Page 1 of Sizzle

1

Elliot

Numbers are the devil. When rubbing my eyes out of my head doesn’t make the spreadsheet on my screen any clearer, I lean back and yank open the door to my office.

“Jimmy!” I yell. “Get back here when you get a sec!” The door squeaks like a motherfucker as it swings shut, reminding me of yet another thing that needs fixing.

I’m still rooting around in the desk drawer—I know there was some WD-40 in here somewhere—when the squeaking recommences.

“You rang?”

“Yeah, I need your eyes a sec,” I tell the kid. At twenty-four, Jimmy’s not a kid so much, I guess. But he’s worked for me off and on since his sophomore year at the community college, so he’s still a kid to me.

I mean, thirty-three ain’t exactly over the hill.

“Why are you glaring at me? I haven’t said anything yet,” Jimmy says, looking over his shoulder at me.

“I’m not glaring at you, I’m glaring at the numbers. They’re supposed to be the same at the bottom. Why are they not the same?”

Jimmy sighs, and I know it’s bad. Kid’s almost finished with grad school now—he’ll be an accountant before spring, once he gets his license.

“Have you given any more thought to hiring that firm I mentioned? I have another one of their cards if you lost yours,” he says, totally ignoring my question.

I can’t afford the small business accountants he recommended, but more than that, I don’t want to hand over my business to a bunch of suits I’ve never met. Anyway, I can handle it. It’s just arithmetic, right?

I must have said some of that out loud, because Jimmy sighs again.

“It’s arithmetic, yeah, but you have to put the right numbers in the right places if you’re going to manage your own spreadsheets.”

We’ve had this conversation before, so I wave him out of my chair and sit down, saving the program and shutting it down.

“Yeah, yeah,” I tell him. “So besides opening my wallet for the pros downtown, tell me how to fix it.”

“That’s part of the problem,” says Jimmy. “From what I can tell, you haven’t done anything wrong, but you’re pretty far in the red. Like… pretty far. All things considered.”

“Red’s the bad color, right?” Jimmy doesn’t bother sighing this time, just shaking his head before asking if he can get back to work. I wave him out.

“And Jimmy?” I call out. He catches the door before it slams shut again. “Thanks. I appreciate you not saying anything about this.”

He nods and pulls the door closed.

I scrub my hands over my face. The kid won’t breathe a word about my shitty bookkeeping—I know that much. That’s not what worries me. What worries me is that this isn’t the first time the restaurant hasn’t been able to keep up with expenses. We’ve been falling further and further behind for months. Something has to change or else we’re going to be in trouble.

The house phone rings. Since we don’t open for another two hours, there’s no other staff to answer it. And wouldn’t you know it? Caller ID says it’s Mrs. Miller, the owner of the building. She’d cut me a deal on the rent when I originally approached her about a lease, saying she'd preferred to see the space occupied rather than it wasting away, unused.

Needless to say, I take her calls every time. I pick up the receiver.

“Mrs. Miller,” I say.

“Mr. James,” she says. “How are you today?”

I will never for the life of me understand this woman’s delight in small talk, but she’s been awfully easy on me the last few months, so I make it a point to be nice when she calls.

Plus, she’s on the far side of seventy. My own mother isn’t winning any parenting awards but even Mom would scalp me if she found out I was rude to the elderly.

“I’m doing all right, Mrs. Miller. How are you?”

“Oh, can’t complain, can’t complain. I’m sorry to bother you at work, Mr. James.”

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