Hold fast, p.1
Hold Fast, page 1
Table of Contents
Dedication
Title
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
What's Next?
Bits and Bobs
Acknowledgements
Copyright
Contents
Dedication
Title
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
What's Next?
Bits and Bobs
Acknowledgements
Copyright
Dedication
For J, who introduced me to climbing walls and belayed tirelessly for hours. All the love.
Hold Fast
Kris Ripper
Chapter One
Sunlight filtered in through the high stained glass windows, splashing the bouldering wall with a bright wash of color. Zack Scherzo squinted at the problem he’d been working on for the last half hour. The best perk of working at a climbing gym was spending his lunch hour bouldering, though today he’d spent most of that time staring at the wall. He still needed to grab at least a banana and a yogurt before his break was over, and he was no closer to figuring out how the hell the red taped holds were supposed to…make any sort of sense at all.
“Struggling there, Sparky?”
He tore his attention away from the wall long enough to smile at one of Crux’s regulars. “Hey, Stacy. Have you managed this problem? It’s killing me. I’m obsessed.”
“You? Obsessed? Hard to imagine…” She shoved his shoulder. “And no, I gave up on that one. Give me another week to get through everything I can actually solve, then I’ll be back.”
“I do them in order of difficulty.”
“Of course you do.” She moved closer to the wall, stepping into the path of the stained glass.
He blinked. “Oh wow, so just FYI, if you ever want to dye your hair rainbow colors, it’d look really good.”
“Thanks, babe. Are you getting tripped up trying to match hands on that gnarly incut?”
“I thought you hadn’t tried it?”
She grinned. “I haven’t solved it anyway.”
“Mm hmm. I could probably get past that incut, if it wasn’t immediately followed by a crazy impossible reach. But I was talking to—”
A door slammed open upstairs, bouncing off the wall, but not shutting again. The upper office had been a choir loft back when the building had been a church, but was now where the gym’s owner worked (when he bothered to grace them with his presence). They couldn’t see the office over The Rock—the massive top rope island in the center of the gym—but Zack winced when Terence’s raised voice reached them.
“—these kinds of temper tantrums from assistant managers! You’re done here!”
“You can’t—”
“I just did!”
Wait. Wait a minute.
“Oh no,” Stacy murmured. “Did he just fire Amanda?”
The door slammed again, with more finality.
She touched his arm. “Zack, is Val—”
“He’s not here. Sorry, will you excuse me?” He was already walking toward the doors before she had a chance to answer.
General manager Val Orlov had been out the entire morning, attempting to source decent, gently used mats to replace the worn-through sections on the active floor. It couldn’t be a coincidence that Terence picked today to make personnel adjustments.
Zack burst through the huge open slider just in time to see Amanda sprinting down the sidewalk. He watched for a long moment, the fingers of one hand nervously popping the cap of a ball point pen on and off in his pocket.
She couldn’t really be fired. Not without Val even knowing about it. Unless Val knew about it? But no. For one, he wouldn’t fire Amanda. And for two, if he planned to, he’d do it himself. And he’d probably tell Zack beforehand. Being marketing and activities director took him out of the supervisory hierarchy, but he was still usually in on the hiring of staff. Crux was a family, from Val on down. There was no way he would have known about something this drastic without giving Zack a heads up.
But what was Terence trying to pull? The last time he’d shown up at the gym, Zack had been treated to a lecture about why “trendy fitness fads” were bad investments. As far as he knew, Terence had never gotten involved in the human resources side of the business.
The side door opened and Terence barreled out. Zack jumped back a little as if he’d accidentally charmed the snake from its basket. “Excuse me, sir—”
“I’m late for a meeting, Scherzo. Talk later.” He aimed his key fob at his Acura and didn’t even break stride to speak.
“Okay…” Zack sighted down the street, but Amanda had already driven away.
Terence sped off in the opposite direction.
All evidence pointed to the conclusion that the owner of the gym had just fired its assistant manager. Without consulting anyone else who worked there.
Zack walked back inside, arranging an expression on his face that he sincerely hoped would discourage questions. And it might have worked, except Stacy was standing at the long, curving front desk, talking to a couple of the climbing instructors. The staff might avoid Zack when he was looking stern and dire, but Stacy had no such qualms.
“Did that really just happen?” she asked, eyebrows raised.
He exhaled slowly. A callus on his thumb was beginning to rub raw on the pen cap and he forced himself to pull his hands out of his pockets so he’d stop messing with it. “I don’t have all the information. Your guess is as good as mine.” He needed a plan here. “Milo, Rod, Bear, I need you guys on the floor making sure the members haven’t been…disturbed by the, uh, excitement.”
