Published by Barkley Press
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and events portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN-10: 1-937674-04-5
ISBN-13: 978-1-937674-04-5
Copyright © 2010 Jim Freeman
Cover design and typesetting: Michaela Freeman
Photography credits:
Front cover Rain: © Arman Zhenikeyev
Back cover author photo: © Jana Labutova
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author (contact at www.jim-freeman.com), except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Printed in the United States of America
DEDICATION
For Misha
“No two persons ever read the same book.”
-Edmund Wilson
Novels
EVOKE
Letters from Ceilia
The Island
Non-Fiction
Dick Cheney’s Fingerprints
The Dark Side of the Moon
(a five-book series)
Poetry
The Smell of Tweed and Tobacco
Corner of My Mind
Broken Pieces
“There is a field beyond all notions of right and wrong. Come, meet me there.”
-Rumi
It wasn’t great sex and it oughta be, every once in a while, it oughta be, that should be a rule. Ceilia Lybrand lay very still and studied the ceiling fixture, a diamond-stitched down comforter stretched across her and Bill, the ambient light of a sleeping city leaking through the bedroom window. She scrutinized it, contemplating the dimpled bubbles in the opaque glass like so many nipples in a translucent breast, examined it as best she could from the half-dark of the bedroom, in all its minute and infuriating mediocrity. Round… half round anyway… a half hemisphere, let’s be accurate Ceilia. Common as a country hardware store, ordinary as page ninety-seven in a Best Buy catalog.
She needed sleep, she needed Tiffany, she longed for Bohemian crystal and most of all, far more to the point than this endless study of the crap that appeared in the detailing of a pretty damned expensive Gold Coast apartment, she needed to get laid.
C’mon Ceil, for God’s sake, tomorrow is Monday, you’ve got to be ready for the Emerson presentation and another week of juggling schedules. Close your eyes. She closed them, counted slowly to thirty-five and opened them again to stare at the ceiling.
Sex would put her to sleep, good roaring breathless sweating sex, panting sheet twisting moaning do it again, please do it again sex, but they’d made love only an hour ago, or was it two? And he’d almost gotten her there, gotten her so close and she’d wanted so badly to be there, to feel herself rumble and chug, become a veritable unstoppable incredible insurmountable steaming hissing night-train of orgasm, headed for the Grand Central Station of dilated pupils, the Union Stockyards of every animal that ever fucked.
Then he’d come, moaned that little catch-breath moan she knew so well and slumped over her, breathing hard and withdrawing, giving her a hug. Rolled over and turned his back to leave her there with all her boiler doors wide open and fairly belching flame, sidetracked while he coasted to a stop. A hug, he’d given her a frigging hug like it was a hundred dollar bill left on the dresser for a hooker. Left her like a gutted fish still flapping on the deck to listen to his breathing become regular, to hear him drift off to sleep and fucking leave her there to study the unbelievably ugly detail of the light fixture from hell, the piece of shit from page ninety seven.
Two years and one month living with Bill, broad shouldered, big-grin Bill who supported her emotionally in ninety four percent of the ways she needed support, when he wasn’t caught up with the Bears, Bulls or Blackhawks. Dependable Bill, moving up at the brokerage firm as she moved up at WMA. Comfortable Bill, who didn’t run around on her.
Her mind ran to the numbers, a mind made for numbers, a mind that terrorized every fellow student and nearly half the teachers in sixteen years of trig and calculus and world history. Sex an average four times a week over one hundred and eight weeks. Four hundred and thirty-two sexual encounters with this wall of shoulders, peacefully and damningly asleep a foot away on the bed next to her. Give or take a few, forty times tenderly and passionately, give or take a few, a hundred times lustily and give or take a few, three hundred times like tonight, nights when they turned out the light and Bill pulled her to him with little more than a “hey, babe” and his growing hardness. Three nights a week his good night kiss a passing brush of lips and four nights a week a firmer held kiss, his mouth opening against hers whether or not she returned the touch of his tongue. Then the whispered hey, babe.
It wasn’t fair, not at all the place they’d started, but a place they’d drifted to and she blamed herself as well as him. More than him, she blamed herself a hell of a lot more than she blamed him and if she were honest, if she were really square with herself, that was probably what kept her awake and stuck with staring down the architectural failure above their heads. No drifting Ceil, you can’t allow you and Bill to drift along like this or you’ll end up eddying in some backwater, stuck up against the bank like a muddy leaf. You’ll end up like Mom, drinking your way to the end.
He sometimes manhandled her to the edge of complaint on those nights, bullying her in that kidding way of his and she gave in, always wanting more, mostly settling for less. You’re settling, Ceil and you’re too damned young to settle. A woman’s always too young to settle, whatever age and you bloody well know it. Call it what it is, not worth the effort when he’s feeling like a stud, but if that isn’t worth the effort, what is? That’s the thing that really scares you.
One time out of a dozen he left her sleepless like tonight, needing to be taken again but slowly, fondled and caressed and soothed and murmured to. Needing to be loved and stroked and played with and giggled at, a game played by teenagers alongside lakes where mosquitoes swarmed and no one paid a moment’s attention until the itch and scratch of morning. Needing that long dreamy building from way down deep inside that would leave her breathless when he entered her, wanting him, wanting it, wanting the night train out of town. In those moments no mosquitoes bit and they’d live forever in each other’s arms because death was merely an abstraction.
