Truth in Advertising

PASS THE GRAVY BOAT


Ian and Pam take a car service from the shoot back into the city, but I get carsick in a parking lot, so I take the subway whenever I can.

I make my way to Corner Bistro, where I find a seat at the bar. I eat a cheeseburger, drink a couple of beers, and read the Times, though often I stare at the TVs, which show a hockey game, a cable show with what appears to be a panel of eight people yelling at one another, and, for some reason, The Sound of Music. None of the TVs have sound.

• • •

I call Phoebe on my way home.

She says, “What if I had a guy over and was involved in an intimate moment?”

I say, “But you’re in bed, sort of reading, sort of watching The Bachelor.”

“That’s just weird that you know that,” she says. “Where are you?”

“Walking home.”

“I was reading a story in Vanity Fair about Johnny Depp. He owns an island.”

“Like I don’t?”

“Then I started reading that Billy Collins book you gave me.”

“Which one?”

“Picnic, Lightning.”

“I like a funny poet. Why are so many poets depressed? It’s always dead people and dead mothers and dead soldiers. Grecian urns. Epic poems. Why not a poem to donuts? To canned tuna?”

Phoebe says, “I loved Sylvia Plath in college. I loved Emily Dickinson.”

I say, “I’ve tried to read Emily Dickinson and I have no idea what she’s talking about. Love is the thing without feathers? That’s like a password in a spy novel. And then your contact says, ‘Yes. And Belgium is lovely in springtime.’ You stopped listening.”

“I was watching that new iPad commercial. They’re so good. How come we don’t do ads like that?”

“Those are done by the talented people. We do diapers.”

“You excited about Mexico?”

“Yes. No. I’m wondering if I should have picked someplace else.”

“You always do this. At some point you have to make a decision and actually take a vacation.”

“Why? I enjoy the planning.”

“You’ll cancel. I know you. You’ll end up home alone cooking a chicken.”

“Keats was twenty-five when he died. Byron, Shelley, Tennyson.”

“What’s your point?”

“I was just seeing if I could name some poets.”

Phoebe says, “How was the rest of the shoot?”

“Fine. We got what we needed. Barely. I don’t know how, considering the director, the client, and the agency.”

Phoebe says, “It always works out. You worry too much.”

I wait at the light and watch as a cab goes by with three guys in their twenties in the back, one of whom has pulled down his pants and is sticking his ass out the window.

I say, “One beautiful thing.”

Phoebe says, “I’ve got a good one.”

It’s a thing we do. Every day—well, most days—we have to describe a beautiful thing we saw that day, one beautiful human interaction. It was her idea, something her parents used to do with her when she was little.

She says, “So this kid gets on the train. Tough looking. Wearing this baggy suit. He sits across from a dandyish guy. You get the sense the kid has a job interview or something. He has a tie around his neck. He starts trying to tie it. But it’s obvious the kid has no idea how to do it. The dandy’s watching the kid. Says something to him in Spanish. I’m thinking there’s gonna be a fight. Only, the kid says something back, sort of . . . meek. The dandy says something and the kid hands him the tie. The guy ties it, talking the whole time. Undoes it, ties it again, then hands it to the kid. Dandy got off at the next stop. I love New York.”

“That’s really nice.”

Phoebe says, “You?”

“I can’t think of anything.”

“That’s not the game. The game is that there’s at least one beautiful thing that happens to you every day.”

“I can’t think of anything.”

“Think harder.”

It takes me several seconds, but it comes to me sharp and clear.

“I was walking to the subway this morning. Early. Like five thirty. To get to the shoot. And there’s one of those guys, the Ready, Willing and Able guys. Former homeless people, guys just out of prison. You know these guys? The city puts them to work sweeping and cleaning. Anyway, he’s swapping out a huge bag of trash and putting in a new empty bag, and there’s this homeless guy sleeping in a corner, by a subway grate. The heat from them, right? This homeless guy is curled into a ball. The cleaning guy walks up to him. I’m sure he’s going to wake him up, tell him to move on. Except . . . he takes his jacket off. This uniform jacket. And puts it over the guy.”

Phoebe says, “I like that. See, you just have to look. Beauty is everywhere.”

“Thank you, Oprah. Now go to sleep.”

“Don’t tell me what to do. Did you call your brother?”

“Yes.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’ll call him tomorrow.”

• • •

It’s early the next morning and the office is quiet.