Milo brushed floppy brown hair away from his eyes. “You got it. I think the yoga class might have heard too, because Randi came to the doorway to, like, glare at us.”
“Rats. Okay, don’t worry about that. You three, work the floor.”
“Got it.” Milo and Rod immediately went off to different parts of the gym.
Bear hesitated, clasping his hands behind his back. “Sure, Zack. Should I call Valentín?”
Stacy held up her phone. “Already did. Ex-wife’s prerogative, kids.”
“Good.” Bear nodded to both of them, then headed for the bouldering wall in the back.
“I almost get the impression he thinks I can’t handle a crisis on my own,” Zack said ruefully. “And thanks. Calling Val was at the top of my list after make the members forget anything strange happened.”
“You’re lucky it’s a slow time. Though if it was busy, it might have been too loud to hear.” Stacy gestured to the desk. “You want me to keep an eye on things for a few minutes so you can regroup?”
“We haven’t descended to ‘staff the desk with volunteers’ quite yet. But thank you for offering. And actually, if you could stand her for a minute while I grab my notebook, I’d appreciate it.”
“My pleasure.”
“Did Val say when he’d be back?”
She nodded. “He’s in Pleasanton, so it’ll take him a while to get here, but he’s on his way.”
“Great. Thanks, Stacy.”
Pleasanton to La Vista would take at least half an hour, probably more. Zack paused only to pet She-Ra, the gym’s unofficial cat—a mangy street beast who came inside in the morning, left at close, and deigned to eat the food they left out for her—before navigating the narrow hallway back to the old vestry, which they’d divided into offices for he and Val. He took a moment on his side of the room to breathe and close his eyes.
Maybe Val could talk Terence out of this. Except nothing about Terence invited compromise or…an acceptance of mistakes.
Damn.
Zack grabbed his green Crux world journal and the little case that held his prized Staedtler Triplus Fineliner pens. He needed to take some serious notes. That would help. Or at least it would feel less like doing nothing at all.
Amanda had been hired three months after Zack. She hadn’t always been the most reliable employee, but she was a hell of a routesetter, and the staff trusted her. She also helped Milo execute the all-important member events Zack planned.
Oh god. What are we going to do?
* * *
By the time Val walked in—during the brief spike of late lunch climbers—Zack had filled three pages of his world journal with what he knew of Amanda’s job duties, in his typical half-doodle notes, color-coded by priority. And he wasn’t done yet. If this kept up he’d need to start a new WoJo early, which would throw him off for the entire year.
The good news was that apart from coordinating routesetting, most of what Amanda did could be taken over by other people with minimal training.
The bad news was twofold.
First: they’d need to figure out how Amanda had scheduled routesetting, and who she’d contracted with to do the work. Crux didn’t have the budget for full time routesetters to change the holds so the regulars were never bored climbing the same routes again and again. He’d have to go through her paperwork, and if that didn’t work, he’d have to poke around in the gym’s expenses.
Second: they were already understaffed. The climbing instructors did maintenance, cleaning, and classes during slow times on the walls. Zack couldn’t think of a single time he’d seen any of them lounging around with nothing to do. Someone (probably Milo) had even written up a list of stuff that could be worked on behind the desk, for whoever was greeting members as they walked in.
He pushed his chair back as he finished summing everything up for Val. “Is there any possible way you can get Terence to…take it back?”
Val’s light brown complexion was far too pale. “No, and the whole thing is my fault. I wrote her up for tardiness, you remember?”
“Yeah, but that was…” Zack flipped to the red tab of his WoJo. “That was in March. You think he decided to fire her almost three months later? That makes no sense.”
“He’s been riding me harder lately to cut costs. He’s even hinted that maybe we could trim staff.” At Zack’s mouth-open shock, Val waved a hand. “I know. I told him we were already stretched thin. I’ve asked Bear to cover in the afternoons three times in the last month, and I don’t mind him bringing the kids in, but you know it’s against the rules and if Terence found out…”
“We can’t lose Bear.”
“I know.”
Zack shook off the potential difficulty of things that hadn’t actually happened and focused. “Val, I’m not sure we can lose Amanda without…” cutting hours and services.
“We’re gonna have to. Terence doesn’t take anything back.”
“But don’t you think…if we show we can deal with losing one person, he’ll just be more tempted to fire someone else?” Zack wasn’t sure exactly how much Val made, but he knew he’d already topped out his own salary range. And Terence had no idea what a marketing and activities director did, as he’d pointed out to Zack more than once. (It hadn’t been an invitation to explain; Zack only wasted fifteen minutes attempting to do so before he realized that Terence didn’t care, even though without a vibrant membership program no gym could thrive.)
