This reindeer finds Manhattan heat
A shattering experience,
For when he ventures on the street
He undergoes the great expense
Of weighing eight straw hats upon
His antlers, in the hope that they
Will separate him from the sun
And keep him cool despite the day.
Poor deer, his overhead is quite
Absurd. He should be told to go
To Macy’s where the Fahrenheit
Is like the prices, sweet and low.
*
“It was also a not-so-subtle signal to the management that maybe they could pump some of that refreshing oxygen up here,” I said, taking the seat next to Olive and thereby clearing her route to the door, hoping she’d take the hint.
To my utter absence of shock, she remained unmoved and unmoving. In recent months Olive, a junior copywriter, had emerged as my friend-rival. Not my friendly rival; rather, she was someone who pretended to friendship even as she was being boiled alive from the inside out by seething jealousy. My grinning enemy. Someone who, when Chester would approve my copy yet again, even after a tenacious fight, would smile—teeth gritting—and say, “Honestly, Lily, you’re undefeatable as always,” resentful and obviously longing for my eventual defeat.
Olive was in the habit of saying “honestly” so often that even a child could see that she must be deceitful. I marveled at her mother’s prescience in having named her daughter after a green—with envy—cocktail garnish: hollow and bitter.
“It’s hotter than blazes,” said Chester, “so I hope they listen. But look at you, Lily, fresh as a flower, like the heat can’t touch you. Just like in the article.” And he read again from the page: “‘A slim, copper-haired girl in a softly clinging yellow dress is bending over a great clipping book, studying the full-and half-page advertisements pasted there.’”
“Yes, yes,” I said. “And ‘green eyes that smile.’”
“Oh, but those eyes are not smiling now,” said Chester. “What’s the matter?”
Perceptive as always, that Chester. It was he who’d first seen my talent, calling me clever and breezy as he plucked me from the forty-dollar-a-week field in which I’d been toiling—where Olive was still hung down—and flung me into the stratosphere. I had no reason to think he’d accede to my request for more money, at least not easily, but I had to make it. Not out of greed, I hoped he would understand, but out of justice.
“Chester, do you see what the lede of the article calls me?”
“The highest paid advertising woman in America,” he said. “I should think that’s correct and that you more than deserve it. We owe our loyal advertising readership to you. You’re better than vaudeville.”
“Thank you,” I said, giving a stagey bow from my seat. “But woman, Chester. It says woman. Why not person? I’ve come in here to ask for a raise. We both know I bring R.H. Macy’s more business than anyone else on the thirteenth floor, woman or man. Why not pay me what I’m worth?”
“Lil,” he said, resorting to the nickname he always used when things between us became strained. “About that … I know it’s been on your mind. But I’m afraid it’s been decided that we really can’t do that at this juncture.”
“The passive voice, Chip?” I said, resorting to my counterpart to Lil. “The use of the passive voice to disguise one’s role in the making of a decision is imprecise and obfuscatory. You’re a better adman than that. Active verbs! Why not say ‘I refuse to pay you fairly’?”
Chester picked up Olive’s paper, folded it, and handed it to me, though I was still clutching the one I’d walked in with. I could tell Olive wanted to ask for hers back but was too meek to do so.
“In here,” he said, tapping the article from behind his mahogany desk, “you sound so gracious and unassuming. I wouldn’t have expected we’d be back on this again today.”
He folded his shirtsleeved arms—too hot for a jacket—across his barrel chest, their cross echoing the barricade his desk seemed to have become.
“I love it here, Chip,” I said, looking at him as I handed Olive’s World-Telegram back to her. “I love working for you, and I would never speak ill of Mr. R. H. Macy or the store that bears his name. Not in print and not in private. But the two-track, male-female pay grades don’t make much sense. While I’m at it, it seems as though Helen should be paid the same as the male illustrators, too.”
Though I was fantastic at my part of the job, Helen McGoldrick’s visual bravura pushed my words that extra mile into the contested territory of our audience’s minds. Her technique was advanced, anticipating the jazzy, kinetic midcentury style, each stroke a smile, streamlined and forward-thinking. Each image vibrated with such sheer American cheer that even my darker copy came off as droll, the perfect inducement to buy buy buy.