Advanced Mythology

by Jody Lynn Nye

  “Good to see you. C’mon back. Coffee?” He led Keith through the door into an elegant suite of rooms. “Becky was saying just the other day she wondered what had become of you.”

  “Same as Marcy. Finished my bachelor’s degree. I’m in grad school now.”

  “Cool,” Mr. Collier said, gesturing Keith to a chair. “So, what can I do for you?”

  Keith glanced around, trying to figure out just where to begin.

  It was a handsome office, suitable for a partner of the firm. There were signs of money around the room, but very little wood. Almost all chrome, leather, and black melamine. Keith found it cold. He felt like blurting out that his prospective son-in-law could go a long way toward improving his office furniture, but that would impede Marcy’s chances of happiness, not improve them.

  “Have you seen Marcy lately?” Mr. Collier asked.

  “Well, yes,” Keith said. “Just the other day. In fact, she’s why I’m here.”

  Mr. Collier raised his eyebrows, looking hopeful.

  “You know she’s living down on Hollow Tree Farm,” Keith began. “She’s really happy there.”

  “We haven’t seen a lot of her in the last couple of months,” Mr. Collier said, reproachfully. “Her mother and I were wondering why.”

  “Well, she’s been a little shy about facing you,” Keith said.

  “Oh, not us! We’re her parents. We love her.”

  “I know,” Keith replied. “You see, she’s been seeing this guy. Well, he’s a good guy, but he’s not what you’d call the usual kind of person. She wants you to meet him, but she’s not sure how … she wants to make sure you like each other.” Keith cleared his throat. Better start over. “I don’t know whether she’s mentioned it a lot, but she’s really interested in getting married. Soon. What she wants more than anything else is to get your blessing, yours and Mrs. Collier’s. It’s really important to her.”

  Alan Collier eyed him askance. “She’s not … pregnant, is she?”

  “No! I mean, I don’t think so. I think they’re waiting. She’s really serious. I mean, Marcy and Enoch.”

  “Are you sure you’re not here on your own behalf, Keith?” Mr. Collier asked, with a “between-us-guys” kidding expression. “Marcy used to talk about you a lot.”

  “No, sir. Not for myself. I’m committed. I mean, I’ve got a girlfriend. Very serious.”

  “I think there’s still a spark of something there,” Mr. Collier pressed. “You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t still fond of my daughter.”

  “I did have a crush on her,” Keith admitted, “but I don’t any more.”

  “You were stuck on her for a long time during your sophomore year. Long enough for it to turn into real romance?” Mr. Collier asked.

  “No, sir,” Keith insisted, puzzled as to the direction the conversation was going. It was as though Mr. Collier wasn’t hearing what he was saying. “We both grew out of it. We have someone else. Each. Marcy’s more like one of my sisters. I’ve got three. It’s Enoch she’s interested in.” This wasn’t going well. The more he talked, the more Mr. Collier looked convinced Keith was thinking the opposite of what he was saying. Keith was just making it worse by trying. He’d better get out of there before the man got the idea he really was there to make a bid for Marcy’s hand. “I’m sorry, sir. I’d better go.”

  “Come anytime,” Mr. Collier said, genially, standing up. “You’re just like one of the family.”

  He can’t face it, Keith realized, hurrying down the street in hopes of catching a bus. Now I know what Marcy’s been up against. It’s like I’m just knocking on the door. He’s not letting me in. I’ll have to try again.

  Keith looked at his watch. He’d better get moving. It was a long way back to PDQ.

  * * *

  “I want this to be big, really big,” Doug Constance said, leaning forward conspiratorially. Keith and the others, Dorothy, Paul, Janine, and Rollin sat poised around the conference table in the largest boardroom at PDQ. Pinned to the felt boards around the room were photos and schematics of the Origami in dozens of different configurations. Inspiration, Keith thought. “We have a chance to change people’s perceptions about communication and productivity. One-unit offices are the wave of the future. One-unit computer systems keep all your data in one place, one very portable place. One-unit entertainment systems will give you an endless range of options for movies, games, music—and they’re all the same unit. We save space. We save resources. Brainstorm on it. Not you, J. Pierpont Finch,” he said, as Keith sat up with his mouth open. “Let’s hear some other ideas before you blow us away.”