Someone has put up politically correct holiday decorations, limited—by an agency committee comprised of deeply serious human resources people—to snowflakes, snowpeople, and sleds. Except at Denise Muniari’s desk, which looks like a mini Rockefeller Center around the holidays. She has a small tree in front of her desk with lights and ornaments on it. She also has a miniature manger, with tiny figurines of Mary, Joseph, the three Wise Men, animals, and, of course, the birthday boy. Denise is the creative department’s manager and believes, as she once told me, “It’s Merry f*cking Christmas, not Happy f*cking Holidays. I have the utmost respect for Jews, Fin. God knows they’ve been through a lot. But don’t rain on my baby Jesus birthday parade.”

I hear music, faintly. It gets louder the closer I get to my office. I stop outside the office, in the hallway, and listen as Paulie plays the guitar and sings.

I stand at the door. Paulie looks up and smiles.

Paulie says, “Fin D. What up, my brother?”

“Hey, Paulie.”

“How was L.A.?”

“Didn’t go. Shot at Silvercup instead.”

“Bummer. Who wants to go to Queens in December?”

“Who wants to go to Queens ever?”

“I thought you took the red-eye back. I love the red-eye, Fin D.”

“Really? Can’t stand it myself.”

“No, man. I love the idea of going to sleep on one coast and waking up on another. Check this out. It took the Donner party five months from Springfield, Illinois, to reach the foot of the Sierra Nevadas. Imagine that. Five months. And yet we traverse the continent, with a nice glass of tomato juice and a magazine, in under six hours.”

I say, “The modern world is an amazing place, Paulie.”

“I guess,” Paulie says, still smiling. “Mostly it’s just louder and faster.”

“You’re in early.”

“Can’t sleep lately. Plus I like it here when it’s quiet. So how was Gwyneth?”

“Couldn’t be nicer. Couldn’t be lovelier. She’s rich and beautiful and successful and happy. Like all of us.”

I turn to leave and Paulie says, “Oh, hey, Fin man, I almost forgot. That NVD spot is up for an award. We found out from the account team.” He chuckles. “You bastards.”

About a year ago Ian and I helped Paulie and Stefano out with a project. Our group also works on a pharmaceutical account (indigestion pill and depression/anxiety medication). The company had a new drug that helped relieve what the account team referred to in meetings and e-mails as “NVD,” which I soon found out was pharma-speak for the family of symptoms known as nausea-vomiting-diarrhea. So Ian and I thought it would be interesting to personify them. We’d cast guys who looked like they might be nausea or vomiting or diarrhea. The amazing thing was how many actors in New York and Los Angeles actually look like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.

In our imagined commercial, the NVD would stand together, in what looked like a stomach, and talk to the camera about how horrible it was to be them. We’d use grotesque sound effects. We thought it was funny in an incredibly childish way. We thought the client might laugh and say, “Okay, where are the real ideas?” Except they loved it. They thought we were serious. They thought we’d found a window into the “soul of the brand.”

At the presentation, the head client leaned across the table, all but reaching out for our hands.

“You get it. No one wants to be nausea or vomiting or—God forbid—diarrhea. But they are. And we can help.”

The problems arose during casting. Nausea and vomiting were relatively easy to find. And the client loved our casting suggestions. Nausea (perhaps not surprisingly) was a balding, stocky guy with a mustache and very hairy arms. Vomiting was a tall, incredibly pasty guy with the most pronounced Adam’s apple I’d ever seen. His mouth hung open and he had bad teeth. He was also balding. Diarrhea had a full head of slicked-back hair and an unnaturally yellow tint to his skin. He was an oddly shaped man, like a pear, and he wore his pants quite high. Joey Beetie was his name. “No one beatie Joey Beetie, huh?!” he’d say, and then laugh like a hyena. “C’mon!” He hit on almost every woman at the casting session (including Pam, who simply stared him down). He was physically and emotionally repugnant. He was, to our minds, the perfect embodiment of diarrhea.

Except the client didn’t like him. I know their exact words because I’ve saved the e-mails.

“While we like Nausea and Vomiting very much, we’re having a problem with Diarrhea. We feel strongly that Diarrhea simply isn’t aspirational enough for the brand.”

The account team responded.

“Our understanding of Diarrhea was that he should be repulsive. Obviously we’ll continue to cast, if you feel strongly about it, but creatively we feel like we really have Diarrhea.”

The client e-mailed back.

“We feel you’re missing the point of Diarrhea. While repulsive, Diarrhea is also very much part of the brand. Much like a family black sheep that is still embraced. Diarrhea is bad but Diarrhea is the reason for the brand. In that way, people should aspire to the brand. Thus Diarrhea should be aspirational.”

