Truth in Advertising

YOUR FATHER IS IN DÜSSELDORF


The plane lunges forward, gains speed. The power pushes me back in my seat. A small thrill. Kennedy has the third longest runway in the United States at 14,752 feet. Faster now. I place my feet flat on the carpet, sit up straight, as if at attention. It is a thing I do on planes at takeoff and landing. I am not sure why. A nod to humility, perhaps, to something greater than myself at a moment when humans transcend their limitations. The pilot eases back the yoke as he hits a ground speed of at least 150 miles per hour, thereby deflecting the horizontal control surface elevator on the tail. Up faster now, a steep climb over the water, over Queens, as he pushes out the engines, in the case of this plane twin Pratt & Whitney 4062s, engines with a maximum thrust capacity of 63,300 lbs. As I mentioned, we had the Boeing account awhile back.

The shoot starts tomorrow. I’m on the 7 A.M. flight to Los Angeles, flying back in time. I like the idea of gaining time, as if I could undo or change or keep something from happening.

• • •

Today we have the pre-production meeting, a largely ceremonial gathering where all of the principals on the shoot—the director, producers, agency, and client—eat expensive, catered food and review the pre-production booklet, which includes the script, the locations, and the casting, as well as the name and phone number of every crew member, catering, and insurance company. None of it is news to anyone. It’s the equivalent of that part during a wedding ceremony where the minister asks if anyone has a reason why these people should not be wed.

I take a cab to the production company’s office in Santa Monica. A young assistant leads me through the cavernous space. It must have been a warehouse or storage facility at one point. A one-story cinder-block structure, a few blocks back from the beach. In a far corner is a glassed-in conference room. Alan, Jill, Ian, Pam, Jan, and Jan’s team of perhaps six people. Ian and Pam flew out to L.A. two days ago to begin casting, wardrobe, set design. Alan and Jill arrived last night with the client. They have the underappreciated job of shadowing the client, Secret Service–like, throughout the process. Account service, to my mind, is the hardest job at an agency. Much of the blame when things go wrong, none of the credit when they go right. All of them appear to be listening to Keita, fake smiles plastered on their faces. He’s wearing old-fashioned board shorts, a white dress shirt under a seersucker jacket, and Vans. He must have seen a Beach Boys album cover fairly recently. He waves to me and smiles. On a table at one end are sandwiches and bottles of water—sparkling and flat—from a natural spring in Iceland. I can’t shake the bubble of tension in my abdomen. I’m sneezing and my nose is running.

Jan makes her way to me.

“Jan,” I say with a fake smile, kiss-kiss.

“Fin. How are you? How’s your father?”

What if I went in for it, full tongue? I think that Jan is far more sexual than I give her credit for. Then I notice her shoes.

Ian told Jan my father was ill. I’d suggested it, as I thought it would create sympathy and make her more amenable during the shoot.

“He’s much better,” I say. “Thank you. Would you believe he asked for a Philly cheesesteak when he woke up?” I smile and fake a laugh. Jan smiles awkwardly.

“Is he from Philadelphia?”

“No.”

“Strange. Are you close, Fin?”

“How do you define close?”

“We’re all going through it, aren’t we?”

“Yes.” I nod, though I’m not sure what she means.

“We think we’re here for ourselves but we’re really here for our children, aren’t we? We’re placeholders for the next generation,” she says with the head-tilted earnestness of a daytime TV talk-show host.

I’m nodding like a Hasid at the Wailing Wall. “I think that’s right,” I say, though I have no idea what she’s talking about. I think it’s about dying and making room for others.

Jan says, “Fin, I had no idea Keita Nagori would be here. Did you see the Fortune story about him last year? ‘Samurai or Sap?’”

“I missed it.”

Jan tells me about the article, how Keita insisted that every office of Tomo shipping, advertising, and PR have Ping-Pong tables and half-day Fridays in the summer, apparently a very un-Japanese thing to do. An e-mail written to Keita by his father was leaked to the Japanese press (the story intimated that his father leaked it) savaging Keita, calling him stupid and incompetent, a spoiled playboy who didn’t deserve to inherit a great company. The fallout was a massive public embarrassment for Keita.

