Page 10 of Charmed by the Obsessive Boss

"Catalog company out of Maine. They do holiday throws, heritage stuff. Last April they called and asked for two thousand Bloomfield Blue blankets for their fall line. Mr. Whitcomb said no. Too small an order, he said, we'd lose money on the scale."

"Would you have?"

"Yes. Eight dollars a throw, on a first run that size." I tap the pad. "But they'd have come back. A second order, a third. The Drapers run slow January to June. Dead months, when we lose the most. A standing contract would've filled them. Nobody in that office ever did the math past the first invoice."

He goes very still beside me. I can feel him thinking, the way you feel a furnace through a wall. "I know the buyer at Harbor & Pine," he says.

"Of course you do."

"I know a buyer at everything. It's a vice." He's got his phone out already, typing with his thumbs. Fast, intent, his tongue caught in the corner of his mouth for a second. Like a boy. "She'll answer on a Saturday. She takes every call from the sidelines at her kids' soccer games. Go on. What else?"

"The west wing."

"The empty one."

"Twenty thousand square feet. Nobody's been in it since the eighties. High ceilings, good light, wide plank floors. You could put studios in it. Weavers, potters, a woman who makes soap. Rent them out, run an event space on the weekends. Weddings, harvest dinners." I'm talking faster and I hear it and can't stop. "And there's people who'd take early retirement if the package was fair. Not forced. Seven, maybe eight, who've been staying out of habit and a lack of anything else. If the numbers worked, they'd go with a handshake. I'd make sure they got a good one."

He doesn't write any of it down. He's looking at me, and I realize I've been drawing for the last two minutes, on the back of a purchase order I pulled from my folder to take notes on. A floor plan in blue ballpoint, with arrows and doorways. East windows, I've written along one wall. Long table here, beside a tiny arrow in the middle.

"How long have you been drawing that?" he says quietly.

"Three years." I flatten my hand over it. "On order forms mostly. Napkins. Never showed anybody."

"Why not?"

"Nobody asked."

"I'm asking." His hand stops an inch from mine on the table. Doesn't touch. "You've been designing the future of this building on the back of purchase orders, Rosemary. The people who were supposed to be doing it were asleep."

My eyes go hot, which is stupid, which hasn't happened in a meeting since my father died. I look at the window and the dark floor. "It's just a sketch."

"May I keep it?"

"It's an order form."

"It's your handwriting."

I pick it up and hand it across. He folds it in thirds, reaches behind him to the jacket he left on his chair that morning, and slides it into the inside pocket. Over his heart, or near enough. I watch him do it and don't know what to do with the fact that I watched.

At the end of the table Charlotte is chewing her pencil. "Can you do spelling?" she says to Roman, abruptly, with the air of a person who's decided something. "Mom always does it wrong."

"I do not."

"You said seperate with an e last week."

"There's a rat in separate," says Roman.

Charlotte's head snaps up. "A what?"

"A rat. Right in the middle." He spells it out on his fingers. "S-E-P-A-R-A-T-E. P-A-R-A-T. There's a rat. Nobody forgets a rat."

She whispers it to herself, delighted. "A rat in separate." She grins at him, the great, too-big-teeth grin, then remembers she isn't supposed to and tucks it away. "Okay, do February."

He does February. He does necessary (one collar, two sleeves) and library (there's no way to make a mnemonic out of that, he admits, you just have to be afraid of the r).

By the time we're done Charlotte has moved her chair to his side of the table and is leaning into his arm to check the list. I'm sitting with a pen in my hand and I can't read what I've written.

At some point she goes to the bench under the window with my old tablet and her headphones and a heap of mill blankets. Burrows in like a small animal. It's nearly eight. I've been watching the clock without admitting it.