5. Hard Advice and Jalapenos
Chapter five
Hard Advice and Jalapenos
Haze
T he light in the conference room is harsh. Even accounting for the fact I didn’t sleep all night, I’m shocked that amidst such opulence, these cheap-ass, eyeball-busting light fixtures exist in this space.
I’ll have them replaced in a week.
I should have taken something to help me sleep, but I didn’t want to be half-stoned for such a momentous occasion. The irony of ending up in the same condition from avoiding a sleep aid is not lost on my exhaustion-addled brain. Whether or not I’m well-rested doesn’t matter, anyhow. The contracts have been picked over with fine-toothed combs. The deal is set in stone, approved by the NBA, and both parties have agreed. The only part left is to sign the contracts and take the photos.
I’ve asked for a month until we announce, and Daniel Winicki III, the man selling me the Chino Hill Commanders, has agreed. He gets one month to impart his thirty years of wisdom to me and say goodbye to his legacy.
After the lawyers and personal assistants file out, I find myself alone with Dan, squinting past the rude glare bouncing off the stirred-up motes of dust. “You look like a wheelbarrow full of shit, son.”
“Yeah. Rough night,” I answer with half of a self-deprecating grin.
Dan doesn’t buy it. “I won’t pretend to know anything about your personal life these days, Haze, but are you sure? I'll rip up the contracts and send you a bill only for the lawyers if you have a single doubt about this. Running a team is a full-time job. I don’t know how you’re going to manage it on top of the rest of your business.”
My face freezes. I have too much respect for Dan to let him read the stark irritation that ripples through my body. Especially if I’m unsure how much of what I’m feeling has to do with the fact that my gas tank is empty. “Well, Dan,” I say carefully, as evenly as possible, “I’ll do it the same way you did, only better. Because I have a top-tier team and technology, you didn’t. And I don’t have one of those pesky families like you do.”
He winces. “God damn it, Haze, I didn’t mean it like that, and you know it.” He sits back and pulls a toothpick out of the inside of his jacket. I’d bet the cost of the team it’s cinnamon flavored. Dan Winicki’s been chewing on those since he quit smoking in the early nineties. “Forgive me for being defensive, but the Commanders are my baby.”
“I know, old man, and I swear I’ll do you proud.” I stand up, and my left knee feels like it’s forty-four years old.
“I always planned on you, Haze. I knew neither of my kids would want the team. I just knew that day that it would come to fruition. I’m sorry it happened the way it did.” He gets out of his chair, leaning heavily on the back of the chair beside him as he rises to his full height in stages. “My hips are so damn bad I can’t stand up straight. But I’ll be damned if I let those hammer-happy bone docs slice and dice on my skeleton. Not unless I break it first.”
I button my jacket and walk around the table, pushing chairs in to clear a path for him. “I’m sorry it happened the way it did, too, Dan, but Angie would have approved.”
“You think Jacob would have played for me?” he asks. So far, Dan has signed three sons of his former players. I would expect nothing less from a man who has such a hard-on for legacy. The only reason he didn’t try harder to convince one of his kids to take on the team was he was aware that running a professional sports team could only be done by someone willing to bleed for the organization. No amount of money can prepare someone for the magnitude of responsibility that comes with owning pro sports.
I step around him and hold out my arm. He uses it as a rail until we get close enough to the door for him to grip the handle. “Maybe.” I shrug. “He was only seventeen when he died. Still had to get through college ball. As much as he wanted to play...” I pause as memories push aside my train of thought.
“What?” Dan asks, gripping the door handle.
“He wanted to be a doctor. After Sydney got diagnosed. I don’t think he would have chosen ball in the end.”
His eyes crinkle with a slight smile as he nods his head, recalling my son fondly and with respect. “He would have given it up, just like his father did when his family needed him. You’re a better man than I, Haze Harmon. Don’t let anyone tell you different. The Commanders are in good hands.” With that, he pushes the door open, and the flash of camera bulbs obliterates the nostalgia brewing in the space between us.
***
“Do you want me to order you a steak from Valdoni’s?” Martine glances into the rearview mirror as she turns left on Van Wagoner.
“No thanks,” I answer absently, rubbing my temples as the landscape flies by in a blur.
“You need to eat, Mr. Harmon. You have black bags under your eyes, and you look like my Uncle Santi after a week of shop shutdown.”
I snort. “I wasn’t aware mama bear was listed in your job description.”
“I won’t be the laughingstock of Harmon Holdings because my boss refuses to take care of himself. You look like fight night, boss. Your suit is rumpled, your face is a mess, and you look skinny.” Her voice rises as she ticks each offense off with a perfectly manicured talon against the pad of her thumb while driving.
