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First published by beActive books in September 2014
Copyright © 2014 beActive books
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the author.
ISBN: 978-1-909547-04-9
ebook by ePubMATIC.com
CHAPTER ONE
It’s half seven in the morning, and already I can hear the metallic drone of traffic as the cabbies and the bus drivers surge and stall the first round of life into the city center. The sound of tires on wet asphalt seeps through the blackout shades like waves in the distance. I make a mental note: book cottage on east shore before summer rush, slide out of bed, and plop down on the floor. I tuck my feet under the nightstand, puff out twenty crunches and collapse back onto the rug.
Five more. One. Two. Okay, two. Two’s good.
The alarm bleeps, and I tap it off with a toe.
Brad rolls over with a groan and buries his platinum head under one of his three goosedown pillows.
‘Morning,’ I say in my best Scarlet drawl and swat at his dangling foot. Brad doesn’t do mornings. They’re bourgeois. He mumbles something into the pillow. ‘You’ve got that shoot today in Astoria,’ I call back to him from the bathroom. ‘Three snoozes. Max.’
In Brad’s not so humble opinion, anyone who bothers to get out of bed before ten is a ‘spaniel’. And to do it five days a week to hold up a desk? That is skirting on madness. Of course, Brad’s baseline for reality is a penthouse apartment in Soho, a string of private art colleges, and a very doting, very connected mommy. Where do you slot a sixty hour work week in there? Two vampish spreads in Vogue and he’s fashion’s ‘it’ boy. The fact seems almost to annoy him. He could’ve taken pictures of dog turds and been the next big thing (his words), but you should see the way he laps up the fandom of tweedy, ism-spouting types.
Last week, for instance, he towed me with him to another gala opening, the same coterie of art haus chicks trussed on all sides, nodding and chin rubbing at ten by ten shots of empty blue sky. I parked myself beside the hors d’oeuvres and tallied the backlog of spreadsheets on my smartphone. I know, I should have at least pretended to be interested this time, but I had a deadline. I didn’t have time to stand around schmoozing over the subtleties of cobalt and cerulean and ultramarine. It’s blue, alright?! Job done.
Unlike my prodigal boyfriend, I don’t possess the talent of making something out of nothing. I have to work at what I want, and I mean flat out eat, sleep, and breathe it. It’d be all too easy to resent Brad; but if I had three trust funds, honestly, I’d do a bit of lazing in bed too. By the way, I most definitely do not have a trust fund. What I do have is a chance of a lifetime junior post at Markham & Associates--the slickest ad firm in New York--and I’m this close to landing the promotion of my dreams. To say I’ve put in the long hours is beyond understatement. My best friend, Kate, says I’m starting to resemble Ozzy Osbourne (if someone dragged him through a car wash and then beat him with a stick). Seriously?! It’s not that bad. My eyes aren’t exactly ‘racooned’ black; and, okay, my skin is a touch on the pasty side, but that’s the look now, right?
Keep your shirt on, Kate, the long haul ends TODAY. Thank God. I’d never admit it, but I cannot wait until I’m finally in the boardroom pitching for the directorship. It’s been twelve-hour days for three months, and that’s straight through the weekends! I haven’t eaten a vegetable since Kate’s Christmas tofurkey, Brad’s communicating almost exclusively in a cryptic sort of text speak, and my dreams (when I can sleep) invariably feature me, a quarter of my actual size, dodging across my desk as my boss, Stuart Markham and my office nemesis, Roger Kline, and a long line of clients try to crush me with big black binders.
I pad down the hall in my slippers and heave a monster yawn at my smartphone. What’s on today’s to-do list?
Collate stats on late run samples.
Okay.
Deliver Down Home campaign to Stuart & Co.
Easy enough.
Snag directorship.
Hmm.
I halve a Murray’s bagel, pop it in the toaster, and grind two glorious cups’ worth of dark roast Costa Rican into my prehistoric drip machine. One of those flash enamel espresso makers--that is what I’ll splurge on with my first director’s pay check.
