by Joe Ide
“A surfer,” Stimson said. He went on. “I must say it’s unusual to have an intern with no résumé or references. I take it you know someone.” He wasn’t resentful, just curious.
“Laurie Singer. Friend of my wife’s.”
Stimson sighed. “I’m going to miss Laurie, I really am. The last thing she did was bring you on as an intern.”
“Laurie’s not here anymore?”
“Friday was her last day, God bless her,” Stimson replied. “I mentored her when she was starting out. I always knew she’d be going places.” Not good, Dodson thought. If Stimson was unprotected, so was he.
Dodson thought the architects who planned the building must have been high. Ground level cut right across the middle of the one big window. The top half looked onto the bottoms of tree trunks, ferns, bushes and a layer of dead leaves and twigs. The bottom half of the window was solid dirt with roots burrowing and squiggling through it.
“Yeah, it’s unsettling but you get used to it,” Stimson said. “Once a mole made its nest right in the corner there. Fascinating little thing, had babies too.”
“What happened to it?”
“A snake ate the whole family.” Stimson took a sip from his coffee cup and made a face. “Let me tell you what I do here. I’m a creative executive. My job is to develop advertising campaigns.” There were posters of various products on the walls, none of which Dodson had heard of. Kiss Me More Lip Gloss, Persian Lite Seven Grain Pita Bread, Uncle Buck’s Feral Hog and Sweet Potato Dog Food and a few more.
Stimson continued. “The creative director gives me an assignment and it’s my responsibility to develop a campaign that targets the appropriate consumers and get them to buy the product.” Dodson nodded. “A lot of people think it’s easy,” Stimson said dolefully. “But take my word for it, it’s not.” Stimson had been here too long, Dodson thought. Put out to pasture while he was still in his office.
“I’m hungry. Do you mind?” Stimson said.
“Not at all,” Dodson said.
Stimson found a camera bag in a desk drawer. “Let’s go,” he said. “I’m supposed to take the stairs.” They’d gone up one level to the lobby and he was already winded. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea.” They went into the lobby itself and waited at the elevator. “There’s a rooftop garden. It’s got a great view,” Stimson said.
A man appeared beside them. He was late thirties, fashionably thin, sharp suit, grooming by GQ and a cutting expression. He looked like Jared Kushner if Jared Kushner was black and hostile.
“Stimson,” the man said. “Hard at work as usual.” He glanced at the camera bag. “Doesn’t your wife fix you breakfast?”
“Brad Hampton,” Stimson said. “I’d like you to meet my new intern, Juanell Dodson. Juanell, Brad is my creative director.”
“Good to meet you,” Dodson said. Brad gave him a quick glance. He didn’t say anything or offer his hand. It was a short but uncomfortable wait. Brad’s animosity and impatience were almost audible. The doors finally opened. Brad got on, turned and put a palm out. “Private call, take the next one.” As the doors closed, he added, “I’m expecting big things from you on the Skechers campaign. I’m looking forward to your presentation.” The doors closed. Stimson sighed, relieved. They waited for the next car.
“I’ll be straight with you,” Stimson confessed. “I am the last person in the whole building you want to be working for.”
“Oh, yeah? Why’s that?” Dodson said.
“I’ve been here for twenty-nine years,” Stimson continued. “I started as an assistant, then assistant copywriter, a junior creative, then half of a two-man creative team. That’s where you want to be. You’re actually creating campaigns. Dennis Rogers was my better half. He was the art director. We were really good.” Stimson smiled nostalgically. “We were servicing major clients. Dove soap. GM trucks. Tide detergent. Hershey bars. Coca-Cola.” The elevator came and they got on. “But times changed as they usually do, and the products changed too,” Stimson went on. “All the new stuff, electronics, phones, cloud services, video games. Dennis and I couldn’t keep up. Our mindset was stuck in 1995. I’ll let you in on a secret. I have a collection of Michael Bolton albums.” Dodson had never heard of the guy.