Agency: “Could you suggest guidelines as to what aspirational Diarrhea might look like?”

Client: “Young (thirties), clean-shaven, not too tall, wears sneakers maybe. If he weren’t Diarrhea he might be in a beer commercial playing the part of the friend. We feel strongly that the audience should like Diarrhea as an idea more than an actual symptom. What about someone with a lisp or a harelip? You feel sorry for them in a small way, perhaps, as if being Diarrhea isn’t necessarily their fault. Looking forward to seeing options.”

In the end, the client chose a boy-next-door type, bit pudgy, perennially lost look on his face, the kind of guy you see on a street corner in New York in the summer, looking down at a map, then up, then back down. Matt someone-or-other was his name. Nice guy. I asked him what he thought Diarrhea’s character might say if he could speak. The client was standing with me. Matt thought for a moment, as if I’d just asked him if he believed in the afterlife.

He said, “Well, like, if I were Diarrhea? I think I’d, like, say, ‘Uh-oh.’”

The client turned to me, smiled, and nodded. We knew then we had Diarrhea.

I tell Paulie it would be the highlight of my career to win an award for that spot.

Paulie says, “Hey, Fin man. You have to talk to Stefano. He’s turning forty next month and he’s wiggin’ out. Maybe it’s an Italian thing. Thinks it’s the end of his manhood. He has this plan.”

“Why am I sure this is going to be a very bad idea?”

“He wants to break the four-minute mile.”

“Makes sense for an overweight smoker.”

Paulie puts his guitar down. “Have you decided on the vacation thing?”

“Mexico. Christmas Eve. Very excited. How about you?” I ask. “Where are you going for the holidays?”

“Wife’s family in Westchester.”

I nod to his guitar and say, “Sounds really good, Paulie. Nick Drake?”

Paulie says, “You got that right.”

“Tortured soul.”

Paulie shakes his head slowly. “He felt too much, Fin. Saw beauty everywhere. Too overwhelming, ya know?”

I say, “I’m not that deep, Paulie.”

• • •

In my office, I open up The New York Times, turn to the obituaries. Whole lives, right there, in three hundred words. Full, rich lives. Exciting lives. Sad lives. Lives lived through war, depression, children, success, failure, ridicule, public embarrassment, famous patents, Nobel Prizes, moon landings, prison, Academy Awards, the invention of tubing, coils, rheostats, anti-lock brakes, the Kelvinator, the pilot light, lived in Paris/Taos/Mill Valley, supported passage of civil rights, textile imports, Holocaust survivor, Cold War spy, OSS. It’s all there. A modern Shakespearean drama.

Also there, on the next page, is a gravy boat. It’s in an ad for Bloomingdale’s, for their fancy dinner plate collection. For the holidays. For families who get together and set the table with fine china. And who use a gravy boat. Or sauce boat, as I learned they are called. We got a sauce boat, Amy and I. For our engagement. We promised each other we wouldn’t do the usual thing: the round of parties, the formal invitations, the registry. But we ended up doing all of it because Amy wanted it. And so did her mother. Amy said we had to register. I said we didn’t need anything. She said I didn’t understand, that people wanted to show us their love by buying us an ice cream scoop from Crate & Barrel. I said I found that hard to believe. We argued but mostly ended up laughing about it. Especially the gravy boat. She had registered for an eight-piece fancy dinner set, complete with gravy boat. She said it was essential to have a gravy boat. I asked her if she often made gravy, because I’d never seen the results. She finally admitted that she’d never actually made gravy but was eager to try. She said it felt old-fashioned, a thing married couples do. The more I ridiculed her about gravy and its accompanying vessel, the more I found I wanted it. Once set up, we followed the registry online, like a kind of video game, watching as the things she’d chosen were ticked off. We waited for “sauce boat—quantity 1” to disappear. I’d suggested we ask for ten. It all seemed unreal to me. But not to her. Amy could see the dinner parties we were going to have. With gravy.

Then there was the engagement party. This was about eighteen months ago. Amy’s mother’s apartment, Brooklyn Heights. A swanky neighborhood just over the Brooklyn Bridge. Looks like a movie set of old New York. The family bought their townhouse in 1980 for the then-princely sum of $275,000. I would never ask how much it’s worth now. But I don’t have to with Zillow.com, which says it’s worth $4.5 million. Amy grew up there. Went to Saint Ann’s, played squash at the Heights Casino. She could see us living there, she said. See raising our children there. Grace Church School had a wonderful preschool program. Two hours a day, two days a week, for just $7,000. And then either Saint Ann’s or Packer or Brooklyn Friends, each running about $30,000 a year from age five on. This wasn’t taking college into account, mind you. A quick tabulation had the education bill, per child, at $500,000. Good. Excellent. All made perfect sense. I nodded and smiled. But who was she talking about? Who was this man named Fin who would be the father and do the things fathers do? Surely not me. Didn’t she know I wasn’t that man, that I would never be that man?

