Seven tiles comprised a boat upon the dark sea of desktop. Gao Tao collapsed the sail, cleaved the hull, extruded a captain. The square head gazed at the horizon. Gao Tao tilted it up to the sky.
The tangram set had been buried alongside its yellowed puzzle book in a drawer of leftover takeout bags. Gao Tao had first turned to it when his tunnel through the Great Firewall collapsed overnight. Even after he dug a deeper one to his favorite international news sites, the tangrams remained next to his lamp. Slow mornings were eased into with familiarity, others jumpstarted with conundra from pages as yet unsolved. A polygon baffled Gao Tao for three days before he searched for a solution online. Instead he found proof that it was impossible, and grumbled at his failure to think up a similar analysis of angles and edge lengths.
Heels clicked their approach as the clock flipped to nine. Sun Saifei strode into the office, tablet in one hand and ceramic mug in the other. The doorway behind her showed a wedge of linoleum from the hall outside, dingy against the pale gold of Gao Tao’s bamboo floor.
Gao Tao idly arranged the tiles back into their square frame without referring to the etched guidelines. “Where’s my tea?”
“My hands are full.”
“You could bring a tray.”
Sun Saifei settled into a nearby chair, crossing her ankles with a swish of flared slacks. “You could go make your own.”
“Get out of my chair and push a button? You’re breaking my balls here.”
“Somebody has to.”
Sun Saifei had been languishing as a glorified typist and scenery outside the executive suite. Gao Tao’s eye was drawn up her legs and kept by her mind when she finally agreed to eat lunch with him. Their first shared break was a light introductory conversation, with feelers of trust couched in jokes about the workday grind. The followups brought forth a growing litany of grievances as they found themselves in deeper agreement. Time and effort pissed between the cracks of wasteful processes. Posh markets ignored to peddle cheap junk long since gone unsustainable. And, on one late Friday night, musings on the possibility of a forcible change in leadership.
Gao Tao had written it off as a whim, a steam valve on yet another shitty week. Records began to appear in his file cabinet, customer lists and payroll and the eventual prize of the corporate books. Curiosity became analysis, then a theoretical reorganization – still a work in progress when wind of impending sale pushed them to jump.
Sun Saifei opened the display of her tablet. “Guess what we just became.”
“You know I hate games without rule sets.”
“I know you hate games you can’t win. We’re a Certified Gold Merchant.” Sun Saifei showed off a digital seal of approval from the certifier in question – a partner of several online manufacturer directories. Gao Tao vaguely remembered a certification fee and a phone call thus regarding – a basic quiz about registrations and financials passed off as an audit.
“What exactly does that get us, aside from that godawful clip art?”
“Into the good section of the directories. The one that buyers bother to look at.”
“Are they looking?”
“Apparently. Hits are up on our listings, and these all came in after the update.” Sun Saifei displayed her folder of emails sent via the aforementioned listings. Most weeks, she had been lucky to see more than one.
“Any leads?”
“Two followup responses, radio silence otherwise. I’ll give those all a gentle poke.”
A stable of clients had stayed on from the old No. 1 Leather, passable providers of minimal profit margins. Sun Saifei kept a list of brighter prospects color coded with her progress at converting nibbles to bites. Promising yellow. Doubtful orange. Dead end red. Rare green – springtime sprouts through the lingering detritus of autumn.
Sun Saifei’s phone buzzed. She checked the display, flashing the contact name to excuse herself. Her voice notched up into a smooth and precise melody. “Supreme Leather and Luggage.”
Gao Tao checked on the plant’s upcoming workload as the call proceeded in snippets of clarification and agreement. Sun Saifei had a communications degree and a former position in customer accounts, all squandered in her not quite promotion to Uncle Peng’s secretary. She would deliver the business, Gao Tao the product. But business came slow and hard fought, leaving their schedule laced with gaps that never seemed to fill.
“Yes. Of course. We’re thrilled to be working with you.” Sun Saifei ended the call with a flourish, picking up her tablet to flip a name to green. “They said the same about us. I want to believe it’s sincere.”
“CeCorp is – remind me again?”
Sun Saifei sent a link. CeCorp’s website was clean, crisp, and earnest. As per the usual broker’s discretion, the endorsements of buyers and suppliers were anonymous. Yet they described the challenges of orders – and their CeCorp-facilitated success – in enough specifics to give a sense of substance rather than boilerplate bullshit.
“They’re like us – a former nobody with a new face and focus. Their clients want rapid prototyping and turnaround. CeCorp wants to see if we deliver as advertised.”
Gao Tao snorted. “As if we wouldn’t. How much did they order?”
“A hundred bags to start. More to come if they like the sample.”
“If they come back at all.”
In her first months of selling Supreme, Sun Saifei would have told him to put a lid on the cynicism. Instead she went back to her tablet. Perhaps CeCorp would become a client, a new notable in their short list of good business. Perhaps they would take their samples to some crapshoot of a sweatshop, same as any other prospect hamstrung by a bankroll with no concern for the value of reliability.
Sun Saifei’s phone rang again. She ignored it. Her tablet chimed with a notification. She investigated, letting it drop onto her lap with a huff.
“Should I ask?”
Sun Saifei handed over the source of the chime. “Look what just crawled into my inbox.”
Uncle Peng’s favorite client, Gao Tao’s albatross. Tenseco Enterprises was a top subcontractor for big box stores overseas. Uncle Peng had bowed and scraped in hopes of manufacturing for those stores himself. The contracts never came, and the scraping continued to the point of drawing blood. Tenseco persistently balked at the rising costs of materials and labor. They insisted on a direct line to the boss, and only begrudged themselves to deal with Sun Saifei after Gao Tao changed his private number.
“Seems standard issue.”
“Read the whole thread.”
Gao Tao expanded, skimmed. “Are they serious?”
“As ever.”
“Give a man some wallets and he wants the whole damn warehouse.”
The order had been finalized a month ago. To Tenseco, that meant the delivery date. Anything else was fair game to shoehorn under the deadline. Five hundred purses here, a thousand totes there. A truckload of luggage casually doubled, or piggybacked on merchandise without the exponential complications of zippers or pockets or piping. Gao Tao had once thrown Tenseco a bone in hopes of impressing them with his new flexibility. It only riled up the incessant barking at his heels.
Sun Saifei began to draft a reply. “Double rush premium or – how long of a delay?”
“Say three months, and I’ll give them a pleasant surprise. Unless they take their ball and go play someone else.”
“Better them than certain others.”
Supreme Leather and Luggage had its new name, a sleek website, snappy directory text to jump out from a sea of nondescript competitors. Yet its fledgling boutique floated on cash from the bargain basement. Ice Nine had come calling in a deep red quarter, yet another venture fresh out of design school with a minimal investment. Tenseco piled on a massive rush addition, threatening to pull the entire order if denied. Supreme ran a month at full overtime throttle to boost itself out of the hole. Ice Nine took their business elsewhere and subsequently took off. They refused all attempts at reconciliation, and Gao Tao refused to speak their name until he tore out the thorn digging deep at every relevant blurb in the fashion news. A women’s tennis sponsorship. An expansion into Russia. A gambit swept off the table before it could rise or fall on its own odds.
“Better get some substance onto the schedule.” Gao Tao sighed. “Standard rush or a month delay. I’ll scrape something out of this clusterfuck.”
Sun Saifei resumed her methodical typing. “At least this time.”