Jan continues, her thin, glossy lips moving fast while I dial down the volume to almost nothing, the faintest sound of her voice in the distance. My own personal camera has zoomed in on Jan’s mouth. I read a book awhile ago. It was by a Buddhist monk and it talked about how all you had to do—the secret to happiness in life—was to live in the moment. And the way to do that was to breathe and to focus on what you were doing. I’m breathing and I’m washing a dish. I’m breathing and I’m walking down the street. I’m breathing and I’m staring at a woman’s breasts. And I tried this, breathing and focusing on the moment. But for the most part it never worked for me (which, let me just emphasize, is far more of an indictment of me that any shortcoming of Buddhism or meditation). Except this one thing did happen. The handful of times I tried, in that close-to-immeasurably small space of time when I was almost in the moment, all I felt was . . . afraid. I could see myself, as if at a great distance, completely alone in the world, and I could imagine my own death. Now, it may seem obvious by this point that perhaps I wasn’t even close to being in the moment. But I was in something.

The headmaster of my high school used to give talks every couple of weeks, before classes would start for the day. For some reason I always remember them taking place in the winter, when it was really cold and the sun hadn’t fully come up yet on a raw, gray New England January morning. And he would say things like, “You are a speck upon a speck upon a vast speck.” Dust in the wind and how no one would remember us in one hundred years’ time. But he said despite all that, we mattered, and that what we did mattered, that there was beauty in the small thing, the little achievement, even if we are destined to end up as ashes.

Jan’s mouth continues to move silently, hands gesturing.

So why wouldn’t I do it? Why wouldn’t I find a way to get on a plane and bring his ashes to Pearl Harbor? What’s the big deal? Because I don’t want to? Because it isn’t convenient? Because he disappeared? Because he drove my mother to suicide? But what does that have to do with now? With one hundred years from now? And yet my anger—when I let myself think about him, about what he left in his wake—is crippling. Again and again he hurts me, hurts us. Which is why I choose not to think about him.

In the nights before I left for L.A., the nights when I half watched reality television, waiting for Phoebe to call back, waiting for sleep to come at 3 A.M., 4 A.M., 5 A.M., and instead getting up and showering and walking to work, where I sat and stared out the window, the nagging, guilt-addled comeback was always the same. Do it.

I had called Eddie the night before I left and asked him to FedEx the ashes to Los Angeles. It was around nine in the evening when I called.

I’d said, “I was wondering if you’ve called your guy yet. The VA guy.”

He snorted, a not-so-funny laugh. Mean-spirited Boston sarcasm. It’s only funny if it hurts someone’s feelings. He’d been drinking.

Eddie said, “There is no guy. I made that up. There’s no guy.”

I said, “What are you talking about?”

“Do you know where they are now? His ashes? They’re in the trunk of my car. I can’t bring myself to bring them into my home, I’m that sickened by the man. Can you understand that?”

“Eddie.”

“His ashes are going where they belong. In the garbage or out the window as I’m driving over the Tobin Bridge or into a dumpster behind a Denny’s.”

“Eddie. What are you talking about?”

“He killed her. He drove her to her death as much as if he was in the driver’s seat of that goddamned Chevy Nova.”

Then he mumbled something about ashes and the f*cking Navy.

I said, “Eddie.”

No response. Tinkling ice cubes.

“Eddie,” I’d said. “I hate him, too. But you’re better than this. I need you to send them to me.”

Still no response. And now he has left me no choice. Eddie’s Kryptonite.

“Ed.”

“What!”

“Mum wouldn’t want this.”

“F*ck you. F*ck you for saying that to me.”

I heard a Zippo lighter open. It must have been close to the phone. Heard the tobacco burn as he inhaled. Heard the click of the lighter close. All one-handed, I’d bet.

He said, suddenly sober as morning, “I can’t believe you’re going to do this for him.”

