“Hello,” I said to the woman with the sick kid. I racked my brain trying to remember her name. “Lana, right?”
She offered a tight smile. “Yes.”
“How are you?” I asked. I was trying.
“Fine.”
“Have you seen Saige?” I asked casually.
“She was taking a personal day,” she answered tightly. “She’s been working twelve-hour days.”
I didn’t have to question her loyalty. It was evident. “I see,” I murmured. “Has anyone else taken a personal day?”
“Nobody else can afford to,” she snapped.
I nodded. “I’ll be in my office if anyone needs me.”
She offered a tight smile mixed with a snort. She didn’t like me. I walked back to my office and closed the door. I picked up the letter and reread it. Lana thought Saige was taking a personal day. Did that mean she was coming back?
I read the words once again. No. She was gone. She didn’t want her people to know, which I was happy for. I would be dealing with a complete disaster if they knew she quit. There would be nothing keeping them at their jobs.
I sat in silence, the smell of muffins and eggs suddenly heavy in the room. I wasn’t hungry anymore. I was staring down defeat. For the first time in a long time, I felt truly worried. My new business was about to go belly up.
I grabbed my phone and called Davin. I was going to vent and then listen to him gloat because he warned me this would happen one day. It turned out that day was today. “Are you at the bar?” I asked him when he answered.
“Uh, it’s nine,” he said.
“I know what time it is, and I also know you go in early.”
He laughed. “Yes, I’m here. Damn, are you checking up on me?”
“No.”
There was a pregnant pause. “What happened?” he asked with a sigh. “Did you fire someone else?”
“Not exactly,” I answered.
“What exactly did you do?” he questioned. I didn’t miss the hint of accusation in his tone.
“Technically, nothing today,” I said. “I was ready to apologize and I hoped we could have a nice conversation about everything. I even picked up breakfast for her.”
“For Saige,” he clarified.
“Yes, for Saige. I know things didn’t go well on Monday. I didn’t talk to her yesterday. My plan was to give her some time to cool off.”
“And you somehow managed to screw up bringing her breakfast.” He laughed. “Only you.”
“She quit.” I said the two words and let them hang in the air.
“Saige quit?”
“Yes,” I said and let all the feelings roll over me.
“What’d you buy her for breakfast?” he asked. “Warm cup of piss or what? Don’t tell me you were a tight-ass and bought her some shitty ninety-nine-cent breakfast sandwich.”
I looked at the fast-food bag on my desk. “It was two dollars actually and that doesn’t matter because she doesn’t know I brought her breakfast. She left me a letter on my desk. I haven’t seen her since Monday.”
“Damn, you really pissed her off when you fired that guy,” he said, stating the obvious.
“Maybe, and I’m sure it’s a bullshit excuse, but in her resignation letter, if you can call it that, she says she needs to spend more time with her son.”
“Her son?” he repeated. “I didn’t know you were chasing a mama.”
“I wasn’t. I’m not. I mean, I didn’t know. She mentioned a babysitter, but I thought she was joking.”
He laughed. “You thought a woman who mentioned her babysitter was joking? What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I don’t know. She doesn’t look like she has a kid.”
I could hear him groaning. “You’re such an idiot. Look at the many models and actresses that have several kids, and by your standards, you couldn’t tell. She has a kid. Maybe more than one.”
My eyes bulged. “You think?”
“What did the letter say?”
I quickly read him the letter aloud. It was short and sweet, and if one read between the lines, it was a big “fuck you, you’re an asshole, and I quit.”
“So, just one kid,” he said. “Not that it matters, but if you were expecting her to work as much as you do, she probably couldn’t or wouldn’t keep up. She’s not a bachelor with servants to do all the stuff normal people do on top of being a mom. I’m going to assume there isn’t a husband in the picture.”
“Fuck, I hope not,” I muttered.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know how to do that tax stuff?” he questioned.
I chuckled. “Nope.”
“I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but with her gone, the rest are going to go soon.”
I leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. “I know,” I groaned. “I know and I have no idea what to do. I don’t know how to do the day-to-day stuff. What good is a business if I have no one to run it? It would be like me trying to run the bar by myself. I don’t know shit about mixing drinks or any of that.”
“No, you don’t, which is why you hire people like me. The problem is, you get this idea in your head that you know what’s best. You have to listen to the little people.”
This was the part where I let him give me the “I told you so” lecture. I certainly deserved it. “I know. I fucked up. I’m going to be screwed if I can’t get someone in here tomorrow.”
“Do you want her back?” he asked.
“I need her to run this place.”
“Then let her run it and get your ass out of there,” he said. “It isn’t like you don’t have anything else to do. Why’d you insinuate yourself in that place?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because of her and your past,” he said.
“Not just because of that.”
“But a lot because of that,” he said with a laugh.
“I know she’s good at her job. That’s what I wanted her for. I wanted her to keep running the place but with my improvements.”
“Your people skills suck, Nash. You have got to have the highest turnover percentage in New York.”
I sat forward. “Watch yourself or you are going to be a part of that statistic,” I warned.
“Oh, you’re going to run a bar and a tax firm?” he joked. “Good luck with that.”
“There are people out there that want the jobs,” I reminded him.
“And like you have time to find those people. Why would you want to go through the trouble when you have people perfectly capable of handling the job? Do you want her back?”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. “It’s good business.”
He laughed. “Okay, we’ll go with that. If you want her back at work, you better fight for her. You can’t let her go without trying to get her to stay. You need to let her know she’s a valuable employee. You need to pull your head out of your ass and listen to what she wants. She’s been there a lot longer than you have. You have to listen to people that know just a little bit more than you about certain things.”