Amy’s parents, Linda and Syd. Divorced, but friendly. He’s a hedge-fund guy, she’s a landscape architect for rich people. Amy’s sisters, Cassie, short for Cassidy (God only knows why), and Celia. Cassie’s a producer at Warner Brothers in L.A., and Celia is in “transition,” bouncing from job to job, trying to be a singer in a band, a model, an actress, and most recently (after seeing the Sean Penn/Nicole Kidman film The Interpreter) an interpreter. She flirts and feels the need to exude sexuality. She also drinks too much.

Despite the fact that it all seemed unreal to me, that it was as if I was watching myself in this tableau, there was something quite real and lovely happening. Amy’s family and friends, happy people who knew one another, shared each other’s birthdays and bar mitzvahs and first communions, soccer leagues and dance recitals. Big hugs, real smiles. I watched it all, not part of it. Watched Amy, the center of attention, radiant in a clingy black dress and boots. Me, next to her, a seemingly normal man, a decent job, no body art or criminal record. One after another I was introduced to Phil and Alice, “our old neighbors,” Glen and Miriam, “whose daughter Tammy was my best friend growing up,” Lindsay from the Heights Casino squash league, “who was bulimic and slept with everyone.” Presents piled up in a corner, large, beautifully wrapped decanters and flatware, blenders and All-Clad pans. And one gravy boat.

Then the toasts started. Amy’s father first, lauding his ex-wife, who was standing across the room holding back tears as he talked about what a great mother she was, how Amy possessed her goodness, her relentless love of life and people. Then Amy’s mother, telling stories of Amy as a girl, willful, confident, kind. How she was an early sharer, how she helped others. Cassie next, talking about what a great big sister Amy was, Celia at her side smiling, three too many gin-and-tonics. They meant it. Every word. A round of applause to Amy.

And then the pregnant silence when it was over as people looked around, waiting for my family to say a few things, share a few insights, tell the story of my life. I could feel myself turning red, smiling like a fool. I was about to say something that would have no doubt only added to my embarrassment when someone started talking.

“I have to apologize for being late,” Ian said, Jack Kennedy–charming. He was in the back of the living room where we’d gathered, near the front door. I hadn’t seen him come in. I don’t know how long he’d been there, but long enough to take in what was happening. He was shrugging his overcoat off, his boyfriend, Scott, taking it from him. They looked over at me, handsome, smiling faces, lifeguards swimming to a drowning man.

Ian said, “I was putting the final touches on my talk. But I was under the impression this was a roast, not a toast.”

Smiles and laughs all around as people craned to see him. Others near the doorway made space and he took a few steps toward the center of the room.

“So, hi. My name is Ian Hicks, and I am . . .” He pulled a face, looked over at me. “What am I to you, Fin?”

Scott jumped in. “You better not say boyfriend.”

Everyone laughed.

Ian said, “We won’t go there. No. Finbar Dolan is my copywriter partner at work. But mostly Fin is the brother I never had. I don’t mean to treat this as a therapy session, but when you grow up gay in Montana, you pray that there are people and places that are . . . different. Better. Accepting. That’s what brought me to New York. And when I first met Fin, when I got partnered up with him, I thought, ‘Oh, Christ. A fag-hater.’” A couple of uncomfortable, polite coughs from the crowd. “I’m sorry, but I judged him on his bad clothes, which I’ve tried hard to fix. Except I was the one who judged. Because here was this remarkable person, this loving, funny, amazingly kind person.”

He talked for a few more minutes. I stopped listening, though, merely took in the tone, the reaction on the faces, laughing in the right places, moved at the right times. I thought of my family—Eddie, Kevin, Maura—whom I’d invited. Granted, it was a half-assed invitation, giving them an out if they wanted, saying I understood that it was a long way to come—especially for Kevin—for just a few hours on a Sunday night in Brooklyn. I said there was always the wedding. As it turned out, they all had plans that would have been tough to break. And I really didn’t expect them to come.

Much later, after we canceled the wedding, we had to return the gifts. It took an entire day, Amy’s mother coming with us. We spoke almost not at all. The clerks would inevitably ask if there was any reason for the return. “We’ve canceled our wedding,” Amy would say simply.

