AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Take my watch,” he says to you. He is rattled, sure, but not as rattled as he should be. There is still the faux bravado of a soft man who has never known tough. This is just a small problem, he thinks, because all his problems up until now have been small, inconsequential. He’ll get out of it, he’s sure. He always has in the past. For guys like him, things just seem to go right. They live in a delusion of meritocracy. They believe that they have supernatural charisma, charm, and innate talents that separate them from the rest of us mere mortals.
“It’s a Vacheron Constantin timepiece,” he tells you. “My father bought it in 1974. Do you know how much they go for?”
You shouldn’t be enjoying this so much. “Tell me,” you say.
“Probably seventy-five grand.”
You give a soft, impressed whistle. Then you say, “I’m not here for that.”
“Why are you here then?”
“I’m here,” you say, “for Jackie Newton.”
You watch for a reaction. This, you are sure, will be your favorite part. He doesn’t let you down. Bafflement crowds his face. It’s not an act, which makes it all the better or worse, depending on where you stand. “Who?”
He really doesn’t know her.
Should you tell him?
When Jackie Newton was eight years old, her mother ran off with Gus Deloy, a coworker at the old Circuit City on Bustleton Avenue in Philadelphia. Jackie remembered her mother sitting on a suitcase to close it, the lipstick smeared on her teeth, telling her daughter, “It’s best this way, I’m a shit mom,” before hurriedly dragging that suitcase along with her dad’s old army duffel bag down the cracked front walk and piling it all in the back of Gus’s Jeep. She didn’t look back as they sped off, but Gus did. He gave Jackie a reluctant half salute, an almost apologetic look on his face. Maybe Jackie’s mom would have changed her mind or regretted abandoning her daughter eventually. Maybe she would have come home or asked to see Jackie again. But for three years, there wasn’t a word. Then Jackie’s dad, Ed Newton, got a call that Mom had died in a car crash in Pasadena.
No word on the fate of half-salute Gus.
It wasn’t all bad for Jackie. Ed Newton raised Jackie the best he could. He was a good man, surprisingly gentle and patient with her. She was his whole world. You could see it every time he trudged through the door at the end of his shift. His face lit up when he saw Jackie. The rest of the world? It could go to hell, as far as Ed was concerned. He didn’t hate. He just didn’t really care. His daughter was his everything, and like the best of fathers, he somehow managed to make her feel that without suffocating her.
Ed Newton worked long hours doing hardwood flooring for TST Construction, mostly on new residential complexes on the outskirts of Philly. He didn’t mind hard work. He loved tools and making things with his hands, but his bosses were cheap rat bastards, always trying to cut corners, always trying to squeeze the last bit of juice out of anyone who worked for them.
“It sucks working for someone,” Ed Newton oft repeated to his daughter between bites as they sat at the Formica kitchen table. “Be your own boss, Jackie.”
That was the dream.
When Jackie was ten, Ed Newton bought her a leathercraft suede tool belt. It was the most beautiful thing Jackie had ever owned. It smelled like pinewood and sawdust. She treated the leather with oils three times a week. She wore it all the time. Even now. Even more than a quarter century after he first gave it to her. When she was eleven, Dad managed to buy a small plot of land outside the Poconos. Every weekend father and daughter would go out there and build Dad’s dream hunting-and-fishing cabin. Jackie always wore the tool belt. Ed was a patient teacher, and she was a quick study. They worked mostly in silence. The work was Zen for them both.
The two of them had plans too. One day, Ed said, they’d open their own contracting company. The two of them. They’d work for themselves. They’d be their own bosses.
When she was eighteen, Jackie got a full scholarship to Montgomery County Community College. She took finance courses, something her father encouraged so they could shore up the fiscal side of running a construction firm. Jackie worked various construction jobs after graduation to learn the business inside and out. The hope was that if they scrimped and saved, they’d be able to open their own shop in three to five years.
It took longer than they anticipated.
Ed put a second mortgage on the house in Philadelphia and despite Jackie’s protests, he sold the dream cabin they’d built outside the Poconos. By the time they raised enough capital to get a business loan, Jackie was thirty-three, Ed was sixty-two—but a dream delayed is not a dream denied.
One day, Ed Newton burst through the front door with a stack of business cards that read:
Newton and Daughter Construction Services, LLP
Ed Newton
Jackie Newton
General Contracting, Home Remodeling, Flooring
The logo on the upper right-hand corner was a little house with windows as eyes and a wide door as the smile. Jackie had never seen her father so happy, and for the first six months, things went surprisingly well. The Nesbitt Brothers needed last-minute help with a housing development in Bryn Mawr. Newton and Daughter kicked ass on the project, bringing it in under budget. That job got them some good referrals. Other jobs followed. Ed and Jackie hired three full-time staff and leased office space in a warehouse on Castor Avenue.
Newton and Daughter were still small-time with a lowercase s, but they were moving in the right direction.
After a year, their fine work and excellent reputation got on the radar of Ronald Prine, a major Philadelphia real estate mogul. Prine’s people invited Ed to put in a bid on hardwood floor work for the new, upscale Prine skyscraper on Arch Street. It was a huge job, too big for them really, but it would be a prestigious get and a chance to put Newton and Daughter on the map.
Ed and Jackie spent two weeks working out the numbers and creating a full PowerPoint presentation for the Prine conglomerate, but their initial bid, according to Prine’s people, came in too high. Ed Newton went back to his office. He sharpened his pencil and lowered their bid. Prine’s people still balked.
