She sat down at the table with him, and he ordered a glass of wine for each of them.
“I was happy to hear that the deal wasn’t completely dead in your mind. The last time we talked, I didn’t think I’d be hearing from you on that subject again. You sounded very definite.” He looked at her warmly.
“I was. I am,” she said honestly. “But we need an investor. Paul says we can’t stay abreast of the times without one, and he’s probably right. And if we have to have an investor, I’d rather it be you than anyone else. If we can come to decent terms for both of us.” That was the key issue here. And the last time they spoke of it, they were as far apart as anyone could get. “We’re working on the online shopping feature. Paul thinks we have to move uptown eventually. The neighborhood scares some people, although it’s not dangerous. I’m not ready to move yet.”
“He’s right. Being where you are is hurting your sales.”
“The homeless people wandering around are harmless. They don’t look great, but they’ve never hurt anyone.”
“There’s talk of drug gangs on the borders there, and that is dangerous.” She nodded. If it was true, he was right. “How are your kids?” he asked, breaking away from business for a minute, and happy to see her.
“They’re fine,” she said, sighing, “except I got a call from their school a few days ago. Apparently, the school counselor thinks I’m never home, and I don’t spend enough time with the boys. They’re not complaining and I’m with them on the weekends, well, after work on Saturday until Sunday night. In retail, you have to work on Saturdays.”
“That’s familiar turf for me. Zack and I are catching up now, and we’re getting to know each other. I missed a lot of time with my kids, and it’s hard to catch up later, but I get the feeling you do spend time with yours,” he said generously.
“I try to. What do other women do who work? It’s a juggling act at best.”
“My wife was lucky. She didn’t work, but she wasn’t with them all the time either. No one is, unless you can’t afford a babysitter, then you have no choice. They don’t see their father?” She shook her head.
“Very seldom. We got divorced when they were toddlers, and fatherhood isn’t his strong suit. He sees them every once in a while and brings them back two hours later. They’re a handful. He’ll probably get married again and have another family and be ready for it. But he’s missed the boat on the twins so far.” Mike realized again that she had a lot to cope with, especially compared to someone like Maureen, who had nothing to do except play tennis and complain. Spencer was a much more exciting woman, and he was sure that what she did wasn’t easy. And she was busy with her work and all the problems and demands, not just her kids.
“I’m getting divorced,” he said out of the blue, bringing her up on his own news.
“I sort of suspected that when you said Zack was living with you. Is it going okay?”
“More or less. Our marriage has been dead for years. We never had the guts to bury it. I finally did. I couldn’t take the punishment anymore for everything I didn’t do and hadn’t done all the times I worked late or traveled. She’s been wearing her anger and bitterness like a shroud for years. It was killing both of us. All of a sudden, I couldn’t see the point of being punished for the rest of my life. The practical stuff is a little complicated, but she’s fairly reasonable. I feel like I just got out of prison. I’m sorry to say that. It sounds disrespectful and ungrateful, but it’s true.” She smiled as he said it. He looked so earnest. “I should have done it years ago. She was never going to forgive me, so what’s the point?” He looked peaceful as he said it.
“Did the kids take it okay?”
“I flew out to see my daughter in San Francisco to tell her, and she was fine with me. She wasn’t surprised. I think she was relieved too. The atmosphere has been poisonous for years, and she and her mother don’t get along. Jennifer is too much like me, which irritates her mother. Zack was sad about it when I told him on the plane flying back from France. We were waiting till he got home to tell him. He’s adjusting pretty well. He says he wants to live with me, but that could change. And he’s finally going to college at the end of the year. Right now, he’s spending days at his mother’s and nights with me, because he can’t manage with his casts. So, I guess it’s all turning out okay.” He smiled at her. He didn’t look unhappy. In fact, he looked more relaxed than when she’d last seen him. And at the Met, the icy tension between him and his wife had been palpable.
“I think I’ll be poorer, but a lot happier. I’m not going to sacrifice my life to save on a divorce. If I live another forty or fifty years, I don’t want to be unhappy for all that. That’s what finally convinced me. Life is short, but it can be long too. Too long to be miserable.” He smiled at Spencer, and then they got back to business. “So, what are we going to do about your store? I take it you’ve given it some more thought, or we wouldn’t be here.”
“I have, and I always come out in the same place. It hurts, but I could live with the thirty-five or forty percent investment you spoke about initially. But the jump after that to your owning sixty to eighty percent of the business would kill me. I can’t give that up, Mike. I’ve worked too hard to preserve Brooke’s and bring it this far to give up control to someone else.”
“The trouble is,” he said quietly, “no one will invest in it unless you do. Those are the kind of percentages people expect, and I do too. And there’s no way to turn Brooke’s into a big moneymaker unless you make the kind of changes I was suggesting, make it exponentially bigger, move it uptown, or downtown, open branches around the country. It’s the kind of growth my investors would expect.” He was matter-of-fact about it, although sympathetic to how she felt.
“It wouldn’t be the same store then,” she said sadly.
“No, it wouldn’t,” he admitted.
“You wouldn’t accept less ownership?”
“I couldn’t. And you won’t make enough increase in profits unless someone puts a lot of money into it. Or you can keep it a small specialty store, but then it’s not an interesting investment for someone like me. You’ve got to go big and spend big to earn big, and it’s tough to do with the model of a store like Brooke’s, if you hang onto majority control and don’t give the investors a free hand to do what they need to do.” He looked regretful as he said it, and so did she. He knew how much the store meant to her, and how hard it was for her to let go.
“I can’t give up majority control, Mike. Not to that degree.”
“I know,” he said kindly, “but that’s what any big investor will want.”
“We don’t need stores all over the country, or a huge store. You can’t maintain the quality control that way.” He knew that too.
“At a certain point, it’s about revenue and return on the investment more than quality. There’s going to be some slippage if you grow.” She nodded. He was being honest with her.
“It’s everything my grandfather didn’t want, and I’ve been committed to maintain.”
“If you want serious investment money, you’ll have to give up control.” It sounded like a death sentence to her.
“I’m not that desperate yet. We’re doing okay.”
“Okay isn’t good enough. Paul Trask is right. You won’t last long with ‘okay.’ Only the big fish survive now, the small ones don’t. In order for my investors to accept a deal like yours, we’d have to own a very heavy majority. I can’t negotiate that down. No one would want the deal. Why don’t you think about it? The kind of money you could make on it long-term would be an important legacy for your boys. The money matters too.”