Late in the day, with one gift to return, Amy reached her limit. I told her I’d do it. I would have walked to Tierra del Fuego on my hands if it would have changed the expression on her face, lifted the gloom. All day I’d opened doors and gotten water and coffee, carried boxes and tried to smile, waited on them both like a beaten servant. And I was happy to play the role. I kept saying sorry.

We were standing on Fifty-seventh and Lex and it was getting dark. I wanted a movie moment, a smile, a hug. I wanted forgiveness. Her mother stood a few feet away, examining her hands.

I said, “I’ll call you, okay?”

Amy stared. “No, Fin. You won’t.”

I said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Amy, with too much edge, her patience spent: “Stop saying you’re sorry, Fin.”

It was loud on the street. Cabs honking their horns, a car alarm not far away. City noise wears on you sometimes. It had been a long day. Not enough food, too much coffee. I hadn’t been sleeping well. The thing is, I’m not someone who raises their voice. It came on fast, out of control.

I said, “I didn’t plan this! Okay?! The idea wasn’t to hurt you! You think I like this? Hurting you? I don’t! I’m just so f*cking sorry, okay?”

My throat closed up and my eyes welled and my hands were shaking and I was pretty sure I was going to vomit. I bent forward, hands on my knees, like I was in a huddle, and a strange sound emanated from me, a kind of primal moan.

And just that fast whatever anger was there was gone, and in its place an overwhelming regret that I had created all of this. I stood up and put my hands on my hips, trying to catch my breath, my heart beating like I just ran the hundred-yard dash. I think in that moment, for the first time in weeks, Amy saw me differently. If the look on her face was any indication—though how can one ever know these things for sure?—I think she saw that she wasn’t the only one in pain. Which is why she then sobbed harder than she had the night I said I couldn’t do it, wailing away a block from Bloomingdale’s.

The point is that I never made it to Simon Pearce that day to return our last engagement party gift. Nor any day after that. I kept it. I do not know why, exactly, but I needed to hold on to it, even if only for the imaginary dinner party I would have with my imaginary wife, where one needs an obscenely expensive gravy boat.

• • •

The phone startles me. I see the display, the area code before the number. 617. Boston. It’s Eddie. It has to be. I watch myself watch the phone ring, like someone in a movie, and think, as I do when I’m watching a movie like that, Answer the phone! A tingling in my stomach, in my palms. Answer the phone, it’s your brother, for God’s sake. But I continue to hesitate. Because it’s Eddie. Because of who Eddie’s become. Because it’s about my father. And maybe he’s alive and maybe he’s dead and there’s a one in a million chance he’s come back to beg forgiveness but I’m sorry, old fella, there’s a statute of limitations on forgiveness. At least with the Irish.

The ringing stops.

I go back to the obits and read about a pioneer in DNA research who won a Nobel Prize. I read of an economist who was noted for his “mathematical rigor.” I read of the inventor of the Bundt pan. Unlike the other two men, there is no photo of him. Instead, there is a photo of a Bundt pan. He was eighty-six. This is how he is remembered to the world. I wait for the red light on my phone that signals a message but it never appears.

• • •

An e-mail informs me that there is a problem with Doodles.

Doodles are a chocolate candy with toffee in the center. They are one of the oldest candies in America. Chances are good that you have eaten them. We have been their ad agency for many, many years. Doodles and Chew-gees and Gooshy Gum. One of the company’s newer products, Joy-Jellies, which is selling very well, is handled by an agency across town. We would very much like that business. Last year alone, those four products earned two-point-eight billion dollars worldwide. The Chinese love Doodles and they love Joy-Jellies but they detest Gooshy Gum, whose name, we learned not long ago, is roughly the equivalent to the Chinese word shit. People here take Doodles very seriously. The company needs a new rip. (A rip is a rip-off of video footage from other TV commercials and sometimes movies that we share with the client at the start of the production process as a guide to the kind of thing you’d like to shoot for them, or sometimes just to make them happy: “Hey, look! We stole these images from an award-winning Nike commercial and from Mission: Impossible III, among many, many others to show you how great your candy is.” We also steal music we could never, ever use. U2, Coldplay, The Rolling Stones. It’s akin to me sharing The Great Gatsby with someone as a guide to my writing.)

