Nouveau riche, p.1
Nouveau Riche, page 1
Nouveau Riche
B. E. Baker
Copyright © 2023 by B. E. Baker
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
For Tessa
May you never have to sell your “Hottie”
Contents
1. Emerson
2. Elizabeth
3. Emerson
4. Elizabeth
5. Emerson
6. Elizabeth
7. Emerson
8. Elizabeth
9. Emerson
10. Elizabeth
11. Emerson
12. Emerson
13. Elizabeth
14. Emerson
15. Elizabeth
16. Elizabeth
17. Emerson
18. Catherine
19. Elizabeth
20. Emerson
21. Elizabeth
22. Emerson
23. Elizabeth
24. Sample Chapter Minted BARBARA
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by B. E. Baker
1
Emerson
My mom always forgot things we needed when she went to the store. She sometimes forgot to pay the utility bills as well. As a result, they cut off our power on several occasions, including once during a snowstorm. Mom also never had what we needed when we traveled, no matter how minor the trip.
As I got older, the problem was clear. She never made lists.
I became somewhat obsessed with them.
Throughout school, my teachers mocked me for always having them, but I always remembered to bring projects, homework, and everything else I needed. Lists work when used properly. So when my girlfriend dumps me and I get fired on the same day, I do what I always do when I have a problem to solve.
I make a plan and list its component parts.
Actually, I make three separate lists.
The first is a list of references to use while I hunt for a new job. The second is a list of possible clients I could approach if I decide to start my own accounting firm. The third is a list of my expected expenses over the next six months, which I use to project my necessary timelines in either direction.
While the potential upside is higher if I start my own firm, I’ll also face more risk and a longer timeline, meaning I’d need to tamp down in an aggressive way on my expenditures.
“What on earth are you doing?” Bea—short for Beatrice—has stopped behind me, and she’s peering over my shoulder.
My sister’s an unabashed snoop.
I set my pencil down and pivot in my chair. “That’s really rude, you know.”
“What is?” Bea frowns. “Asking people you love why they’re doing stupid things? Or reading over your shoulder?” She arches one eyebrow. “Because I’m doing you a favor, to be honest. Who else is going to point out your idiocy?”
I lift my chin a little, fighting the urge to stand up so I can tower over her. I don’t need the benefit of height. I already command the high ground. “There’s nothing stupid in my behavior for you to point out.”
“Oh, ho, I beg to differ.” She drops one hand to her hip. “First, your girlfriend dumps you because you’re not from a rich enough family and she’s afraid to tell her daddy she’s dating you. Then, on the same day, your alleged supervisor throws you under the bus for his error, and you just roll over and let him. You refuse to accept that those are tied in any way.” She shakes her head. “You got the royal shaft, and didn’t fight it because you’d lost the will to live. Now, instead of buying a loudspeaker and shouting about the injustice outside your old office or getting drunk and sleeping all day, you’re. . .” She frowns and squints. “What are you doing?”
I slide all the papers into a stack and fold them in half. This time, I do stand. “Neither sleeping in nor blasting my grievances with a loudspeaker would fix the problem.”
Bea tilts her head. “Before you solve the problem, Emerson, it’s okay to mourn a little.”
I roll my eyes.
“I’m not kidding.” Her voice is quiet, and it’s not replete with her typical know-it-all, lecturing tone. “There’s a reason there are stages of grief.”
“No one died, Bea. I don’t need to work through stages.” It hits me then—the time. The sun’s barely been up for an hour. She’s usually not awake for several hours yet. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping in?”
She groans. “Mom and Dad called last night, and I told them about how you got fired.”
I throw the papers down on the table. “Why did you tell them? I said I didn’t want—”
“I knew you wouldn’t, and they deserve to know.” Bea drops into a kitchen chair with a beleaguered sigh. “You know they do.”
I may have a tendency to handle things myself, and sometimes people I care about don’t feel included. “I would’ve told them in a week or two, when I’ve finalized my plan. I don’t even know whether I’m starting my own business or finding a new job.”
“You’re such an idiot. That doesn’t matter. Your family doesn’t care if you have your plan worked out. They care that you’re hurting.” Bea flops her arms across the table, propping her chin on her elbow. “Plus, if you start your own firm, they’ll be your best line to new clients—”
I head for my room, shaking my head almost involuntarily. “No way. I’m not asking them for help.”
“It’s what parents do.” Her voice is quiet, but crystal clear.
I pause, but I don’t turn. “Well, they aren’t really my parents, just like they aren’t yours.”
She’s utterly silent, which is strange for Bea. She always has something to say.
I finally turn around, bracing for the tongue-lashing.
“You never let them adopt you, but they always wanted to, and you know that.” Her tone’s full of reproach this time. “Some of us think you’re an idiot for it.”
“I need to do this alone,” I say. “I can’t go running to them my entire life every time there’s a problem.”
