Too Much of a Good Thing
Page 32
All this food is within my grasp, and it’s why I need those twice-daily power walks. The folks at MultiCorp eat a lot, at odd hours, late at night, all day, in fact. I know I would put away three thousand calories a day at least if I ate like some of them do. Instead, I sip my Honesty Tea from Soma by Nature, the nicest oasis in the building far away from the seventeenth floor, and I use no sugar or cream, just the straight stuff, because I am the antioxidant queen.
Because I’m running late, I step into the elevator instead of taking the stairs, all two hundred and thirty-eight of them. I have toned, tight calves, thighs, and booty from climbing and descending over one million steps in the last five years. This elevator is still stank. I look around at people trying not to touch each other but most likely secretly wanting to. I used to have a crush on a tall Hispanic guy who used the stairs a lot. I called him “Tool Hombre.” He had this huge toolbox and hands as big as my head. I’d smile, and he’d grunt. I’d smile some more, and he’d grunt some more.
We were regular conversationalists.
I smile all the time on any elevator, and these real New Yorkers around me think I’m crazy. While they give careful nods at people they think they know or that they think know them, I just smile. No winking at any time, though. That could lead to a sexual harassment lawsuit in the wink of an eye these days. Hands at sides, feet together, eyes front—I’m a good little MultiCorp soldier.
The elevator doors open and ... “Welcome to MultiCorp.”
I smile at our main receptionist, Tia Fernandez, sixty-five, widowed, fiercely Cuban, and who still salsa dances every Friday night at Cuba on Thompson Street. She thinks I’m a shorter version of Lauryn Hill, and I think she’s a younger version of Eva Mendes. Other than me, she is the nicest person here, and like me, Tia trips every day here at MultiCorp.
“Hi, Tia,” I say. “Don’t you look sexy today.”
Tia rolls her eyes and smiles. She has to be the prettiest woman I have ever known. I hope I look half as good as her when I’m her age. She has the smoothest brown skin, always smells of sage for some reason, and other than me, wears the loudest clothes, preferring bold oranges, vibrant yellows, and electric greens. Today, though, she’s business casual with a pair of tan slacks, old-fashioned earth shoes, and an oversized white sweater.
“It is Friday, Shari,” she says. “Payday.”
I smile. “You’re making me look bad with that outfit.”
“I am not dancing later,” she says, adding a few dance steps anyway. “But you will be dancing soon, because Miss Ross is back from Los Angeles.”
My heart falls to my stomach and instantly biodegrades. “Miss Ross is here, as in here early?” I whisper.
Tia shakes her head. “She is due back from LA this morning.” She points behind her at a master calendar the size of Wyoming. “Her plane should have already landed, but knowing Lady Di as we do, we should not expect her anytime soon.”
I smile. Everyone in the office has a different nickname for Corrine. Some call her “Diana Ross.” Others call her “Die, Anna.” The latest nickname floating around is “Corrine-cula” because one of her front teeth is kind of, well, pointier than the other. I secretly call her “Miss Cross” since I bear her all day and sometimes bear with her even on weekends.
I walk behind Tia’s “edifice,” which isn’t a desk so much as a building partition the shape of a flying vee with a rolling chair behind it. I check Corrine’s mail slot and find yet another catalog from Neiman Marcus.
Corrine and her Cinderella dresses. “It’s a Tahari,” she told me once about a brown outfit she modeled for me. As I nodded and showed my false approval by forming a little O with my mouth, I wondered why an old game-system maker would diversify into dresses. “You like my Kay Unger?” she asked one day. I’ll bet it looked better on Kay. “Paisley is the new black,” she once told me while wearing a jade-green dress. Why can’t the new black be black? Before a date with her longtime boyfriend, Tom “Terrific” Sexton, an account executive at Harrison Hersey and Boulder, Corrine changed at work from a hoochie-kootchy Gucci to a Michael Kors sheath dress, which, I found out later, cost as much as my monthly rent. The rip up the side of that dress was, to be blunt, a rip-off. They must have used the fabric they cut out at the bottom to make the rest of the dress. And Corrine routinely drops five hundred bucks for scary-looking stilettos. I’d like to see her get those spiky heels stuck in a pile of pigeon poo on the Brooklyn Bridge.
