Page 4 of Santa Baby Maybe
1
Kane Co.
Six Months Ago
W.B.
“Icalled you both together so you can see how I want to approach this,” Wes Kane said, sitting behind his desk with an expansive view of LoDo Denver behind him in the windows. Coors Field was so close, I thought if I reached out I could touch it.
“The way I see it,” he continued. “The merger is going to happen, and if our people are going to make it through unscathed then we, as a company, need to be in better shape. So it has to be a two-pronged attack. Yes, we have to shore up the financials, but we’re going to need more than that. We’re going to need new ideas, maybe a new direction…”
“Something besides Christmas ornaments?” The woman in the chair adjacent to mine asked. She’d been introduced as Joy Knews. An artist and Christmas ornament designer who’d recently been hired to head up the design department. Just as I’d been hired to take over the financial planning.
She looked like an artist, I thought. Long, wavy brown hair, little to no makeup, flowing blouse and loose skirt as opposed to more traditional professional business attire. She was even wearing sandals. Sandals that revealed her toe rings.
I almost snorted when I saw them. Who attended a meeting with the president of the company wearing toe rings and her toenails painted a soft pink? It was unseemly. Unprofessional. And distracting.
I shouldn’t know what this woman’s toes looked like. Trying to focus on the man in front of me, I adjusted my tie and considered the idea.
“We could move away from Christmas ornaments entirely and focus on other uses for our glass products,” I said. The truth was, I wasn’t entirely thrilled to be working for a Christmas ornament company. I thought it sounded silly. As if Christmas ornaments should be left to the efforts of elves and such.
At my last job, the company made tractors. Tractors were solid. They were real. Substantial. But my upward mobility had been limited because of the family nature of the company and so Wes’s offer of CFO of Kane Co. was too good to turn down. Not to mention the challenge of saving a company on the brink of financial disaster right before a major merger.
If I pulled this off, my reputation in Denver would be solidified and I could have my pick of jobs. Perhaps even be a contender for a CEO position.
Money, power, success. Stability, safety, security.
All of it could be mine. I just had to get over the fact that the business I was going to save right now was in the Christmas ornament industry.
“No, we’re sticking with what we know best,” Wes said, and I could see his words offered relief to Ms. Knews.
Figured. She probably loved Christmas and ornaments and decorations and all things bright and shiny.
It was hard to explain, but people like her really annoyed me. They just drifted through life without a care in the world, their only goals were to make things prettier and nicer. Never seeing the ugly underbelly of what it took to sustain art. You needed money to buy art. Money to make art. Did she even understand that? Or did she just care about her silly oval glass designs?
“But I want new ideas,” Wes continued. “Business as usual won’t get us back to recovery. We need to shake it up, separate ourselves from other companies out there producing the same product. W.B., I need you to figure out how to make money out of air, and Joy I need you to come up with the most spectacular Christmas ornament that every buyer must have. Are you both up to the challenge?”
“I am, Mr. Kane. Sorry, Wes. Yes, sir,” she said. And then began clapping for some unknown reason. Like she couldn’t quite help herself. Ridiculous woman.
I simply nodded once. That was all that needed to be said.
“Okay. Good luck. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my ten o’clock is waiting.”
I took that as my cue to leave and nearly butted heads with Ms. Knews as I bent to pick up my briefcase—yes, I still carried a briefcase—while she was also bending down to pick up her…satchel I suppose you would call it.
She pulled back at the last second and laughed. “Ha, that would have been a classic Three Stooges moment.”
I looked at her blankly.
“If our heads had butted,” she explained. “Three Stooges?”
“Never heard of them.” I had no idea why I lied about that. It just came out. As if only silly people knew who the Three Stooges were and I wanted to point out I wasn’t one of them.
One of people like her.
We made our way out of the office. I allowed her to pass in front of me and together we walked toward the elevators.
“So maybe we should meet or something,” she said.
