There were nine men, including Jack Cheatham and Rich Panda. No one acknowledged Jules, but he continued to study them.
He was fascinated by the roll of their lapels. He knew nothing about fashion and had never paid much attention to clothing, especially men’s clothing, but now he was hypnotized by lapels. Even the name was strange in English if you said it or thought about it several times, although in French (revers) it seemed more sensible. If you knew French, the English word was even stranger, as it meant the shovel. Although Jules had no idea, every suit in the room was a Paul Stuart made-to-measure by Samuelsohn in Montréal, and the roll of the lapels was expressive of much of America: its informality, its riches, its confidence, and even of the curl of waves breaking at that very moment along the hundred miles of wide, windblown beach that ran, broken by surging inlets, from Brooklyn to Montauk Point. Never in Paris had he seen such lapels. In Paris, lapels were flat and bodiless. Here, they were full-bodied, and seemed to give substance. Jules thought, if fabric is soft and rich, it should indeed roll like a wave.
Apart from the rosewood paneling and fine leather chairs, the boardroom had a lot of glass, some etched, some clear, all extremely thick and heavy. This, and a long, million-dollar, walnut table were solid counterweights to the somewhat nauseating sway of the building. Through windows in various directions one could see the Atlantic, Long Island Sound, the Hudson Highlands, and the distant Ramapos.
The board had been at work since eight and had broken for lunch in a dining room accessible by the first of many staircases descending ten floors through the interior of the skyscraper. Though the dining room was only one storey down, an electric dumbwaiter had carried up a tea-and-coffee service that, before business resumed, was laid for the board by young men and women in French waiters’ costumes. Each person had before him a gold-rimmed cup and saucer and an insulated carafe of either coffee or tea. Planted along the centerline of the magnificent table were silver salvers loaded with petits fours and stacks of the kind of cellophane-wrapped, long cookies one is given too few of in an airplane. As people bustled with their papers and partook of their coffee and tea, nothing was offered to their aides sitting against the rosewood walls.
“Okay,” said Rich. “To business.” He nodded to an assistant, who tapped a key to begin recording. “The first item on this afternoon’s various agenda is the proposal to adopt a musical theme as Acorn’s worldwide branding signature. He signaled, and the recording Jules had made in Paris swelled to fill the room. Jules heard élodi. It was so vivid it was as if she were there. When the music stopped, once again no one said anything, or even sighed.
“Well?” Rich asked. “What do you think?”
At the far end of the table, a man who was so big he looked like he had inhaled a delicatessen, said, “Isn’t a jingle supposed to be irritating, so it becomes a brain worm, and you can’t forget it? This isn’t irritating, it’s inappropriately beautiful. These days, people don’t like that.”
One of the outside directors raised his hand briefly and said, “Has this been tested in our markets all around the world? Differences in taste and musical perception are vast. Half of humanity has a non-Western musical system.”
“No, we haven’t done any testing yet,” Rich admitted.
“As far as I’m concerned,” another titan said, “it’s too slow, too referential, and too demanding of the attention span of the Millennials who are the market we have to clinch in the next decade.”
“Good point,” said another. “It was too nineteenth-century. You couldn’t fit it into a ring-tone, and anything longer than that is kryptonite to the young unless they’re on Ecstasy.”
Rich nodded as if learning a needed lesson while surviving a necessary reprimand.
Next, one of the two older women spoke up. She was astoundingly elegant. Her hair was gray and she wore diamonds with restraint. A university president, she was simultaneously guarded and aggressive, like a bee carefully hovering before going in for the sting.
“I appreciate very much that you’ve made the effort, Rich, but it’s not going to work. I strongly recommend against it.”
Rich nodded in an accepting way.
Jules was astounded, and stood to protest. “Excuse me.”
“And who are you?” Rich asked.
“Jewels Lacour,” Jack Cheatham said.
“Who?” Rich wanted to know.
“I wrote it,” Jules said. “It’s not nineteenth-century at all but firmly twentieth-century.”
“We’re probably not going to use it,” Rich said. “We’ll let you know.”
“You accepted it. It’s written clearly in the emails.”
Rich turned to Jack, who shook his head in denial. “As always,” Jack stated, “acceptance depends upon getting the product into usable shape, which means that the supplier has to meet our needs and requirements and be willing to work with us, no matter how long it takes.”
“I’m willing to work with you,” Jules told everyone.
Silence. With a slight, barely perceptible smile, visible at the corners of his mouth, a spider smile, Rich said, “As you’ve heard, we have to test it worldwide and adjust for each market and culture.”
Thinking of Luc and time, Jules said, “No.”
“So, you’re not willing to work with us?”
“The email said accepted. The piece was agreed-upon.”
“The email, Mr. …?”
“Lacour,” Jack filled in for Rich, “Jewels Lacour.”
“Is not a contract.” The attorneys in the room remained omittedly mute.
“I don’t think we should have any worldwide signatures,” one of the board members said. “And, besides, shouldn’t this be left up to the professionals in the ad agency? We’re not set up or competent to develop such a campaign.”
It appeared that a consensus had been reached, as usual, silently welling up and incontrovertible. “So noted,” said Rich. “The next order of business.”
“So noted?” asked Jules, at first angry but then feeling as if the ground beneath his feet were falling away from him.
“So noted,” Rich replied.
TWO HOURS LATER, as the brilliant afternoon was ending in the kind of brilliant day that everywhere is the emblem of autumn, Jules was riding in yet another elevator, rising at terrific speed to the top floors of a skyscraper even higher than Acorn’s. He had gone to the French Consulate and been directed to a lawyer at a leading firm, someone who knew French and was familiar with French law.