American Outlaw - Jesse James [122]
Things had just gotten way too big for me. And unfortunately, I had never learned to delegate very well. I wasn’t one of these crafty CEOs with ten underlings running his arms and legs for him. Instead, every single goddamn tiny decision seemed to run directly across my desk. Every sale, every customer complaint, every bit of shop drama: it all came to me.
But the real killers were the lawsuits.
“I can’t believe it,” I exploded, one day. “Another one?”
They had been coming in, like biblical plagues, over the course of the last several years. Ever since I had married Sandy, my legal luck had turned to shit. The leeches had come out of the swamp, suing me more than half a dozen times. In 2007, the California Air Resources Board accused me of churning out bikes in violation of their clean-air standards, and they stuck their hands deep in my pockets, even though I offered to recall each of my bikes and make them smog compliant. Later that same year, a customer going through a messy divorce wanted to renege on his deal to buy a custom chopper, but I’d already spent his down payment on labor, so I refused; he sued me, too. In 2008, even my freaking lawyer sued me.
I don’t know if I had a sign on me, saying “Take my money!” Maybe I’d kicked around in the spotlight too long, let my brand get too well known, because things had sure been simpler when I was selling fenders out of my garage. I think people thought that because I was married to Sandy, I had access to her money, which wasn’t true. She and I kept our finances separate. Both of us understood it was the path of least drama.
But if the intention was to wear me down, my various litigants were succeeding. My legal bills were enormous, and I went from feeling like West Coast Choppers was my retreat, the one place where things made sense, to not even really wanting to be there that much anymore. I couldn’t help but feel like I was milking the cash cow for everything it was worth. And that had never been my style.
“It just doesn’t make me happy anymore,” I told Sandy. “There’s so much stress associated with being there.”
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” Sandy sympathized. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Unless you can make me excited about doing something I’ve done a million times before, over and over again,” I said, “I think the answer might be no.”
I hated to act ungrateful. I knew that I’d achieved every blue-collar guy’s fantasy, having created what was probably the biggest and most prestigious custom motorcycle shop in the world. I’d built it up from the ground, from absolutely nothing, just by my own sweat. But now I couldn’t help but wish to be rid of it. I couldn’t help but want to be free to do something, anything, else with my life.
“I think we need to go out to a nice dinner,” Sandy suggested. “Just you and me. I’d like some alone time with my amazing husband.”
“Yeah, all right,” I agreed. “Maybe that’ll help.”
“Make the reservations,” Sandy said, flashing me her famous smile. “I’ll get dressed.”
But even that didn’t seem to work out for us.
“Jesse! Sandra! Can you give us a shot? Can you give us a second?”
“Sandra, when’s the football movie starting? You guys start filming yet?”
The paparazzi battled with one another to get a photograph of Sandy and me entering the restaurant. It was just kind of lame, to have to battle through this horde of photographers just to get into a space of borrowed peace for about three hours.
“I wish just once we could go out and be totally left alone,” I grumbled.
“Let’s try wearing disguises,” Sandy suggested, smiling.
“Nah, these guys have radar,” I sulked.
“Don’t let it ruin your dinner,” she said. “There’s no point.”
“I won’t,” I said. But inside, I had already kind of let it spoil my mood.
It just felt like my chances to ever be normal again had completely faded away, and forever. To ninety-nine percent of the people out there, I was Sandra Bullock’s husband, the owner of West Coast Choppers, some reality TV star. But that’s not how I really felt as a human. I was a regular old