Before I can answer, she taps the device set in her ear. She listens, then says, “Sure, patch him through.” She pastes on an extremely fake, wide smile. “Mr. Cousineau. What can I do for you today?”
Oh God. Martine hates Rob Cousineau. He’s a reporter for The Capital Conversation , a financial rag more interested in the personal lives of the people who move money than the whys and wherefores of the money moving. I smirk into the mirror mouthing, “Obliterate him.”
Martine smiles back, instantly forgiving me in the time it takes her fake smile to transform into that of a shark. “Mr. Cousineau… May I call you Rob? Rob.” She gags and coughs, somehow making the sound both executive-level classy and deeply insulting. I scooch to the end of the seat, straining to tease words out of the muffled stream of unhappiness I hear slipping out of her ear. “Good gracious, that just won’t do. My apologies, Mr. Cousineau. I can’t bring myself to call you by your first name.”
Martine lifts an eyebrow in the rearview mirror, and I very gently chuck her on the shoulder. “Excellent work, boss,” I mouth into the mirror.
She taps a button on the cord of her headset. “This piece of work, I swear. He can’t hear anything from my line, and still, he’s yapping like that uppity smash-faced ankle biter my Tia Connie carries around in her fake Louis…” She slips into a few lines of her native tongue, and I bark a laugh, recognizing a few of Martine’s favorite insults. She puts a warning finger to her lips, whips around Taft Avenue, and taps the cord again. “MISTER Cousineau, I’m sure you respect my time the same way I regard yours. As I am quite certain you know how valuable Mr. Harmon’s is. I’ll resend the email. Good day, sir.”
I open my mouth to speak but close it when she blows through a stop light and peels around the next right like she’s being tailed. “Mr. Harmon, I’m kidnapping you.”
“I—”
She holds a hand up in the mirror. “I cannot hear your objections. You’ve been asking me for years to go to dinner, and this is it. This is the day I choose. I’m choosing the restaurant, too. I need a drink after listening to that.” She lowers her voice, muttering, “Puto chupa pollas con cara de cabra,” while banging her fist on the steering wheel, cursing under her breath as if I won’t hear her. I wonder how many pomegranate martinis it will take to get her to teach that to me. According to her Instagram, that’s what she drinks. I had my brother Bryce’s assistant, Luna, put a basket of all the ingredients to make the drinks together for me. Along with four plane tickets so Martine could take her sisters on a trip for the last Executive Assistant’s Day. I snicker again, imagining her bossing them into the thank you cards I’d received.
“Boss! Now you laugh. You’re lucky you pay me enough to deal with the Rahhhhhhb Cousi-NO’s of the world.” Mocking his voice, she pinches her nose to recreate the extra nasally voice of the self-inflated reporter. This time, I laugh outright.
Martine pulls the car into the parking lot of a boarded-up pawn shop. Outside are picnic tables with mismatched umbrellas and three food trucks. “This is the best Latin food you can get until you hit LA,” she announces, turning off the engine and getting out of the car. She lifts her face to the setting sun. “I hate how greasy I feel after sitting in a room full of lawyers.”
“I’m telling Bryce you said that,” I tease. “Do you have the keys?”
She turns, crossing her arms over her chest as she shakes the dangling keys in her hand. “How dare you, boss man.”
“Sorry, I just, you left your purse…”
“Because you are paying, Mr. Harmon. Nobody here will steal my purse. My nephew will…” I take her arm as she prattles on about her nephew Luis and all the things he’ll do if anyone touches my car or her purse. While she orders for the both of us, I lift my face to the sun, enjoying the warmth of a late summer evening. With my eyes closed, I can almost imagine the heat on my cheeks is Angie’s fingers.
With Sal gone, I have no one to talk to about those I’ve loved and lost. No one understood my grief the way he did. My own blood relatives, my brothers, my parents, not one of them listened the way I needed them to. Only Sal gave me that grace, twisting his compassion into a lifeline strong enough to pull me from the depths of grief and despair.
Martine and I wait in comfortable silence during the surprisingly short time it takes for our order to come up. She leads me over to one of the tables, pulls out a chair, and shoos me into it. Still silent, I watch her fuss as she drops various wrapped packages and a Styrofoam container in front of me. “Mr. Harmon—”
“I refuse to eat a single thing unless you call me Haze.” She draws her chin back, her spine straightening into her classic about-to-object pose. I hold my palms out in an entreating gesture. “Come on, Martine. It’s dinner. After work hours. Street food with a friend.”
