The Staircase of Dragon Jerico
Chapter Eight
PRESTON SAT in his office listening to Mrs. Armstrong berate him for the cutbacks in the company. He’d about had it with her. She’d wasted no opportunity in the past week to tell him how cruel he was.
She’d started her employment with him the previous summer, demure and efficient. She became more caustic and aggravating the longer she worked for him. When she’d found out about the layoffs, she instantly started defending people.
“Surely, firing Georgia in the development group isn’t going to save enough to make a difference to the company. But it will make all the difference in the world to Georgia. She has three children and her husband is on disability. What kind of heartless monster would fire her?”
“I don’t know. I approved the cut list; I didn’t create it,” Preston growled.
“As if you don’t know everything that happens in this company. Other people might be fooled by you sitting in this private office and never appearing in public, but you can’t hide from me. Mr. Carver, this isn’t like you.”
“No, it isn’t like me. I hated every second of it. And I hate hearing you talk about it. I’m responsible for the company, not an individual employee in development. If we can get Cloudhaven off the ground this spring, maybe we can start hiring people back again. But everyone is at risk if we don’t make the cuts necessary now,” Preston said slamming a Rubik’s Cube down on his desk.
“Well, like usual, Mr. Duval blamed you for the cutbacks and went around the office encouraging employees with his smile. You need to address the company so they know you are not a heartless villain.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You do fine in this office. Why not in the auditorium?”
“This office is safe. Even you, when you are being intolerable, are safe. I can’t speak to everyone. It’s bad enough that I have to go to the board meeting and listen to Royce explain things to them. I doubt that I’ll even go to the meeting this week.”
“Of course you will,” Mrs. Armstrong said, softening. “I know you are smarter and more creative than anyone in the company. Having a little speech impediment doesn’t change that.”
“It’s not a sp-speech imp-ediment!” he said getting frustrated. “I’m going to go take a nap. Don’t disturb me.”
“Of course, Mr. Carver. You go get some sleep. It’s safer up in your bed.”
Preston glared at her and stomped upstairs.
Ingrid Armstrong watched Preston go up to his nest on the next floor. She’d had about all she could take of his temperamental outbursts. So, he stuttered a little. She’d scarcely heard it in his voice in the past two months. They’d worked out initial rough spots after she went to work for him.
But when there was real pressure on him, he went to bed like a three-year-old, covering his head to hide from the monsters. Or he worked one of the damned Rubik’s Cubes. She went around the office apartment spotting the cubes wherever he left them, and scrambling them again. It seemed they were the only things he ever left out of place in the office.
Mrs. Armstrong did not appreciate being delegated the domestic jobs Preston wanted done. When she started, it had been explained to her as if he were handicapped and needed assistance. She would be his personal assistant, given as many domestic tasks as professional tasks. She picked up his laundry and cleaning to send out and made sure it was properly put away. She supervised the cleaners who came in twice a week. She ordered his groceries, which were delivered to the elevator where she took charge of putting them away.
It had been fine when she started, but she soon discovered his only handicap was his stuttering and ridiculous panic attacks. He kept the apartment office fairly clean on his own and it was only his obsession with cleanliness that required cleaners to come in at all. He made his own bed and did his own dishes. Immediately. When a dish was used, it was washed and put away. There were no dishes in the kitchen sink or drying on a rack. He was quite capable of all these tasks.
As a result, she complained or did a slipshod job on some of them. Preston responded with a raised voice and she retreated to her desk where she handled his business relations. For as much as a week she would speak to him only by way of email. She knew what she needed to do and could not understand why Mr. Carver didn’t understand what he needed to do. It was like having an adversary in the office rather than a boss.
He’d never even invited her to share one of his gourmet dinner creations. She was sure that if he hadn’t been born into the Jerico family, he’d have become a chef. She went over his grocery lists each week and was amazed at the things he ordered.
It wasn’t as if he expected sex from his assistant. Well, Mrs. Armstrong was older than his mother. But in some ways, he expected all the other duties of a nice domestic housewife.
Not that he would ever attract a wife. If he expected her to act like his personal assistant, she would be gone before she arrived.
Mrs. Armstrong sat at her desk and composed an email message to the full company, explaining the necessary cutbacks from the office of the chairman. It would be on Preston’s computer when he had hidden long enough and he could sign and send it.
Then she looked at the map of the resort development and picked up the pieces of a building, thinking she could put them together. They didn’t fit the way she thought, though, and she quickly gave up on it. She went back to her desk to run the numbers on what would be saved through the layoffs.
It was two weeks later that the lid blew off the pressure cooker and Mrs. Armstrong threw her hands in the air in frustration.
“That does it! Mr. Carver, I don’t need to put up with your abuse any longer!” Mrs. Armstrong said.
“What abuse?” Preston asked. “I simply want you to do your job the way I want it done! Is that too much to ask?”