The caramel sweet smell percs into the air, and my stomach curdles. Should I be worried about today? I flick open the business section of the Times, same as every morning, and scan the least jargony bits of The Wall Street Journal, but my brain keeps jarring back to the office. According to water cooler gossip, I am first in line for the big time. I floored Stuart with my inaugural campaign, a groundbreaking mp4 hub for Brooklyn label Two Tone Records, and this latest campaign is a sure thing for international syndication. Last week, Kate shot me so many winks across the boardroom I thought she’d developed a tick, and then Tina, my already prone-to-fits-of-snorting assistant, can hardly keep a straight face when there’s even the slightest mention of ‘promotion’.
I’m over thinking. When Stuart calls the morning briefing to announce who’ll succeed the impeccable James Rice, it’ll be my name he calls out. To make it more or less official, I click open my iCalendar and check off the first empty slot: DREAM JOB.
That’s me one tick closer to bringing off the foolproof Five Year Plan I’ve been tweaking since my senior year at Columbia. When I was eighteen, my world was shattered by a side swiping semi. In a crushing flash, I lost both of my parents. All of the light went out of the world that day. Ever since I’ve been trying to sort a new life here in the city, and let me tell you, life doesn’t do freebies. If you want something, you’ve got to work for it, and I mean work. I’ve been flat out since graduation, and it’s finally paying dividends.
I scan down my iCalendar notes: High profile job? Check. Flat in Cobble Hill? Check. Adoring, sexpot boyfriend? Check. Could I be more on track to a white wedding, 2.5 kids, and a spot on the senior board? Not if I tried.
I yank the coffee pot off the burner and shoot my mug under the hissing stream (I’ve never been able to wait) and, with one eye on the Times, snatch open the pantry door. A horde of monochrome glamazons pout out at me from a haphazard web of twine, all of them wielding bizarre props in even more bizarre poses. I shriek and reel backwards, and my mug smashes on the floor.
‘Brad!’
There’s an indistinct ‘Mmmph’ from the bedroom.
‘What happened to you relocating Miss Thangs?’
No answer.
‘Uh huh,’ I sigh and reach past a very long pair of legs for the Nutella. A twinkling something catches my eye, and I reach a hand behind the Cheerios and snatch out a tiny, ribbon strung box. Genius hiding place, Brad. I so knew he was messing when he’d said he wasn’t getting me anything! I flip over the box and peel open the gold embossed card: ‘Happy Birthday, gorgeous. X, Brad.’
The blo
od in my chest swells and, with a hot sparking, shoots to the pit of my stomach. For half a second I think of tearing back into the bedroom, wrenching the covers back off of my sleepy headed Picasso, and celebrating early. I even kick a shoe off, but I can’t be late, not today. Everything has to be perfect. I have to be perfect. God, the last thing I need is to waltz into the boardroom wearing one of Brad’s signature hickeys. I snug the box back into its hiding place and flush at the thought of what might be tucked into that teensy package. How am I going to keep a straight face for an entire week?
I’d known Brad for approximately two minutes when the flag went up. Smooth, sexy, ridiculously talented…
‘This guy,’ I’d said to myself, ‘is trouble but very likely the best kind.’
I’d watched as he crouched and sighted, long sinewy arms holding the camera steady. He’d been covering a shoot for the agency for a mobile networking company with a bent on updating its image. The models--long-limbed boys with disarmingly feminine mouths, and girls with gaspworthy curves, and not one of them over twenty-two--simpered into the camera with equal adulation. What is it about a camera that turns people into complete idiots?
That would never be me. No way.
I remember smiling to myself, squaring my shoulders to the computer screen, safe and smug and fighting the urge to look up from my cubicle when the flashbulb crackled, and Brad, the soft spoken, six foot five, Lower East prodigy, was fixing on me with his wide barreled lens! I’d tried to duck out of the shot, but in that flashing second he had caught me, mouth slack and vulnerable, eyes lingering just enough to show the break of a smile. 1‘Yeah,’ it said. ‘I want you too.’