She eased her fingers between her legs, a momentary flicker of guilt skimming across the need, with him lying so close. But Bill had brought her to this sleeplessness and left her, turned his back, hunched the pillow comfortably and drifted off to somewhere else. His breathing was regular as hers increased and he lay still as she began to squirm. Away… she’d take herself away from the numbers, away from the clumsy beaded design of the ceiling fixture, from shadows on the wall and this abstract, vague and undefined anger.
Damp and perspiring and satiated, she relaxed and rolled on her right side, her back facing the wall of his, a stretched-sheet no man’s land between them, but the anger was fading as she drifted and it would be all right. Five hours to the alarm. Five hours of sleep would have to do before the week tackled her again.
___________
“Where in the hell did you come up with that? Larry Watterson grinned at her and set the bottle of Black Label on the conference table and turned to the broad black-lacquered credenza for glasses and ice.
“Come up with what, Larry?” Ceilia pushed back in the chair, pleased, her face a mask of contrived innocence. The presentation was over, the clients packed up and gone, she’d pulled a stalled media proposal back from the edge of disaster. Her boss had the Black Label out for the post-mortem. Life was good.
“You know damned well.” He shoved the ice bucket to the center and circled the table, setting a glass in front of Ron Erland. Ron needed a drink and looked like it. Emerson Mills was his account and account managers aren’t supposed to have their chestnuts pulled out of the fire by art directors. It’s part of the written code, right there in fine print, check it out. If Ceilia hadn’t stepped in when he floundered, the deal would be no deal at all, gone in a New York minute, blown coverage and Ron was too old and far too highly paid to drop a pass as the clock wound down.
Larry set a tall glass and can of Coke in front of Tom Esterbridge, the media buyer. Ceilia liked Tom almost as much as she disliked Erland. Quiet and unassuming in a brash and outspoken business, he’d been off the booze for five years now, the Whiz Kid of media placement. The last glass Larry slid with a grin in front of Ceilia.
“Here we are, sweating our way through our best pitch to Emerson Mills… a damned good pitch, I might add. But it was sweaty Ron, you’ll have to admit that. Emerson and his guys were listening, but they weren’t moving. Everything was uphill. Jesus I hate that in a pitch. Nothing rolls, everything has to be pushed. And at the crucial point, that pause we all know so well and fear so much, that moment of truth when the client buys the bit or turns to the numbers, good old Wally Emerson looks directly at my creative director and says, ‘What do you think, Ceilia?’”He mimicked the client’s soft Midwestern voice.
“And you… you look him straight in the eye and roll all the dice. Roll all my dice, I might add and that takes guts Ceil, but you pulled it off.” Larry tried for Ceilia’s voice and got only halfway there. ‘Mr. Emerson, there are agencies who will pitch you with glitz and glamour for this account. It will look pretty as hell, but it won’t sell sportswear.’ I almost croaked. ‘This is a well thought-out program, with a lot of media balance and it will move product. WMA doesn’t expect to win a creative award on your bankroll, we expect to take Emerson Mills up two or three notches against their competition.’ And he buys it. Sits back in his chair, grins like a kid and says, ‘That’s what I was waiting to hear.’ Those pretty much the words, Ceil?”
“You do his voice better than you do mine, Larry.” Ceilia sipped her scotch. “Yeah, those were pretty much the words, you’ve got a good memory. Looks like next week just about this time you’ll have another account, Ron.”
“Yeah, it was smooth sweetheart, real smooth. Guess I owe you a dinner over this one.” Ron Erland smiled and raised his glass in a toast to Ceilia, but there was perspiration on his upper lip and he drained rather than sipped the scotch, reaching for the bottle. Numbers ran in her head again, numbers that multiplied commission percentage against the gross value of the booking, counting Ron’s take of a major new account that he’d all but dropped.
Tom fiddled with his Coke and smiled shyly, not quite meeting her eyes. “Thanks for the bit about ‘media balance,’ Ceil. We worked real hard on that and I wasn’t sure he was taking it all in.”
Larry Watterson leaned back in his chair, rolled the ice in his glass and propped a leg on the corner of the conference table, reaching for a cigar and Ceilia winced. He lit it, sending a plume of smoke directly at the ceiling. “Well, it’s always a team thing, but Emerson Mills had every ad agency in town chasing their account. When we got short-listed I thought we had a pretty good shot but hell, you never know.” He reached for the Black Label and dusted the top of his drink.
“Wally Emerson’s account puts us right where we need to be. We can afford to get tough now with a couple accounts that ask too much and pay too slow. One of those accounts is yours, Ron. Ceilia just bailed you out, whether you know it or not.”
“Hey Larry, I know… I know.” Ron pulled a mock arrow out of his chest, with an accompanying thwunk of wet lips. “Said I’d buy the lady a dinner.”
Ceilia sat forward in her chair and circled the fingers of both hands around the glass. Time to get something else out on the table.
“So, Larry… ?”
“Yeah?” He grinned at her.
“So I’m a hero, huh?”
“You bet, Ceilia. You’re always a hero, that’s why we pay you so goddamn much money.” The grin was still there behind the cigar and she knew his mood would last for the rest of the week. Well maybe not the full week, but he’d be a pussycat at least through Wednesday, his step lighter down the corridors, the rare smile more evenly distributed among the proletariat.
