Andrew passed a set of rearranged boards back to Chris, who plucked several off the top of the pile and held the first up for his guests to see. Fortunately, the ad he’d chosen to start with didn’t feature a half-clad teenager, but rather a plain wooden door.
“So,” Chris said, looking down at the board. “We open with the camera locked on the door of an apartment. The door’s a bit scuffed and the paint’s peeling in places. It’s clearly the kind of apartment you had in your twenties.” He moved on to the second board. “Then we see a young man strut down the hall with a bottle of wine in one hand. He knocks at the door, and a pretty girl opens up and drags him inside. The next time the door opens, he’s coming out. There’s no wine bottle in his hand, and his clothes and hair are rumpled. He’s obviously spent the night.”
He let the board drop, revealing another illustration of the original door.
“We watch as the door gets dingier and more scuffed, marking the passage of time. As we’re watching, a different guy shows up and knocks at the door. The door opens, and the same girl throws her arms around him and pulls him inside. He, too, leaves after spending the night.”
Chris was smiling as though he couldn’t wait to get to a punch line.
“So we see the same thing happen a couple more times. It’s always a different guy and the same girl. Each time she waves goodbye the next morning, she seems a little less satisfied. The last time, she stays at the door, looking a bit miserable. There’s a bottle of Pura-Tea in her hand. The camera moves in close as she lifts it to her lips. We see her skin sparkle as the purifying antioxidants work their magic. When the camera pulls back again, she’s framed not by a doorway but a wedding arch, and we see she’s wearing a flowing white bridal gown. One hand is holding her new husband’s hand. The other is still clutching the bottle of Pura-Tea. The tagline appears: ‘Pura-Fide.’”
Chris burst into laughter, and the rest of them instantly followed suit.
Harriett leaned forward in her chair to study the last board. It was truly remarkable. If she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn the whole thing had been crafted by an alien species. They live alongside us, she thought. Some work with us. Some fuck us. And some do both. And yet they seem to know absolutely nothing about us.
“What is it?” asked Andrew, sensing trouble.
Harriett sat back and wove her fingers together. “I don’t think I get it,” she said.
“What don’t you get?” Chris asked.
“The whole thing,” Harriett told him. “So this chick sleeps with lots of guys, and it makes her sad. Then she drinks a tea. It purifies her, and suddenly a man wants to marry her.”
“That’s it!” Chris seemed relieved. “You got it!”
“So sleeping around made her dirty?”
He cleared his throat. “It’s meant to be tongue in cheek. We’re just riffing on society’s hang-ups.”
“Ah,” Harriett said. “I see. You’re playing off the common misconception that women who like to fuck are whores, and men won’t marry whores. Perhaps the girl in the ad should be douching with Pura-Tea instead of drinking it? I mean, you’d want ladies to purify their real dirty bits, would you not? How much tea would they need to buy for each guy they’ve fucked?”
The four men in the room stared at her.
“I think you may be taking this a little too personally,” Andrew finally said.
Harriett grinned. “You’re married. How did you make sure Celeste was pure before you slid a ring on that finger?”
Andrew blanched. “Can we not bring Celeste into this?”
“Now who’s taking it personally?” Harriett laughed. Not at her joke, but his chutzpah—acting as if she were besmirching his wife while everyone in the agency knew he was screwing a junior copywriter. “Show the ad to Celeste. See what she makes of it.”
“Celeste has retired from advertising.”
“As I recall, Celeste was retired from advertising,” Harriett corrected him. “Who’s the target audience for this campaign, again? May I see the brief?” She read the target section, though she needn’t have bothered. “They call them the Mindful Moms. Affluent, health-conscious women age thirty-plus. They love yoga, drink herbal teas, and champion social causes . . . Holy shit, that sounds just like Celeste, does it not?”
In fact, it sounded like every woman in Mattauk. From the viewpoint of giant corporations, they were all the same person. They were all Mindful Moms.
“By the way,” Harriett added, “how old’s the girl in this spot? She looks a little young for a Mindful Mom. Where’s she hiding her kids while she’s banging everyone in the neighborhood?”
“Max loves this script,” Chris interjected. “He thinks it’s fucking brilliant.” The way the words came out, it was perfectly clear that he intended them to be the end of the conversation. Harriett had no intention of stopping.
“Max is a fifty-five-year-old Scottish male. I’d much rather hear what Andrew’s wife, Celeste, has to say. Presumably, she’s the one who’ll be buying this shitty carbonated water.”
“I don’t give a fuck who the ads are for,” Chris sneered. “Max thinks this spot could win awards, and that’s why he brought me here. To win awards. You’re here to sell the work I tell you will win those awards.”
Harriett almost admired him for saying out loud what they were all thinking.
“I’m here to sell work that you tell me is good?”
“I think I’m the best arbiter of what’s good and what isn’t. How many Gold Lions have you won?” Chris asked.
Thirteen was the answer. Her ideas, her lines, her scripts had gone on to win thirteen Gold Lions at Cannes. But her name wasn’t on a single one of those trophies. And unless your name was on the trophy, and the trophy was displayed on a window ledge in your office, you were a loser just like everyone else. That was one of many mistakes Harriett had made over the years. She’d let men take credit for her work assuming they would be grateful and her contributions acknowledged. But selective amnesia was endemic in the advertising community. Most of the men she’d helped didn’t even remember. The rest saw her generosity as a sign of weakness.
“I’ve brought in seventeen new accounts since I came to this agency two years ago,” Harriett told him. “I’d like to make Pura-Tea the latest. We can discuss this script later with Max. Let’s see what else you’ve got.”
Harriett knew it was going to get ugly. And she couldn’t wait.