  Keith let his mouth close. This was the second major strategy meeting on the Origami. Now that they had conditionally won the account, it was up to them to prepare what Dorothy called “the dog-and-pony show.” The president of the company had gone back to his corner office, leaving the rank-and-file to hash out the details of the account.

  “What are we selling here?” Janine asked. “The convenience? Every PDA is convenient.”

  “This is more than a PDA,” Paul said. “It’s a handheld computer.”

  “That takes too long to say.” Doug waved a hand. “Do enough people know the difference? I know I don’t.”

  “Let’s assume the person on the street will find out. Let’s just tell them what it is,” Janine said.

  “I think we ought to concentrate on the battery life,” Rollin said. He and Janine were a team, having worked together for the last couple of years. Keith envied them their chemistry, their easy give and take. “That’s miraculous, twenty hours. My laptop poops out in three.”

  “Yeah, but my cell phone lasts for more than three days,” Paul said.

  “With this you don’t sell a battery,” Janine argued sharply. “It’s a machine. What it is. How long it lasts is gravy, not a selling point.”

  “Oh, yes it is,” Rollin said, with an exasperated look at his partner. “What good is it if it’s out of gas?”

  “How about the combined features?” Keith offered. “Being able to record music off the air and dub it into videos…?”

  “Is anyone but techno-geeks going to like that?” Doug asked.

  “Man, these days everyone is a techno-geek,” Rollin said. “Start a conversation in a bus terminal, and homeless people start coming up to you with their cell phones.”

  “Is it universality or exclusivity we’re trying to promote?” Dorothy asked.

  Rollin grimaced. “You know most people will end up using it to play solitaire.”

  Paul laughed. “A truth, but an ugly truth. Do we make use of it?”

  “How about an ad with the cards all jumping out to become features of the machine?” Janine asked.

  “I think that would get really confused, visually,” Dorothy said.

  “Don’t make it look like gambling,” Rollin said. “Bad connotation.”

  “All right, folks, this is what we’ve got from the big boys,” Doug said, holding up a sheaf of documents. “We’re going to take this a step at a time. Two television commercials, one for now, one for the holidays, to run in 10-second, 30-second, and 60-second blocks. A billboard. Full-page ad for the glossies. Newspaper ad, to run in full-page in the tabloids and half-page in the full-sheets. They’ve got a company up the street working on the design for the box, but we’re providing the wrap.”

  Doug started leafing through the briefs. “Janine and Rollin, you did some really good work on the Daiyenu Play System. You can do that. This is for the big time, remember. Gadfly can still decide they don’t want us for media ads, even after we spend a million dollars for them.” The team nodded. He turned over the next sheet of paper in the stack. “Billboard. Outdoor displays, worldwide …” He looked at Keith, then put it on the bottom of the stack, shaking his head.

  “We’ll take that,” Janine said at once, holding out her hand. “I’ve got some great ideas.”

  “Uhh …” Doug said. “Maybe we’ll work on this one closer
to the end of the rotation. You work on the TV ads first. We’ll need the lead time for post-production.”

  Keith was getting more nervous by the moment. So far, Doug hadn’t offered him an assignment. He could understand the executive’s reluctance to trust thousands of dollars and the account to the hands of an inexperienced part-timer. He knew Doug considered his outburst on the product name a fluke.

  Keith smiled absently at the intern who brought around everyone’s order from the coffee shop. He peeled off the lid and glanced into the murky pool. The cappuccino was too dark to have been made with a single espresso. Keith hated bitter coffee. He took a handful of sugar packets out of the box on the table, shook them down, and tore all the corners off at once, keeping his eyes on Doug, willing him to hand over a brief. He stirred the sugar into the coffee, took a big swig, and nearly spat it out across the table. The intern had already sugared it for him. Not wanting to make a fuss, Keith drank the syrupy brew.

