Tough Sell

by Trixie More

  She picked up the computer and a sweatshirt, grabbed a power cord and headed back out to the sunny living room. She plugged in the power, sat on the couch and stared at the thumb drive. She didn’t want to see that video again but that tribal tattoo had bothered her. She touched the power button and the laptop sprang to life. Not dead then, just dormant.

  On the screen were blue sky and the play symbol. Better to get this done. She pressed play. When the tattoo came into view, she paused it. She leaned over, grabbed her cell phone and took a picture of the screen. Turning the phone in her hand, she examined the image. It felt safer this way. Nothing could accidentally start playing. She swiped her thumb and finger apart, making the image larger. A tingling rippled across her scalp and she pressed her home button, the familiar icons calming her. She set that aside, closed the video and made short work of putting the evil thumb drive away, nestled in the pocket of her winter parka, at the back of her closet along with her rosary and a small roll of twenties. She came back to the sofa and started her day’s work.

  First order of business, call Gunnar. Turned out, that was easier than expected. She found the “contact us” page of the Walker and Birkeland website and clicked on chat. The person who came on to message with her was someone named Eva. Dorothy explained she had worked with Ed on an ad campaign and she was hoping to talk to a man named Gunnar. Did Eva know anyone there by that name?

  Ten minutes later she was on a video call first with Eva, then with Gunnar, the Nordic god.

  “Hello, Dorothy. It’s nice to see you again.” He watched her with friendly eyes.

  “Yes, me too,” she stammered. The last time this man had seen her, she’d been smashed up against a wall with Ed’s knee between her legs. “Look, Ed told me you guys had a fight.”

  “Yah, but we made up.”

  “You did?”

  “Yah, well, he gave me a lot of money to be his friend again.”

  She laughed at the dry tone. Gunnar’s face told her that wasn’t really what happened.

  “Listen, I have an idea. I can’t use the campaign I created because Cogent Digital owns it. And I checked, I can’t even use the darn strategy that I had in mind either. It’s part of that same work product.”

  Gunnar cut her off. “I didn’t think you were, um, working on that anymore,” he said.

  “Of course I am!” She was a little offended. Who did he think she was? Didn’t Ed tell him anything?

  “You aren’t working at Cogent anymore, right?”

  “Right. That’s exactly the problem I’m talking about.”

  “So why are you working on a campaign? Ed is getting ready to find another agency to do the campaign.”

  He was? Well, OK. She’d just see if they could come up with anything as good as her ideas.

  “Fine, that’s fine. It’ll take weeks for them to draw up the contracts and get them signed. I’ll be done by then.”

  On the screen Gunnar looked taken aback. “So what did you want to talk to me for?”

  “Well, I wanted to beg you to stay partners with Ed, he needs you.”

  “OK. I can do that.”

  She laughed. “And I wanted to know if you would agree to be the spokesperson for the campaign. We can do grainy photos and real time style sound bites, and you should wear a fisherman’s sweater like the guy on the website. Is that your hand on the website? And I think we should get some photos of Norway that I don’t have to pay for. Do you have any stunning, clean, photos of fjords suffused with sun rays that you photographed yourself?” She was trying to keep up with the thoughts flying through her head. “In the first campaign, I was focused on America. If I use photos from Norway, Europe, you know, that will distance it.”

  Eva leaned over the shoulder of her somewhat stunned husband and then his chair slowly rolled away as she elbowed him literally out of the picture. His expression never changed. Dorothy laughed, delighted at the deadpan humor the two had. Eva pulled a chair up and said in her husky voice, “I think I can help you.”

  The two women brainstormed together, tossing out ideas, like selling a portion of Gunnar’s share in the business to an investor if possible, running social media ads, starting an ice bucket crusade style stunt and other ideas until Eva hit on something that made them both gasp. What if there were a way to make one of their products a media sensation? Could they get something on a talk show? What about a magazine article? Dorothy leapt up, her hands clenching the sides of her face.