Another e-mail—agency-wide—reminds us about the holiday party, which this year is being held . . . next year! In another time, in a far different economy, long, long ago, the company holiday party was a special affair. Not so this year. My admittedly unscientific poll has shown that people have laughed it off but one gets the sense they’re hurt. People work hard. There are many people here for whom a party is a nice thing, a special thing, a thing to get excited about, perhaps an excuse to wear a pretty dress. It shows that the company you work for—that you invest so much of your life in—cares just a little bit. I do not generally think of a Tuesday morning as a great time for a holiday party, but our parent company does. There are several reasons they think this way. One is because the cost of renting a greasy-smelling banquet hall in a Times Square hotel at this time slot is far less. Another is fewer people will drink at a party at 10:00 A.M., limiting any potential liability when, say, a male employee, perhaps after six too many Stoli-and-tonics, “accidentally” pulls his penis out of his pants and runs around screaming, as was the case last year. Less alcohol means less cost (a theme?). And, perhaps most importantly, fewer people calling in sick the next day. The e-mail reminds us that the party begins at 10:00 A.M. with speeches by Frank, Dodge, Martin, and a special keynote by Keita Nagori, the aforementioned son of the agency’s new owner. Brunch and dancing to follow.

• • •

Later in the morning the office fills with the hum of the workday: the R2-D2 of electronic phones, the light tapping of laptop keyboards, the quiet buzz saw of copiers and printers, conversations muted by the carpeting. Light days today and tomorrow, the agency closing at noon on Christmas Eve.

Phoebe comes into my office with two coffees, something she does most days. I am hard at work. I’d begun, but did not complete, my expense report, as I got distracted by a Google search for information about Mexico but somehow find myself reading a long story about Brett Favre’s childhood.

“There’s a new receptionist on nine,” she says.

“This is not a great lead sentence,” I say. “ ‘Call me Ishmael’ is a great lead sentence. ‘Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday’ is a great lead sentence. ‘There’s a new receptionist on nine’ needs work.”

“She’s a former Miss Black Deaf America.”

I say, “Much better.”

“I’m serious.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means she’s deaf and beautiful.”

I say, “Would you rather be deaf or beautiful?”

“Neither. Wait. Beautiful.”

“The other four senses of the deaf are far more highly attuned than the average person.”

“Is that true?”

“I have no idea. I hear perfectly well.”

Phoebe asks, “What sense would you lose?”

“Touch.”

“You say that very quickly. You’re sure? Never feel softness, texture?”

“Touch is overrated,” I say.

Phoebe says, “You’d give up touching the curve of a woman’s hip?”

“Okay. I see what you did there. Umm . . . hearing.”

Phoebe says, “No music?”

“I want all my senses, but I also want that thing where your other senses are more highly attuned because you can’t see or hear.”

Phoebe looks at me and says, “Stop.” She says it gently.

I’m touching my scar, the small one along my jawline. I got it when I was a kid. I’m self-conscious of it. Phoebe knows that.

She says, “Did you hear about Tom Pope?”

“Tell me.”

Tom is an associate creative director who sits a few offices away.

“I heard from Jackie who was out with Erica at what’s-it-called across the street that Tom was at the bar with that new account girl.”

“The stunning one?”

“The stunning one.”

“Not his wife, in other words.”

“Definitely not his wife. They were making out. At the bar. Like openly making out. This is across the street! Tom gets so drunk that he puts his head on the bar and the stunning one strokes it. People are watching them now. He puts his hand up the back of her blouse. He gets up and walks into the hostess stand, almost knocking it over. The hostess picks him up, asks if he’s all right. He says he’s fine. Then he walks out onto the street and in full view of the entire restaurant, pukes onto the sidewalk.”

Why is there a part of me that secretly enjoys hearing about this? Why is there a tingle of excitement at someone else’s misfortune, poor decision, emotional duress? Is it because somewhere in my own psyche I understand poor, sad Tom Pope’s actions, his need for attention from an attractive young woman as he grows older? Is it because I recognize this as a cry for help, a longing for something that’s clearly not happening at home? Or is it because it’s just plain funny when a grown man makes a horse’s ass of himself in public and then vomits freely?

Phoebe says, “Promise me you’ll never be like that.”

I say, “If he keeps this up he could be a partner in no time.”

Then Phoebe says, “Would you miss me if I left?”

“You mean, like, left my office?”

“Left. Quit.”

“You thinking of leaving?”

“Yes. No. Maybe. I’m getting a little bored.”

Ian has stuck his head into my office and says, “Can I come with you? I’m bored, too.”

I say, “The entire agency may come with you.”

Ian says, “I’m headed to Chubby Feet.”