“A friend after hours only ,” she insists, stabbing a finger at a package. “Eat that first, Haze,” she bosses. “And while we eat, we talk.”
I open the package, my stomach grumbling as soon as the aroma of seasoned beef and masa hits my nose. Martine dives into a burrito. “What do you have?” I ask around a mouthful of food.
“I have something you can’t. It is special for me,” she says, primly smirking. She knows me well enough to know the moment she says I can’t have her food, I’ll focus with laser intensity on getting it. She turns her container and pushes it forward to make it easier for me to dive in.
Flavor explodes on my tongue. “Fuck me,” I groan. “That’s delicious.” My stomach roars, starved past emptiness, forced into primal growling that’s louder than the sucking vacuum in my chest.
“You can have it. I’ll eat yours.” Martine reaches across the table. I curl over my food like a lioness over her cub.
Martine turns in her chair and motions to the kid in the window of the truck. When she turns back, a sly smile creeps over her face. I stuff another bite of the shrimp and chicken, liberally doused in queso fresco, in my face. “You did that on purpose,” I mumble.
She relaxes back in her chair, tilting her face into the setting sun. Martine worked for my father for a couple of years. After his stroke, I inherited her, so to speak. She was too good, too knowledgeable about the family business, and too valuable to let go just because we didn’t have an exact job description for her at the time. Martine was pivotal in transferring my father’s accounts to my brother, me, and the few junior associates we employed at the time.
A man with an apron wrapped around his waist and a hairnet on jogs over and hands Martine another container of food. “Do you feel appreciated?” I ask abruptly. “Compensated appropriately?” I stuff another forkful of food in my mouth and chew vigorously, desperate to have something to do if she decides not to answer and nail me with one of those extremely uncomfortable stares she’s known for.
She opens her eyes and rotates her head lazily, blinking at me. “I’m compensated appropriately. As for appreciation… Tell me what you’re really asking Haze.”
I swallow my food. “This.” I wave my hand over the table. “You taking me out for supper. You knowing something is wrong with me. The way you are just…aware of what I need. This isn’t part of your job description, Martine. This is what you do for someone you care about.” I’m instantly uncomfortable after the words burst out of my mouth, but I’m curious. Her answer will soothe the itch of my curiosity.
A wall of ice forms over her posture, breaking off the severe cliff of her countenance and crashing between us. Rippling out like a bomb blast, I shiver as an icy wave of frigid cold pushes the radiant heat of the late-summer afternoon away. She sits up, straightening, then leans forward, gripping the edge of the cheap metal table we sit at as she hisses at me. “Jesus Christ, Haze! Do you really want to have this conversation here?”
Fuck. I had no idea the question would garner that big of a response. The knowledge that she’s going to take my simple yes or no question and turn it around on me makes the inside of my skin crawl. “Yes.” No. Of-fucking-course, I don’t want to. I don’t want to hear anyone speak of uncomfortable subjects. Martine’s response tells me she’s been waiting for an opportunity to say something one of us (me) is going to find uncomfortable. I could nip this conversation in the ass right now. But I have no one left in my life to tell me the things I don’t want to hear. Sal is gone. My wife and my children are dead. My brother thinks I’m a machine and not so secretly pities me, but not enough to disturb the delicate work-life balance he’s achieved. There is no one to give it to me straight but Martine.
Martine chuckles, taking a bite of her food and swallowing before answering. “You think you’re so stoic, Haze. Have you forgotten I’ve known you since you were a child? I’ve watched, in slow motion sometimes, every growing pain, every phase, each evolution of your life.” She pushes her food around her container, deliberating over what she wants to say next. “I know that you appreciate me. And I suspect, beyond the professional relationship, you are fond of me, as I am of your family. There’s a reason many of us normal, blue-collar folks call our co-workers our ‘work family.’ Do you show me you’re fond of me? Not often. Do I feel like I could go to you for anything, and you would go out of your way to fix my problem? Yes. Without a doubt.”
She takes another bite, her eyes slightly narrowed as she intakes and calculates what I’ve let slip over my face. “I’m going to say something, Haze, and you’re going to listen. I’ve earned the right, and if you think it comes from anywhere but the love in my heart for the boy my boss adored, then you can take my job and fuck yourself with it.”
She drops that bomb mid-swallow. Coughing hard, I cover my mouth and reach for my drink. “Jalapeno,” I wheeze.
