Chapter 16 - Toothpick Dick

Chapter 16: Chapter 16 - Toothpick Dick

Andrew stared at Jesse like he’d grown a second head.

"You can’t be serious."

Jesse said nothing. He just sat there with his legs crossed, perfectly relaxed, like a man waiting for his coffee order.

Andrew dragged a hand down his face. "I can’t give you the VP position, Jesse. I already gave it to Rudy. It’s done. It’s been announced. HR has the paperwork. It’s impossible." He leaned his palms on the desk. "Ask for something else. A raise. A bonus. A real office with a fucking window. Anything."

Jesse held his gaze for a long, quiet moment.

Then he glanced down at his watch.

"You have two minutes left to do as I asked."

Andrew’s composure cracked right down the middle.

"Are you deaf? I can’t have two VPs of Brand Operations and Supply Chain! The board will laugh me out of the room. It doesn’t work like that!"

"Then demote Rudy."

"What?"

"Demote him," Jesse said, like he was suggesting Andrew switch to decaf. "This isn’t about Rudy’s feelings, Andy. This is about saving the company."

Andrew opened his mouth to argue. Jesse didn’t let him.

"Don’t act like I don’t know. I’ve been in that basement for five years, but I see every invoice, every shipping contract and every vendor payment that comes through this building. I know the company is running on fumes." He tilted his head. "Your Tokyo expansion flopped. The handbag line bled money for two quarters straight. You signed that ridiculous ten-year lease on the Soho flagship right before rents dropped. You’ve been rolling over supplier debts for months, hoping nobody notices."

Andrew’s face drained of color.

"This fall collection isn’t just a fashion show," Jesse went on. "It’s a make-or-break moment. If it flops, the investors pull out. And you know exactly what happens after that."

He leaned forward slightly.

"Your uncle comes back. The Diddler."

The words hit Andrew like a slap.

Victor Hyland. His father’s younger brother. The man the board had pushed out three years ago, and the man who had spent every day since waiting for his nephew to fall flat on his face so he could walk back in and take the company for himself. Andrew had called him "the Diddler" behind his back for years.

If the fall collection failed, the board would hand Victor the keys before the runway lights even cooled.

Andrew’s whole body seemed to go loose and tight at the same time.

He grabbed his desk phone and stabbed a button.

"Margaret. Get HR in here. No, right now. And pull up Rudy Mazer’s promotion file." His eyes stayed locked on Jesse. "We’re making a change."

He hung up, yanked open his laptop and started typing so fast he kept hitting the wrong keys. He signed something with a stylus, slammed the laptop shut and looked up.

"Done. You’re the VP of Brand Operations and Supply Chain Strategy, effective immediately. Now make the fucking call."

Jesse smiled.

"See? That wasn’t so hard."

He pulled out his phone. Instead of dialing Pedro at the port, he scrolled down to a different name.

Hassan Farouk.

Andrew frowned. "That’s not the port."

"Why would I call the middleman," Jesse said, "when I have the man himself?"

The phone rang twice before a warm, gravelly voice answered, thick with an Egyptian accent.

"Jesse, my boy. I wondered if I would hear from you."

"Mr. Hassan. How are you? How’s Karim? Did he hear back from Columbia?"

Andrew watched in disbelief as the tension in Jesse’s shoulders simply disappeared.

"He got in!" Hassan laughed. "Early acceptance. He wants to study engineering, like his useless grandfather. I told him New York will eat him alive."

"New York eats everybody alive. He’ll be fine. Tell him congratulations from me." Jesse paused, then let his voice drop into something more serious. "Mr. Hassan, I hear there’s been some confusion with the payment on our shipment."

’Charisma Boost,’ Jesse thought.

[Activated.]

It wasn’t like flipping a switch. It was subtler than that. His voice felt warmer in his own throat. His words came out exactly the way he wanted them to, every pause landing in the right place.

Hassan sighed. "My nephew handles the business side now. He says your company has been late with payments before. He doesn’t trust the new people. He says the new man, this Mazer, doesn’t answer his phone."

"He’s right," Jesse said. "The new man doesn’t answer his phone. That’s why I’m calling you myself. That’s why the new man isn’t the new man anymore."

A pause.

"You have taken his place?"

"As of about thirty seconds ago."

Hassan chuckled, low and pleased. "Good. Good. I never liked the sound of him."

"Mr. Hassan, you and I have worked together for a long time. Has Standard & Silk ever let you down while I was the one handling things?"

"No. Never with you."