This is not an insult by Ian. Nor is it a form of Tourette’s. This is the name of the company where we color-correct commercials. After you’ve shot the commercial, edited the commercial, you then primp it for air. This takes place at highly specialized companies in New York and Los Angeles, usually in formerly industrial buildings in TriBeCa or West Hollywood or Santa Monica. Often they are simple raw spaces, open concrete floors and walls with modern sculpture, an array of death masks perhaps, a flat-screen TV that shows nothing but waves hitting the beach. In the middle of the room there is almost always a Ping-Pong table. Soviet-era posters might adorn the walls. Sleepy-looking young people wander the halls, their hair unwashed and bedraggled, their pants low on their hips, ironic writing on their T-shirts (I’M NOT GAY BUT MY BOYFRIEND IS). And in the semi-darkness of the editing suites with their double-paned soundproof glass doors, there sit exceptionally expensive computers and software systems manned by industry-famous men with one name. Luke. Rush. Anton. They provide exceptional lunches.

The companies have uniformly bizarre names that bear no relation to the business they are in. No Stan Whaley’s Plumbing and Heating Supplies here. Instead, Chubby Feet, Hey Gary!, Ham Sandwich, and Super Happy Good Time. The receptionist at this last one, a perpetually fatigued-looking young woman named Petrol, must say the company name hundreds of times a day. Often she answers the phone by saying, in a voice that suggests otherwise, “Super Happy.”

Who’s to say why they choose these names. It is, I think, in the worlds of advertising/entertainment, the almost manic pursuit of hip. This is crucial. Who’s hip, who’s cool, who’s the guy? The problem is that by the time I’ve heard who’s hip/cool/the guy, they’re no longer hip/cool/the guy. They’re mainstream/accepted/cliché. The key is to be just ahead of the hip curve, which I have never ever once been. Where does one go to learn of this hipness and coolness? My father wore zip-front cardigan sweaters. Not cool. Kurt Cobain wore zip-front cardigan sweaters. Cool. Why? Could be his use of heroin and his playing of the guitar. But what is cool? What is hip? My sense, after a lot of thought, is that if you have to ask, you’ll never know. Also, it would be gauche and profoundly uncool to ask how these post-production houses came up with their clever names or why they simply didn’t call themselves Alan’s Post-Production Services. When I’m there I say things like “Hey, man” and “Hey, dude,” even though I don’t use the words man or dude in normal conversation. In this way, along with my uniform of blue jeans, Blundstone’s, and short-sleeve T-shirt over long-sleeve T-shirt over short-sleeve T-shirt over a life vest, I believe I can be seen as cool.

Ian says, “Come over if you want lunch. I doubt I’ll be back. Or call me later if you need. Also . . . I’m hearing rumors of another round of layoffs.”

Phoebe says, “I’ve heard them, too.”

“All rumors are true,” I say.

“Who said that?” Phoebe says.

“I did. Just now.”

“I thought so,” she says. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know. But it sounds good.”

Ian says, “Did you hear about Tom Pope?”

We nod and Ian shakes his head and leaves.

I turn to Phoebe and say, “So wait. She’s deaf and she’s a receptionist? She answers phones?”

“No. Just greets people. She speaks. Like Marlee Matlin.”

“We hired a person who can’t speak well to greet people and we’re a multinational communications company?”

“Well, now that you put it that way.”

I say, “Is she beautiful?”

“Who?”

“Miss Deaf Black America?”

“Gorgeous.”

“Does she look deaf?”

“You’re an idiot.”

“The blind look blind,” I say. “I’m just wondering if she appears particularly oblivious to sound.”

Phoebe has stopped listening. She’s leafing through an Us Weekly while I casually scan CNN.com.

I say, “So, you heading to Boston?”

Phoebe says to Us Weekly, “Yeah. Taking the train Thursday.”

“You excited?” I say to my computer screen, which is currently displaying a story about the Fox channel premiering a show called Naked Housewives.

“I love Christmas. On Christmas Eve, if it’s cold enough, we all go skating. There’s a pond at my dad’s country club with a hut and they build this big fire and there’s hot chocolate and, because it’s all WASPs, there’s also gin and beer. And then we have dinner at the club and go to midnight mass. In the morning my mom and I go to a women’s shelter in the city and hand out gifts, help serve breakfast. Then later we have dinner at our house and open presents.”

“Same here. Almost exactly. But without the skating. Or the family part. Or the dinners. Or the volunteering. Or the getting-together parts. But the gin and beer is identical.”

“Did you call your brother?”

“Yes.”

“You lie.”

“Only to clients.”