  “Eva, I’ve got it. I’ve got it but I need to work fast. I want to do this before Ed has to fly to LA.” The women spent another half hour outlining the plan. They brought in Gunnar and spent another half hour on it. By the time Hildi was yanking on Eva’s arm, they all thought they had a winner.

  Dorothy spent the rest of the day working on the packets she’d asked her father to deliver to his board. Even if this new scheme worked, it wouldn’t solve everything. The company would still need to attract investors. She was thinking particularly of Douglas Lloyd. Initially, she’d thought he would be the perfect investor for Ed’s company. Now she wasn’t so sure. She fiddled around running an Internet search on him. She found lots of information: he was a well-known philanthropist, a successful investor and appeared to be an eligible, if aging, bachelor. There were a few pictures of him in evening dress, a typical corporate headshot out there, but that was it for photos. His website listed many of his holdings and, as she’d remembered, he merged his philanthropic tendencies with his investment strategy. Socially conscious investing he had called it.

  She shivered and checked her phone. That tattoo, it bothered her. She’d seen it somewhere. Restless, she wandered into the kitchen, made a cup of coffee and came back to her computer. She made sure the packets of information she prepared were targeted to attract Doug’s attention while appearing to be made up for the entire board. She printed out a copy to review in the morning for typos, dug out the tailpipe CO2 cleaners Ed had given her and called her mom.

  Sometime in the afternoon, she received a call from the temp agency she’d applied to the day before. She scheduled her interview for the following week. She was going to need an income pretty soon.

  By two that afternoon, she was at a pizza place with Allie and her mom. Afterward, she drove her mom home and returned to the city in her mom’s pretty Ford Mustang. She was going to need a less than eco-friendly car tomorrow, and the Race Red Mustang fit the bill perfectly.

  The brilliant red paint on the Mustang sparkled, the black and red leather interior was soft as a glove, and she couldn’t wait to drive it all the way to DC in the morning. She’d always assumed her father had picked out the car, but after their conversation in the kitchen, it was suddenly conceivable to her that her mother might have actually been the one to buy it, as she’d always claimed. Either way, Dorothy needed to get the CO2 cleaners attached to the tailpipes. Eva had said Ed and Gunnar both knew how to attach them. Dorothy hoped she was right.

  Finding a good spot to park near Edward’s place took forever, but she finally found a fairly large space on the avenue around the corner from his apartment. She nosed the ’Stang up to the front of the space, shut the engine, fed the meter, and then parked herself in the back of the space. It was getting late but there was still plenty of daylight. She made sure no other cars parked too close to the trunk. They would need some room to work. Fortunately, her parent’s muscle car madness hadn’t extended to custom exhaust features. She leaned against the back bumper of the car, enjoying the late-day sunshine, while she waited for Ed to come down. From where she parked, she could watch the corner he would be coming from and so she got to enjoy the sight of him walking toward her, a broad smile on his face. He had his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans, his omnipresent Mets jersey on and a black duffel bag slung over his shoulder. She couldn’t have held back her own hundred-watt smile if she’d tried. He was just so damn hot. And despite the fact that she was here on business of sorts, her libido was definitely in dri
ve. She wanted to slide down the front of the man and have him lay his cock on her flattened tongue. She wanted to suck him, lick him, and then turn around with her hands flat on the bumper, and have him show her a little muscle of his own. She smirked. Inconvenient city; too bad there wasn’t a wheat field nearby.

  He came up to her and put his hands around her waist as she reached up to kiss him. She made it a deep, wet one, and he chuckled.

  “That is not the way to get work done on your car, lady,” he said. “That’s the way to get someone to promise to work on your car. Totally different concept.” He leaned back, eyes humorous and warm.

  “How is it possible that every time I see you, you’re hotter than before?” she asked.

  His nostrils flared a little as he took a deep breath, his eyes lost focus a bit. He gave his head a little shake and then moved toward the car. It was her turn to laugh.