“So.” She paused. “Suppose it had gone the other way?”
“Whaddya mean?” The bushy light brown eyebrows shot up and the expression on Larry’s angular face went from beaming to quizzical to wary. “Suppose what had gone the other way?”
“Suppose the remark had blown the account? Suppose Wally Emerson said, ‘Glitz is what I pay for and glamour is what sportswear is all about. If WMA doesn’t know that, I guess we need an ad agency that does.’ I thought when I said it Larry, it was risky. But I didn’t see any movement in our direction and I really thought if we didn’t take ourselves out of the pack, the account was going south.”
“But it worked, Ceilia.” Larry was halfway back from wary to quizzical. “Worked beautifully. What are you looking for, all the credit? A few others of us were in the room too, you know?”
“It’s not that.”
“What, then?”
“I liked your saying that it’s a team effort when we win, Larry. I guess I need to know it’s a team loss, a WMA loss when we lose.” She looked at him and wondered if he was getting it. “I felt very much out there on the edge with my remark to Emerson. Guess I’d like to know the agency would catch me, more particularly that you would catch me if the ground gave way and I fell off the cliff.”
Larry was back to full grin. “Goes without saying, Ceilia. We’re always behind everyone at WMA. Team effort… always goes without saying… ”
Ceilia carried the warm glow of the scotch back to her office, stopping briefly in the art department, checking the progress of story-boards for next week’s presentation to Noble Electronics. They were one of the several accounts on Larry’s shit-list. Maybe now they’d be able to dump Noble, it wasn’t good for the inside of her to do terrific work for a client who whined about every cost, questioned every ad placement and let the invoices run a hundred twenty days. A Ron Erland account and they’d come up with a hell of a campaign, the boards looked slick. That’s good, she thought. Maybe too good to waste on Noble but if Larry Watterson was serious and they were ready to resign some accounts, it would feel just fine to wave goodbye from the strength of a slick presentation.
Get real, Larry’s never serious Ceil, not about dumping clients anyway. It’s a numbers game for Larry, his numbers only stack in one direction and that’s up. Even the pain in the ass clients, the ones that take the heart out of creative staff, added to the pile of numbers. Not enough of a pain in Larry’s ass, the problem accounts rumbled and grumbled and choked their way through staff-meetings and private quarrels, taking their toll at lower levels.
Whenever she passed his office and saw him staring into his computer screen, Ceilia knew he was looking at the pile, urging the numbers up. Mentally taking WMA from number twenty-three on Crain’s list of Chicago’s Fifty Largest Ad Agencies to number twenty-two and eying the break point into the top twenty. He was probably already at the screen, sipping scotch and factoring in the Emerson account, wondering if the year’s numbers would leapfrog a couple steps to break onto that hallowed ground. That would bring a smile to Larry’s face, allow him a surer step into the dining room of the Chicago Club and Emerson Mills could quite possibly do it. Then he’d be back at the computer, looking off into the screen as if it were a crystal ball, judging the distance to the top ten, pacing the halls, the challenge once again sneaking into his language.
Well, maybe that was what it took to sit in his chair, it was a tough business. She walked into her office, sat down behind the broad white desk and thumbed through telephone messages, punching the speed-dial to Bill’s direct line.
“Bill Frankel.” He picked up with the no nonsense, slightly upbeat but very busy broker voice that he took on and off like a trader’s smock.
“Hey Billy boy, it’s Ceil. What are you doing, this very moment?”
“Hey, hon.” She could hear the grin, knew he’d be leaning back, propping a stocking foot at the corner of the desk, watching quotes ribbon by on the computer. “You catch me at a bad moment. This very instant, my secretary has her pants down and is about to do some serious damage to me.”
“Yeah? Put her on the line and let me tell her what to expect. She’ll need some preparation for the disappointment.”
“Funny girl.” She could hear the grin widen. “Extremely funny girl. Actually, right this very moment, I’m looking at a hot utility bond offering and trying to figure out which of my worthless clients I’ll favor with the chance to make a killing.”
“Yeah, well I’ve just come from a more modest, but equally profitable presentation with Emerson Mills and with no small help from your live-in lady, we nailed the account.” Her voice lowered to conspiratorial level and she fiddled with the white mug that served as a pen holder.
“I’m still feeling the glow of a little celebratory scotch and the sudden rise in Larry Watterson’s approval index. My stock is up, baby. For the moment, I’m very high on his list of ‘attaboys’ and before the reality of tomorrow, I thought I’d spring for dinner. Just the two of us, candlelight and a little vino at Le Escargot or whatever other romantic spot of your dreams.”
“Aw, hon.” Her heart sank as she read disappointment in his tone and knew they weren’t going to have dinner. Now there would only be the reason. “You know I’d love to, but you must have forgotten tonight is the Blackhawks first night of Stanley Cup playoffs and Charlie and Joe and I have center-ice seats. We’re catching a quick dinner in Greek Town.”
“Ahhh, yes… Stanley Cup.” She felt the warmth of the scotch fading like the air out of a party balloon stuck too long to the ceiling. “Yeah Billy boy, I had forgotten. That’s okay, it isn’t really all that important and it’s Monday night anyway.”