I couldn’t quite believe it myself.

Eddie said, “Why? Why do it?”

Until the moment he asked me I didn’t have an answer.

I said, “Because I can think of twenty really good reasons not to but I still feel guilty. Because he was a sad, angry man but he was my father and our mother loved him once. Because he asked me. Because you’re convinced it’s the wrong thing to do. Because I’m tired of the way people treat each other in this family, especially when they’re alive.”

The phone was quiet for a time and I thought he’d hung up until I heard what I realized was clapping.

“Bravo,” he said. “Spoken like the toilet-paper salesman you are.”

“F*ck you. Diapers.”

“Sorry. Huge difference.”

“What happened to you? What happened to this family?”

He said, “You know nothing. You were a child. You didn’t live through what we lived through. You think I want to feel this way, that I choose to feel this way?”

I said, “How long do you hold on to this?”

“Till I die.”

Then he hung up.

I called Pam, who was already in L.A. with Ian.

“I need to ship something,” I said. “Out to L.A. To the hotel. Can you give me the FedEx number?”

“Don’t tell me it’s your luggage, Dolan. Creatives who do that drive me nuts. We’re on a tight budget on this one and I can’t do shit like that.”

“It’s not my luggage . . .”

“Because if it is . . .”

“Pam, it’s not my f*cking luggage.”

I don’t talk like this to her.

I said, “I’m sorry. I just . . . I’ve got a situation here and I just need the FedEx number, please.”

I told her the basics. She asked for Eddie’s address. She said she’d take care of everything, that the ashes would be waiting for me at the hotel. If you are lucky you have a friend or two who understand what you mean, not what you say.

Now, here in L.A., I want to run from the room. I feel wildly alone. Then the thought comes so fast and so clear it’s startling. Without her I am lost.

Standing here with Jan, I find myself still nodding. I’m nodding only because Jan is nodding. She’s nodding gravely. She’s making a serious point that I am agreeing with, though I have no idea what the point is as I haven’t heard a thing she’s said for the past several minutes. The volume returns and Jan says, “I’ve just returned from Diaper World.” She says this with the gravitas of someone who’s just returned from a life-altering trip to Machu Picchu or Angkor Wat.

“Wow,” I say. “How was it?”

Diaper World, despite its name, is not a theme park with rides on giant diapers. It’s an annual diaper convention for the industry to show off its latest offerings. I have been to two Diaper World conventions, one in Cincinnati and one in Phoenix. The one in Phoenix I attended not one moment of, sitting instead by the pool, where I read, drank beer, and sustained a savage sunburn.

Jan says, “Fin, it was inspiring. A diaper convention, right? But I mean, amazing things are happening in diapers right now”—to my mind an unfortunate sentence construction.

She plows ahead. “It was in Montevideo, Uruguay. Have you been? Of course not. No one has. Amazing city. Who knew, right?” (Well, the Montevideans, certainly.)

I see Ian and Pam talking with a man, late fifties/early sixties, with a wispy gray ponytail and a kaffiyeh around his neck.

“Are you excited about the spot?” I ask.

“Excited? I think it’s interesting. I worry that it’s too serious and maybe not serious enough. Does that make sense?”

No.

“Absolutely,” I say, a nodding, sycophantic jackass. Three loud sneezes.

“Bless you,” she says. “I want to strike the right tone with this. I want to be serious, of course. We’re a serious brand, it’s a serious product. But I want to communicate revolutionary. Revolutionary meets breakthrough. Meets intense. But funny. We’re a funny brand, Fin. As you well know. Funny but not laugh-out-loud funny. That’s not what we’re about. Light. I think that’s the right word. A wink. The kind of thing that makes you smile more than laugh. Like many of your ideas. I want people watching to turn and elbow each other . . .”

She elbows me to prove her point and I spill club soda from my cup. Jan remains oblivious.

