Chapter 2

It was while I was still in Atlanta that I experienced something of a crisis of conviction. It occurred right at the time I'd finished writing up what was then the single biggest dollar volume sales order of my entire life. I'd spent an hour with two buyers from a national chain of home improvement centers, negotiating shipping and delivery schedules to their twelve main regional distribution warehouses. Price of goods hadn't been too much of an issue for them, rather, it had been the limited quantities of product I had available, and, mostly, the timing of the scheduled delivery for the entire order which had been their primary concern, and the largest sticking point.

For my part, it had been in negotiating a quick enough payment from them, and then checking with my manufacturer as to whether there was any way they could increase their production output enough to satisfy this new product demand I suddenly found myself encountering.

The Atlanta show had already proved itself far more successful than I'd ever imagined, drawing to it buyers representing many, if not most, of the larger national retailers. I'd been fielding inquiries from a number of their representatives and buyers. The home improvement people were simply the first to actually commit to making a large sales invoice, and then backing it up with a signed purchase order.

My crisis of conviction occurred right after the two buyers left me with that signed contract in hand. It was then that I realized that there was no one I could contact to share the awe and elation I was feeling. I was all alone, alone in the most real sense of that word. That realization quickly took me down from my short lived elation, sending me into some kind of emotional tailspin that left me wanting to cry. I was all alone, and things that would have mattered, should have mattered, simply didn't matter to me.

I called Danny, and talked to him. All that did for me was to force me to realize that he and Kaitlyn weren't the ones I wanted to share my important triumphs or disasters with. Danny was mostly interested in letting me know how good my sixty inch Mitsubishi wide screen looked in his living room and then complaining to me that my whole master bedroom set wasn't fitting very well in their biggest bedroom of his small trailer.

Kaitlyn got on the line afterwards, to inquire about whether what I'd told Danny had meant that they could also sell all of my other furniture, whatever they didn't need, or didn't have the room for.

I told them that they were welcome to keep what they already had moved over to their place, but not to remove anything more from my house. I did end up relenting enough to tell Danny he could go over and get my dining room table and chairs, since he and Kaitlyn had both told me that those items had been what they'd most wanted right after I'd told Danny they could take whatever furniture of mine they could use. I seldom ate at that big table anyway, and had no idea how the two of them expected it and the chairs to fit in that small dining alcove they had.

That night, about six hours after I'd signed that huge purchase order, I'd finally convinced myself that my personal situation with Leslie didn't necessarily have to exert a controlling influence over every other aspect of our total relationship. Our break up as a couple didn't mean that we couldn't still relate to each other in a business sense, or even the two of us remaining friends, not if we both decided we wanted it to be like that. No one could determine how we were supposed to act with each other but the two of us.

It was too late to call her by then, but I did call up some of her voice mail messages to listen to, and I ended up scrolling through the fifty or more text messages she'd sent out over the last week or so. I've never been called so many vile names, and in so many different ways, but, for some reason, whether listening or reading, her two main points in all her communications to me came through very clearly: we weren't finished talking about what we were arguing about yet, and she wasn't yet taking any actions that would have justified my breaking up with her.

I'm not sure that anything important had changed about the way I viewed what she wanted to get permission to do. I knew I didn't want her sleeping with any other men. I realized, that this being true, it had to mean that I hadn't completely given up all hope of somehow resolving our present dilemma. This also meant there might still be a chance for us to salvage what I thought I'd completely given up on at the time I'd left Hesperia.

I recognized hope when it was surrounding me in that Atlanta hotel room. Having recognized it, I had to wonder if I could put aside my fears and stubbornness for long enough to embrace it. If my past actions were accurate predictors of the future, then the odds against it were very high. Still, though my hopes weren't certain, even seeing any slight possibility of working something out was preferable to what I'd been going through over the past week and a half.

I spent the next hour up in that room, carefully rereading all those text messages, and listening to Leslie's voice pleading with me to call her. Pleading in the earliest messages, but, as the number of unanswered voice mails grew, her tone became angrier. By the time she started texting me, instead of leaving voice mails, a lot of her anger seemed dissipated, and she was putting forth arguments designed to convince me that we could still resolve our problems.

