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Pierce.
Sitting at a small, romantic-looking two-top. His tie is loose, causing the vest of his three-piece suit to protrude outward slightly, making him look like he has a bit of a paunch which isn’t normally there. He’s on the phone, and as I approach from across the room I hear him talking with Derek. I don’t know for sure that it’s Derek. But I know.
“What do you mean six months?” He’s sort of yelling. “Six months for a trademark? What the fuck, Derek?”
I knew it was Derek.
“Find a way to fast-track it.” And he hangs up the phone. I wonder how long this Derek guy will continue lawyering for Pierce if he keeps getting hung up on all the time.
“Monsieur,” the maître d’ says, showing me to my seat.
“Merci,” I say, sort of as a reflex, as I sit. I probably sound like an asshole. But. Then again. Comparatively…
“Merde!” Pierce lets out, slamming the phone down on the table, and downing his Shirley Temple with an aggressiveness that comes over as really cute, since it’s a Shirley Temple and all. (I think he drinks them so that other business types who may be watching him won’t know he’s a teetotaler. Gotta keep up appearances in the cut-throat world of douche-baggery.)
“Hey, man,” I say, adjusting myself into place. “Um… Why are you here?”
“What do you mean?” he says, annoyed, chewing on an ice-cube. “We’re having dinner.”
“I thought—”
“Turns out I need to get out of here early, because I’m hooking up with a flight attendant chick I hook up with when she’s in town. She’s on a turn-and-burn from London, so if we wanna get it on, I gotta snap up twenty minutes in the airport Westin.”
“Charming.”
“So I had Myrtle call to see about making the rez for earlier, but it had already been pushed up to six-thirty. I assume you did that. Gauche American that you are. So anyway. I’m here. How we doing on figuring out who this bitch is?”
I smile at him with tired eyes, both because I am tired from the day and because being Pierce’s best friend can tucker a body out. I let out a puff of air through my nose and say, “What was that on the phone?”
“Good news and bad news. The good news is that Sexpert hasn’t been trademarked yet. Ha! Dumb hussy.”
“OK, let’s all just—”
“The bad news is that the attorneys say it’s gonna take at least six months for us to get a trademark on the name.”
“OK. And?”
“And? And who knows if this chick already has a trademark in motion. But more importantly, she’s out there now. She’s gaining traction in the public’s perception. So, even if we get it legally locked in six months, by that time her brand will be established in the Zeit. Geist”—I don’t know why he breaks it up into two words. For effect, I guess—“and that’s it. The brand will be hers. It’ll be meaningless to own the name. And we’ll look like the copycats.” He chews on another ice cube.
“Dude, I don’t get it. I mean, it’s a fun idea. It’s a clever idea. Hell, man, it might even be a genius idea, but it’s not the only idea. I get that you’re freaked out about the magazine losing money. I do. OK? But don’t you think you’re putting a lot on this one thing?”
He stares at me for a moment while he crunches his ice cube.
“No, you don’t get it,” he finally says. “It’s not just the idea. It’s that it was my idea. And somebody has stolen my idea. My dad never wanted me to be a part of his business. You know this.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I don’t wanna get all Freudian and shit, but fuck it. You know my first memory of my dad?”
“I don’t.”
“It was him turning his back on me and Mom and closing the door to the house in Marseilles when the car drove us to the airport. I was four, and he didn’t hug me, or say goodbye, or whatever. Didn’t even wave. Just turned his back. And closed the door. And that was it. And then we were on a plane to America. And I spent the next twenty-three years—twenty. Three—trying to connect with the guy and get him to … well, not love me, that’s ridiculous. But, hell… like me. Or trust me. Or let me be a part of his world. And finally, finally, he gave me a shot. I came to him with the magazine idea and he finally acquiesced and gave me a chance to do this thing. That was five years ago. And in these last five years, I’ve gotten closer to him and had a relationship that I’ve wanted my whole life. Well, not exactly. But as close to a relationship as we’re gonna have.”