I would pay to see that. I’d even film it and upload it to YouTube.
But back to MultiCorp. There are wide-open spaces on this floor and no cubicles anywhere. Only our founder and CEO, Mr. Dunn, has an actual office because “we are a family with no secrets.” Thus, we have no privacy, and our phones don’t buzz or ring and only light up. As a result, everyone whispers around here, and at first it drove me crazy. I’m used to it now. Except when people have gas. I will never get used to that.
Because of all the glass and lack of walls, I get decent views of Brooklyn and the Brooklyner, which is nice most days, but sad on cold, rainy days. It just shows me how far I have to go after I tidy up Corrine’s career, I mean, accounts and affairs by, oh, seven o’clock. I haven’t left at five since I started here five years ago. If I ever billed MultiCorp for all those extra hours, they’d owe me over $50,000.
Hmm. Why don’t I bill them for those hours? Oh yeah. I’m on salary. Still ...
MultiCorp is the largest minority-owned, full-service multicultural advertising agency on the planet. We do TV, web, print, radio, billboards, and whatever else you can advertise on, including T-shirts, kids’ meal toys, mugs, pens, and boxer’s backs. We reach out to the dispossessed, the tired, the hungry, and the poor. Okay, technically we reach out to clients who want to take money from African-American, Hispanic, and Asian American urban consumers.
Thus we try to convince Grandma Millie to shop for her eggs, bread, and butter at Kmart instead of Walmart. We want Hector and Juan to join the exciting U.S. Army instead of the boring U.S. Air Force. We urge the New Dons and OYG street gangs to buy their throwaway cell phones from AT&T Wireless instead of Verizon. We want America to shed tears and act indignant about our public service announcements concerning teen pregnancy and spouse abuse. Those are always so uplifting. We want people with no disposable incomes to frequent casinos as often as they can. The U.S. Census Bureau is one of our major clients, and it makes so much sense to use MultiCorp the more multicultural this country becomes.
We also represent Jamaica. No kidding. We represent an entire country. “Come to de islands, mon.” That’s about all we need to say because folks go to the islands. You really can’t screw up advertising paradise. Okay, hurricanes sometimes turn Jamaica into a giant mass of windblown palm trees and knee-deep mud, but essentially, keeping the Jamaica account has been a no-brainer and therefore perfect for my boss.
Yeah, um, perfect. When Corrine and I first heard we’d be working on the Jamaica account, I said, “Come to de islands, mon.” She didn’t make the connection. I had to explain it to her five times. Corrine then told me it was a silly idea, that good advertising ideas take time to develop, and that no one would take “Come to de islands, mon” seriously. She said she would think of something “much more upscale and erudite,” yet my slogan is out there on billboards, in magazines, on the radio, on every bus in the city, and all over the TV. The Jamaican man who did the TV ad and who has lived in New Jersey his entire life (so much for realism) has even been on a few talk shows. Naturally, Corrine took full credit for my idea and got the big bonus and the free vacation to Jamaica. Mr. Dunn has been calling her his “rising star” ever since.
I can’t afford to go to Jamaica or to live too long in my disappointing past, so I go to my desk, which is within whispering distance of Corrine’s “space,” as she calls it. I have vowed to stop whispering because I’m making her too much money. Luckily, Corrine is gloriously late this morning because of her trip. I do a happy dance, my bo
ots spraying water on the plastic carpet protector under my rolling chair. Now I can get so much more work done because the boss isn’t around.
Somebody has to work around here.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2009 by J.J. Murray
“Embracing the End” on pages 4–6 copyright @ 2005 by
Janet Purchase. Used by permission.
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ISBN: 978-0-7582-7750-3