This Is My Brain in Love - I. W. Gregorio Page 0,55
is any indication, so is Will.
I wonder if people can see it in me, too: the crackling of electricity under my skin, the slight flush in my cheeks that I can already feel, like I’ve got the beginnings of a fever. I can hear it in my voice, grainier, breathier, when I lick my suddenly dry lips to say, “Hey.”
Will’s eyes go to the button I’m wearing (“Show them your love. Buy them Chinese tonight.”), and he smiles, getting impossibly brighter. He glows. “You like them?” he asks.
“They’re perfect, and you know it.” I can’t be serious with him right now. I’m giddy, buzzed with emotion. “They’re part of the plan.”
“Yeah, tell me about this plan.”
Wordlessly, I hand him the report.
My dad is the first to walk in, and I brace myself for the thunderous scowl he normally wears when he finds that Alan or I have been bu guai (literally, not good). He never explicitly said that he didn’t want me to see Will anymore, but it was certainly implicit. So I’m shocked, and maybe a little unsettled, when his eyes flicker to Will, and my dad’s expression barely changes. “Hello, William. Xiao Jia, ni ganshenme?”
Just barely, I stop myself from blurting out, “I have a plan.” Instead, I take a deep breath and say, “I’ve got some ideas for how A-Plus can increase profitability even more. I wanted to run them by you and Mom.”
“Ta weishenme lai zheli?” he asks, head nodding to Will.
“You know that Will has some skills that can really take A-Plus to the next level. He made these pins, you know—I think they’ll be a great advertising tool.” I hand him a cheery red button that says, “Choosy Moms Choose A-Plus.”
My dad grunts noncommittally and nods as my mother finally joins us. He looks suspiciously at Will and switches to English. “You know no money to pay you, right?”
“Well, Mr. Wu, I have to say that I’m not really doing this for the…” Will says at the same time I raise my hand to cut him off. My dad is playing right into my hands.
“Remember, Baba”—I always call him by his Chinese honorific when I want something from him—“we’ve got a new source of passive income through the website. The convenience fee should more than cover a modest salary, plus it’s a built-in incentive—the more online orders he drums up, the more he makes.”
To my own ears, I sound like a child trying to be a grown-up. The business school jargon that I whispered to myself yesterday evening in front of the mirror in the bathroom sounds stilted, so obviously trying too hard. I kind of hate myself.
My mom is nodding, but my dad looks unimpressed, and Will clears his throat and jumps in. “Mr. Wu, I’ve got a lot of experience writing copy and crafting headlines. The buttons are only the tip of the iceberg—I can work on some ads to place at the college, and I think I’ve got a good shot at placing a personal essay in the O-D. One of the things I’ve been kind of reading up on is how restaurants can drum up publicity, basically marketing that you can’t really buy, that you have to earn. One of the things that a lot of the local restaurants around here do is take advantage of special events—like how Senorita’s has a Cinco de Mayo party, and the Celtic Harp has a Saint Patrick’s Day fest. If we worked with the local Chinese Association to plan some programming around Lunar New Year and the Moon Festival in the fall, we could increase awareness significantly.”
I nod, taking a deep breath. These are all ideas Will and I have tossed around before, so it shouldn’t surprise me that he’s bought into my business plan 110 percent. “Basically, Baba, we need to increase our profile. These tent pole events will raise awareness, and there are two main areas that I think are growth targets: the college population and the catering population.
“You’ll see on page two that we have a lot of actionables.” This is one of the catchphrases that I know will get my dad’s attention. Whenever we had family gatherings in New York, he would always find some way to mock my cousin Yi-Ping for being a stuck-up NYU MBA, but there was always a twinge of envious resentment in his voice. “We’ve already gotten a little bit of a foothold in MVCC just from the Boilermaker, and this fall we can