She was referring to Dan Callahan’s friend, Mark Davenport, an account executive who had been transferred from the London office about a month ago, and who had been assigned that very morning to the project.
“Me?” pleaded Mark.
“You are perfect for this,” Bonnie said. “You have a British accent, which is most appropriate for this project.” Mark was new to the office, but he already knew that there was no point in trying to argue with Bonnie.
“B will write it all for you,” Bonnie offered without even looking at me.
“It’s written already, Mark. If you want, I’ll sit down with you after the meeting to go through it,” I said.
“Thanks.” Mark smiled at me.
After working with Mark, I left the office early to stop by the video store and prepare myself to meet Simon for our last night together. I picked another Fellini movie from the “Chubby Chasers” shelf: Amarcord.
I went home, threw on a miniskirt, a light sweater, and a pair of knee-high boots, and went downstairs to find Alberto waiting for me.
I have to confess that the film we saw that night was so good I almost forgot that I was with Simon. That night I rediscovered the joy of watching movies that move you, and change you, and make you understand things. I’m not trying to come across all intellectual and artsy-fartsy. It’s not like now I only like foreign films with subtitles—as a matter of fact, Clueless is still one of my favorite flicks. But I finally understood the trick with foreign movies; you have to ease into them. You have to assume that there’s stuff that you are not going to understand and let go of it. Think of the people in Bombay watching something like Booty Call. You think they get all the jokes? Of course not. For them it is as much of a foreign film as any Japanese movie is foreign to us.
But back to Simon and Fellini. Amarcord is about this little town in Italy where all the schoolboys are always lusting after the older women around them. Now, the beauty of this movie is that all those ladies are gorgeous…and fat. You see them walking up and down the street of their tiny town with their voluptuous curves swinging from left to right, like Grandpa’s old pendulum clock.
And—not to sound conceited—almost every woman in that movie looked a little like me. There was the Gradisca, who had a tiny waist and an extensive ass. There was the tobacconist, whose boobs were so enormous that they could easily suffocate a lover. These women didn’t hide their curves with blazers or tunics: they walked around wearing skin-tight sweaters and short skirts, showing off their bodies with pride, as if there was no one in the world more attractive than they.
The more I saw of the movie, the better I felt about my body. To think that a smart guy like Federico Fellini saw beauty in a big ass, or a gigantic pair of boobs, made me proud of my size, and that doesn’t usually happen when I see movies starring Jennifer Aniston.
As I saw Gradisca prancing around on the screen, I fully understood what Madame told me on the first night: “It’s not what you have, it’s how you feel about it.”
Maybe I was getting more comfortable in my own skin, or maybe Simon was getting to know me and letting down his guard, but, little by little, we ended up leaning very comfortably on each other. It happened naturally, I swear to God that I wasn’t planning to make a move on him or anything. We were so close to each other that it simply made sense to intertwine our limbs a little. To make a long story short, by the time we got to the sad part of the movie, Simon was holding my hand.
I must have some unresolved issues with my mom, because, ever since I was a little girl, seeing a mother dying in a movie—even in Bambi—makes me cry uncontrollably. In Amarcord there’s a death of a mother, and, as expected, I started silently weeping. What I did not expect was Simon’s reaction. Out of the corner of my eye I caught him wiping a tear off his face.
I like manly men, but I also like a guy who’s man enough to allow himself to drop a tear when it’s necessary. It takes a lot of courage to let your feelings show.
When I met Simon I never imagined that he could be that kind of guy, and I’m not embarrassed to admit that I was wrong. It takes time to get to know somebody, and if I had dismissed him on that first night, I would have never been able to witness this side of him.
I’ve been to a bunch of singles events in New York where you sit with a stranger for a couple of minutes to talk about yourselves, and then a bell rings and the guy leaves and a new one comes in. I’m not saying that you should court someone for years before you decide to take the plunge, but for me, fast dating is like fast food: it doesn’t fill me up.
Women go through men, and men go through women, as if we were going through shoes: too high, too low, too tight, too loose, too white, too dark. We’re not taking the time to get to know anybody.
Simon was not my physical ideal, but that single tear he shed watching that scene said more about him as a person than a thousand words, than a million personal ads, than a gazillion profiles on the Internet.
As the movie ended, we relaxed more and more, and our breathing became one. I can’t remember when we fell asleep, but I know that it was smooth and peaceful. In less than twelve hours I was having the big meeting with the whole marketing team, Bonnie the bitch, and the Chicago Boss, but nothing else seemed important to me that night. I felt for the first time in a long time that I was living in the present. And being in the present made me realize that I was falling in love.
That Friday morning, when we woke up, I could tell that he felt no shame anymore when I found his arm around my shoulders. I looked at him and smiled, and he smiled back. As I was looking for the words to tell him thanks, or you’re welcome—or whatever you say to bid farewell to someone who paid you an insane amount of money for sitting next to him for five nights in a row—he took an initiative that swept me off my feet.
“Would you like to come back tonight and watch another movie?”
“Sure,” I said. But I actually wanted to hug him and scream, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
My passion horse was running out of control.
