Free Full Circle by Mona Ingram

now.
But if you give us a couple of hours to feed our daughters and get organized,
you could stop by the house.” She looked at Bella. “We might as well hear what
he has to say.”
    * * *
    When Rafael
showed up two hours later, he was wearing a crisp white shirt with the neck
open and the sleeves rolled up. Beautifully tooled leather boots were visible
beneath faded jeans. He looked like a model in GQ . Bella wondered if
she’d be able to concentrate on what he was saying. They sat in an informal
group on the porch.
    “I should
tell you about myself,” he began. “I come from Lima, where my family has been
in the textile business for many years. I’ve been working in and around the
mills all my life, and I only recently realized that there’s nothing new for me
to learn. I wanted to expand into fashion, but my father, who’s still in
control, wouldn’t hear of it.” He spoke calmly, but Bella sensed underlying
frustration.
    “His
objection was that if we expanded into fashion, we would be competing against
our present customers, and that they would stop buying from us. While that may
be true in a few cases, I couldn’t make him see that markets are expanding.” He
gave a wry smile. “I mean no disrespect to my father, but the term ‘global
markets’ means nothing to him. He simply can’t conceive of selling our product
in Asia, for example, or Europe. I realize that e-commerce is in its infancy,
but now’s the time to take advantage of that, and jump in with both feet.”
    He sat back
and took a sip of lemonade. “The result was that I decided to come to America.
I spent three years at Harvard and there’s something about the American entrepreneurial
spirit that’s fresh and exciting.” He looked from Sofia to Bella. “And your
stand at Venice Beach confirmed what I’ve always believed to be true. With hard
work and vision you can succeed.” He sat back and gave a short, dry laugh. “I
apologize if I sound over-eager, but that’s the way I feel.”
    Bella leaned
forward. “So what do you want with us?”
    He didn’t
hesitate. “I want to help you expand.” He looked around the small house.
“Where’s your production facility?”
    “We don’t
have one.” Sofia spoke proudly. “We farm out our assembly on a piece-work
basis.”
    He nodded.
“How much time each week do you spend running around, delivering and picking
up?”
    “Too much”
Sofia acknowledged. “And now...” she threw up her hands.
    Rafael leaned
forward, elbows on his knees. “What you need is a location where you can set up
your entire production facilities.” His gaze darted from Sofia to Bella. “Who does
your designing, chooses your fabric, takes care of ordering, makes patterns,
handles the cutting, orders all the miscellaneous supplies, does the one
thousand and one things necessary to produce the volume you need, let alone
what you’ll soon need?”
    They
exchanged looks. “We do,” said Bella. “But to be honest, we’re not sure how
much longer we can keep it up.” She looked almost sheepish. “I work, and
Sofia’s on a widow’s pension, but we don’t have the kind of money it would take
for an expansion of that nature.”
    Rafael
slapped his thigh. “That’s where I come in. If we could work out some sort of
an agreement, I’d supply the money for expansion.” He looked from one to the
other. “After all, you two had the initial concept. I’d have to put in
something.”
    “We’d have to
think about it,” said Sofia cautiously, “but there’s something that concerns
me.”
    Bella and
Rafael turned to her.
    “Most of my
workers have small children. Even if they could afford day care, I don’t think
they’d want to leave their children. We’d probably have to find new production
staff but I really don’t want to do that. They’ve been loyal to us and we feel
the same toward them.”
    Rafael
thought quickly. “Have you been paying them cash?”
    Sofia nodded.
    “Are