He sent the negative to the office in a well worn copy of Hemmingway’s A Moveable Feast. I wasn’t sure if he meant it as a compliment or a taunt. His number stared up at me from the back cover. I didn’t call. I’m a professional for God’s sake.
Two weeks later, the powers that be in the art department had Mr. Scholer back up on sixth in his vintage Levis and scuffed motorcycle boots, this time for a blue chip client. He’d clomped past my desk and stopped mid stride, even though he was a good twenty minutes late. I snuck a glance up at him before he turned on his heel. The seat of his jeans was loose hung, and his hair was a sandy, deliberate mess. He squatted beside the paper shredder and looked up at me, pupils broad and misty like an old dog’s.
‘Morning,’ he’d said, and instantly my stomach had knotted. I’d glanced down the corridor at the entourage of handlers waiting there, eyeing me, then Brad.
‘They’re waiting for you,’ I’d said and hard trained my eyes on the computer screen. I couldn’t see a thing save a blur of muddy light. Brad didn’t say anything; he just smiled, stood up, and went on down the hall.
Kate had poked her head over the top of the cubicle. She’d been listening in, jaw dropped and eyes bulging.
‘Oh my God,’ she’d said. ‘Where did that come from?!’
‘The south side,’ I’d laughed.
‘Well ye ha,’ she’d said and plunked back down in front of her computer.
When Brad was back the next day with the photograph--me, red faced and praying Tina (my assistant) would ring me into Stuart’s office on some sort of errand--Kate had cleared her throat demurely and sashayed to my side of the partition.
‘Her name’s Julie,’ she’d said to him and stuck out her hand. ‘And I’m Kate.’ Brad took her palm in his and half shook, half caressed it, his eyes locked on mine.
‘A pleasure,’ he’d said and handed me the photograph, sepia in a hand distressed frame, with a little nod that reminded me vaguely of an underfed John Wayne. I looked at myself, frozen there in miniature, the way the L-shaped shadow of the partition wall gave my face a soft angularity, the strange suggestion of boldness in my eyes. Was that really me?
Brad had tucked his thumbs into his waistband and scuffed the up pointed toe of his brogues on the carpet. ‘I know a place on tenth that does a half respectable foie gras,’ he’d said. ‘Come on and go with me.’
Ground up goose liver? No thanks.
I’d opened my mouth but nothing, not one syllable, made its way up and out of my throat. Kate had jutted an elbow into my back, and I’d let out a strangled yelp and tripped forward a step. Brad reached out and caught my forearm in one, self-sure motion that tripped off a rapid fire of questions in my head. Was this genuine, tip of the hat smooth, or was it a very (very) convincing show? I mean, French on the first date? Seriously? That’s a bit cliché for an art fiend. And what is with the hipster getup? This guy’s minted! And he’s got a good five years on me. Christ, did I shave last night?!
I’d let myself be led by the wrist, a vision of a waning Judy Garland in full Oz regalia crossing in front of me and then disappearing into the elevator. I am so not in Kansas anymore, I’d thought as I glanced over my shoulder at Kate, and she gave me a discreet thumbs up, the same gesture she’d flashed so many excruciating times when we were roommates at Columbia, and she’d insisted on setting me up with a long string of wingmen. Eventually, after five glorious courses at Chez Max and three more (avec whipped cream) at Brad’s penthouse apartment, we were officially ‘a thing’.
Brad wasn’t exactly part of The Plan. In fact, he was decidedly anti-plan. But there was something about the scattered, blood rushing, no strings attached way of his that I found sexy in a brash, teenage sort of way. He would catch me headed cross town, pull me into a shadowed corner of the underground, and kiss me until the gapers flushed and looked away. He’d come knocking late with a bottle of brandy and a pack of cigarillos, and we’d sit out on the balcony, toasting bold promises to each other in the nasally speak of Hollywood gangsters. I called in sick not once but twice to loll in bed naked and watch ‘professional’ Brad thumb through sheets of negatives.