“I am not your mother. Playing with your Rubik’s Cubes is bad enough, but listening to you complain about your underwear not being folded correctly is just too much,” she said. “I don’t know what you will do without me taking care of actual important things, like your memo to the company or the board minutes, but I’m not a domestic servant. You have no right to ask me to shop for your groceries and do your laundry. Now, complaining there are scraps of your model under the table is beyond the pale. You dropped them there! You have house cleaners for cleaning. If they still come to clean for you after the last temper tantrum you threw.”
“I didn’t throw a t-temper t-tantrum!” Preston objected. “I explained h-h-how I want it done.”
“Well, explain it to your next assistant!” Mrs. Armstrong yelled. “If you can find one! I quit!”
“Please, Mrs. Armstrong…”
“No, Mr. Carver. I’ve had enough. I don’t need you adding to my gray hair. I’ll stop at HR and turn in my keycard.”
Mrs. Armstrong snatched up her purse and headed to the elevator. Her purse was all the personal possessions she had in the office. Preston had objected to her bringing personal things into his home. It would be too much like living together.
He flopped in a chair next to the window and gazed out at the snow on his rooftop patio. It would be melted soon. The plat map for Cloudhaven was finished. He’d sent the plans to the engineering department for specifications of the needed utilities and streets. They would divide it into proper phases and get it ready for survey and construction. This was all work he could direct to be done without board approval. It required no additional investment and was fully within the scope of the department’s responsibilities.
Next was preparing building plans for spring. Before they could break ground, though, he needed board approval to create the partnership for the community and get financing. The time was coming quickly.
He solved a Rubik’s Cube and set it aside. He really needed an assistant.
“I thought you were getting on well with Mrs. Armstrong,” Jacqueline said at Sunday dinner. Preston sat with his mother and grandfather the first Sunday of February, as he did on most Sundays.
“She turned into a real bitch,” Preston said. “She actually complained to me about the staff cuts and demanded that I reinstate a friend of hers. She blew up when I pointed out there were modeling scraps under the table that hadn’t been swept up. And taking care of my laundry was not a new responsibility. She’s been in charge of that and the groceries since day one. There was no reason for her to start simply shoving things helter-skelter into my drawers. The socks weren’t even mated. I just want the jobs done right. I require that of all employees; it isn’t new for my assistant.”
“Well, she’s right. You need a wife,” Lawrence said. “Once you pay a woman to do those things, you realize how wives who do them are vastly undercompensated.”
“I’m willing to pay that price,” Preston said. “The thing is that she handled the phones. I’ve had to talk to three people this week on calls that should never have come to me in the first place. How am I supposed to concentrate on my work when I keep getting interrupted?”
“Speaking of which, we’re going to need the board approval for Cloudhaven soon. We need a solid partnership agreement so we can finance the infrastructure,” Lawrence said.
“Royce will present the entire proposal at the next board meeting,” Preston answered. “I just wish he were as good a person as he is a salesman. I need him out there in front making the sales, but I really don’t want to deal with him.”
Jacqueline laid down her silverware.
“Okay, I’ll do it temporarily,” she said.
“What?”
“I’ll be your assistant while we search for a new one for you. There’s too much going on right now to have you so distracted by help you don’t have. I did the work when you first took over the company. I know what you need. I’ll make sure the next assistant understands the rules and rewards. Mrs. Armstrong was what? Your eighth assistant since you took over?”
“Ninth,” Preston muttered. He understood that he was hard to work for.
Few companies had a position for a person who functioned in all aspects of both professional assistant and personal assistant. He should have been born in an era when he could employ a gentleman’s gentleman. Except he’d tried working with a male in the position—his fourth assistant, he thought—and it was disastrous.
Not at first. At first, the guy seemed like a perfect fit. He made sure Preston’s accounts were balanced, that his laundry and groceries were taken care of, and that his correspondence went out without any errors in it. But the guy had ultimately confused the position with the person. He adopted Preston’s mannerisms and personality to such an extent that people thought he was Preston. When Preston discovered ‘extra payments’ made from his personal accounts, he stopped his assistant short.
He did not file charges against him. His assistant knew far more than Preston wanted exposed about him. He just quietly paid him to go away. He’d learned from that experience that men could be gold diggers, too.
“Okay. But I don’t want you to be my assistant any longer than necessary. Your job number one will be to find your replacement. And please don’t confuse finding me an assistant with finding me a wife. That last one was a disaster,” Preston said.
“Janice was devastated when you didn’t want to see her again. You can’t blame her for taking up with Royce when you declined. She said she knew all about Royce and that it was a one-time fling with him, but that she’d had higher hopes for you.”
“Let me remind you that you had higher hopes. I couldn’t shove enough food in her mouth to keep her quiet. She actually tried to talk to me during the madrigal performance. I’m better off the way I am,” Preston said. “Besides, I read and watch television. I know women are rejecting the traditional roles of being housekeeper, cook, and mother. I’d never ask a wife to do all that. Even after I get married—should such a thing ever happen—I would continue to hire an assistant to take care of all the menial tasks.”
“Be careful you don’t take away too many of her perceived responsibilities. You’ll end up like Royce and Shannon. You’ll have a full-time prostitute instead of a wife,” Lawrence said.
“Isn’t that what Mother was suggesting? Wed and bed with an ironclad pre-nup and then pay her to get lost after she provides an heir. Like my father.”