They reached the top floor and went out on a roof garden. Green plants. Tables with umbrellas. Great view. The ocean in one direction, the city stretching to the horizon in the other. They sat down and Stimson opened his camera case. He took out a sandwich neatly wrapped in wax paper. Old school, Dodson thought.
“Want a half a sandwich?” Stimson said.
“No, thank you.”
Stimson continued. “When Coke started putting rappers into their commercials, I knew Dennis and I were done. He took a buyout. I couldn’t afford to. I fell out of favor and wasn’t given another partner. My assignments got less and less prestigious. I got a pay cut. Two of them.” Stimson ate the sandwich like it was the best thing in the world. “Marge can really make a sandwich. Sure you don’t want some?” Dodson shook his head.
“I would have been fired but I had friends in high places,” Stimson continued. “But they’re retired now or they’ve gone on to other jobs. Laurie used to be my creative director. Brad took her place and now I’m a pariah. That’s why my office is in North Mongolia and they replaced my assistant with an intern.” He opened a little thermos. “Apple juice?”
“No, thank you,” Dodson said. “Brad said you were making a presentation?”
“I’m supposed to, but I’ve got nothing,” Stimson said. “Skechers wants a print ad for their walking shoes. Their brief says they want cool, edgy and relevant. For walking shoes? I don’t even know what that means. It’s also a test. If we give them an ad they like, they’ll give us more business. If we don’t, a multimillion-dollar client goes down the drain.”
“When’s the presentation?”
“Tomorrow, doomsday,” Stimson said. “I’ll have zip, and Brad will convince Matsumoto to let me go. Ed Matsumoto, Brad’s boss. I’ve known Ed for years. I don’t know if that helps or not.” Stimson finished the sandwich. Then he refolded the wax paper and put it back in the camera bag with the thermos. Really old school, Dodson thought.
They went back to the office. Stimson worked on his campaign and Dodson spent the rest of the day taking files and drawings from one office to the next, adding up Stimson’s expense receipts, copying documents, reading company memos and filling out activity reports that Stimson said didn’t matter.
Dodson met people. Some were friendly, others were busy and distracted. Hey, you’re the new guy, aren’t you? Good to meet you, Juanell. If you have any questions just ask. It’s boring around here but you’ll get used to it. You’re Stimson’s intern? Oh, that’s, um, that’s great. What’s he working on now? Thumbtacks? Doorknobs? Just kidding. Nobody seemed to care about his age or how he spoke. Nobody asked him about Taylor Swift or rock climbing. The talk was general, everyday chitchat. Last night’s game. Traffic. Where to eat. Posts on Facebook, one executive or another. To Dodson’s surprise, people tried to clue him in. Zack Sandler is the executive art director. CPM means cost per thousand clicks. Bounce rate means how many times a consumer looked at a web page and didn’t engage. Brad and Walsh are freaking out about Skechers. There was racism everywhere you went but Dodson didn’t see it here, at least on the surface.
When he returned to the office, Stimson was slouched in his chair, facing away. Drawings and partial drawings were scattered around. The wastebasket was full of crumpled-up paper. There was a large sketch pad on the easel. The drawing had been x-ed out several times.
“Mr. Stimson?” Dodson said. Slowly, Stimson revolved in his chair. He looked as gray as the dirt window, the bags under his eyes like hammocks with people sleeping in them.
“We have plans, me and Marge. Did I tell you she was sick?” he said. “Immune deficiency disease. She’s just starting to get symptoms. We both pretend they’re not there. The doctor says she’s got two
years, maybe three, before they get really bad.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“If I get my pension, we’ll buy a Winnebago and travel until…until we can’t anymore. Marge is really looking forward to it.” Stimson smiled dreamily. “Wouldn’t that be great? No clocks, no phones, no campaigns, no Brad. At age sixty-five I’ll be happy for the first time since I was a teenager.”
“Why wouldn’t you get your pension?” Dodson said.
“Brad hates me.”
Stimson sent Dodson home, saying he was pulling an all-nighter. Dodson wished him luck and told him to call if there was anything he could do. He felt sorry for the man. Desperate, fearful, his idea of happiness a Winnebago and no phones. Stimson was whipped. He had to go on but the juice had been squeezed out of him a long time ago.
