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At twelve bucks an hour, I could at least work enough hours and make enough money to get Tria some health care. Michael seemed to think I would lose my mind doing such work, and I wasn’t going to argue that point. It didn’t matter, though, because I was going to lose my mind if I didn’t get Tria back, and this was still the first step.
“Hmm…” Michael hummed as he tapped a finger on the mouse button. “This could be interesting.”
“What’s that?” I asked. I moved a little closer so I could see the screen.
“If I recall, you did a little stone setting in your youth, did you not?”
“Yeah, I guess,” I said. “Not a lot or anything, but I can do the basics. Bezel and tube settings, at least.”
“Well maybe we have something for you here.” Michael looked over at me with his brows raised. “It’s one of the main shops—the one over on Glendale. There are two open positions for stone setters.”
He pointed out the relevant portion of the website listings, and I leaned over to get a better look. The position was for someone who could do fairly simple bezel and burnish settings, which I had done many times in my sophomore year of high school. I was no expert at it, but I had made a few nice pieces for my mother’s birthday that year.
“That’s your basic sweatshop, isn’t it?” I asked. “I mean, it’s not like you get a lot of artistic work going on there. Just set a stone and move on, right?”
“True,” Michael agreed, “but you’re qualified for it.”
He tapped the screen with his finger, and I looked over at the qualifications. He was right—it didn’t require a high school diploma and only specified minimal experience. For the briefest moment, I was hit with a wave of optimism.
Then something else hit me.
“You don’t run the jewelry side of things,” I said.
“Uh…no, I don’t,” Michael admitted.
“You can’t give me this job.” I sat back in the chair and folded my arms across my chest. My skin was tingling as the implications of what he was trying to set up became clear. “I’d be working for my father.”
“Very, very loosely,” Michael explained. “It’s not like you would be in the building where he works. You would likely never see him.”
“But it’s still working for him,” I repeated.
“Yes, technically, it would be.”
“Fuck, Michael!” I stood up and glared down at him.
“Twenty-five dollars an hour, Liam!” Michael stood up beside me. “It’s that or the janitor’s position, and this one is nearly twice the pay. What’s better for Tria?”
He was getting a little frustrated with me. I could tell. Not that it wasn’t warranted. I didn’t have the slightest idea how to perform any of the jobs we’d talked about. Even cleaning out toilets was hardly my forte. This one though—I knew how to do this. I’d be rusty and out of practice, but I remembered the basics. If I were to be completely honest, I had once even enjoyed the task.
“Fuck you,” I muttered, but all the fight was gone from me.
“Does that mean…?” Michael looked at me pointedly, trying to read between the lines of my obnoxious phrasing.
“I’ll apply for it,” I sighed.
“Good! Now let’s put something together that at least resembles a resume, shall we?”
Chimes rang from Michael’s pocket, and he sighed as he reached down and looked at the display before shoving the phone back into his pocket.
He pulled the laptop over and started fumbling around with a couple of different resume templates. We got all my information in, including his address as my own. We even used some of my messing around in the bar as experience and put Dordy down as a reference.
Michael’s phone rang again, but he glanced down and then ignored it. When it continued to buzz in his pocket, he finally gave up.
“Dammit,” he growled. “I don’t know who this is, but let me grab it so they’ll stop interrupting.”
“It’s all right,” I mumbled. While he answered the call, I walked over to the window and looked out over the hill where a thin sliver of the river was visible. I wondered if I had time to sneak outside for a smoke without Chelsea noticing what I was doing.
The woman speaking to Michael must have been pretty ticked off or upset about something—I could hear the sound of her voice across the room though the words were too muffled to be understood. Michael couldn’t seem to get a word in edgewise, and the look on his face was comically tense. Finally, he raised his voice.
