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“It was. Were you late for work?”
“Yeah, and I got in trouble. Blah blah.”
“If you worked for me, you could come in any time you wanted.”
I waved away the offer and cracked open my chicken sandwich
container. Mandy had offered me a hundred jobs and she’d offer another
hundred, but her clothes would never say Papillion on the label.
This name is your responsibility now.
“Gotta keep my eye on the evil stepmother.”
“For how long?”
“I’m not wishing for anything, but she’s gotta die someday. Then it’s
mine.”
“And you still want it? After this morning?”
I tilted my head to get a bite of my sandwich. I was starving. I was
always starving. The bomb of a chicken salad hero was no match for my
appetite.
“Twitter fame don’t pay the bills.” I wiped my mouth. “Art with nothing
to sell doesn’t either.”
“What if…” She shoved salad in her mouth. “Just for kicks, let’s say
you had a piece that made… I don’t know, let’s say…” She crinkled her
face as if calculating. “Ten million. Would you start buying up shares?”
I was right. She’d been calculating. She knew her competition’s share
price to the penny. “Like a hostile takeover?”
“They call it activist investing now.”
“Of my own company? Basically… buy my birthright?”
“You could murder Bianca, I guess.” She wrinkled her nose and shook
her head as if the idea wasn’t just morally bankrupt, but icky.
Ten mill? Fifteen? If I had it, would I scoop up shares and kick the bitch
out of the corner office? Return the Papillion name to its former glory?
In three more bites, I had most of the sandwich down and the idea
mostly digested.
Juggling the GAC and a full-time job was hard enough. If I ran
Papillion, the collective wouldn’t fit into my life.
“Maybe,” I said, deciding to play the game. “First thing I’d do is fire
Jean-Claude, then I’d kill those ugly fucking T-shirts.”
“Interesting.” She nodded into her salad, and when she looked at me
with a gleam in her eye, I realized we weren’t playing.