Small lies. Damn Ceil, why do you always run away behind the small lies and make it okay for someone. This is important. Only important if it means something to him, though. Not important enough to make an issue, because then it’s not candlelight and a second bottle of wine, then it’s obligation and forced interest. Why do you wish so badly Ceil, that he’d cancel the hockey game and come home early to have a drink, hold you in one of those bear hugs and take you off to candlelight and too much wine. Then home in a late cab to make love slowly, so everlastingly slowly like he used to.
“What time you think you’ll be home?”
“Probably about ten thirty, hon. We may stop for a quick one after the game.” His voice was apologetic. She hated the sound of apology, hated herself for hating it, him for making it, the slight scotch-high draining out of her and leaving her bleak with need, unaccountably sad. Abruptly she turned the mug upside down, sprawling pens and markers across the desk. “How about tomorrow night, Ceil? We could make a night of it.”
“Nah. Not important, Billy boy. You guys all have a good time and I’ll catch you at home.”
She hung up and fingered the messages. Another small lie accomplished and she bent over to pick up a yellow highlighter and a well chewed ballpoint that had fallen to the floor, stuffing all the pens back into the mug. She set the messages aside. Four o’clock. She rarely left the office before six thirty, but to hell with it. Today she was getting out and damned if she’d go shopping and then home to cold chicken and a solitary glass of wine.
Suzanne would still be at her office and Suzanne would bloody well drop anything, change any plans if Ceil needed a quiet talk over dinner. Yeah, that should work and the balloon drifted off the ceiling. Get the hell out of here and home to a long hot bath. Light all the candles in the bathroom, shut off the lights, make sure there was plenty of bath-oil and soak for an hour with Oleta Adams doing background and a glass of red wine. Then eight o’clock dinner with Suzanne.
She dialed the number.
___________
Suzanne was already seated at a window table at Spiaggia, sipping a vodka gimlet and gazing out at the blackness beyond the ribboned traffic of the Outer Drive that was Lake Michigan. She spotted Ceilia in the reflection of the window and got up to give her a big hug and one of those lopsided smiles she seemed to save for special occasions.
“Hey Ceil, you look like a lady who just knocked over a big account.” She settled back to the chair opposite and raised her glass in toast. Ceilia grinned, there was a lot of toasting going on in her direction today and she loved it. “Tell me about it, I’m breathless with expectation.”
Ceilia ordered scotch on the rocks and settled in to go over the events of the afternoon presentation and from her chair as they talked, she watched the lines of traffic make the bend on Lakeshore Drive at Oak Street. A steady stream of headlights headed north toward the suburbs of Evanston, Wilmette and Winnetka, a smaller stream of tail-lights, sliding around the corner toward the Loop and Hyde Park, all a tracery against the huge void of Lake Michigan. Dwindling now, the rush-hour was long past. They ordered. Mussels over black angel-hair pasta for Suzanne and rare tenderloin for Ceilia. Rare, red, nearly bloody meat seemed appropriate for a celebration of a kill. A bottle of Chianti to accompany. Tonight was a night for red.
Suzanne absorbed the play-by-play, interrupting with occasional questions about a tone of voice or the expression on Wally Emerson’s face, the lopsided smile alternating an arched eyebrow through forkfulls of pasta. Suzanne was the rock that anchored Ceilia in Chicago. Close friends their last year at high school in Utica, New York then roommates through four years at Syracuse University and on to graduate school in New York City. They’d shared a minuscule apartment on west Sixty-Seventh and somehow got one another through Columbia and a half-dozen romantic entanglements. When Suzanne’s father set up an interview for her with a top level Chicago law firm and she moved to take the job, Ceilia felt lost in New York. The city was awash in Columbia and NYU graduates, all with advanced degrees in various media programs and all lining up for the few available agency openings. Like actors at open auditions, she kept bumping into the same faces in reception rooms, twenty-something young faces bright and eager with expectation and each hoping to fill a single job opening. Ceilia caught a low rung in the art department at Young and Rubicam and settled in to work her way across the maze of drafting tables, inching closer to the proximity of the art director’s glassed-off cubicle. But the next step up seemed so far beyond the horizon she couldn’t even conjure up a sustaining vision.
Six months later, when Suzanne begged her to come to Chicago, she packed up and left within a week, sleeping on Suzanne’s couch and making the rounds. There was an opening at the medium sized Watterson MacAvey Agency. Young and Rubicam it wasn’t, but there were only a dozen people in the art department and Larry Watterson liked the painfully slim portfolio she lugged into town. The Windy City it might have been, the Second City certainly, but Chicago was a breeze compared to New York.
“So, here you are on top of the world and end up with me for a date. Hockey game, huh?”
“Yeah… well… that’s just Bill. It was pretty short notice and he probably had told me about the game. I just sometimes sort of tune out that stuff.”
“How’re you two getting along these days?”
“Oh, fine. You know Bill…” Ceilia picked up the butter knife and studied it, then slid it under the edge of the plate and looked at her friend. “I guess fine.” She glanced out the window at the stream of traffic below and Suzanne waited her out.