CHAPTER 24
That Friday morning, I went home tired but walking on air. I took my shower, applied my makeup carefully and lovingly, and started the complicated process of choosing what to wear for the big meeting with the Chicago Boss.
“Should I wear something simple—something to blend in—or should I dress up like a vamp and steal the spotlight?” I asked myself.
Blending in would be safe. No one would notice me, I would sit, take notes, and before I knew it the meeting would be over. On the other hand, I could wear something sexy and fabulous, be acknowledged, and piss Bonnie off. It was a tough decision.
I instinctively reached out for one of those boring pantsuits that I’ve been wearing for the last three years. The cut was conservative, the colors were muted, it was the perfect outfit to pass unnoticed. But when I saw myself in the mirror wearing that stupid suit, I felt disgusted. I felt that I was betraying myself.
“Who am I kidding? I don’t have a muted personality. Why the hell do I have to wear muted colors?” I concluded. “Fuck that,” I said, and I went back to the closet and picked the coolest outfit I could come up with. Once you taste freedom, there’s no way you can ever go back into slavery.
I arrived at the office fashionably late, and as I entered the big conference room I got a few compliments on my appearance from some of the girls in Media Research.
“I absolutely love that dress,” said Caroline Connors.
“Thanks!”
I wore a red vintage-looking dress with a sweeping skirt and shaped bodice that made me look like an ample Grace Kelly on the way to a 1950s Hollywood party. To top it off, I accessorized it with a rather excessive necklace made of Swarovski crystals that trickled playfully between my boobs. Let’s face it, I have great breasts, and now that I’m proud of them, why not show the road to paradise with a long path of shiny stones?
I combed my hair back, but left the natural curl in, so I had a big head of hair over my
shoulders. I’m telling you, hair alone, I was traffic-stopping. I did wear my glasses, though, to add a little intellectual flair to my look, but even with them I was a knockout.
At the office, all the departments had gathered to present and discuss the creative and marketing ideas to the big man on campus. I sat with my notebook ready to take notes that I would transcribe and distribute afterward. Yeah, I have a B.F.A., and a master’s in communication arts, but my life had been reduced to taking notes in meetings. Welcome to corporate America.
The Chicago Boss was sitting at the end of the table, and Bonnie—being the ass-kissing snake that she is—squeezed herself in at his side. If he said yes, she would nod; if he said no, she would shake her head. It looked like a ventriloquist act. The purpose was to convince us all that she had the Chicago Boss by the balls, but anyone who can read body language could see that the Boss was vaguely annoyed by having her next to him at the narrow end of the table, and—knowing what I knew—that made the whole scene more repulsive and amusing for me.
Group after group, the plans were laid out in front of him.
“We’ve planned six cities—New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, and Seattle. We’re talking billboards, bus stops, phone booths, even phone cards!”
“Tampons on phone cards?” asked the Chicago Boss with a frown.
“Of course!” said Larry from Media Planning. “The average age of the phone-card user is?—”
“Phone cards?” the Chicago Boss asked again. He had a very subtle way of letting you know when he wasn’t crazy about something. I personally thought that the phone cards were a bit excessive too. You see, great minds think alike.
Finally came our turn to pitch the slogans. “Go ahead, Mark, blow us away,” said Bonnie, trying to distance herself from our presentation.
“We’ve come up with a very exciting and eclectic list of possible slogans,” Mark said.
Bullshit. We came up with a few lame lines that were downgraded to “pathetic” by Bonnie.
Poor Mark leaned over the computer, controlling the sad PowerPoint document that was being projected on the wall.
“…and the last one: ‘UK Charms…to the rescue!’” Mark finished.
The Chicago Boss remained silent through the whole presentation. Then he spoke.
“To the rescue? Is that your grand finale?”
Mark stood there frozen.
The Chicago Boss took his glasses off and covered his eyes for a second.
“There’s nothing here,” he told us somberly. “We are trying to attract young girls. Come on! The product is fun, sexy, new! This is not your mother’s tampon! You don’t sell tampons to girls and old ladies with the same language,” he said. “You gotta give me something to work with, guys!”
This came as no surprise to me. Our original ideas were nothing to write home about, but anything decent that we came up with had been carefully destroyed by Bonnie. Acting as if she were fixing our lousy work, she mangled all the concepts, turning funny into boring, and surprising into predictable.
“You gotta give me something to work with, guys! This is the backbone of the campaign,” he pleaded.
But nobody said anything, because we all knew that opening our mouths meant getting instantly fired by Bonnie. She didn’t allow any cracks in her power structure. That is the problem with many of these big companies: they have turned into royal courts where your boss is the undisputed king. You can see these bureaucrats single-handedly sinking the business, but nobody can do anything about it. The hierarchy is so rigid that they are untouchable, unapproachable, unquestionable. If the company goes down, then everybody praises the whistle blower, but try to blow the whistle to stop the company from sinking and you’ll get fired in a New York second. Isn’t that insane? And if you happen to have your retirement invested in stock from that company, then you’re double-screwed.
The Chicago Boss was huffing and puffing. Bonnie sat there completely undaunted, watching her plan come to fruition. She couldn’t imagine that I had an ace up my sleeve.
