Or perhaps, Frank thought, Anders was jealous of him. Who wouldn’t want to be with someone like Cleo, so thoughtful and special and beautiful, after the parade of dull models Anders had dated since Christine? Either way, the thought that he had something Anders wanted gave Frank an inner glow of satisfaction.
“So you want me to crop the shot?” asked the editor. “Even though that means we’ll lose the parakeet in the branch over there?”
Frank refocused his eyes on the screen, staring at the god-awful tagline hanging like a divine verdict in the sky. The whole thing was, of course, unadulterated shit. What had started out as an ad that was going to subvert the standards of alcohol advertising had become an ad that was playing off the standards of alcohol advertising, and had now devolved to an ad that was just trying to meet the standards of alcohol advertising.
“Yes,” said Frank, cracking open his third Diet Coke of the day. “That’s what I want you to do, Joe.”
“Dude, my name’s Myke,” said Joe. “With a y.”
“Not until you get that shirtless asshole out of my shot, it’s not,” said Frank.
Frank wasn’t surprised at how the ad had turned out, but at heart he was still a bit of an idealist. He’d skipped college and started as a copywriter at eighteen, coming of age at a time when it was still possible to make work that felt, somehow, important. He had a gift for storytelling and a strong visual eye; he’d had ambitions to write and direct movies, but the family money his mother had lived lavishly on for years had dried up, and advertising was the more dependable bet. He’d earned awards and bought his own apartment in his early thirties, but he had not forgotten what his former boss, an icon who’d been one of the creatives behind Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign, had slurred to him at his retirement party. If you want to make good art, don’t go into advertising. And if you want to make good advertising, don’t stay in America.
“Frank?” His assistant Jacky’s head appeared in the doorway. “I’ve got Zoe on hold in your office.”
Jacky was a Queens native with a cotton-candy puff of dyed blond hair and navy-blue eyeliner that Frank was sure was tattooed on. In the fifteen years she’d been his assistant she’d never forgotten an appointment, never given out information on Frank to prying parties, and only once called in sick, with appendicitis.
“Why didn’t she call my cell?”
“She says you never answer her.”
“There’s a reason for that.” Frank wheeled his chair toward Jacky and took her hand, propelling himself in a seated pirouette beneath her. Jacky gave him a knowing smile.
“Family’s family, hon. She says it’s important.”
“Everything’s important with Zoe,” said Frank. “She’s an actress.”
Zoe was the result of what his mother claimed was a surprise pregnancy in her early forties, but which Frank suspected was a last-ditch effort to create a shared interest with her second husband, Lionel. Lionel was a striking African-American midwesterner with a moderately successful real estate business and a talent for squash. He was also the first man to not let Frank’s mother walk all over him, a fact Frank acknowledged with grudging respect. Frank’s mother had divorced his father when Frank was two, prompting his father to move back to Italy and start a new family with a wife who, presumably, didn’t leave knives in his bed when he stayed out too late.
“What are you going to do by the time I get back?” Frank turned to the editor, who was looking dejectedly at the screen.
“Take the shirtless asshole out of the shot,” he said in a low monotone.
Frank laughed and slapped him on the back.
“That’s the spirit.” He gave him a little wink. “Myke with a y.”
Frank followed Jacky out into the white light of the hallway. Honestly, he was grateful to Zoe for the excuse to leave the soporific editing suite. He’d rather speak to her than any other member of his family.
“Just think, hon,” said Jacky, with her usual knack for reading his thoughts, “it could be your mother.”
Lionel and his mother had raised Zoe in Manhattan, then enrolled her in boarding school after they moved to Colorado to open a luxury ski clothing store. Frank’s mother loved skiing; he’d grown up accompanying her on ski trips to the Alps and Aspen. She came from money and had a regal disposition on and off the slopes. Her long nose and arched white forehead lent her the imperious look of Russian wolfhound. But she was young when she had Frank, and treated him more as a companion than a son.
Growing up, he’d often had dinner with her at restaurants near their apartment on the Upper East Side; she’d order them escargot, truffle salad, or steak tartare, dishes not particularly suited to the indelicate palate of a child, and talk about her life in the same frank manner she would to any adult. Oh, men are afraid of women my age. They think any woman over thirty’s got a bear trap instead of a cooch! Occasionally they’d steal the cutlery, just for the hell of it, laughing as they pushed past the doors hand in hand, butter knives sliding down his trouser legs. Even now, when he thinks of his mother’s laugh, he can hear the jangling sound of silverware on the sidewalk.
“Little Z,” he said, picking up the phone. He looked out the window at the pleasant bustle of Madison Square Park below. “What have I told you about grown-ups with jobs?”
“Fraaaaaank.” Zoe’s voice was high and keening.
“Zoooooooo,” Frank echoed, elaborately miming tying a noose around his neck for the benefit of Jacky, who was lingering in the doorway to ensure he’d answered. Jacky shook her head, but her eyes were smiling with the good humor that had allowed her to tolerate Frank’s antics for over a decade. Frank noticed she’d left a bottle of water and two Advil by the phone.
“It’s not funny!” Zoe’s voice wailed in his ear. “I’m at Beth Israel. I had a seizure at the theater, and the stage manager took me here. I’m meant to be getting a brain scan, but they want to put this weird glue in my hair.” She raised her voice, presumably for the benefit of some harried medical personnel within earshot. “Which is never going to happen! Can you come down here? I’m freaking out.”
Zoe had been diagnosed with epilepsy at boarding school after having a seizure while drunkenly breaking into a boy’s dorm room. It was Frank who had gone to the family weekends at the wilderness program (or “not-a-rehab,” as his mother referred to it) she’d spent her last semester of high school in, and it was Frank who’d taken over Zoe’s Tisch tuition and rent her sophomore year, when his mother’s ski business failed to produce profits.
He had even given Zoe a monthly allowance so she could focus on rehearsals for Tisch’s production of Antigone that summer, but he had stopped that once he and Cleo decided to get married. There were only so many wayward young female artists a man could support at once. But he never stopped worrying about Zoe, and he would still do anything, go anywhere, to make sure no one touched a hair on her head without her permission.
“I’ll be there,” said Frank. “Give me fifteen minutes.”
He lunged for his bag on the white leather sofa, inadvertently pulling the phone and a pile of papers off his desk.