“I don’t know, Suzanne. Bill loves me, or I guess he loves me and I suppose I love him too, but sometimes I just look at him and I wonder how long I can do this. We talk about marriage every once in a while and that’s what I’m supposed to want. That’s what it’s all supposed to be about, this pairing up and living together. I just find myself wondering about the whole concept of for-evering and if I can do it, with Bill or anyone. I guess that sounds nuts.” She picked up the knife again, rolled it in her fingers and studied the slightly curved blade. “Does that sound nuts?”
“No…”Suzanne sighed and waited for her friend to look up. “It doesn’t sound nuts, not to me.”
“Well you know, I think one of these days he’s going to bring it up again and flat out ask me to marry him and then I’m gonna have to come up with something. I don’t know what that something will be and it scares me.” Ceilia balanced the knife across her forefinger. “Doesn’t scare me so much that I’ll lose Bill, but I’m twenty-eight years old and it scares me that I don’t know how I feel about this whole marriage concept. It’s such a long way to the end of life and I just don’t know if I can make it that far with Bill, or with any one single person for that matter.” She worked the blade of the knife between her fingers. “And I’m afraid that somehow I’ll miss the boat, afraid that by the time I figure it out, Bill or whoever will be long gone and I’ll be caught with a choice of some middle-aged twice-divorced alcoholic or a life all alone.”
“So?”
“So, alone isn’t so scary right now, because for one thing I’m not alone and for another, I’m still at an age where there seem to be choices. But jeez, Suzanne, when I’m forty, how many choices will there be? But I’m just as scared to jump at Bill, even though we’ve lived together for two years… maybe because we’ve lived together for two years. He’s such a nice guy and he doesn’t run around on me. He’s doing really well at that stock and bond stuff he does and he seems to respect what I do. I see us getting married and moving to Wilmette and buying a Buick station wagon and having 2.1 kids and getting a country club membership. God, then becoming fortyish and fiftyish and it just scares some part of me to death.”
“Yeah, I know… ”
“What about you and Eddie? Where’s that going, for God’s sake?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Ceil. Him being a partner in the firm and all, that raises a whole bunch of extra questions. But we’re pretty serious and spend most nights sleeping over at one apartment or the other. I guess one of these days we’ll get tired of keeping tooth-brushes in two different medicine cabinets and take it the next step, but it’s not the same for me. You know that.”
“Yeah, I guess. But how? How different, how not the same? Doesn’t it scare the shit out of you, sometimes?”
“Not really, Ceil.” She sipped her glass of wine. “It’s funny sometimes, how close we are, you and me, but I want the commute from Wilmette and the Buick and the kids. That’s the way I grew up, with three brothers and a younger sister and Mom whipping us all over town from music lessons to swimming team to Little League. I guess I just always wanted that and Eddie wants it too, but we’re a fair way behind you and Bill in our relationship.” She glanced up from her gaze out the window and looked at Ceilia.
“I know that sounds terribly ‘middle America’ to you but every time I have my period it feels like another opportunity lost, another moment I’m growing older without kids. I’m the same age you are, Ceil and if Eddie and I don’t get our show on the road I’ll be nearing fifty, when my oldest is twenty. I don’t want to be too goddamn old to drive the station wagon without bifocals.”
“What about your career?”
“Yeah well, everything’s a trade off, Ceil. Money-wise it’s not a problem. Eddie makes plenty of dough, all the partners are looking for tax dodges. Would I miss it? Probably. Would I have to quit? Not really. The firm has all kinds of leaves of absence and maternity leaves and if I wanted to keep on going, there’s the option of full time live-in help. Would it affect my climb up the partnership ladder? You bet. I’d have to settle for just a good lawyering job and forget about being a litigator. But like I said, it’s all trade-offs Ceilia.”
“Yeah, well… you know how I feel about having kids.”
“So?”
“So, I guess I envy you the fact that you know what you want. Every time I have my period, there’s just this ‘thank God’ sigh of relief. But still Suzanne, how does anyone really ever know? I mean you know. But how does someone like me, who thinks they’d never have the patience and is scared to death of being divorced in middle life and left with a couple of kids, really know? What if I get to my forties and kick myself in the butt for having to come over to your house and be ‘funny old Aunt Ceil’ to your kids?”
“You would make a perfect ‘funny old Aunt’. My kids would love it.”
“Thanks. Thanks a lot. You’ve got all that great programming behind you. I look at Mom and that creep she married after Dad was killed and I just get the willies.”
“Bill’s not like that.”
“Christ Suzanne, Bill’s not like that, I’m like that. I’m the one who’s all screwed up. Bill would just toddle off to the burbs, have the kids and pay the bills, boink me two or three times a week and get bifocals when he was forty. I’m the one who doesn’t know if I can stick it out and one of these days he’s going to get hormonal on me and decide he wants a wife and kids. What do I do then?”
“So, marry him and have his kids.”
“I don’t know.”
“Not the answer you wanted from me, huh?”
“Oh sure Suzanne, you’re okay, you just have a whole different pitch on it. A good warm family background to look to for support.”
The waiter hovered and they ordered a slice of Chocolate Paradisio to share, hesitated a moment and changed the order to two slices. Cappuccino twice.
“I look at Mom and Frank and think how he just ruled her life and now she’s fifty-four years old and miserable and scared and stuck. I guess she was pretty broken up when Dad died in that car wreck and there she was, with a two year old daughter and no family to make it easier, no one in sight to pick up the slack. Frank came along and she grabbed him like something floating by in a flood.” Ceilia drained the last of her wine.
