Page 13 of Bad Luck Club

Chapter Five

Lee walked into the sales office on Friday morning, psyching himself up to learn how to sell beer. After all, there could be worse things in the world, like working in a sewage plant.

Phil, a man in his fifties with salt-and-pepper hair and a paunch hanging over the waistband of his jeans, was sitting at his desk with a landline receiver in his hand. “I’ll come by next week, and we can discuss it then,” he said into the phone. He cast a glance at Lee and motioned for him to sit in a chair next to the desk. Shorter than the desk chair, it gave him flashbacks from grade school. “Yeah,” Phil said to the person on the other line. “I’ll be sure to bring some.”

Lee took a seat, trying not to frown at the sight of Phil’s black polo shirt with the Buchanan Brewery logo sewn over the left side of his chest—the old logo, from before Adalia had redone it.

He cast a quick glance down at his dress shirt and pants. Did his siblings expect him to wear jeans and a polo shirt like a used car salesman?

Phil ended his call, then sat back in his chair and gave Lee an appraising look. “So you wanna sell beer, huh?”

From the man’s smug expression, he had serious doubts about his ability to do the job.

Lee figurednot really, but there’s not much else I can do herewasn’t an appropriate response, so instead he held the older man’s gaze. “Looks like it.”

Phil held his gaze a bit longer before he gave a slight shake of his head. “I hope you’re ready to hit the ground runnin’, because you ain’t got time to let grass grow under your feet.”

“River gave me a crash course on the product line yesterday, and I looked over my notes last night. My background is in sales. I’m ready.”

Phil released a bark of laughter. “You sold fancy condos up in New York City.”

“Not exactly,” Lee said slowly, tamping down his irritation. “More like buildings.”

Another bark of laughter answered him. “That don’t mean shit here.”

Phil turned a Rolodex on his desk—a real, honest-to-God Rolodex full of pieces of ripped-up cardboard, some of them stained with what smelled like old beer—then pressed the speaker button on his phone and dialed a number.

The phone rang a few times, and a woman answered. “Dingo Bar and Grill.”

“Hey, Jess. This is Phil with Buchanan Brewery,” he said in a much warmer tone than the one he’d used with Lee.

“Hello, Phil. How are you? Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“That’s why I’m calling. I’ve only got a couple of weeks left here at Buchanan, and I’d like to bring my replacement by. Will tomorrow work for you?”

She hesitated, then said apologetically, “Phil, wow. I hate to hear you’re leaving, and I’d love to see you, but if you’re coming by hoping to get a pity sale for old times’ sake, I might as well save you the trip. I don’t have room for you on my taps. After y’all shut down for a few months, well…I had to move on. And my customers are really feeling the replacements I substituted in.” She paused. “I like you, Phil, but it’s business. You understand that.”

“Sure do. But I’d still like to drop by to say goodbye.”

From the sharp intake of air over the line, she wasn’t too thrilled by the prospect, but she didn’t say no. Instead, she paused a moment, as if weighing her options, then said, “I can fit you in, but drop by after the lunch rush, okay?”

“Can do. See you then,” Phil said as he hung up the phone. He turned to Lee with a look of resignation. “You’ve got an uphill battle, son, and frankly, I’m not sure you’re up to the challenge.”

Lee bristled, but he didn’t want to get into a pissing match with someone who was apparently infamous for comparing prostate problems with the old brewer, Lurch. Worse, he wasn’t so sure he’d win that pissing contest right now, and his ego couldn’t handle anything else. So he chose to focus on something more productive. “Why is this an uphill battle?”

Phil motioned to the phone. “You heard how that call went. Dingo was a solid client, but breweries need to innovate to stay competitive, and frankly, as much as I loved Beau, he let Lurch slide for years. We hadn’t had a new beer in three years. Customers weren’t excited about getting the same old stuff. Then the brewery closed last summer, and more than half of our accounts used it as an excuse to stop buying from us altogether.”

Lee shook his head in confusion. “But the brewery is pulling in a small profit. How can that be?”

“Probably from the tasting room, over-the-counter sales, and merch. The tasting room is busier than ever thanks to Addy’s hocus-pocus work on social media—all that twitting and hash-browning.”

Lee suspected he meant tweeting and hashtagging, but that hardly seemed important given what he’d just said. “You’re saying outside sales are half of what they used to be?”

Did Georgie know about this? He had to assume she did.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. Asheville gets a couple of new breweries every season, seems like. For every sale we lost, there were ten more breweries behind us, ready and willing to replace us. We still have loyal customers, but they’re few and far between.” He scoffed. “Hell, some of the accounts that wanted to remain loyal fled for the hills because they didn’t like losing the beers your sister cut from the roster.”

“So you’re saying people left because we didn’t innovate…and then more left because we did.” Lee sat back in his seat, his head whirling with this information and what it meant for the health of the brewery.

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