“This is a pretty big problem.” Her brow’s furrowed, her eyes intent.
“And I’ll deal with it myself. Like I said.”
“Well.” She flops down on the table, her arms limp, her chin mushed against the table. “I’m going back to bed. But I got up because I thought you might want to take a temp job.”
“A what?”
“The hotel’s looking for some help, and because it’s last minute, the pay is decent. They have a lot of events booked today, and they need waiters to carry hors d’oeuvres around and stuff.”
After lending a hand with Mom and Dad’s inn for years, Beatrice graduated to being the head waitress at the nicest hotel in Scarsdale, the Opus Westchester. It’s five hundred bucks a night to sleep there, and the hotel restaurant’s correspondingly fancy.
“I’ve never waited tables, except at Mom and Dad’s, and—”
“I told them that, and they said that’s more experience than the last four people they used.”
“What does it pay?”
“Thirty bucks an hour,” she says. “It’s not insane, but it’s probably the best you’ll find for this kind of thing.”
A few shifts like that would go a long way toward keeping me from dipping into my meager savings while I try to find a new job or start my own firm. “When do I need to be there?”
“Thirty-nine minutes from now.” She smiles. “And it’s a twenty-minute drive.”
People think she’s nice, but in her heart of hearts, Bea’s sadistic.
Eighteen minutes later, I’m turning the key in my ignition, dressed like a constipated penguin, ready for my first temp job at a hotel. I hate that, with a college degree, I’m still reduced to walking around a room full of snobs and offering them tiny chunks of who-knows-what. But sometimes trains go off the rails. Until you can get the dumb little cars back on the track, you do what has to be done. I know that better than anyone.
Bea did not warn me that the catering supervisor is horrible.
The first fifteen minutes of my six-hour job—they have two events back-to-back, apparently—is spent being lectured on the importance of averting my eyes from all the guests, elegantly staying out of the way, and never letting my platter become empty. She may have a British accent, but that doesn’t make her pretentious list of dos and don’ts less obnoxious.
“But at some point, it’s going to be empty, right?” I can’t help pointing out the obvious. “It’s not the ‘magical loaves and fishes’ platter.”
The stout woman scowls, her face flushing. “I hate new people.”
My feelings for her are equally strong, but I manage not to share that sentiment.
She inhales and exhales a time or two, and then she launches. “First, it’s not a platter. You’re not serving pigs at a trough.”
I’m pretty sure they fill the pigs’ trough with a bucket, but again, I keep that to myself.
“Your serving tray will never become empty, because as soon as you realize your assigned appetizer is two-thirds of the way gone, you’ll reconnoiter and move back toward the kitchen.”
“But—”
She sniffs and throws her chin up, managing to look down on me from a foot below my eye level. It’s impressive, to be honest. “Look, Everett—”
“Emerson.”
“Whatever.” She rolls her eyes. “When wealthy people see hors d’oeuvres coming their direction on a serving tray, they realize they’re hungry—if they are—and if they’re disappointed because the promise of food turns out to be an empty one, they become crabby. Quickly. It’s our job to make sure that they don’t. Do you understand?”
I blink.
“Because when the people who come to this hotel get crabby, people like you get sacked. Am I clear?”
I don’t mention that being sacked isn’t much of a threat, seeing as I don’t have a permanent job, nor do I want one. I had to sign a half-inch stack of papers making it clear that this is a temporary position, and that the Opus Westchester isn’t liable for anything I do or anything that happens to me while I haul buckets of slop around for these rich pigs.
“Everett, was I clear?”
“Crystal.” This may not be worth the thirty dollars an hour.
“You appear to be doing this as a stopover on your way to something better. This job may even seem trivial to you,” the woman says, “but while you’re out there, you’re the front of our hotel, and we want to make sure—”
“That I’m a suitably invisible frontman,” I say. “I get it. I’m actually pretty good at being invisible.”
“If you can do this adequately, there will be other jobs like this one, and if you do them well, which I’m not holding my breath about, there are permanent positions for competent staff that pay far better than thirty an hour.” She purses her lips before continuing. “Oh, and the very best thing about rich people?”
Oh. That’s a question. She wants an answer. “They’re. . .rich?”
Her laugh actually doesn’t sound forced. “I was going to say that they pay well. That’s why we put up with all this. Now go out there and disappear.”
Maybe the woman’s not such a terrible manager at all. She had me nervous enough that I listened, and at the end, she lightened up so I saw her as a person. It was a little heavy handed, but it’s not a terrible strategy with people you don’t know at all. I grab my platter—I now insist on thinking of it as a platter—look over the cheese puffs placed carefully on it, noting that there are thirty-seven of them, so one third would be right around twelve, and head out into the great wide ballroom.
Bizarrely, these people are wearing flouncy frocks and suits at ten in the morning. What on earth are they thinking? The banner in the corner reads “Seven Oaks Charity Brunch and Auction.”