“At least that’s my take on it. She never complained, never really leveled with me, never really been a mom so far as that goes. Frank just had his rules and she lived by them. I’ve seen some snapshots of her and Dad and they were always goofing off in front of the camera or grinning with their arms around each other. I never once saw Frank put his arm around her. I had dinner at home, every night at six o’clock on the dot because that’s when he wanted it, but man I was outta there every minute I could. The neighborhood was my home and I spent every spare moment at some friend’s house or playing baseball.” She looked up and grinned at Suzanne. “I was a better shortstop than any of the boys and they used to pick me, right up on the front end when sides were being chosen. Ah, I dunno, Suzanne. I’m drifting… just drifting. We’ve had this conversation before.”
“So then Ceil, how’s tricks at Watterson MacAvey, I mean aside from being a current hero?”
“Cool, just too cool.” Ceilia grinned and stuck her fork neatly and vertically into the tip of the cake. “I’ve been on a swing there lately and things seem to just fall into place. Isn’t it strange Suzanne, how sometimes the planets all line up in the right position and stuff just works? I mean, it never lasts for very long and then there’s a period where everything turns to shit, but it’s just so cool to ride that wave. Larry Watterson is hopelessly in love with me, right now.”
“Yeah?” Suzanne managed the lopsided smile, while sucking chocolate off her spoon.
“Oh well, it won’t last of course. Larry’s a parody of that old song, ‘when I’m not near the client I love, I love the client I’m near.’ He’s just having a good time right now with the numbers. We’ll hit a low spell, or one of those three-month periods where we can’t buy a client and then he’ll be his old self, sticking his nose in everyone’s work and being a pain in the ass. But that’s just Larry and for the time being, I’m his number-one shining star.” She finished the cappuccino and turned the cup in circles on the saucer.
“Pisses me off a little though, that Ron Erland walks off with such a big hunk of change just for being assigned as account exec. Damn, now there’s a job for you. Ron’s main qualification is his golf handicap. His life is made up of golf dates, expensive lunches and dinners and that sailboat of his. Christ Suzanne, he’s got a forty-five foot sailboat moored in Belmont Harbor and WMA picks up all the expenses. Same for the country club and his Chicago Club membership. Sheesh, they frown at me when I turn in a bunch of cab fares.” Ceilia slivered another piece of chocolate. “He eats like we are tonight on a regular basis and it’s on the house, all picked up by WMA. He’s a pretty decent guy, but clueless in some ways, absolutely clueless. Pussy job he’s got, but I guess someone’s got to do it.”
They ordered another cappuccino. The river of lights on the Outer Drive was becoming a trickle as nine o’clock edged toward ten.
“You know Suzanne, I miss the grunt work. I miss all the foolishness of cut-and-paste, setting up the storyboards and computer imaging layouts for presentations. The creative stuff. Now, I’m Creative Director and so much of my time is spent in administrative bullshit and other people are doing all the creative stuff, the stuff I love to do and can’t get my fingers into anymore. That sounds just too whiney for words, doesn’t it?”
“Sounds pretty whiney. What are you making now, seventy-five?”
“Seventy and then the bonus.” Ceilia stirred two spoons of sugar into the creamy cappuccino, through the scalded milk and powdering of chocolate on top.
“Yeah pretty whiney, I admit it. Maybe that’s just the human condition floating to the top of anything that’s good and taking the shine off it. I’m making more than my stepfather ever made or makes yet and he’s nearly sixty years old. But it just seems like everything at work conspires to take me away from what I’m really good at, what I really love to do and pushes me into more and more management. God, why isn’t it okay to stay in the creative end and still make some decent money?”
“It is, Ceil. Nobody put a gun at your head and said ‘here, take this extra twenty grand or you’re outta here.’”Suzanne did the famous arched eyebrow trick and then leaned an elbow on the table, chin in hand, stirring her cappuccino idly.
“Well you know, that’s not really true, Suzanne. I mean no, they wouldn’t have kicked me out the door, but there’s this strange sort of corporate culture at WMA. This sort of ‘move up or move out,’ even though they don’t say it. Don’t you feel that at the law firm?”
“Not the same thing, Ceil. At my joint everyone is panting to claw their way up the ladder and get into the feeding frenzy at partner level. None of that sort of loosey-goosey creative mishmash you guys get so wound up in, where writers want to write and artists want to keep mucking around in the paint set. Partnership, money and deferred payment are a single goal in the legal game. Everyone focuses on how fast they can move from a BMW to a Mercedes and if the guy who came in with their entry class is ahead or behind. If he’s ahead, they stay at the office half the night and there’s always someone ahead.”
“Sheesh.”
“Don’t sheesh me, Ceil. I’m not the one who just signed a big deal and is having trouble with it.” Suzanne flipped her the lopsided smile and ordered brandy for both of them.
“I’m not having trouble, I’m excited.” Ceilia grinned her best excited grin. “Don’t I look excited?”
“You look fine and you sound okay. It’s just the words that make me wonder. Seems everything you’ve said about Bill and WMA has this tinge of… I don’t know, Ceil… this sort of hint of disaster in it, as though you seemed on loose-ground.”
“I don’t know… I hear what you’re saying and I don’t think I’m on ‘loose ground’ as you put it, but… is anybody really happy anymore?”
