“No one is acting like children, Mas. Bri is obviously uncomfortable with this woman, and I don’t blame her.”
“It’s business.”
“Yeah, it is. But you heard her line about Bri losing twelve more pounds. That’s not business, that’s bullshit.”
“It’s done. One of you, and I don’t care who, is to email Ms. Nesta-Vrees and set up a meeting with her next week, or the week after at the latest. You are going to need financials, projections?—”
“I’ll do it,” Trystan replies curtly.
Bri remains stock-still, cross-legged in the chair, turned to face me, perched on the edge of the desk. When I tap her knee to attract her attention, she flinches before curling away from my hand. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I sent her home last night in the car, taking Trystan and Aydra, because I wanted more time to talk with potential allies at a private men’s club in the opposite direction to her apartment. Perhaps it’s the collaborative group she’s been thrust into. Either way, she has a job to do. A job for which I’m paying her an excellent salary.
“If that’s all, Mason, perhaps Bri can get back to her tasks with Helen. Do you mind if you and I have a word?”
“Sure.” It’s a verbal representation of my current frustration. Not with my staff, but more my inability to secure an accurate read on her mood. Bri senses her freedom and dashes from the room like a startled rabbit with the hounds of Hell snapping at her heels. The moments of silence tick on until Trys breaks them with a sledgehammer.
“Jesus, you are a fucking hypocritical prick sometimes.”Ouch. Why don’t you tell me how you really feel, buddy?
“Careful. Last time I checked, it was my name on the foyer, not yours. I don’t pay you for your opinion of me.”
“I’m raising an issue with your behavior as a friend and human being. Not your subordinate.”
“Nice backpedal. You saving your nose this time?”
“Asshole.” And he’s right. A furious haymaker thrown in a fit of rage half our lives ago broke his nose and destroyed the cartilage. Even with stellar surgeons, you can still see the slight bow of the bone when it didn’t heal as well as expected, nor did a second surgery correct the almost undetectable deformity.
“You do this on purpose,” he thunders, unperturbed. “You make their lives miserable, and they leave. It might be a game to you, but it’s not to them. Not to Bri, at least. Why must you behave like such a fucking caveman?”
Now, I’m a lot of things, a cave dweller isn’t one of them. Mercers are way too polished, too refined. Years of finishing school, behavioral and etiquette lessons, and butlers whose job it was to teach me how to tie a tie. I was four years old and expected to perfect a full Windsor knot.
“Bri is… excellent. I don’t want her to leave,” I say, my voice rising higher in volume than expected. Walking around the desk to resume my seat, I met his steely stare. “I expect her to understand the difference between business and childhood bullying. As a professional, Ms. Broe should be more than capable of separating the two.”
At twenty-four, Sabrina is close to the absolute basement age for an EPA. The contract stipulates that any woman between twenty-three and forty-five years of age can be recommended. Too young, and they tend to lack the maturity to understand business practices, and this being a no attachments contract. All too often they get hung up on adesigner dress not fitting, or accommodations in Europe being too old and too dated. At the other end of the scale, women in their forties can be notorious clingers. Torn between accepting a mediocre, suburban life driving a late-model SUV and listening to Michael Bublé, or wanting to mother me to the point of cloying asphyxiation; I pass on both, always. As soon as the signs start to glow like the Bat-Signal, they are terminated on the grounds of a misdemeanor, and the interview process begins again.
“You could have fooled me,” he barks back, cold and bitter.
“Perhaps you’re easily fooled, Trystan.” It’s a low blow, but I’m pissed.
A vein throbs at his temple. “Perhaps I am. But I possess some shred of fucking decency that skipped your prestigious DNA. You didn’t even notice Bri come back from the restroom with red-rimmed eyes, or her food untouched on her plate. No, you were too busy flirting with Aydra or trying to cement some unnecessary alliance that didn’t require fortification. Tell me, Mason, was your mask so firmly in place that you didn’t even notice how affected she was by the reappearance of her teen bully?”
My resounding scoff is met with a look of pure derision. “Everyone handles stress and pressure differently, Trystan, this might be an excellent lesson for Sabrina. How she handles this could define her. She might tap into a reservoir of resilience she never knew she had.”
This time his laugh echoes through the space like a sound wave. “As long as she fits into the box deemed acceptable and appropriate by a Mercer, right? Or she might end up with a broken nose too? You said it yourself not five fucking minutes ago. It’s called life, right?”
Pen and I share a cozy cocktail table at O’Rordys, an upscale Irish bar with over three hundred global whiskies to sample. She answered my panicked message within a minute and suggested we meet for a drink to discuss plans going forward.
“Juliette? Jules? Nasty fleas?”
“Yes!” Nasty fleas was a moniker Pen had given Juliette at the height of her fascination with my extra weight. It provided a temporary distraction from the turmoil, and because we weren’t cruel bitches, the name never saw the light of day other than in our hushed discussions. Unlike our classy selves, Jules still found it necessary to announce me as Flabby Sabby in public. At a gala dinner where I entered like a princess and exited like a crushed insect.
“Oh man. What the actual fuck is she doing working at Fenkels?”
“I don’t know, but Trystan and I have to work with her on an upcoming deal that has something to do with a pilot program out of Georgia. I think I’d rather resign than sit with her on anything. But before you say it, I can’t, I know. Even so, she makes me want to peel my skin off layer by layer.”
“The last time I heard anything about her, she was a junior sales rep for some pharmaceutical company. How did she end up working in radio, and with that whiny voice?”
The ice in my vodka soda does another laparound the glass, chased by the disintegrating paper straw. My last few days working at Mercer Media have made me feel like a column of pulp about to tear in two.
“Bri, it’s mush. Stop.” She snatches it away and places it on a cocktail napkin. “So, other than Juliette Nasty Fleas, is everything else okay at MM?”