• • •

Late in the afternoon, Jill, the Snugglies account exec, calls.

She says, “There is a serious problem with the Old MacDonald animatic.”

She and Alan have me on speakerphone. They ask if they can come down to my office. I call Ian. Fifteen minutes later we all sit in my office. Jill closes the door.

An animatic is one of the last stops along the long, painful conveyor belt to approval—from brief to creation to internal review to client presentation to revisions to re-presentation to additional presentation to more senior clients to additional revision based upon senior client feedback to animatic to focus-group testing. In an animatic, a voice-over reads the idea as the focus group looks at hand-drawn pictures. It’s the kind of thing you might have seen in a high school phys ed class in the sixties about avoiding syphilis or the dangers of Western culture as told by state agencies in Pyongyang today. An animatic has about the same relationship to an actual commercial that Orangina has to orange juice.

I say, “What’s the problem?”

Jill looks to Alan. Alan says, “The problem is cock.”

Ian says, “I’m all ears.”

Alan says, “This isn’t funny.”

I say, “Ian doesn’t joke about cock.”

Jill says, “You guys. Seriously. The client is really upset. And the Young MacDonald launch is a huge deal for them.”

The Young MacDonald launch is a new line of diapers that have animals on them. This may not seem like a big deal as there are plenty of diapers with animals on them. In fact, it’s unlikely that you can buy diapers without animals on them. But these aren’t ordinary animals. Our client signed an exclusive deal with Pixar (translation: Snugglies paid Pixar an exorbitant fee for the right to use the cartoon animals) and is launching the animal diapers in concert with the opening of a movie using the same characters in January. We were awaiting focus group testing and footage from Pixar before editing the spot. The movie is about a cartoon teenager who grows up on a farm (his grandfather is Old MacDonald, his father is simply MacDonald) and who doesn’t want to be a farmer—he wants to be a hedge-fund manager. Though he eventually realizes he wants to stay on the farm. Throughout the spot we’d see babies (wearing only Snugglies diapers) crawling around, playing with cuddly stuffed animals, as we hear children singing “Old MacDonald,” which Pixar has contracted with Beyoncé to re-record. The challenge was finding a way to seamlessly integrate the movie into the spot. How would the babies see it on a farm? Several ideas were tossed around. One involved showing the movie on the side of the barn. Another had the movie reflected in a puddle in the pigpen (both the client and Pixar reacted angrily to this, misconstruing our creativity for an indictment of the film). Yet a third had a drive-in movie theater next to the farm, but the concern there was that children would have absolutely no idea what a drive-in was. In the end, we eventually decided the babies would sit in front of a large flat-screen TV (the client’s input via a co-branding deal with Sony’s flat-screen division), where they would watch a partial trailer for the movie.

I say, “But what’s the problem? And please don’t say ‘cock’ again.”

Jill says, “In the script you use a cow, a pig, and a rooster.”

I say, “Of course I did. I’m a professional writer.”

Jill says, “Sing the song for me.”

I look at Ian. This is a trap. I say, “I won’t sing. But I’ll talk it.”

Jill says, “Whatever. Just do it.”

I say, “Old MacDonald had a farm. E-I-E-I-O.”

Ian says, “I feel like this is how Christopher Walken sang to his children.”

Jill says, “Shh. Keep going.”

I say, “And on this farm he had a cow. E-I-E-I-O. With a moo-moo here and a moo-moo there, here a moo, there a moo, everywhere a moo-moo.”

Jill says, “Jump ahead to the rooster part.”

I say, “And on this farm he had a rooster. E-I-E-I-O. With a . . . oh, shit.”

Ian says, “With a cock-cock here and a cock-cock there, here a cock, there a cock, everywhere a cock-cock. Where is this farm? I want to live there.”

Jill says, “We need to get on a call.”

Ian says, “So you’re saying this is a huge cock problem.”

I say, “Can’t we just lose the rooster? Cow, pig, chicken.”

Alan says, “There’s a problem with the cow and the pig. They didn’t test well. People were offended by the pig. They thought it was demeaning to heavy-set mothers. They thought we were calling people fat cows and fat pigs. The client’s really upset.”

Somewhere, not far from these offices, surgeons are saving lives, social workers are helping the poor, the clergy are ministering to the forgotten, scientists are on the edge of breakthroughs that will improve the human experience, artists are writing plays, novels, painting masterpieces. I want to know if Miss Deaf Black America looks deaf, and I have a cock problem. Truth be told, this is not an unusual day at Lauderbeck, Kline & Vanderhosen.