“I’m happy. Look at me. Suzanne Wilcox, age twenty-eight, doing better than she ever expected at good old Utica High School. Got a pretty nice guy she’s smooching with. I’m happy. You want happy? Here it is, sitting right across the table from you at Spiaggia, having a better dinner than I ever thought I’d have, drinking a pretty good label brandy.” She smiled the half smile. “I am the personification of Happy.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“I am not. You’re just having a bad-hair day.”
___________
The rest of the week settled into a comfortable routine, carried along on updrafts of Larry’s smile and the occasional quiet congratulations of someone passing in the hall or looking up from the coffee pot.
The following Tuesday afternoon, she caught sight of Ron Erland heading into his office and was about to kid him about signing Emerson, but something in the look on his face held her back. It slipped her mind as she met with the media team to talk over approaches to a Thursday shoot and returned most of the phone messages stacked on her desk.
Coat over her arm as she headed for the door at seven-thirty, she checked her box and saw the message in Larry’s scrawl. ‘Ceilia---away from the office all afternoon, but please see me in my office, 8am Wednesday. Emerson account---IMPORTANT. Larry.’
What the hell? Ron’s strange look flashed across her mind and she shouldered her way through the glass doors and pressed the elevator button. Whatever it was would have to wait for morning, but she hated those kinds of messages at the end of the day. It would be on her mind all night and she was meeting Bill for dinner and a movie.
Ceilia nudged Larry Watterson’s door wide enough to step in, coffee in one hand and her briefcase with the Emerson Mills correspondence in the other. He had a cigar lit and the room stank of it. An afternoon cigar smoker, it wasn’t a good sign, this early morning chewing on a wet stub. She wanted to leave the door open to clear the air, but the look on his face suggested closure and she clicked it shut with her heel.
“You’re late.”
“Hey boss, ease up. Five minutes, for God’s sake.” She set the coffee on the edge of the desk and the briefcase beside her chair. “Had to get a cup of coffee and get my troops moving.” She pulled the iPod yoke from her ears and left it hung around her neck, like a musical stethoscope.
“I wish you wouldn’t wear that goddamn thing around the office, it’s not businesslike.”
“C’mon, Larry. What’s businesslike in an ad agency? Half the staff wears beads and Hawaiian shirts and besides, it keeps me calm in this madhouse. Your note sounded like a long talk. What’s the real grouch, what’s gone wrong with Emerson?”
“Whaddya mean, gone wrong?” He looked at her sharply.
“Combination of your note and Ron Erland’s look yesterday afternoon. I expected him to be cruising everyone’s desk, slapping backs like a new father and he just sort of slunk into his office and the next I knew, he was gone. I put the two together and I wonder what’s cookin’? We in trouble or something?”
“Trouble for Ron. As for the account, nothing that can’t be fixed, but that’s what you and I have to talk about.” He leaned back, set a foot on the pulled-out drawer of his credenza and pressed the intercom button. “Janie, bring me some coffee, will ya?”
“So, what’s it all about?” Ceilia’s stomach turned imperceptibly. “My little speech to Wally Emerson backfire?”
“No, you can relax and get yourself all un-stiff. You’re doing fine.” Larry looked at the toe of his well polished shoe, waiting for coffee. Janie knocked once and then opened the door without waiting for a reply, set the steaming WMA logo cup in front of her boss and got out quickly. He must have been in his ‘terrible Larry’ mode when he came in this morning, Ceilia thought. Even Janie wasn’t smiling.
“So anyway, Ron got himself all pressed and primed and took off with the contracts yesterday. Expected Emerson to tell him what a cool guy he is, sign the damned things and talk about golf.” Larry sipped coffee and began to look a bit more relaxed.
“Emerson has him in and beats around the bush and Ron can’t get the fucking contracts signed. Tries twice and Wally Emerson takes off in a new direction each time, asking about this, asking about that. Shook Ron up a little and as it turned out, he had some reason to be shook. You know what a pro he is at getting the signature. Sign first, bullshit later, that’s Ron’s style.” Larry’s glance rose to the spread of antique duck-decoys that covered an entire wall of his office. He seemed to Ceilia to be picking words, setting up for something and adjusting the usual stream of consciousness ramble that would run out of him like oil from a punch press. She wondered if the antique patina of the decoys was mostly cigar smoke from years of Larry’s commitment to panatelas, then jerked her attention back to the conversation.
“Emerson kept going over stuff we’d covered in the presentation and Ron finally flat out asked him if we had a problem. No says he, no real problem that can’t be worked out, but then he starts to go on about you and how key you are to the whole concept.”
“Me? What the hell, Larry… ”
“Now wait a minute, Ceil. Don’t get all bubbled up, just let me lay in some background for you.” Larry swung in the chair and faced her, elbows on the desk, chin on his folded hands, cigar momentarily in the ashtray. The body language meant ‘corporate Larry’ and the hairs on the back of her neck anticipated lightning.
“You’re the one Wally Emerson has been paying attention to all the way through the development of this account. He gives me the glad hand and he talks to Ron and looks sort of blankly at Tom, but he listens to you. I don’t know why, but you seem to have his number.”
“But… ”
“Goddammit Ceilia, just shut up for a minute and listen.” Larry’s chin never left his hands and the words were spoken softly. Speaking quietly was way out of character for Larry, something definitely serious was up.