“. . . and say, ‘That was amazing. I want to buy those. And even if I don’t have children and I don’t actually want to buy those, I admire that company and see it at the forefront of eco-think. Like Apple or Google or GE. Or DuPont, post-Bhopal.’ You got the e-mail about removing non-toxic and biodegradable?”

“What? No.”

“Might have just been to the account team. We’ll talk about it.”

Ian, Pam, and Ponytail are making their way toward us.

Pam says, “I’m sorry to interrupt. Jan, I wanted to introduce our director, Flonz Kemp.”

Jan extends her hand but Flonz embraces her like a former girlfriend you bump into in a bar, both of you single, and think, You look good.

Jan lets out an involuntary, “Ohh.”

Flonz lets go and looks Jan up and down. Jan is suddenly a flummoxed teenager in the presence of a star.

Jan says, “Okay. I just have to say I loved Scrambled Eggs at Midnight.”

Flonz says, “It was very good, wasn’t it? You’re an attractive woman, Jane.”

“Jan.”

Flonz laughs like a character from an episode of Barnaby Jones. “What is the actual product we’re shooting tomorrow?”

Jan laughs. Pam doesn’t, as she knows he’s serious.

Flonz is tying and retying his kaffiyeh. “I just got back from six months in Morocco. Any of you speak Arabic? Because I do.”

Flonz Kemp was a legend, at one time the most famous commercial director in the United States. He shot most every great spot, won every big award. During his runaway success, when agencies would beg him to shoot their work, he had, one hears, great disdain for the business. He threw fits on the set, screamed at agency people, at clients. Yet they continued to hire him. He made vast sums, threw it around on fancy cars, houses in Europe. But what he was really looking for was validation, proof that he was better than commercials. He wanted to direct movies, take Hollywood by storm. He got his chance when he co-wrote a comic thriller about a night watchman (Flonz’s job before he became a director) who wants to direct movies who foils a real jewelry heist by filming it all as if it were a thriller. He catches the thieves, sells the movie, and moves to Hollywood, where he takes a part-time job as a night watchman. For his “lunch” each night he ate scrambled eggs. Scrambled Eggs at Midnight. The film was a summer hit. Flonz was hailed as the next Spielberg. He was given huge money for his next film, for which he insisted upon rewriting the script, much to the annoyance of the Academy Award–winning screenwriter, who quit after Flonz began tinkering. It was a comedy about people during the ice age. Flonz didn’t see it entirely as a comedy and felt adamant about shooting in the Swiss Alps in winter. And also about having the actors sing their lines. Conditions for cast and crew were apparently horrendous, shooting at times nearly impossible. He came in a year late and wildly over budget. The film was laughed out of theaters, and not in a good way. “Flonz Flop,” they called him. He tried to get back into commercials but he’d made too many enemies in the ad world. He was our sixth choice.

People find a seat at the large table. Pam leans over and says to me, “We need to talk about the package.”

Jan says, “Why don’t we get started.”

Talk? About what? About the possibility of FedEx losing my dead father? Did Eddie not drop the ashes off at the FedEx office in Boston?

Alan says a few words, welcomes everyone. Jill sits next to him, nodding vigorously at everything he says.

Pam takes charge. She is eloquent but all business. She makes special mention of Keita, as I have asked her to.

Pam says, “We are honored that Keita Nagori, special assistant to the chief operating officer of Lauderbeck, Kline & Vanderhosen’s parent company, Tomo, Japan’s largest shipping company and third largest in the world, has joined us today.”

We go around the room and introduce ourselves, say what we do.

I text Pam, who sits two seats away. Package lost?

Pam texts back, Not now!

Ian texts, What’s the problem?

I text him back, Ashes. Might be lost.

Ian texts back, OMG.

Pam walks everyone through the pre-pro book, talks about locations, wardrobe, casting. None of it is news to anyone in the room. We’ve all seen the location pictures, the casting, the wardrobe. At some point on each page Pam politely turns to Flonz in the hope that this person our client is paying $25,000 a day will have directorial input. He smiles vacantly, like the weird uncle at Thanksgiving dinner. It is unlikely he’s looked at the locations, casting, or wardrobe. All of which bodes well for a great shoot.