I still had two more days of manning my display booth at the show. It really pained me having to let prospective buyers know that I'd sold out of all the product I could get produced over the next twelve months. I took their cards and any contact information, assuring all of them that I'd be in touch with them as soon as I had more uncommitted product to sell to them.

There is something perverse about people. Once they'd been informed that I was sold out of wind chimes, their desire to purchase some from me seemed to increase markedly. Several buyers offered me higher prices, if only I'd make an exception for them and ship them a few gross of the chimes they now suddenly needed to have. Some of these buyers were people I remembered talking to in Las Vegas, at the earlier Expo show. They hadn't bought any chimes then, but now they were suddenly clamoring for some, telling me they needed to have at least a minimum order.

I was on the telephone at least twenty times the following day with the daughter of the Chinese family that made the chimes. Her English was far better than her parents or brother's. It was far better, but still barely understandable, and only then, when she remembered to speak very slowly, and answered any questions I had over her word usage.

I finally began to get the gist of what she was telling me, which was that her parents had hired some relatives back in their old home province to help them with the assembling of all the raw materials into finished chimes. She told me their newly revised production capacity numbers, which were about triple the previous limit her parents had given me before.

"So sorry, make more cost more. Now four dollar ten, okay you?"

"No, make more, cost less. I sell big number to people. They pay me not so much, and they pay late. You understand me?"

"Four dollar ten, okay?"

"Three dollar eighty, more better."

I had begun to get an inkling, while talking to the daughter, that her poor command of English was simply a ruse to keep me frustrated, and, possibly, easier because of that to negotiate with. I'm not sure what there was about her speech that first tipped me off.

"Four dollar what said for first year. Now, four dollar ten for all rest, OKAY?"

"Not okay. Never mind, we do this year. I look for someone else make for me next year."

"I tell father, he no like."

"I have a contract with you people, and it reads four dollars per chime.

"For the first sixty thousand, not for any of the extra ones you want us to sell you now."

I gave a startled laugh at her suddenly vastly improved English. I'll admit that I sometimes had felt like I might have been exploiting Mr. Chen and his family, especially with the selling price I'd negotiated with them. Now, hearing his daughter's vastly improved language skills, I had to wonder about who, between the two of us, was the one actually doing any exploiting.

"We'll stick with the original contract while you finish delivering the remaining forty thousand units to me. All of those are already sold, and I made meaningful price concessions to put them in the hands of a strong retailer. I was hoping you people would want to work with me so that both of us would end up making a lot more by working together. I can make my own trip over to China and see about getting those chimes produced already fully assembled over there for me. I'm pretty sure I can get all I can sell for less than the three eighty I just offered you."

"At three eighty, it isn't worth our time coordinating all the import and shipping schedules. We weren't making out that well even at four dollars a unit."

"I'm certainly not going to beg you to accept my offer. I don't have to. If you believe it isn't worthwhile for you to supply me with the chimes, I'm sure you know your own costs a lot better than I do. I know the marketplace though, and I have the contacts to get the product into the hands of people who can create the greater demand we need. You go back to doing things your way, and I'll find someone else who doesn't mind taking less per unit if it means making a lot more overall."

I had just finished hanging up from speaking to her when my cell phone rang again. The call was from the same number that I'd just been talking to.

"Jimmy Masters? This is Alan Chen. We've talked it over, and we have a different proposal to make to you. Can you come by our house tonight?" From the sound of his voice, Alan was the son.

"I'm at a trade show, clear on the other side of the country, talking to some people about your chimes. From here, I have to make another week's worth of business calls, so I won't be flying back to California until after the first of the month, and that's at the earliest."

"My father wants to know how firm these orders you claim to have are?"

"I have signed purchase orders for all the product your family is contractually obligated to supply me. Beyond that, I have hundreds of buyers who are waiting for me to tell them when new product will be available for them to purchase. I'm going to need to find a reliable source for these other buyers, but now I have my doubts that you'll be that source."