“You are in a difficult position,” Jacqueline said. “You are wealthy. Anyone who finds out about that will be interested in it. The pre-nup is simply supposed to protect you from predators, not stop you from having fun.”
“It’s too bad they don’t have those kind of finishing schools out east anymore,” Preston said. “You know, like ever-so-great-grandmother Isolde came from. Drake went, interviewed the potential matches and signed a contract with her. As soon as he had a place for her, he sent for her and they lived happily ever after—guaranteed by the school.”
“Well, we can assume there was a happily ever after,” Lawrence said. “I’m afraid the family doesn’t have that great a track record when it comes to marital bliss.”
There were no immediate solutions to any of Preston’s problems. Jacqueline promised to start work Monday morning and immediately start searching for a replacement, whom she would train to be exactly what Preston needed.
A wife? Or a mother?
Perhaps… Just maybe… she had contributed to Preston’s dependency on an assistant. Jacqueline pondered the situation as she dressed for work Monday morning. It felt good to put on a business suit and prepare for the corporate world she’d spent so little time in as her father’s assistant. It wasn’t that Preston was helpless when it came to his home. If anything, the extra help was needed because he was so obsessive about having everything perfect.
His kitchen, for example. There was not a dirty dish to be found anywhere in Preston’s apartment. And not only did Preston wash his dishes as soon as they were used, he dried and put them away. Preston loved to cook, and washed each item he used in preparing his meal immediately after using it. If anything, this led to a lot of extra water being run down the drain.
Jacqueline had, herself, lectured him on washing his clothes before there was a full load of laundry to be done. Now, he carefully placed his dirty underwear, socks, and shirts in the laundry chute where it fell into a bag and was sent out once a week to be laundered, pressed, and folded. His assistant should have been happy that she only had to send the laundry out and put it away when it was returned. If he had a washer and dryer in the apartment, she’d have to actually wash, dry, fold, and iron before putting it away.
The problem was that Preston got distracted easily. Obsessive. When he was working on the plan for a $100 million project, he couldn’t be expected to think about scraps dropped on the floor beneath the table where he was working on the model. So, of course, when he noticed them, he got upset that they hadn’t been cleaned up. Jacqueline had suggested a robotic vacuum for the apartment, but they were built too low to grab some of the scraps.
She was in his apartment before eight Monday morning, and had the offending scraps swept up before Preston came downstairs for breakfast. She had the coffee brewed and waiting, but she would not infringe on his private breakfast routine. It was part of his morning ritual.
While he took care of his breakfast, she went upstairs, wiped down his bathroom, and made sure everything was neat. She twisted his solved Rubik’s Cubes into new patterns, hoping she set them in as difficult a pattern as possible.
They’d discovered the Rubik’s Cubes when Preston was in middle school. They’d tried various devices to help him concentrate, including stress balls, worry stones, and fidget spinners. It was not until presented with the challenge of a puzzle that Preston had been able to calm his mind enough to listen in school. He’d become quite competitive with the cubes and had won a state championship.
Jacqueline checked through email and his schedule for the day. He planned to work Phase One of the development plan at the same time the infrastructure was being reviewed. People would question his idea of building any housing before there were jobs or services available in the community. His notes showed an answer for that as well. When the first grading was completed, delivery and convenience vans would be dispatched to the community. They would start with food for the laborers and expand to grocery delivery and laundry services as residents arrived.
She forwarded half a dozen questions to Preston’s inbox and handled everything else herself. She was no stranger to the company. She was a part owner. Even when she’d been a new mother, she’d worked as her father’s assistant in the company and knew the business like the back of her hand.
“Did you consider applying for the job yourself, Ellen?” Jacqueline asked the HR person who was searching for a new assistant for Preston.
“Don’t try to trap me into that situation,” Ellen said. “I hate to say it, but your son is impossible to work for.”
“I’m doing it.”
“He wouldn’t dare complain about his mother’s performance,” Ellen laughed.
“Well, do we have any resumes?”
“Yes. Everyone knows we just went through cutbacks, so applications have fallen off. However, there are a few people out papering all the businesses. I have a couple of interesting ones. This is from Mrs. Armstrong’s niece. She insists she can follow directions, even though she has no experience.”
“Janice Holmes? Absolutely not. I’ll save you the agony of having her fired her first day on the job.”
“That bad?”
“History. Preston dated her. Once. I’ve been told in no uncertain terms they are not compatible,” Jacqueline chuckled. “Who’s this?”
“Erin Scott? Great resume. Way overqualified. She was on an exec track at Allard Holding when she quit to marry and move to Jerico City. I did check her references, because as soon as we lift the hiring freeze, I think John Olivetti in Marketing has the ideal place for her. Her references were quite forthcoming with more information than needed.”
“Currently working as a waitress?”
“Hard times. Shows she’s willing to do anything if it will give her a leg up,” Ellen said. “Current manager also speaks highly of her.”
“I like her. Let’s talk about what kind of strategy we could put together that would entice her to take a job for which she is vastly overqualified.”
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