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“Open it.” She gestures to the folder.
It’s a printed-out email, which seems weird enough already, but when I read through the request for a consultation and then see the signature at the bottom, my eyes bulge out. All I can do is stare back up at my sister.
“It arrived this morning. And five minutes ago, I finalized plans for both of us to have lunch and the rest of the afternoon free so we can go see him.”
“Wha—Are you—Is this a prank? Because that would be mean, Zoe.”
She rolls her eyes at me. “No, I wouldn’t joke about this. We’ve been looking for a way to get an in with the big fish in the pond. This is it.”
I nod then straighten my tie. “When are we leaving?”
“One hour.” She nods once then leaves my office without another word because she knows exactly what I’ll do during the hour.
That’s the main reason why our PR consulting firm—JPR—has been so successful in the last five years since we founded it. We know each other like the back of our hands—comes with the territory of being twins.
So whenever either one of us needs something, the other one is already anticipating it.
We also play off of our strengths. Zoe’s the best at managing the overall operation and I’m better at getting the clients and taking their calls to calm them down when shit has hit the fan.
Up until now, we’ve managed to get some pretty impressive celebrities as clients, the most impressive of all are Samantha Sawyer, her husband Edward Trent, Sterling, and The Storm. All very talented, very well-known, verysuccessfulmusicians.
We also manage a dozen other lesser-known celebrities, and we’ve been looking into getting to ‘the bigger fish’ as Zoe started calling them.
These are the people who control markets, people who can lose billions if the general public turns on them. No, we wouldn’t be dealing with drug or cheating scandals if we represented these people, we’d be dealing with politicians calling for action, news stations asking for interviews, and trying to avoid the public from calling for their heads.
So, yeah. Getting these people to sign with us has been a pipe dream, mostly because we predicted we’d have to be in the game for at least ten years and prove ourselves the whole time for them to take us seriously.
Of course, the companies these people own—some of them are women fucking finally—have PR departments, and we don’t want to deal with that at all. We want to represent the individuals. Because the faces of these companies, the owners, CEOs, and heirs are the ones who are most vulnerable.
It’s safe to say I’m not prepared to have a meeting with Harrison Crawford. Owner of Crawford Inc., the New York Kings, and about half the buildings in Manhattan. Also probably a good chunk of the buildings in the tristate area now that I think about it.
I knowofhim, of course. Who is born and raised in the New York area and doesn’t know the Crawford name? But I haven’t been researching him because I never thought he’d ask for a consult.
And a week before Christmas no less.
Some people would think it’s a bad sign for a rich man to ask for a last-minute consult—surely knowing we’d have to cancel a lot of other appointments—in mid-December. I’m sure Zoe did spend a couple of hours dealing with every meeting, call, or Zoom call we had planned so we could do this consult, so I’m not worried about it. Since we’re giving all our employees three weeks off like we do each year around the holidays, we had nothing urgent to take care of. Zoe and I will stay on top of things and take care of our clients during this time, if necessary, but people mostly behave around the holidays,mostly.
However, Mr. Crawford didn’t demand the consult, he asked if it was possible. Besides, he’s Harrison his-middle-name-should-be-fucking Crawford, he can do whatever he wants. So I stop working on the account of one of our younger clients who’s up for two Grammys in a few months and needs some more exposure to give him a better shot at winning and get to work.
An hour later, I’m as prepared as I can be.
HarrisonTheodore—found out his actual middle name—Crawford is about to turn fifty years old in less than a month, has two children, and got divorced from Mary Crawford—his college sweetheart—after ten years of marriage about eighteen years ago. He had an affair that was exposed to the public a few months after his divorce when his daughter was born. He also came out as bisexual in a press conference he did for the Kings—the NFL franchise he owns and I worship—earlier this year.
His oldest son, Theodore Harrison Crawford—there’s a pattern there for sure and I mentally roll my eyes at the customs of the stupidly rich—is twenty-eight years old and unwillingly came into the limelight just before said press conference when he was photographed crying next to his father in a hospital waiting room. It came out then that he’s in a relationship with the star center of the New York Kings, Mike McKinnley. He’d stayed suspiciously out of the spotlight for his whole life before his boyfriend got injured in a game.
‘Could be messy’I wrote in my notes.
His daughter, Iris no-middle-name Crawford, turned seventeen this year and naturally attends Luxton—the most prestigious prep school in Manhattan. She has been very present at the Kings games since her father bought the franchise and was often photographed with Gabrielle Darnell’s—another one of those ‘big fish’, and the owner of the Las Vegas football and hockey teams—twin daughters out and about in Manhattan.
‘Could be messy in about five years’is what I wrote about her.
Other than that, I found a lot of charity presence and an amazing ability to handle the press.
I have no idea why he’s asking for a consult, and it worries me.
“He sent a car for us,” Zoe mentions while we’re descending to the lobby of the building where our offices are—a Crawford-owned building,naturally.
I nod in reply as I fix my suit and tie and make sure my hair is presentable on the mirrored wall of the elevator.