He told Cherise about his day. “Uncle Buck’s Feral Hog and Sweet Potato Dog Food?” she said.
“’Fraid so.”
“Well, I hope you haven’t hitched your wagon to a dying mule.”
“Me too.”
“Was it anything like you thought it would be?” she asked. “The people I mean.”
“No, not really. As long as you don’t mess with them or loaf around, they don’t care who you are. They got their own lives to handle.”
“I know,” Cherise said.
“Gloria was wrong about damn near everything.”
“I know that too.”
“Then why’d you let me take them damn lessons?”
“I wouldn’t have,” Cherise said, “but you were so insistent that white people would be condescending, I wasn’t going to convince you otherwise. And then you went on and on about needing to learn things and I figured fine, if that’s what will make you feel better. I wasn’t planning on my mother getting involved. That just happened.”
Dodson loved that his wife was so smart. He was impressed with her, proud of her. But there were times when he wished she’d bump her head, be less smart and give him a fucking break. They went to bed, but he couldn’t sleep. He wished he had some weed, but he’d stopped buying it. He felt guilty about spending the money. He paced, watched TV, had a bowl of Cocoa Puffs, played Madden and Call of Duty. He put on a robe, went out on the balcony. The sun was rising. It was six in the morning.
The neighborhood was quiet. Rare and pleasant unto itself. On the rooftop across the street, Bolo Wakefield was tending his pigeons. He’d been doing it for decades. Bolo was stooped and gray haired, wearing a straw hat, coveralls and no shirt. He held his head at an odd angle. Bolo had had a couple of strokes. The right side of his face sagged and he couldn’t see out of that eye. He had a tough time keeping his balance. A week ago, Dodson carried a thirty-pound bag of bird feed up to the roof for him, learning more about homing pigeons than he wanted to know.
Bolo had built what he called a loft, a wire cage really, with a corrugated metal roof. It was big enough for him to move around in. “You start with young pigeons that have never been outdoors,” he said. “And you feed them at the same time of day. Do it by hand so they get to know you. Then you don’t feed them again until the next day.”
“Seems like a long time between meals,” Dodson said.
“It is,” Bolo said. “When you come in the next day, the birds are damn near starving. You do this for two months.” Dodson almost said it sounds like animal abuse but held his tongue. “At the end of the two months, you open the door and move away so they can’t see you. Then you let ’em come out by themselves. Mess with ’em and they’ll likely be traumatized and not come back.”
“I’ve got to go now, Bolo.”
“This is the good part,” Bolo said. “Watch this.” He had to turn slightly so he could see with his good eye. He unlatched the loft and opened the door. The pigeons were excited, walking back and forth, cooing and bobbing their heads. In a flurry of flapping and feathers, they flew out, a couple dozen of them. They climbed, swooped, careened across the clouds, winged over the rooftops and disappeared into the sky. Must feel good, Dodson thought. Flying free.
Dodson’s day with Stimson had affected him. Made him think about himself, his future, where he wanted to be in five years, ten years and on down the road. It didn’t used to matter until he’d married Cherise and now there was Micah to worry about. He’d learned a lot from watching Isaiah. His mindset, his attitude, how he conducted his life. Isaiah was happy in his way. Happy wasn’t doing nothing. Happy was doing the thing you loved to do. It might not be fun or exciting to someone else, but that didn’t matter. If you found that thing you were lucky. Like most people, you put a toe in the water, got pulled in by the river of life and ended up in the Baltic Sea or the Gulf of Mexico or some other place you never thought you’d be. Dodson shook his head at the phrase “finding your passion.” It made it sound like you’d be riding the bus one day and see your calling on a billboard.
Isaiah didn’t discover his passion. He followed his gift. He became an investigator by investigating, and the more he did it, the better he got, and the better he got, the more he wanted to do it because he was good at it. It was satisfying. Isaiah grew his passion like a rosebush, trained it like a racehorse. The result was expertise. Kids were always looking for something “cool” to do. Actor, singer, model, writer, entrepreneur, even though they had no talent for it or the drive to learn the profession. That’s your problem, Dodson thought. Looking for a cool career that got public attention. But Isaiah had taught him coolness was being an expert. Be the one they turn to when no else can solve the problem. Didn’t matter if your world was shoemaking, shooting pool or flying a helicopter. If you were an expert, you were cool.