  The jitters came on gradually but with the force of a slowly charging rhino. Before he knew it he was getting dirty looks from the others for tapping his pencil on the table. He put the pencil away, but then he didn’t know what to do with his hands. He found himself playing with a rolled-up napkin, shredding it into strands and twisting them around. Dorothy gave him an odd glance. He looked down between his hands, and discovered it was turning into a miniature cable-knit sweater. It had the mark of glamour on it, meaning he’d been using magic without thinking about it. Enoch would have given him an A in miniature magical macramé and told him not to do it in public.

  “I used to be dynamite at construction-paper snowflakes,” he said, tossing the scrap of paper aside. He put his hands under his thighs and sat on them.

  “And we’ve got a full-page ad here for the executive journals: financials, airline magazines, Newsweek, WSJ. Something classy and understated …” The pent-up energy just exploded in Keith. He had to move or self-destruct.

  “I’ll take that one,” he said, springing to his feet. “I’ve got an idea.” Everyone looked at him. He sat down.

  “Okay, Keith,” Doug said, surprised, handing over the paper. “All right. Let’s come in later and talk about it some more. There’s a dozen other briefs pending. We need to get the vital ones out of the way now.”

  “I’ll take Keith for a while,” Dorothy said, grabbing him by the shoulder. “Should we meet back here about four? We ought to be able to hash out some initial ideas before quitting time.”

  The others nodded, leaning together to look over their data sheets. Dorothy held onto Keith’s arm and marched him out of the room. He smiled over his shoulder at the others. His hands were shaking. He took a couple of deep breaths before Dorothy swung in front of him and shook a finger under his nose.

  “What was with you in there?” Dorothy asked on the way out. “You were more hyper than ever.”

  “Double caffeine and eight sugars,” Keith said. “Next time I’ll taste it first, I swear.”

  “God, I bet your mama had to keep you on a leash as a kid.”

  “Nope,” Keith grinned. “We had a fenced-in yard.”

  “Well, come on before Doug comes out here and takes that back.”

  * * *

  Keith followed Dorothy into her small office. She closed the door behind them and waved him to a chair by the window. The high-ceilinged room had a non-insulated brick wall suggesting that the building had originally been a factory or a warehouse. The rest of the office was furniture-mart modern, complete to the melamine storage units, all of which were stuffed and overstuffed with sample books, binders and sourcebooks. Jammed along the wall were a desk and a drawing table. Under the window was a small table piled high with papers and books. Framed on the wall along the top molding were copies of newspaper and magazine advertisements. Keith guessed by the style that they were her work.

  “We’ll have to find you a cubicle,” Dorothy said, standing with her hands on her hips, looking around. “It’s an office, but it’s too small to swing a cat. I don’t usually have a permanently assigned creative partner like Rollin and Janine, so they’re not wasting any extra space on me. I can find you a desk, or you can take that little table by the window.”

  “I’m happy to be anywhere,” Keith assured her. “The table’s fine.”

  “Uh-huh,” Dorothy said, with a summing-up look, as she swept sample books off its surface and put them in a heap next to her desk. “We’ll see how you feel later on when we’re bumping elbows. We’ll see how I feel. I may want to throw you to the wolves or stick you in the fire-escape stairwell.” She sat down and waved him to the other chair. “So what’s your great idea?”

  Keith held out the creative brief. “This is for the airline magazines, right?”

  “And Newsweek, and fifty other glossies.”

  “Yeah, but we can do something dynamic with the Origami for travelers. How about just a really simple headline: ‘Ready to take off when you are.’ We could make it look like it’s about to take flight.”

  Dorothy’s eyebrows went up and she reached for her drawing pad. “I like it. Yeah. You know, I looked up a book on origami after the first meeting. It’s around here somewhere.” She and Keith bent down to sort through the books on the floor. “Yeah. Here it is. There’s one classic design that’s supposed to be lucky.” She paged through until she came to a pinched figure with bent points coming off it at several angles. “It’s the crane, the symbol of long life. The legend is that if you fold a thousand cranes your wish will come true.”