"We absolutely control every bit of the raw materials you'd need to create those chimes. All the ceramic materials are made from the clay taken from a river that my family's people control, and all of it is fired in special kilns that only we have access to. Even the line we use to hang the chimes is a proprietary product. You aren't going to be able to acquire anything even remotely as unique as what we can sell to you. If you want to sell the best wind chimes, you'll need to go through us."

"I find that information fascinating, Alan, but it doesn't change anything. We're discussing a very basic tenet of business here, and that is the Law of the Economies of Scale. The more of what you sell I buy, the lower unit price I should have to pay. For sixty thousand units a year, four dollars a unit was probably a fair price. If we're now talking about two or three hundred thousand units a year, I'm going to need a much better price per unit. I took a big hit by selling off this year's production at a price that returned little mark up for all my efforts. I wanted your product out there where people could see it and have an opportunity to buy it. I've accomplished most of what I set out to do. Once I've created the demand, I need to know that I'm going to see sufficient return to justify all my time and expenses. Four dollars a unit can't accomplish that for me."

"It isn't our fault that you sold the product so cheaply. We sold a lot of it for ten bucks a copy."

"Really? Is that why your family was falling all over itself to sell me all you could produce at four dollars a unit?"

"Not really, but we had obligations of our own that we needed to meet. We've done that now too, so we're almost in the identical situation you say you're in. We too need to see some return on our investment of both money and time."

"By the way, congratulations are in order for the miraculous improvement in your English, and your sister's as well. Tell me, was that Rosetta Stone, or what?"

"We can't live with three eighty. No way. My father offers the next sixty thousand units at four, and anything over that, this year, at three ninety. That's a very good offer, you should jump on it."

"I'll be going to China myself then, and I feel confident that I'll manage to find some cheap imitation of your chimes at a price I'll find much more attractive than the one we might have been able to agree to. When that happens, I want you to remember that I offered you three eighty for your product, and you turned me down."

"My father is asking what you ended up selling this first sixty thousand units for?"

"Tell him it looks to me like it'll turn out that I sold them for nothing, at least as far as any profit to me goes. Like I told you earlier, I was putting the chimes out there to create the initial demand. I had no idea that I was dealing with such shortsighted people. I was taking the long term view to what is now turning out to be a short term proposition."

"We want to be fair, Mr. Masters, and I can assure you that we don't see ourselves being shortsighted in any way, but you aren't leaving us with any realistic opportunity for undertaking further negotiations."

"You have me at a disadvantage, Mr. Chen, because you already understand what I'll probably find out when I go to China. I'm flying blind, as it were, not knowing if I can find what I want at a decent price, or not. I could very well end up coming back to you, with my hat in hand, asking you to please sell me your products at the price you've already offered."

"You won't find better prices or terms anywhere. This I can promise you."

"That could be absolutely true, and it probably is, but I'll still need to find that out for myself. My problem is that I can't make any money at the prices you've offered. I'll need to be able to do so, if I want to remain in business. I find myself getting more and more curious about what I'll find if I end up going to China and looking for business opportunities."

"The first thing you'd find is a lot of red tape, and government people with their hands out waiting for bribes. Doing business over there isn't simple like it is here in this country. It takes years, sometimes even decades, before people learn how to avoid all the pitfalls of dealing over there. You don't even speak the language."

"I can buy one of those Rosetta Stone packages too, you know?"

"Please, spare me your wit or your sarcasm, whatever the case may be. My sister, Rose, and I have spent our entire lives living right here in this country."

"You could have fooled me. In fact, you did fool me. Where I come from, people who are in business with each other, they don't do too much of that. Not if they want to continue doing business with each other."

"My father is telling me that we can do the next sixty thousand this year at four dollars, and we'll meet your demand at three eighty for anything else you take delivery on during the remaining calendar year. Next year, we start out at four dollars for the first sixty thousand and go down from there. He says this is his final offer to you."