“I’m afraid for you, Haze.” The cool air dissipates, but the afternoon sun is afraid of our table. I shiver, the spicy food not enough to heat the rest of me after her soft declaration. “When Sal came around, I thought you were finally on your way, that he would help you step out of the pit of your grief. My heart was full of hope that you would take his hand and let him lead you back to a place of happiness, but…you used him. You used him as a Band-Aid, and now you’ve ripped him off and discarded him.” I open my mouth, and she holds up a hand. The pain in her voice when she speaks again is raw, abrading me, soaking into my bloodstream in a way that makes denying the truth of her words impossible. “I’m not judging you, Haze. My heart is breaking for you. I would do anything to help you find joy again and learn to live for love again.”
Her raised palm stills my initial urge to bark a denial. The pity in her eyes doesn’t grate the way everyone else’s does. Martine cares. “Your mama is so worried about you, Haze. I had lunch with her just last week. She said she sensed something was up with you and Sal. You aren’t hiding yourself as good as you think you are.”
I open my mouth and then shut it when I’m unable to formulate a full sentence. My head is spinning, my pulse thrumming. I have no idea what to say. The blush saturating my face is acidic, burning with embarrassment that the women in my life have gleaned so much of what I deem intimately personal and private from intuition alone.
Martine has turned what I thought was a simple question about how she feels into a deep dive of my personal life. My appetite curdles and disappears. I push the carton of food away. “Sal wanted something I couldn’t give him.”
“Why?” She cuts in. “Why couldn’t you dig deep and give him what he needs? He loves you, Haze.”
I sigh. Might as well lay it out on the table. Maybe speaking the impasse between us aloud will put it to bed. “My love wasn’t enough. He wanted to introduce a third.”
She nods. “He wants a woman. Someone to bring softness to open and reach into the places your masculinity can’t reach.” She reaches across the small table and picks up my hand. “What he’s asking for can’t just be about sex, Haze. Maybe he needs something you aren’t built to give, and I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts he believes you need it, too. Sal is in love with you. He’d do anything for you. Maybe he thinks finding the right woman for the two of you isn’t finding fault with how you love him but rather a gift you can give each other. I don’t know if I’m wording that correctly, but I think you know what I mean.”
This conversation has gone off the rails, but I know if I don’t finish it honestly, I’ll lose something with Martine I didn’t know I valued or needed until now. The thought of walking into the office tomorrow morning and finding anything but my Martine at her desk turns my stomach. She deserves the truth from me. “You know me, Martine. I’m a greedy man. I acquire things for a living. I’ve done nothing but collect and hoard for the entirety of my adult life. You see how I handle loss. I’m not equipped for it.”
The small tragic smile that accompanies the sheen of tears in her eyes breaks something inside of me. “Oh, Haze,” she chokes out. “No one sees you that way but yourself. I see a man who gives. One whose philanthropy is practiced too quietly because he wishes he could give more. A man who sees the ghosts of his children in every needy child and goes above and beyond honoring them by enriching the lives of strangers. I see a broken heart that refuses to envision a future because of a lost past.” I pull back, but my hand is encased in iron. “I know I’ve stepped out of bounds, but I’m not sorry. Please, Haze. Give Sal the benefit of the doubt.” She emphasizes each word with a shake of our hands, banging her knuckles on the table. “This isn’t a ‘what have you got to lose’ kind of appeal. Think about what you might gain. Find a way to let go of your guilt about Angie and the kids before you lose Sal. Try giving him what he wants. You can decide if you don’t want it later. Look at it the same way you do your business. You’ve never given up on an acquisition without trying to save it. If you’re going to lose Sal either way, why not say goodbye knowing you’ve given everything in your power to give?”
She lets go of my hand and gets up, gathering up the food while turning to shout in Spanish at the food truck. The dinner rush has died down, and before she’s done speaking, the same guy who brought out her food comes over, wiping his hands on his apron. I stand, the iron feet of my chair scraping and squealing across the cement. I’m so stunned by the conversation, and Martine’s appeal, that I’m not sure who is controlling my motor functions when the young man she’s introducing me to holds out a hand to shake. I watch my arm lift, my hand clasp his, and hear my name slide out of my mouth, along with my compliments on the food.
My business brain is already calculating the cost of setting Martine’s nephew Luis up in a restaurant. The break-even time. How long it would take to get an alcohol permit. Martine hugs the young man, not seeming to be worried one whit if what’s on his apron is going to transfer to her clothing. Then she takes my arm and leads me to the car. I’m so lost in thought that I don’t notice when she pushes me in the passenger seat, the blocks blurring by, or when she pulls into my driveway.
A sedan pulls up behind us. “That’s my ride. Go in and get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. Harmon.”
“Tomorrow,” I murmur. I don’t open the door of the car until the sky is dusky and the crickets have reached the climax of their end of summer composition.