  “So this is the bad boy?” He smiled again. “Or the bad girl, should I say? Let’s see what we’ve got.” His shoulder muscles flexed as he knelt down, grabbed the bumper with one hand and twisted his torso to look under the car. Dorothy stood dumbly, enjoying the show. He flipped over onto his back and pulled himself under the car a bit and she imagined his abs, hard beneath his jersey as he held his position, head raised off the pavement.

  She just could not resist. She dragged the duffel over and knelt next to him, trying to be nonchalant, as she rested her palm on his stomach. He rewarded her with a grunt.

  “That’s cheating, darling,” he growled. She lifted her hand and he wriggled back out from under the car. Retreating to the curb, she watched as he bolted the devices onto the ends of the twin tailpipes. The rear bumper of the car had oversized cutouts, presumably to fit custom tailpipe ends. Ed needed every bit of space to get the adapter seated. After about a half hour, he stood, wiping his palms on a rag that had been in the bag.

  “They don’t look bad,” he said, walking around the car, viewing his work from different angles. “So your mom wants to go green, huh?” He looked at her, his face open and sincere. It took a bit of effort to hold his gaze. She didn’t like lying to him, even if it was just a little white lie.

  “Something like that,” she said. But she needn’t have worried. He was already busy checking out the interior of the car.

  “Got the keys? I want to start ’er up and see how she sounds.”

  The Mustang roared to life, rumbling in the most satisfying way.

  “Holy crow. Your folks must have gone for the full package. I’m not sure I should have even touched this car.”

  “It’s all good,” Dorothy assured him. “How will I know if these things are actually doing anything?”

  “There’s a couple of ways but the easiest way is an emissions analyzer.”

  “OK, how much do those cost?” She was already on her phone searching for one. Her heart sank. “Oh, these are like two thousand dollars.”

  “Yeah, that sounds about right. Why?”

  She shrugged, working out her next fib. “I just wanted to be able to show my parents how awesome this is, and they won’t believe me if I just say it works and I don’t know why.” She rolled her eyes dramatically to show how trying this could be. She had to find a way to prove these cleaners worked and that proof had to be quick and dramatic.

  “You could always just empty out the sodium carbonate and show them that.” He got back out of the car and went around to the back. He turned the tip of the filter until it came off and she could see that at the bottom of the filter were nested half pipes. The outer one could turn and slide to the left just a bit, opening up a small slit on the bottom.

  “See that? Once the car’s been driving for a while, you can empty the sodium carbonate out of the filter. When you turn the end piece, as the outer covering slides to the left, an inner liner is sliding to the left ahead of it to seal in the algae and water, allowing the soda and dead algae to be removed. Earlier filters only lasted a couple of months so they didn’t allow for this removal. However, this filter lasts six months and would be too large if it couldn’t be emptied.”

  He pointed to a small tab on the top of the device. “See that?”

  She peered closer. “Looks like I could plug a headset in there.”

  He smiled. “The other thing needed with this is the addition of water. People using these, need to add water just about every time they get gas.”

  “That’s a drawback.”

  He shrugged. “It is. But it’s easy to do and water is harmless to carry. Most people have a bottle of water in the car and each scrubber only requires about four ounces for every tank of gas.” He dug a funnel out of his bag. “If your folks are going to do this, they’ll need this funnel with its tiny tube to do it.”

  “How long does it take to fill with a tube this small?”

  “It takes about the same amount of time as it takes to fill the gas tank.” He smiled, opened the trunk and put the funnel and two bottles of water in the back. He shut the trunk. “That’s it. Just empty the filter and add water when you get gas. When it’s no longer working, the gasket around the funnel opening turns red. Then they need new ones.”

  He locked the car and dug something out of his pocket. He opened his hands to show her eight quarters. “For the meter. You weren’t thinking you were going to leave right away, were you?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “I did have some ideas when you were walking over here. One of them involves me on my knees.”