Why not follow Isaiah’s lead? Dodson thought. Start with the talents you already have and see where they take you. What exactly are your talents? Dodson wondered. What do you do that comes naturally, that’s instinctive? That was easy. Selling. It was the basis of all hustling. Dodson had always been exceptionally good at convincing people to buy, sell, give something up, take a chance or get something for nothing. Hustling and advertising were the same things except the goods were legal and actually existed. Kale is a superfood. Oh, really? You mean like collard greens? If that was the case, black people would be leaping tall buildings in a single bound. Women like the smell of your deodorant? No shit? Then why not cut to the chase and spray it directly on your dick? Call it what you want but that was Hustling 101. Why would walking shoes be any different?
Stimson said Skechers wanted something cool, edgy and relevant. Cool and edgy, Dodson understood. But what did relevant mean? He looked it up in the dictionary. Appropriate to the current time, period or circumstances; of contemporary interest. Dodson read the newspaper and he watched the news. He knew what was current, he knew the issues of the day and what people were talking about. But how do you incorporate all that in a commercial about shoes?
He had to use his imagination. He had to be creative. Grace said creativity was everything you experienced in your entire life brought to bear on a single problem. When she was deciding about a shape or a color she wasn’t choosing from a list. Her life was the sun shining through a magnifying glass, the beam narrowed and focused on one spot until there were flames, until she decided on a shape or a color.
Dodson looked back over his life and thought about his relevant experiences. Then he gathered his own sun and narrowed the beam. His heart was going faster. He looked across the neighborhood and smiled.
He called Grace. “It’s Dodson,” he said.
“Isn’t it the crack of fucking dawn?” she replied, sleepily.
“I need a solid.”
“Happy to help. Can it wait until after breakfast?”
“No. I’m coming over.”
She hugged him as he came through the door. “I’m so glad to see you!”
“Yeah, me too,” he said. Grace was straight up and a badass in her own right. He liked her a lot. She glanced at his hair but didn’t say anything. An act of kindness, he thought. He told her ab
out the internship and Cherise’s ultimatum. She didn’t judge. She didn’t say, it’s about time, or you only have yourself to blame. She felt for him and he was grateful.
“How’s it going?” she asked.
“I really don’t know yet. It’s something new,” Dodson said. He looked at her and frowned. She looked worn-down and worried and she’d lost weight. He’d return the favor, he thought. Nobody wants to be told they look like shit, but she brought it up herself.
“Yeah, I’m not doing so hot,” she said. She told him about the show. “I’m behind on my work. I could do a show with fewer paintings, but I don’t want to disappoint the gallery owner.” She looked like she had something else to say but didn’t.
They went into the kitchen and she made coffee. “Isaiah says my coffee is awful but I don’t think it’s bad for instant.” She offered him a cup.
“No, thanks, I’ve had it before,” Dodson said. “If a taster had a choice, it wouldn’t be your coffee.” She smiled and took an extra-big sip.
“So, what’s this thing I have to do before breakfast?” she asked.
Dodson told her about Stimson and the Skechers ad. He explained his idea. “Do you like it?”
“Like it?” she replied with a grin. “I fucking love it.” She got to work and drew a preliminary sketch. Dodson was thoroughly impressed.
“You know your shit, don’t you?” he said. She smiled, pleased that he was pleased. He knew what she wanted to ask.
“I talked to Isaiah,” he said.
“How is he?” she said, unformed tears in her eyes.
“He’s aight. He’s traveling, getting some head space, Northern California somewhere.” This was no time to tell the truth, he thought.
“Did he say anything…” she began.
“About you? Yeah. He asked how you were. I said, Do you want me to reach out? He said no, but he wanted to say yes, just like you. You gonna call him?”
“I can’t, and you know why.”