Slow nodding along the way. All good. Until we come to the casting of the hero. Who will play the role of the woman from the original spot, who was young, lithe, blond? Pam has, as always, found a broad range of choices. Our recommendation is someone yoga-fit and gorgeous. It’s advertising, not a Michael Moore documentary.

Jan turns to one of her people. “Karen. You had some concerns here, yes?” Which means Jan had concerns but will voice them through Karen.

“I do, Jan. Thanks.” Karen’s voice, wardrobe, and demeanor suggest she might have been a local cable anchor in Tulsa.

Karen says, “Your recommendations don’t fit the psycho-graphic.”

Flonz is laughing. “What the hell is that? Is that even a word?”

Karen is taken aback. “Well, that’s a pretty important litmus test for us at the brand level.”

Flonz is making a face like Karen has started speaking Hebrew.

Karen continues. “We feel some of your gals are a bit thin. We’d like someone who represents our mommies a bit better.” She sorts through some of the casting headshots on the table and produces a photo of a woman who is easily a size sixteen.

Eyebrows raise. Even Flonz is too politically correct to say anything.

Ian says, “I wonder if, considering the running part of the spot, we look at someone who, while representing the demographic, might also represent the aspirational nature of the demographic.”

Jan trusts Ian. She’s looking at the headshot and the additional shots of the actress we’ve chosen; now in shorts, now in a bathing suit, now bulging out of yoga clothes.

Jan says, “Who else do we have?”

Pam is ready for this and puts out two other, noticeably svelter choices.

“I like her,” Flonz says, pointing at one of the headshots. “Interesting face. Let’s go with her.”

Jan thinks on it a moment and nods.

Karen (herself a woman you might describe as on the large side) seems annoyed.

Pam says, “Good. That leaves the script and I believe we’re locked on that.”

The clients look at one another.

Jan says, “Not quite.”

Ian looks at me. News to both of us. We look to Jill and Alan, for whom it is clearly not news.

The script (if you can call it that) is the exact line from the Apple 1984 spot, except for the name and date change. On January 27th, Snugglies will introduce Planet Changers. The first non-toxic, one-hundred-percent biodegradable flushable diaper. And you’ll see why 2010 won’t be like 2010.

Granted, this doesn’t make any sense, as 2010 wasn’t expected to be anything, unlike 1984, Big Brother, blah blah blah. My great hope was that no one would notice that it doesn’t make sense. And that it’s a joke. Granted, not a funny joke, but I was pressed for time.

A client, I don’t know her name, says, “We’re concerned that the 2010 part doesn’t make any sense.”

I’m ready for this. I’m nodding, smiling. “It’s meant as a joke.”

She says, “I’m not sure I get it.”

Nor I. Sneeze. Pam tosses a packet of Kleenex at me. I use them as I formulate my response.

I say, “Well, ya know. 2010 won’t be like . . . 2010.”

Heads tilt, eyes squint. Even Flonz.

Flonz chuckles. “I know Ridley. He’s a prick. So wait. What do you mean, 2010? Have people been talking about 2010 being bad?”

Ian says, “I think we mean that it’s a just spoof of the 1984 spot. No one’s saying anything about 2010 per se.”

Jill, eager to be part of the conversation and help, adds, “I don’t think the words are meant to be taken literally.”

Jan says, “But that’s what the script says.”

One of the clients says, “Could we change the year?”

Karen says, “So it would say, ‘And you’ll see why 2010 won’t be like the future’”?

Someone says, “No. It would say, ‘You’ll see why the future won’t be like the future.’”

Flonz says, “That makes no sense.”

Jan says, “I’m not sure that’s the answer.”

Someone says, “Why couldn’t it say, ‘And you’ll see why the future won’t be so scary’?”

Ian looks at me with a face that suggests he’s being strangled.

Someone says, “Is there a year people talk about like 1984?”

Someone else says, “There’s talk in the Bible of 2012 being the end of the world.”