"Then let me handle it now. Full payment will be wired to you before the end of the day. You have my word. And I’d consider it a personal favor if that fabric stayed with us. Not just this shipment. Every bolt of Giza 45 you produce this season. Nobody else gets it. Not Milan, not Paris. Just us."

The line went quiet.

Jesse could almost hear the old man thinking.

"You ask for a lot, Jesse."

"I know. But I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think we’d make it worth your while."

Another pause. Then Hassan laughed.

"Fine. Fine! For now, the fabric is yours and no one else’s. I will call my nephew and tell him to stop being an idiot. But Jesse, the payment—"

"By the end of day. I promise."

"I believe you. Go. Do your fashion show."

The call ended.

Jesse set his phone face down on Andrew’s desk and leaned back in the chair.

"The fabric’s ours. Exclusively. For the season."

Andrew stared at him. For a few seconds, he looked like he’d just watched someone pull a rabbit out of a hat and then set the hat on fire.

Then the relief faded, and something nastier crept back into his expression.

"You know," Andrew said slowly, "I could change my mind right now. Call HR back in. Reverse the whole thing."

Jesse smiled.

"You could. But you won’t."

He stood and buttoned his suit jacket.

"Because deep down, you now know that I know a lot about you, and a lot about this company. Enough to set it all on fire if I feel like it." He picked up his phone and slid it into his pocket. "This fabric situation isn’t the only thing that can go wrong, Andy. Trust me."

Andrew’s jaw worked. His knuckles had gone white against the edge of the desk.

He looked defeated. More than that, he looked like a man who’d just realized the dog he’d been kicking for five years had teeth.

"You’ll regret this," Andrew said. "I’ll get back at you for this, Jesse. You’d better watch your back. Always."

Jesse gave him a smug, lazy look.

"If you say so."

He turned and walked toward the door.

He had his hand on the knob when Andrew’s voice came again, low and venomous.

"I fucked your girl." Andrew’s voice shook with rage. "And I’m going to fuck her again. Harder than I ever did."

Jesse stopped.

Then he laughed. A real laugh, loud enough that Margaret probably heard it outside.

He turned around.

"Fuck her hard with what? Your toothpick dick?"

Andrew’s mouth fell open.

He looked genuinely stunned, like nobody had ever spoken to him like that in his entire life. Which, Jesse figured, nobody probably had.

Before Andrew could recover, Jesse kept going.

"And just so you know, Tatiana isn’t my girl anymore. I am sure that ruins your whole fucking-the-slave’s-girlfriend kink. I kicked her out on the street right before I came here," He smiled. "But not before I plowed her so hard I loosened her up for you. So next time you try to fuck her, don’t be surprised if it feels like fucking the air."

He laughed again, opened the door, and walked out.

Behind him, Andrew Hyland’s face twisted into something ugly and purple. A coffee mug shattered against the inside of the door a second after it closed.

Margaret flinched at her desk. She looked up at Jesse.

Jesse winked at her.

For the first time in five years, she smiled back.

******

The VP corner offices were at the end of the executive floor, past the conference rooms, where the windows looked out over the Hudson.

Jesse had walked past them a hundred times. He’d never been inside.

The one at the far corner had a fresh brass nameplate mounted beside the glass door. It was so new it still had a little smudge of adhesive at the edge.

RUDY MAZER

VICE PRESIDENT, BRAND OPERATIONS & SUPPLY CHAIN STRATEGY

Jesse stood in front of it for a moment.

He thought about the boy who’d grabbed him by the back of the neck in the third-floor bathroom at Crestwood Academy. The roar of the water. The cold porcelain against his face. The laughter echoing off the tiles while he kicked and choked and swallowed toilet water until everything went black.

He thought about the nerve damage. The crossed eyes he saw every morning in the mirror.

He reached up, wedged his fingers behind the nameplate and pulled.

The adhesive gave way with a satisfying crack.

"Hey!"

Jesse turned.

Rudy Mazer was striding down the hallway toward him, sunglasses pushed up into his hair, a coffee cup in one hand and his phone in the other. He was wearing yesterday’s clothes. He smelled like expensive cologne and last night’s tequila.

So many missed calls, Jesse thought. So many missed calls, and he’s only walking in now.

Rudy stopped a few feet away and stared at the nameplate in Jesse’s hand. Then at the empty spot on the wall. Then at Jesse.

His face twisted into the same sneer Jesse had seen a thousand times in the halls of Crestwood Academy.

"What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Cross-Eyes?" Rudy jabbed a finger toward the wall. "Who gave you the right to touch my name?"