"Tell him no deal. Whenever I get myself into a situation where I have no chance to make a profit, I turn around and walk away from it. That's what I'm doing here. Sorry we couldn't make a deal."

I had a good feeling when I closed up my cell phone. I prided myself on my ability to sense weakness in people I was in the middle of negotiating with. It was my guess that the Chen's weren't going to want me to make any trips over to China on my own. I figured they'd take some time to think things over, then decide they better take my offer while it was still on the table. The next day, figuring all my product need would somehow get met, I once again started taking signed purchase orders for delivery in the coming Fall.

I hadn't been totally candid with the Chen's about my selling prices either. I'd made the big deal at five fifty a unit, but everyone else was paying me six a unit, which had now become my firm asking price, as soon as that other deal had been signed.

I waited until five o'clock in the afternoon, Atlanta time, before calling Leslie.

"Hi, I just wanted you to know I got all your messages, and that I made it to Atlanta all right."

"Do you know that brother of yours has been in your house, taking things?"

"I told him he could take whatever furniture he needed. I can get better stuff to replace it when I get back to California. I was getting tired of most of it anyway."

"I saw him carting off your big TV set. Did you tell him he could take that too?"

"I told him to take whatever furniture he needed. Their old TV was a ratty assed small one, with lousy reception. With the Mitsubishi, maybe he'll spring for the cable package the trailer park offers. You still thinking that we have more to talk about on that other thing?"

"Not if it makes you so upset just for us to be talking, I don't. I guess I'll just have to put up with my not being able to talk to you about those kinds of things. You left right in the middle of what I was trying to tell you. You wouldn't even stop long enough to let me tell you what I needed to."

"It wasn't up to me to make that decision, I told you that. I heard what you said, and I understood what you wanted. It so happens that we are world's apart on that issue. I wish you had gotten all that out of your system before we agreed to do what we did."

"And you think I don't? You can't begin to know what these last ten days have been like for me. Most of me wishes I'd never even had a thought about it, let alone said anything to you. There's still this small part though, and it stills wants to find out about some things."

"I'm not going to change my mind, and that was the biggest part of the reason why I got so mad and left like I did. This is your life, Les. You have to take control of it and do whatever you need to do. Right now, we're no longer a couple. To me, this means we're both free to do whatever we want to. You can go ahead and do whatever you want to. I don't want to talk about anything having to do with "us", maybe forever, or at least not until after you've satisfied whatever questions you might have. I don't know how I'll feel if you come see me later, and you want to talk about the two of us having some kind of future together. There are billions of people on this planet, and I know I can't control what they do. I wouldn't want to, even if I could. I thought we were different, but I guess maybe we aren't. I'm glad we can still talk to each other about other things, and I really hope you end up finding out what you think you need to know so that we can get on with maybe doing some other things that we do agree on."

"Tell me in plain language what you just said."

"That was plain language. Do what you think you need to do. We aren't together right now, and I have no claim on you anymore."

"Are you telling me that we might get back together later?"

"Les, how many ways do I have to tell you that I don't know? If I knew already how I'm going to feel after, I'd have told you. I don't know, and I won't know, until after you get finished with whatever you need to find out."

"You're getting upset with me again, Jimmy."

"I'm very frustrated, and I can't help that. None of this is any of my doing, and I guess I thought we were both sure about where we were headed. Now, I'm sure we weren't. Things change, and people need to adapt to those changes. That's what I'm trying to do, adapt."

"You're putting all of this off on me."

"Leslie, I can't stand it when you try to twist things around so that nothing's ever your fault. Go out and fuck whoever you think you need to, but don't try to make it out to be some shared experience that we both wanted to have happen and were agreed on. When everything is done, and you tell me you're satisfied with it, then I'll find out how I feel, and what I'll be able to live with. Until then, I don't want to talk about any of this again. Is that plain enough for you?"

"Okay, I understand. I won't bring it up again."

"By the way, I sold out all of this year's commitment in chimes, and a whole lot more. I'm negotiating with the Chen's for more, but they're trying to stick it to me on the reorder."