“All these slogans are crap,” said the Chicago Boss. “They’re not smart, they’re not direct, and they are not funny. We need to put ourselves in the shoes of our demographic and say, how would a fourteen-to-twenty-four-year-old girl describe the product in a short and direct way? We have to come up with that: something simple, easy, organic. One line, give me one line,” he begged, surrounded by the most solemn corporate silence.
I waited patiently for the right moment to drop the bomb.
“We need a line that is fun, irreverent, and direct. One line that says ‘tampons,’ that says ‘England,’ that says ‘quality,’ and that screams ‘young.’”
No one said a word.
“One line, please!” he asked one more time as he collapsed on his chair, putting his hands on his face in deep frustration.
Finally, my voice bounced against the walls.
“Bloody awesome.”
Everybody turned to look at me as if I had gone nuts.
“What?” the Chicago Boss jumped in.
“Bloody awesome,” I proudly repeated.
“Who said that?” asked the Chicago Boss.
Bonnie extended her bony finger in my direction.
“She did,” barked the harpy, hoping that I would be publicly scolded.
Knowing that I was in the spotlight, I automatically straightened my back, relaxed my shoulders, and assumed the beautiful pose that Madame had taught me. If everybody was going to stare at me, they should see me at my best—I thought—so I lifted my head proudly, as if they were about to cut it off in the French guillotine.
The Chicago Boss looked at me with his mouth open.
I looked back at him and repeated myself one last time: “UK Charms…Bloody Awesome.”
Then the Chicago Boss leaned over the table toward me, his eyes fixed on mine. Everybody held their breath, there was a tense silence, and finally he said the two most beautiful words I have ever heard in my whole professional career:
“Fucking brilliant!”
The Chicago Boss started clapping; everybody else started clapping. Even Bonnie was clapping—she was pissed but clapping. Ha! To make matters worse—or better—my red cell phone started vibrating, and in the process it started sliding right between my boobs.
“Sorry, it’s an important phone call,” I said, digging deep into my cleavage to rescue my cell. Everybody laughed, and I left the room while bowing at the adoring crowd.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” I said, leaving my fans waiting for more, as I closed the door behind me.
I walked outside the conference room and answered the phone.
“B?”
“Yes, Madame?”
“I got a frantic phone call from Richard Weber. He needs you there tonight at…”
“Wait, wait. I have plans. I’m seeing Simon tonight,” I confessed.
“Aren’t you done with Simon? We agreed on five nights—Sunday through Thursday.”
“Well, he asked me to stop by tonight to watch a movie. I guess I should have told you.”
There was a short silence, and finally the Madame spoke.
“Were you keeping this a secret?” she asked suspiciously.
“It came out of nowhere. I didn’t like the guy at all, remember? I swear I didn’t plan this! I didn’t even find him attractive to begin with!” I bit my tongue.
“It’s not a crime if you liked him all along. I’m just curious, because so many people say that they hate something and then go running after it.”
I didn’t want to argue. Like Madame, I didn’t have time for this so I cut to the chase. “Is it okay to have a date with a client or not?”
“Of course it’s okay, but…are you sure that it’s a date?”
“Of course it’s a date! It’s a date—first—because he didn’t call you to book me, and—second and most important—because he and I really connected last night. We were holding hands!”
“Are you sure that you want to date this guy?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, convinced.
“Then do it. I want you to be happy,” she said.
Getting Madame’s blessing felt good. Everything was working exactly the way it should. I got a surge of energy and happiness, and I strutted my way back to a second round of applause in the conference room, which made me feel like one of those teenage girls that we were trying to sell tampons to: everything was “bloody awesome.”
But the day wasn’t over yet. As matter of fact, the best part of my day was only beginning.
CHAPTER 25
Right after the lunch break, I wasn’t surprised or scared when Mary popped her head into my cubicle.
“This is it, baby. Are you ready?” she told me, knowing that I knew exactly what she was referring to. Bonnie wanted to see me immediately, so it was time to pull out the big guns. I prepared myself and headed for Bonnie’s office.
I walked with my head high into her chamber of horrors.
“Good afternoon,” I said with a big smile.
She didn’t answer. She pretended to be busy looking at some papers, but I knew that it was just an act. She wanted to create tension, and have an excuse not to make eye contact with me, so later on she could use her Medusa eyes to turn me into a stone statue or something of that sort.
Regardless of her intentions, I sat down very comfortably in front of her; actually, I was almost disrespectfully comfortable. After a moment of calculated silence, she dropped the papers and looked me straight in the eye. I smiled again, defiant. She started her speech. “As you are well aware, the meeting that we had this morning was not a brainstorm. It was a presentation. I specifically asked you to schedule a brainstorm several days ago, for a good reason.”
I listened to her with my best puppy face, pretending that I was genuinely concerned and repentant.
“You have no authority to present ideas directly to the president of the company without getting previous clearance from me. I don’t need to explain that this qualifies as gross misconduct and it’s an immediate cause for dismissal that I will bring up personally with Human Resources, to issue an official warning.”
B as in Beauty Page 20
