Love Handles (Oakland Hills #1)(7)
“Wayne.” Liam gave him his coldest glare. “Not now.”
The young man in the bicep-baring tank top didn't seem to hear him. He continued to hold the shorts out to him. “And if we change the reflective embroidered logo to a screen print, we can afford an iPod pocket—”
“Wayne!” Sally, a senior patternmaker in a Tinkerbell sweatshirt, ran over to rescue Liam. Or Wayne, really, since Liam was glaring at the well-built young guy, silently questioning Ed's hiring judgment again. Ed had loved the good-looking talkers, male or female and regardless of their talent. Though at least this guy looked like he knew the difference between a squat and a deadlift.
“Sorry, Liam. He won't bother you again.” Sally pulled the guy away and whispered furiously into his ear.
Liam nodded and kept going, satisfied but wondering when he'd become the type of boss who couldn't bear to have the little people talk to him directly.
Wayne continued complaining to Sally. “But Darrin won't listen to anything I have to say either. He told me thinking is above my pay grade. Well, duh de dum, how f*cking boring is that?”
She shushed him. “Not now!”
Liam turned around and saw Wayne shaking his head with the deflating enthusiasm of a new employee who’d just begun to realize Fite wasn’t as cool as its ads. “Wayne, hold on. Come back.”
The young guy lit up and hurried over. “Yeah?”
“Show me.” Liam held out his hand, and Wayne thrust the shorts at him. With a practiced touch, Liam unclipped the hanger and ran his fingers along the inside seams, judged the fit of the waistband and studied the small inside pocket. “Darrin wouldn't look at it?”
“Just told me to save a couple bucks on the make so it could retail under thirty,” he said. “But going cheap on the stitching makes it chafe, and taking out both pockets doesn't give you any place to stick your keys or music when you go out for a run.”
“And what'd he say to that?”
“He said our customer isn't going out for a run. That he just wears the shorts to lie on the couch stuffing his face, and doesn't need a pocket for his remote control.”
Biting back fury, Liam looked away and ran his hand through his hair to stay calm. “He said that?” That snotty weasel.
“When I argued with him, he threatened to go to you.” Wayne smiled, exaggerating the silver stud through his lower lip. “But I figured I'd save him the trouble.”
“You weren't afraid of him?”
“I know his type. All bitch and no bite.”
Liam snorted and put his hand on the guy's shoulder. He had to be a foot shorter than Liam but didn't cower like some of the employees did, and he liked that. “He's bitch and bite, I'm afraid. But thanks for telling me. Next time you see him, tell him I made you show me what you were working on and insisted you do it your way.”
Wayne beamed. “Excellent.”
“All right.” Liam made a run for it before the guy thought they were friends now or something. He couldn't afford to be anybody's friend at Fite.
He went downstairs to the second floor conference room and stopped outside the door to give them every possible minute. He could hear the frantic, sniping conversation, chairs rolling around the table, the clatter of design boards and samples being hung on the metal-gridded walls. In spite of his foul mood, he drank in the familiar thrill from the creative process and reminded himself to try to go easy on them. Losing Mr. Roche had been a shock for everybody. And at some point, each one of them had gone into this business with enthusiasm, optimism, even love. And though reality had crushed most of the youthful fantasies within the first six weeks on the job, every once in a while he saw a hint of glee in somebody’s face that she hadn’t listened to her parents.
He walked in. “Hello, everyone.”
All movement stopped for a split second while they glanced his way to measure his mood. None look reassured.
The product development conference room was like a going-out-of-business sale at a department store. Racks of clothes clogged the doorway. Boxes of sample buttons and other trim sprawled over a long, white table that filled the middle of the room. Old design boards hung by pant hangers on the floor-to-ceiling metal grids covering each wall. More metal rolling racks on wheels blocked the windows.
Darrin Kipper, the men's designer, sat at the opposite end of the table wearing an orange—salmon, Darrin would say—Armani suit, trying hide his indignation with presenting his line two hours earlier than he'd expected. Mr. Roche never would have moved up a meeting, his eyes said.
Liam looked around the room at the insecure, resentful faces. “There’s no reason to be revising everything at the last minute,” he said quietly. “For years we’ve worked right up until the deadline as though finishing early implied you didn't know what you were doing. Well, not any more. If you aren't able to show me our line a little earlier than you expected, there's something wrong with your ideas. You should have been done yesterday. The day before yesterday. Last week. Nothing has changed, only the bad habits in this building that have everyone running around with their heads cut off for the maximum amount of time possible. As though that were a virtue.”
With that, he sat down, the creak of the office chair the only sound in the room. “All right,” he said finally, leaning back and crossing his arms. “Show me what you've got.”