  Keith’s eyes danced. “That’s great. It pulls in a feeling of magic. That would be good.”

  “If we don’t say the word ‘magic,’” Dorothy said, shaking her head warningly. “You would not believe what things are taboo. You can have people with tattoos selling brokerage accounts, but the second you bring in the pixie dust, you’re toast.”

  “Too bad,” Keith said, waggling his eyebrows. “Magic is my middle name. Well, one of them. I like the idea of the crane, though.” He scooted his chair closer as Dorothy started sketching. “Can you make the Origami look like the origami? The keyboard looks like a pair of wings, but the head and neck would be too wide.”

  “I think I can do it,” Dorothy said slowly, concentrating as she worked. “Oh, yes, look at that. If we change the perspective, tilt it a little and give it a backlight, they’ll see the outline as much as the screen part. Yes, I like that. Here, what do you think?”

  “That’s terrific. You really can draw! You said a thousand cranes,” he added speculatively after a moment. “What about having one in the middle, and 999 others fading off into the distance?”

  “No, little boy. If you really want to draw the eye, you don’t want more than three main elements in your design. Any more than that, you lose focus.”

  “Well, there’s only one product,” Keith reasoned. “They’d be all the same element.”

  “Yes, but you want the name and the company as well. You don’t want those surrounded by clutter. But make it clear by emphasis and placement what you want them to look at first. That would be the unit itself.”

  “Make sure the screen shows,” Keith said, scooting his chair over so he could see better.

  “I know, I know. Don’t bother the lady while she’s working.”

  “Wow, that’s great,” he exclaimed, as she changed the whole perspective with a few penciled lines. “Yeah, it just jumps out at you, doesn’t it? That’s just right.”

  Dorothy glanced at him. “That’s what I think, too. No argument?”

  “None at all,” Keith assured her. “It’s terrific. It works just like you said it would.”

  “It all started from your headline,” Dorothy acknowledged. “This is screwy. We’re just too compatible.” She raised her chin defiantly. “This is just ’cause I knew you from before.”

  “Maybe,” Keith said carefully, not wanting to read too much into the moment, “maybe we just think alike.”

  “Wouldn’t that
be weird,” Dorothy said, dropping back in her chair and looking Keith square in the eye, “if it turned out that we were thrown together over a year ago because we were meant to work together? I mean, we had some mojo going back then, when we were coming up with fake ads for Paul, but this is just falling together, bang-bang-bang.”

  “Is that why you called me?”

  “No,” Dorothy said, going back to the sketch. “I told you, Gadfly came across so weird at the first meeting with the top bananas that I wanted someone with a different perspective sitting in on the creative pitch. You always came up with the strangest things, at the drop of a hat. I thought they were going to ask for the usual dog-and-pony show, like a lot of the big accounts do. I had no idea that their idea of an audition was to name the product. I struck lucky there, too. They could just have easily taken a walk over to a different house. Every agency in Chicago was ready to pitch them. Tech companies are big, big money. I remembered that you had a creative mind, and you were easy to work with. Seems I was right.” She shot a quick glance at him. “It’s too much to hope that I was sensing the copywriter I’m going to be paired with for my whole creative life. You know, there’s some legendary teams out there. But that would be too scary.”

  “I don’t know why,” Keith said. “I believe in magic, so seeing the future’s not that far out of range.”

  “Now, don’t you go talking like that and scaring the customer,” Dorothy scolded him, rapping him on the wrist with the pencil.

  “It’ll just be between you and me,” Keith assured her. He leaned closer to see what she was doing. “I think the image ought to be higher up on the page.”

  “I was just moving it!” Dorothy exclaimed. “Hmm … I think … just slightly above center line. Yes.”

  “That’s it!” Keith said excitedly. “Sorry, I know the art’s your department, but where it is right now, your eye has to go to it.” He piled junk on the layout page around her drawing. “See? It’s still the first thing you see.”

  “I know, little boy, I know. Let Mama work, okay?”