A Winter Dream

Chapter


Twenty-two


I dreamt I woke in a train. Not only did not I know where it was going, I didn’t even know where in the world I was. I got off at the first stop in what appeared to be a small, third world country. Asia? South America? I wasn’t sure. I asked for a ticket to Colorado, but the person at the ticket counter couldn’t understand me.

I remember saying, “I think I’m lost.”

Joseph Jacobson’s Diary





The H.R. people at Burnett were efficient at moving their people, and Wednesday morning, just a week before Christmas, I was on a flight to LaGuardia. Then again, maybe Peter had just expedited things because he was scared I might change my mind and come back for him.

I rented, sight unseen, a relatively inexpensive studio apartment in Sunnyside, in western Queens. I could be in downtown Manhattan in fifteen minutes if I took the No. 7 train.

Leo Burnett New York was located near Madison Square Park on Park Avenue South, a street that paralleled the famed advertising mecca of Madison Avenue.

I took a cab from the airport directly to the agency, carrying my bags into the building with me. I took the elevator to the seventh floor and sat in an austere waiting room for about an hour waiting to see the company H.R. director—a middle-aged woman with a broad, clamlike mouth bent in a scowl.

“Joseph Jacobson,” she said, looking over my file. “Another transfer from our Chicago office. I don’t know why they keep sending us their dross.”

“I can hear you,” I said.

She didn’t respond. “You’re in what department?”

“Copy.”

“Just a minute.” She flipped through a directory a moment, then, lifting the phone receiver, looked back up. “What’s your name again?”

“It’s Joseph Jacobson.”

“Joseph,” she said. She dialed a number. “Hi. I have a Joseph Jacobson in my office. He says he was just hired in Copy. Okay. Okay. Go ahead.” Long pause. “All right, I’ll give him the address.” She set down the phone and looked up at me. “You’re at the wrong location,” she said. “You’re supposed to be at the Seventh Avenue office.”

“You have more than one office?”

“We have a satellite office.” She wrote down the address on the back of a business card and handed it to me. “That’s where you need to go.”

I walked back out to the street, dragging my luggage behind me. My destination was about twelve blocks from the main office, and I dragged my luggage through the crowds of tourists that flooded the city at Christmastime.

The satellite office was located in a tired, dingy building, and the only indication of its connection with the Park Avenue office was a diminutive brass sign on the wall inside the lobby. A tall, middle-aged woman was sitting at the reception desk. “You must be Joseph,” she said.

“Yes I am.”

“I’m Charlene. Welcome to the think tank.”

“Is that what they call it?” I asked.

“Yes. But we call it the sink tank. Sometimes the stink tank.”

I looked around the office. It was small, maybe a thousand square feet. The eggshell white walls were simply decorated with framed pictures of advertisements in black steel frames. There was a small Christmas tree decorated with baubles, lights and tiny plastic Menorahs.

“Why aren’t we near the rest of the agency?” I asked.

“This is corporate Siberia. This is where they send you while they’re deciding your fate. If you’re here, someone doesn’t like you.”

“Then I’m in the right place. What is it that we do here?”

“We do what no one else wants to do. Write copy for the back of cereal boxes, direct mail pieces, the mundane stuff.”

“Where is everyone else?”

“There’s only four of us right now. You, me, Bryce and Leonard.”

“Leonard,” I said. “Is he blond, thin and wears wire-rimmed glasses? Calls himself Len?”

“You got three out of four,” she said. “Not so thin.”

“Did he come here from the Chicago office?”

“About a year ago. Come to think of it, he was thin back then.”

“I wondered where they had sent him,” I said.

“So you’re from Chicago too.”

“Most recently. Actually, I’m from Colorado. Chicago was just a stop on my way up the ladder,” I said facetiously.

Just then the door opened and two men walked in. One was a short, smartly dressed African-American man. The other was Leonard—though it took me a moment to recognize him as he had probably put on thirty pounds or more. Leonard froze when he saw me. The other man walked up to me, reaching out his hand. “I’m Bryce.”

I took his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

Leonard just stood in the doorway, paralyzed, gaping at me like Death had come to his door. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s good to see you too, Len,” I replied.

“Destroying my career wasn’t enough for you? You had to come and gloat?”

The conversation would have been awkward under any circumstances, but in front of my new colleagues it was painful. “Can we discuss this in private?”

“Kicking me to the curb wasn’t private.”

“I didn’t kick you to the curb, Len. I had nothing to do with your being transferred.”

“Then it was just sheer coincidence that I was fired a week after you arrived at LB?”

“Like you said, Potts likes to make human sacrifices.”

“Back off, Lenny,” Bryce said. “He’s one of us now.”

The way he said that sounded ominous. “One of us?” I asked.

“The outcasts. The Leo Burnett untouchables.”

I glanced over at Charlene. She nodded sadly.

“Welcome to the eastern front,” Bryce said. “You had to do something to get sent here. Offend a client. Put the wrong discount on a coupon. Heck, use the wrong deodorant. Usually it’s nothing skill-related or they’d just fire you. Instead they send you here and hope you’ll quit.”

Charlene said, “There are no secrets in Siberia, Joseph. So what did you do?”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I used to be Mr. Ferrell’s personal assistant,” Charlene said.

“Mr. Ferrell?” I said. She looked surprised that I didn’t know who that was. “Mr. Ferrell is the CEO of Leo Burnett New York.”

“I should have known that,” I said. “So what did you do?”

“I made a derogatory comment about the CEO of Nintendo.”

“That’s it?”

“Unfortunately, Mr. Satou was standing behind me.”

“Oh,” I said.

I looked at Bryce. “And what’s your story?”

“Love triangle. Copy chief and I both had our eye on the same woman. She chose me, so I got demoted back to junior and sent here. Lost my desk and the girl. But it’s temporary, that rat won’t be there forever.”

“And the girl?”

“That’s permanent. She showed her colors.”

“We all know Lenny’s story,” Charlene said, making a face. “We’ve only heard it a few million times.”

“It bears repetition,” Leonard said.

Bryce nodded. “I’ll abridge it. Some upstart, ambitious whiz kid came to Chicago and pushed him out.”

Leonard’s eyes narrowed at me.

“Good fiction,” I said.

Leonard’s expression grew more intense.

“I had nothing to do with it,” I said.

“What’s your story?” Bryce asked.

“Do tell,” Leonard said fiercely.

I shook my head. “Like you, my offense wasn’t skill-related. My manager’s fiancée hit on me. He caught her on me at the company Christmas party. She blamed it on me of course.”

“Yikes,” Bryce said.

“That would do it,” Charlene said. “He couldn’t fire you because you’d win a wrongful termination suit, so he makes you want to quit.”

Leonard looked at me with a satisfied expression. “So you and Brandi mixed it up.”

“We didn’t mix anything,” I said. “The woman wouldn’t leave me alone.”

“I don’t blame her,” Charlene said. “You’re hotter than a New York summer brown-out.”

“That’s sexual harassment,” Bryce said.

“Sue me,” Charlene said.

“So how does it work here?” I asked.

“I’m the office manager,” Charlene said. “The main office sends me their copy requests, I deliver them to you, you write them and I send them back to a senior creative who checks your work then passes it on.”

“It’s humiliating,” Bryce said. “I was a senior creative.”

“If they disapprove,” Charlene continued, “they’ll send it back with suggestions. I already have a half-dozen assignments waiting for you.”

“Okay,” I said. “Where do I work?”

“Over there. You’re in the office next to Leonard.”

“Karma stinks, doesn’t it, J.J.?” Leonard said.

“Whatever, man,” I said. “Whatever.”