Ian says, “I think you’re thinking of the Mayan calendar.”

Karen says, “That strikes me as very negative, the end of the world. Do we want to be associated with that?”

Jill says, “That’s not part of the brand at all.”

Client heads turn toward one another. No, definitely not. Right?

I write down Could mark the beginning of a new world on a piece of paper and slide it to Ian. He nods. I say, “How about this: ‘And you’ll see why 2010 will mark the beginning of a new world.’”

Heads nod. Flonz says, “That’s not bad. At least it makes sense.”

Jan says, “Say it again, please, Fin.”

I say it again, in my best voice-over voice. Imagine if people actually spoke like a voice-over. You’d never stop slapping them.

Karen says, “New world? How about a better world?’

I say, “How about a cleaner world?”

Jan says, “I like cleaner.” Others nod aggressively.

I’m tempted to say that the average adult will weigh about six pounds after cremation and that on average, for every pound the person weighed when alive, they’ll produce about one cubic inch of ash after cremation. Do we want to be associated with that?

Pam says, “Okay, just so I’m clear on the Magna Carta here: On January 27th, Snugglies will introduce Planet Changers. The first non-toxic, one-hundred-percent biodegradable flushable diaper. And you’ll see why 2010 will mark the beginning of a cleaner world.”

Karen says, “Could.”

Pam says, “Excuse me?”

Jan says, “Could mark the beginning of a cleaner world. Legally we can’t say they will for sure.”

Jan looks to Karen. Karen says, “Let’s talk about the N.T.B. issue.”

I say, “N.T.B.?”

Jill says, “Non-toxic biodegradable.”

Ian says, “I didn’t know there was an issue. Or an acronym.”

Jan says, all smiles, “In all likelihood, there isn’t.”

Karen says, “But there may be.”

Ian says, “What would the problem be?”

Karen says, “Whether or not they’re non-toxic or biodegradable.”

I say, “But isn’t that the whole point? Wasn’t that the revolutionary part?”

Jan says, “Absolutely. And we believe that they’re still very much a revolutionary product.”

Karen says, “They’re just not one-hundred-percent biodegradable.”

“Or non-toxic,” adds the client I don’t know.

Ian says, “I thought you didn’t know for sure.”

The client with no name says, “It’s almost impossible to ever know these things for sure. It’s science.”

Karen says, “We’re hearing rumors of new results. Mind you, this is one result in a series of tests.”

Ian says, “Did the other tests come back negative?”

The nameless client. “No, no. Very positive.”

Ian says, “That’s great. You mean positive in a good way, not positive in a test-result-bad way.”

Nameless client. “Oh, I see what you were asking. No. Positive in a bad way.”

“Do they do anything different than a regular diaper?” I ask.

Karen says, “Very much so. We’re confident they will, once in the ocean, break down.”

Jan says, “Could. Confident they could break down.”

“At some point,” the nameless client says. “Though it’s impossible to know when. Or if.”

More nodding.

Ian says, “Is it flushable?”

Karen says, “Not in any standard toilet, no.”

I look at Jill, who’s taking notes and smiling. Alan shrugs.

I say, “I’m confused.” More sneezing.

Jan says, “New data. It’s not a problem. The ship has sailed. We need to make sure the advertising works and that the wording is correct.”

I say, “How about this: On January 27th, Snugglies will introduce Planet Enders. A possibly toxic biohazard that will clog toilets and destroy the sea. And you’ll see why 2010 will be Armageddon.”

Ian says, “Could be Armageddon.”

Long pause.

Keita—God love him—starts laughing his ass off.

• • •

Later, Pam and I sit at a table in the bar of The Four Seasons. Faux elegance, preternaturally good-looking people looking at one another, looking for famous people, known people, a model, an actress, so-and-so’s boyfriend/girlfriend/ex-friend. Tori Spelling is at the bar. It’s 10:00 P.M. and the high-priced call girls have slowly begun their nightly prowl, sidling up to lonely rich white men, striking up casual conversations, things in common. Ohmigod, you like tits!?! I have tits!