“So he keeps asking Ron about the development of the media program and how you see the split between print and TV. Ron tells him Tom Esterbridge is the media guy and begins to explain Tom’s plan, but Wally wants none of it. Keeps coming back to you, keeps wanting to know what you think.”
“Ron wasn’t born yesterday, he sees where this thing is going. If Wally Emerson wants you driving this program, he figures he’ll play that up. Shifts gears and tells Wally that you work very closely with Tom and all the media selections are tied right in with the creative side. Tells him that you and I confer on a regular basis about each and every decision regarding the Emerson account.”
“Oh shit… ”
“Yeah well ‘oh shit’ or not, that’s what Wally seems to want and it’s Ron’s fucking job to find out what Wally wants and make sure he gets it.” Larry leaned back, drained the last of the coffee and gazed across the decoys.
“There’s more Ceilia, and this was the tough part for Ron. After an hour and a half of what should have been a fifteen minute meeting, Emerson tells Ron he wants you to be the account executive for Emerson Mills. Wants you running the show.”
“Oh jeez… I hope Ron told him that just wasn’t possible.” Ceilia reached for her neglected coffee and took a long sip. No wonder Ron looked so furtive. The coffee was lukewarm.
“Tried to. Walked him through the whole setup here and how all the responsibilities mesh together, all that ‘team pulling together’ stuff. How the creative director needs autonomy, the ability to step back… all the right stuff, but Emerson wasn’t buying.”
“So?”
“So Emerson tells him he’s got a lot of faith in WMA and likes Ron well enough, thinks he’s done a fine job and would like to play some golf this summer. But bottom line, he gets you as account exec or he needs to rethink the whole process… take another look at the other agency pitches.” Larry took a long drag on the cigar, turned it in his hand, rolled it between his fingers, studying the length of the ash and then exhaled in the direction of his long suffering scummy ducks. “I don’t like to be put in this sort of position, Ceilia.”
“Larry, I’m your Creative Director. I’m not an account executive and have no desire to become one… you know that.” She scrunched back in the chair and drank the last of the cold coffee. “Have Ron tell him it can’t be done, that it flies in the face of our whole organizational structure… anything.” Larry looked at her like she was a slightly slow witted but much loved child, who needed an extra amount of patience.
“You know there’s two things going on here, Ceil. Emerson has made his demand and that’s one thing. Maybe he’s got the hots for you, maybe he doesn’t like the way Ron dresses. Who knows?” He looked across the desk, at a point just past Ceilia’s left shoulder, just three or four degrees away from looking her in the eyes. “But the other thing is that Wally has put his ego on the line. He’s as much as said the account depends on you running it. He’s an old-money guy, Ceil and old-money guys don’t like to be told no. Old-money guys aren’t used to that and they don’t bluff, especially with someone like Ron Erland.”
She felt it coming, conscious of a loss of control washing through her, a vague perception there wasn’t enough air in the room. The same weakness she occasionally experienced when Bill got serious about something in which she was disinterested and began a long preamble, not really a conversation at all but an essay that required her attention. This wasn’t likely to be a conversation either and at the end of it, probably not much of a choice. Larry was talking again and she pulled her thoughts back to the issues at hand.
“… so I’m the guy who’s stuck with making the decision. This is a hell of a big account Ceil, we’re all aware of that and we’ve only got the first part of it. There are four additional divisions at Emerson Mills and they all have advertising budgets nearly as large. This is a foot in a very important door and too big to let it head south on us.”
“Oh shit, Larry.” She looked up at him for a reprieve, a way out she knew wasn’t coming. “I absolutely don’t want to do this as much as anything in my life I’ve absolutely not wanted to do.”
“I know.”
“I don’t even know anything about how to be an account executive.”
“Of course you do. There’s not all that much to it, it’s all about keeping Wally Emerson happy, Ceil. Ron will back you with whatever you need. He won’t like it, but he’ll do it.”
“What about the creative department?”
“You’ll still be Creative Director, but I won’t kid you. We’ll have to bring up or bring in a really strong assistant.” His eyes grazed hers, then settled over her other shoulder. “It’ll mean less time for what you’re doing and a big hunk of your attention on just the one account.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Oh shit, Ceil… don’t make me put it on that basis. No… you don’t really have a choice. It’s what we need you to do. It’s not all downside.”
“But… ”
“I know, I know. Don’t go creative on me, I know where your interests lie. Don’t jump into all that stuff about how you love what you used to do and everything’s taking you away from that. It happens to all of us. That’s what the goddamn agency business is all about. Pushing yourself creatively and sometimes the creativity is somewhere you don’t expect it.” He swiveled and looked at the decoys. “Nothing stays the same, Ceil. It’s all a running game, just a running game. Hold on, now.” He raised a hand and stopped her beginning of a response.
“There’s a third of Ron’s take for starters. That’s twenty five grand and a bigger year-end bonus. There’s a company BMW and an expense account.” He looked this time straight at her. “Limited to the Emerson account for the time being, but damned near limitless in that use. So you’re getting a lot more dough and Ron is going to make sure you don’t get in deep water. That’s why it’s only a third of his take, we expect him to do most of the work and you’ll front with Emerson.”
“So I don’t really get what I want either way?”