But they aren’t eating brunch.
We’re carrying a variety of things out on trays, and they’re milling around, bidding on things. Most of the items they’re pledging money for aren’t even present. There are photos, and there are even small mock-ups. For a split second, I consider setting my tray down and bidding on a vacation to a house in the Hamptons. Mom and Dad would love it. It might be worth the risk of being fired, especially if it’s a good deal for a charitable cause.
But when I scan the sheet, the current bid’s eleven thousand dollars.
The people here clearly have more money than sense. There’s no way any rental is worth that much for a five-day stay.
“It’s owned by Elon Musk.” The other server’s smiling. “That’s why they’re paying that much.”
We both scurry back before anyone can notice we’ve been looking at auction items, but I can’t believe anyone would pay that much just to tweet that they’re staying at his house.
But whenever I get really frustrated or tired, I remember that I’m being paid thirty bucks an hour to pass out frou-frou snacks, and it’s more than worth the sore shoulders. Two of the people who knock back more than their fair share of mimosas tip me, which turns $180 into more than two hundred.
Who tips a waiter for passing around fruit tarts?
Probably the same people who pay more than I paid for a car to spend a weekend in Elon Musk’s house. It’s a whole different world. Luckily, we have a half an hour break between the first event and the second. I get to go pee, windmill my shoulders, and I still have time to sit down for twenty minutes.
That’s when Lisa calls me back.
I force myself to wait until the phone has rung at least twice before swiping to answer. “Hello?” That didn’t sound pathetic, but it wasn’t quite breezy either.
“Emerson?” She pauses. “Where are you?”
Where am I? I’ve called her twenty times since they wrongly fired me and she refused to do a thing about it, and now, three days later, she calls me back and asks me where I am? “I’m working.” There. Let her stew about where I may have found a job this fast.
“You’re working? Where?”
“Not everyone automatically believed Patrick’s lies, you know.”
“I didn’t believe him,” she says. “But he’s been Dad’s friend for two decades.”
It stings a little that my own girlfriend thought it would be easier to dump me than stand up for me. I have to remind myself, again, that it’s how she was raised. She didn’t go through all the drama I did. She was in a safe, solid home with two parents her entire life. Of course she shies away from complicated, drama-fraught situations.
Once I start my own firm or find an excellent job, I’ll convince her to date me again, and then she’ll introduce me to her dad, the owner of the firm that fired me. That part of the plan will have to wait, because it’s almost time to head over to the next event. I can hear the clacking of my boss’s chunky black heels coming down the hall.
“It’s not a good time. Maybe you want to get dinner later?”
“I have your stuff,” she says.
“My what?”
“I’m outside your apartment with a box of your stuff. I wanted to drop it off, but—”
“My stuff? What stuff?”
“The books you loaned me on accounting principles.”
“I don’t need them. I aced that class.”
“The blanket you always used when you came over to my place.”
“That was a gift.” Is she kidding?
“The blue shirt I borrowed.”
I have no idea what to say. She used to sleep in that shirt, and now she wants to dump it on my doorstep? I thought it was good that she called, but this. . .
“Emerson,” my boss says.
“Right.” I clear my throat. “I have to go. Just dump it on the mat. I’ll text Bea and tell her to grab it later.”
“Emerson, it’s just that—”
“Yeah. Whatever.” I hang up before I embarrass myself by saying something really stupid. Talking to her has me both flustered and now, borderline late. I’m grabbing my tray just as the clock rolls over to one p.m. Apparently for this event, we’ll be serving as much alcohol as we serve food.
“I hate carrying champagne flutes,” the other server’s saying. “Thanks for doing those.”
I suppose that’s his way of asking.
Thanks to my tardiness, I can’t even complain. Thanks a lot, Lisa. I’m holding the platter covered with champagne flutes as carefully as I can when someone practically flies past me, and I stumble. The flutes all shudder and my heart stops beating. For a split second, I think I’m going to drop the whole platter, but my years of helping out at the inn serve me well. I manage to keep all the flutes upright, and very little champagne spills.
I can’t help glaring back at the woman who nearly wrecked my afternoon, and I notice she’s really, really pretty.
In an I’m-snobbier-than-Paris-Hilton kind of way.
Her long, dark hair’s tied back into a high ponytail, and she’s wearing a fitted black dress and dramatic heels. Her ensemble probably cost the same thing as my college degree. The diamond solitaire pendant she’s wearing is huge—it would probably pay for a nice sportscar. Her eyes flash and her hands wave wildly as she argues with someone around the corner.
Before I can wonder what has her in such a tizzy, I start to attract notice, or rather, my tray does. I dole out the champagne carefully, and more than one person has a look of desperation as they dive for a flute. I hope their liquid courage helps them survive the next two hours, because as I’m headed back to the kitchen, I realize I’m serving at a funeral.