We’re halfway through our second drink and tired and bored and it was time to go to bed an hour ago. I’m sneezing and feel mildly feverish. I bought Sudafed at the hotel shop and have taken two of them, along with that many beers. The effect is not unpleasant. Ian and Keita bowed out after one drink.

After the pre-pro we took the client to dinner at The Ivy, where the clients drank too much and Flonz talked about himself and Hollywood and famous people he knows. (Keanu Reeves is a “close friend.” Mel Gibson is an “old friend.” They used to shoot rats after a night of drinking with pistols Mel kept in his car. “Maniac. But I honestly never heard him bad-mouth the Jews.”)

It was on the way back that Pam told me. “FedEx f*cked up. Your father is in Düsseldorf. They think. Or Hong Kong. They’re not sure. I’m working on it.”

Hitchcock did a thing in the movie Vertigo. It’s called a dolly zoom. Apparently a Paramount cameraman came up with it. To simulate vertigo, put the camera on a track—or dolly—and pull back fast, the camera resetting its focal point. Zoom in, pull back. The result made your stomach flip. Pam’s news is my own personal dolly zoom.

“A dying man’s request,” Phoebe had said.

“He deserves to be in the garbage,” Eddie had said.

No, he doesn’t. Nor in Düsseldorf, for that matter.

There is a minor commotion as a man and a woman and their entourage walk in.

Pam says, “You know who that is?”

I say, “The guy is Nikita Khrushchev. The woman is the great female athlete of the 1920s, ‘Babe’ Didrikson Zaharias.”

“Close. The guy is Cam Kendrick and the woman is Cindy Steel. They’re the hosts of Inappropriate Candid Camera.”

“You’re making that up.”

“I’m not. You’ve never seen it? It’s huge. They put cameras in toilets, in dressing rooms, bedrooms, confessionals, therapist offices. People masturbate. People screw. They pixelate the screen. It makes The Howard Stern Show look like MacNeil/Lehrer. But people watch. I watch. I don’t know why. They call it entertainment. It is the end of civilization. Of any modicum of decency. It’s on MTV but Fox owns it. Right after Jersey Shore.”

“What do the hosts do?”

“They comment. They set up. They flirt with each other. She wears whore-ish outfits. He has a massive bulge in his jeans. Cartoon arrows appear on the screen from time to time and point at her breasts, her snatch. They point to his dick. The camera zooms in and out and they put in stock noises. Boing. Humping noises. Fart sounds. The crew laugh. Her nipples stick out. She says with a giggle, ‘You guys! Who turned the AC on?!’”

“Who’s worse: us or them?”

Pam says, “Us. Much worse. At least they’re entertaining.”

“We have the wrong director, don’t we?”

“We have the wrong director and the wrong script.”

“What are the chances this will be good?”

“Oh, Dolan. You poor boy.”

We watch an unnaturally beautiful woman take a seat alone at the bar, look around, take in the male crowd like an MI-6 agent in Berlin during the Cold War. She’s wearing what appears to be a vacuum-sealed dress that someone didn’t quite finish making, because it’s missing a lot of material that might cover the thighs. She crosses her legs and even Pam stares. It’s a show, after all. It’s been three days since I’ve talked with Phoebe, the longest stretch we’ve gone in two years.

Pam gets up. “I’m done.”

I say, “What if they can’t find them?”

She pushes the side of my head. “Get some rest. Meet in the lobby at six. And don’t f*ck a hooker.”

I’m tempted to close my eyes for a moment. The Sudafed and beer have thrown a light blanket over me, muted the rough edges, lowered the extraneous noise. I watch as the sex bomb marks me, a bleary-eyed man sitting alone at a bar, surely a look that suggests lost, because otherwise why wouldn’t this guy be in bed, where any normal person is. Easy target, she thinks. She smiles and it’s so good that for a moment I’m convinced she actually likes me. I break the stare and then notice that my parents have walked in.