It was in this heady ‘should I, shouldn’t I’ stage that I did the last thing a New Yorker does on the third date: I gave Brad a spare key. Yeah. Two months and kind of sort of living together? I know. What was I thinking?! Honest truth: I wasn’t. Apart from his very Googleable back story and his (not so Googleable) penchant for showergasms, I knew almost nothing about Brad. Yet, here I was, betting everything I had--and some things I didn’t--on the feeling that he was THE ONE.
If my Dad were alive, Jesus. He would’ve asked, point blank, what I was like carrying on with a ‘chancer’ like Brad.
‘His hair’s too bollixing long,’ he would say, ‘and he hasn’t a proper job!’
‘He’s an artist,’ Mum would’ve said in her gorgeous Aran Irish lilt. She would’ve loved Brad’s free-as-a-bird credo. And all those empty sky shots I’d pretended to fawn over? She would’ve ‘gotten’ those, for sure. ‘He draws beauty out of the world. That’s a rare gift!’ I can just hear her saying.
‘Beauty is it? All day with young ones, the lot of ’em parading around with their bits out? That is a rare gift,’ Dad would’ve grumbled in his flatter Galway accent.
Mum would’ve nudged him in the ribs, face lit up with an almost blushing smile. ‘Sure, didn’t they all say you weren’t good enough for me?’
‘She’s got that the wrong way round,’ Dad would’ve laughed, clasped a hand to Mum’s waist, and spun her to him.
‘And didn’t we get on like a house on fire?’ she’d have said.
Kate’s advice was succinct as usual. ‘If it feels good, do it,’ she’d said.
And Brad did feel good. I’m talking good enough to be worth the stomach in knots when he was (extra) late for dinner, or piecing together a nudey spread, or telling me, with that side cut mouth of his, that I was everything; he’d never felt like this before.
Sure, there are things I’d change if I could--the creepy Goya prints he’s strung around the living room, for starters--but those are only little things. Big picture: Brad brought a fullness into my life. With him, my dreams swelled outward and overwhelmed the fear, knocking around in my heart, of being abandoned again to the world. I try to imagine the pres
ent never ending, and myself in it as easy and trackless as Brad. Would it mean as much, loving someone, if you could slough off the fear of losing them? I don’t have a clue.
I fire a fresh round of coffee into the machine for Brad. Black coffee and clove cigarettes is all the man wants before two. I check the clock. Quarter after. I can take a cheeky twelve minute shower and still have heaps of time to get dressed, twist front to back in the hall mirror, and change into something completely different. Twice.
I glide back into the bedroom, swing open the closet doors, and thumb through all three of my designer (consignment) dresses. I pull out the black dupioni, hold it to my chin, and march to the bathroom mirror. Kate says Hepburn (Katherine, not Audrey) couldn’t have worn it better. I wouldn’t go quite that far, but as I wiggle the zip up my back and take a look at myself, I can’t help but feel a rising air of glamour. If there was ever a day I needed to look the business, today was it.
I take a deep breath, and it hitches in the back of my throat. When the directorship’s mine, I’ll finally be able to relax into myself. No more second-guessing my own executive decisions, no more impostor syndrome. It’ll be my name stencilled on the door of the breezy corner office. I’ll stride in and take my place behind the desk, believing 99.9% in who I am because who I am will suddenly matter more--a lot more and to a lot more people.
My insight would be the undergirding of M&A, and no one, not even the smooth-talking Roger Kline, could out-write my copy or out-heart my concepts. I don’t tell many people this, (like no one but Kate) but I’ve discovered the deceptively simple secret to advertising. First and foremost, forget about what you’re selling. It doesn’t matter. The thing itself is only incidental. What’s for sale is the desire for the thing. The Madison Ave. boys got very rich making desirable something that wasn’t necessarily needful. The post-war housewife didn’t need the microwave oven. She had a perfectly good stove. But she wanted the microwave oven. She bought it, she mooned over it, and she carried on slaving over the stove.
Made With Love: I Love You Forever Page 1