  He smirked. “I can get behind that,” he teased and she laughed.

  “I was hoping you would get in front of that,” she retorted. But she rethought it when his face clouded. “But now that you mention it, knowing you’re behind me works too.”

  He kissed her and fed the meter. As they made their way back to his place she pondered what it meant that he clearly wasn’t comfortable getting a blow job. That explained their first date. She thought about the video, with him on his knees. Well, if she had to go the rest of her life keeping her mouth to herself, she supposed that could be OK. It would be a shame though. She linked her arm through his and rested her head on his shoulder as they walked.

  Chapter 23

  New York at five a.m. on a Friday morning, was busier than she’d expected. Garbage trucks rumbled along the streets, every restaurant and bodega seemed to receive deliveries at this time. Dorothy, on the other hand, was rarely awake at five a.m. on the getting up side of the day, and never already out the door of her apartment. Today was different. Today was Friday, and today, she was going to save the world.

  She grinned to herself. Her happy vagina was sore and she had a love bite on her hip, which meant, it had been a nice evening with Ed yesterday. At the parking garage, she basically bailed out the Mustang, using her credit card, noticing the rumbling of the engine was a bit quieter. That was too bad. The tailpipe adapters weren’t exactly perfect, she thought. They required effort and they muffled the sounds of a muscle car. But, on the other hand, she was going to drive a big muscle car to Washington, to one Franklin Square, where she had an appointment that gave her butterflies in her stomach, every time she thought about it. And she wasn’t going to put any CO2 into the atmosphere. That counted for a lot.

  She thanked the attendant and got into the luxurious, racy interior. She took her time, getting her tunes set and making sure she had everything she needed. Then she was off.

  The ride down to Washington, DC felt like freedom and adventure, power and possibility. She flew down the Jersey turnpike. Keeping pace with the traffic was exhilarating after the stop and go of Manhattan. It was as if, all the people in the state of New Jersey had agreed, to disagree with the speed limit. As she crossed the Delaware Memorial Bridge, the sun was fully up, the waters of the Delaware sparkling beneath the blue-gray span of the bridge. Baltimore called to her and she wanted to get off the road and explore, but there was no time. Crab cakes for lunch and going to Little Italy for dessert would have been divine, but no. She promised herself s
he could come here with Edward later, maybe see the Mets play the Orioles the next time the rotation came up. Just before the tangle of highways outside the nation’s capital, she pulled into a rest area, freshened her makeup and changed into her heels. Back in the car, and then, she was there, in Washington, DC. She had to make this trip quick and she had to make it count. About a block from her destination, she pulled to the side and made a call.

  “I’m here, Brian,” she said. “Is the spot we agreed to open?”

  “Yeah, I got an intern sitting in it now,” he replied. Her insides did a happy dance. He was her favorite tech reporter for the Washington Post. She’d had to use her father’s name to connect with him, and she was pretty sure, by now he knew her real claim to fame. It should be a great story for him and it was going to be a mind-blowing interview for her.

  “OK then, here I come,” she said. She was about to hang up when she heard him start to speak again.

  “Um, Dorothy? You’re Baby Dot, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, I am,” she said smiling to herself. “You’re getting a story and a half.” Grinning widely now, she hung up. The Mustang growled and celebrated with her as she pulled out into traffic, the clicking of the blinker as she turned, like a countdown to showtime. She rounded the corner, waving her arm out the window of the car and a silver compact car pulled away from the curb. She eased into the spot, put the car in park, gunned the engine and then shut ’er down. Here went nothing.

  Brian was coming out of the brass and glass cross-sectioned doors below the iconic lettering that read The Washington Post. Her heart thumped. She got out of the car, knowing her body conscious silver and black dress looked fantastic against the red car. She had on sky-high, fire-engine red heels that were to die for. Horns blew on the street behind her as she worked her way around the car and over to the reporter.