My father is wearing what he almost always wore, dark blue work pants—Dickies was the brand—and a matching blue work shirt, like a guy from a filling station in the fifties. His uniform on his days off, work clothes. His fingernails are dirty. He was always fixing something. Anything to get him out of the house. The lawn mower was upside down and he was readjusting the blade or cleaning the gutter or pouring concrete into the back of the rusty swing set, which he put in wrong and which came out of the ground if you swung too high. It had fallen when Eddie was on it. Six stitches in the back of his head.

They do this at some point on every shoot I’ve ever been on, every business class flight I’ve ever taken, every fancy restaurant I’ve ever eaten in. And they ruin it. They sit down, look around at the crowd, the swank of it all, the money. They never stayed at a hotel like this in their lives. My mother is wearing a simple skirt and a sleeveless white blouse and a pair of faded red Keds, with a small hole cut out of the fabric to allow for her bunions.

“What a nice place,” my mother says, pulling a wide-eyed face as if to say, Wow.

My father smiles. He always smiles at first. “So they sent you on a business trip, huh?”

My mother’s still making the wow face, the I’m so impressed and proud of you face.

“It’s no big deal,” I say. But I want them to think it’s a big deal.

“I should say it is, mister,” my mother says.

My father says, “They fly a man across the country, pay for his flight, put him up in a swish hotel. Says something about how that company thinks of a man.”

“Do you remember the government cheese?” my mother asks, smiling.

I nod. We got government assistance after he left. Large blocks of cheese in a plain cardboard box. CHEESE, it said on the side. Not Kraft. Not a name brand. FLAKES, too. A plain box that said FLAKES. Not Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. Not Frosted Mini-Wheats or Cap’n Crunch or Post Raisin Bran. Flakes. I was aware of it, knew that we needed help, that we had very little money. I was embarrassed by it. Worse, I was ashamed that I was embarrassed. My mother knew it and I knew it made her feel worse.

“I didn’t mind the cheese, Mum. I swear I didn’t.”

She smiles and says, “Yes you did. It hurt my feelings.”

“Please don’t say that. I was stupid. I just . . . I didn’t know. I will buy you anything you want. I will put you up here. Please.”

I say “Please” out loud. I hear myself say it out loud. The people at the next table look at me and laugh.

The waitress is looking at me funny. “Maybe it’s time for the check?” she says.

“Yes,” I say. “Thank you.”

When I turn back my mother is on the verge of crying.

“What happened?” I ask.

My father says, “None of your goddamned business.”

That’s how it would happen. That’s how fast his mood would change.

“Don’t talk to the boy like that,” my mother says.

“He lost my ashes,” my father says. “I asked him for a favor. I said I was sorry. But goddamnit. I was a soldier. I volunteered for my country. I was given nothing. I was a cop. I protected people. What do you do? What have you done? You whining, white-collar waste. You p-ssy. You have it so easy you have no idea. Has a man ever died in your lap? What have you ever done?”

I say, “Dad, please. What did I do wrong? Please tell me.”

My mother says, “Leave the boy alone.” To me, “You didn’t do anything wrong, Finny.”

My father stands and turns. I can no longer see his face.

She stands and looks at me. She looked at me before she left to go to the store that day. She stared.

I say, “Please don’t go. Please.”

But she simply walks away.

A few years ago the agency invited a professor from the University of Chicago whose area of expertise was the social sciences to give a talk. It was called “Understanding the Consumer’s Psyche.” I remember nothing of what she said, except this. She said that our interior monologue, our little Gary voice that narrates our lives, is largely responsible for whether we are happy or not. Where does it originate? How do we change it?

While I consider this the sex bomb decides to make her move. Liquid hips and thighs. A practiced walk. She smiles, doe-eyed, leans over, a free sample of her abundant décolletage, which she knowingly puts at eye level, and says, “Looking for a date?”

I stare at her breasts for a time but I’m not sure I’m really seeing them. I look up and say, “I’m looking for my dead father, actually.”

She says, “I don’t do threesomes.”