“I’ll just have to make it clear to him that we need everyone we have. I’ll ask Rod what his schedule is like this semester.” He frowned. “Oh, god. Are you taking summer classes?”
“I’ll make it work.”
“I hate to ask more of you, but most of this is going to fall on us, Zack.”
“I know.” Zack’s heart sank and he picked up his sticky flags. “Okay. You’re pink, I’m green.”
They ironed out what they could, delegating all of Amanda’s supervisory duties to Val and pretty much everything else they couldn’t let slide to Zack. It wasn’t an even distribution, but Val already picked up every shift he couldn’t get someone else to cover, to say nothing of cleaning the locker rooms when no one had gotten around to it, and picking up cardio coaching. He valued everything Zack did—and understood how important it was—but there were things that couldn’t go undone. Like cardio classes.
“Do we have money for contractors?” Zack asked without much hope.
“No. Amanda was working on some bartering deals or something, trading memberships for a class a week, I think. Anything you can do along those lines, I’d appreciate.”
“Right.” Zack made a note to log in to her calendar and try to find anything she’d written down. He made another note to engage the climbing instructors to come up with a rotation for cleaning the locker rooms. It needed to be done, but if they all took turns, maybe they could lighten the load for Val.
Getting rid of the cleaning service had been another one of Terence’s unilateral money-saving strategies. After three months, Zack could state unequivocally that it hadn’t been a great idea. They really needed a cleaning service.
“I’m so sorry,” Val mumbled, massaging his temples. “I can’t believe I wrote her up. If I hadn’t…”
“She was late three times a week. She needed to be written up. And then she got better. A little, at least. Anyway, if it hadn’t been Amanda, he would have fired someone else. You know that.” Zack offered a smile. “It probably would have been me. Can you imagine how many boxes of notebooks I’d have to pack up if he’d fired me? It’d take hours.”
“God, Zack, don’t even joke about that. I definitely can’t run this place without you.”
Even though everything was basically going to hell, it was still nice to be appreciated. “We got this. Okay? I’m gonna go triage Amanda’s desk.”
“Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
Zack waited until he was in the hallway before checking the time on his phone. Already four. The next few hours would be busy with the after work crowd. They had two cardio sessions Amanda had been scheduled to coach, and a late yoga class. He needed to ask Randi to make a new schedule, and call Cody to ask if he’d be willing to work full time, at least for the summer.
And he had reading to do before Principles of Management tomorrow night.
He approached the front desk, where Randi narrowed her eyes like she was going to mess with him, then dropped the expression and primped her natural hair instead. “You’re letting me off early so I can go home and spend the next four hours getting ready for my date tonight? You’re a true friend, Zachary.”
“If only I could, you know I would.”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t take me four hours to get ready, anyway. So. Tell me the plan. Amanda’s really out?”
“She is. Here’s what we need to do today…” He flipped his notebook open and started going down the lists.
The staff would rally to keep Crux going. But damn, Zack could see a lot of long days in his future.
* * *
Three days after Amanda’s inglorious departure, Zack finally came to the somewhat painful conclusion that she should not have been assistant manager.
Not that he agreed with firing her. But she should never have been promoted. Or she should have been supervised much more closely. Her papers were in shambles.
And he’d found the planner he’d given her in the back of a deep drawer with only two days written on. The rest of it was empty.
At least she’d been using the Crux online calendar for her appointments; if only she’d been arranging them via email so he could figure out what any of them were for.
Amanda’s entire system seemed dependent on neon half-sized sticky notes, which she kept up on the back side of the high front counter where her ostensive desk area lived. In fact, Zack was almost certain he’d picked a number of the same notes out of She-Ra’s wild mane on more than on occasion. He’d tried very hard to find some sort of…organization, some method to the madness that was randomly colored sticky notes in layers with Amanda’s semi-legible handwriting covering them.
If she’d had a process of some sort, it was beyond his ability to decipher.
He’d finally gathered all of her notes and haphazardly completed paperwork and dumped it on the floor in his office. Sorting it had taken the better part of a day—after a solid twenty minutes hunting for his reading glasses, which had been on his keyboard tray for no apparent reason.
It was nearly impossible to read Amanda’s writing even with glasses. He’d only managed to connect about half of the appointments to actual information, which led to another few hours of embarrassing phone calls to ascertain what the meetings were supposed to be about.
Because there’s nothing more professional than someone calling to confirm an appointment, and following up by casually asking what on earth the appointment was for.
He’d canceled as many as he could, but that still left him with a nightmarish schedule for the next two weeks. And literally no idea if he was triaging any of the right things.
