When she’d called Mr. Guelli last fall, she didn’t have the first clue what an advertising specialties company was. Some kind of advertising had been her one and only (and lame) guess. She was half right. Logo Promo was a new business that did exactly what its name implied: It promoted companies’ logos. A business opening a new location might want to give something out with their name on it, a pen or key chain or calendar. If a company had a crew that did business off-site, landscaping or house painting maybe, it might want imprinted shirts, or something that showed passersby exactly who was doing the work. If an office sponsored an event, it was good publicity to advertise by giving away a mug or a water bottle or decorating with imprinted balloons. Logo Promo had connections around the country with suppliers who specialized in making all those items. LP’s salespeople acted as middlemen and placed orders with the suppliers for the products that would then ship to their clients. A pretty simple system, but a surprisingly successful one. Angie was astonished by how many companies used advertising specialties—“trinkets and trash” as they called it.
The gentle ping of the door alarm sounded, and Angie looked up to see Gary, the mailman.
“Morning, Angie,” he said in his always cheerful tone. He placed a rubber-banded stack on her desk.
“Thank you, Gary.”
“Beautiful day out there.”
“You’d say that if it was a blizzard,” Angie chuckled at him.
“You’re right. I think being alive is better than the alternative, so I’m going to enjoy every single day, rain or shine.” Two knocks on her desk and then a wave. “See you tomorrow.” He smiled a greeting to a tiny woman he passed in the doorway, and was gone.
“I think he’s a robot,” Hope Maynard commented to Angie on her way past the front desk. “Nobody is that cheerful all the time.” Hope was the only woman on the sales staff at Logo Promo. At just over five feet tall, she probably weighed in at a hundred pounds, soaking wet. She worked hard and played harder, and she and Angie had become instant friends.
Forty-five minutes filled with phone calls and copies went by before Angie had a chance to get to the stack of mail. Half of it consisted of supplier catalogs and she separated those out for sorting later. The rest would be invoices and—hopefully—checks. With her letter opener (emblazoned with the blue-and-white Logo Promo logo), she zipped open the mail piece by piece and divided it into piles. The last envelope in the stack was a little bit thicker than the average invoice, and once Angie opened it, her mind began to race. She spread the textured parchment paper out on her desk and read through the cover letter a second, a third time.
It was attached to a resume.
More than that, it was attached to a résumé from a person she knew, Chris Avanti, a boy from her high school, somebody who’d been just a year behind her.
In any normal situation, she’d feel bad for opening mail that wasn’t addressed to her. But in cases here at work, unless something was marked Personal and Confidential, she opened all of it. That was part of her job; it was literally in her job description. This résumé had been addressed to Mr. Guelli, yet here it sat, on her desk, making her rethink her position at the company.
When she’d started at Logo Promo almost six months ago, it was going to be temporary. Of course, she’d never said as much to the person hiring her, but that was her plan. Take this receptionist post and make a little money. When something better—something more in tune with my degree—comes along, I’ll take it. A genuine interest in the business wasn’t something she’d expected. A tiny desire to manage a business began to form, something she’d never entertained before in her life, and that had been unexpected.
And now this. This résumé.
She looked at it again. The cover letter mentioned that Chris had heard Mr. Guelli was looking to hire another salesperson, and though he had no sales experience, he thought he could do a good job, that he’d be an asset to the company.
“I am an asset to the company,” Angie whispered. Before she could stop to think, she was on her feet and walking down the short hallway to Mr. Guelli’s office. His door was open, his head bent over the papers on his desk, a small clock radio blaring a baseball game too loudly. He looked up when she knocked on the doorjamb.
Vincent Guelli looked about ten years older than he was, thanks to the salt-and-pepper donut of hair that circled his head and the extra pounds of paunch that stretched his belt. He smiled at her.
“Angelina.”
“Can I talk to you?”
He turned the radio down and gestured to the two chairs angled toward each other in front of his desk. “Of course.”
Wordlessly, she handed him Chris’s résumé and cover letter.
Mr. Guelli donned his half-glasses—another item that did nothing to promote his real age—and read. When he finished, he looked up at her. “Okay. And?”
Angie wet her lips and fleetingly thought, Here goes nothing. “If you hire him for the sales position, I’ll be really upset.”
Mr. Guelli removed his glasses and raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to continue.
“I have the same degree as he does. Communications. And he has no sales experience. Neither do I, but I do have experience here. I’ve learned a lot about this company and this business in the short time I’ve been here. I think that gives me a legup on him.” She cleared her throat, hardly able to believe what she was saying. “Let me give the sales position a shot. Please. I can do a good job. I can make you money.”
That was the clincher. She could see it in his eyes, even when he told her to let him think about it, and that he’d get back to her later in the day. When all was said and done, he was in this business for no other reason than to make money. She knew that, and she had used it. She knew the job was hers. Her parents would be proud.
She was finally moving up in the world.
“‘The Dimpled Pickle’? Really?” Hope shook her head as she handed Angie a beer. “What did it used to be?”
“AJ’s,” Angie replied. “And as far as I’m concerned, that’s what I will continue to call it.”
“‘The Dimpled Pickle’. What the hell were they smoking when they came up with that name?”
“I’m not sure I want to know.”
“I’m embarrassed for your people.”
Angie laughed. “Me, too.”
Hope held up her beer bottle. “Here’s to you, babe, and having another chick in the sales department. Thank god! Now I can talk about my period, and I won’t be met only by blank stares or uncomfortable squirming.”
They clinked glass and drank. It was Friday night. Hope would begin training Angie in sales on Monday. Since Angie had no existing accounts of her own, Mr. Guelli had hired her on at a small salary—very small—and a commission that was a percentage of the sales she brought in. Plus, he’d given her a handful of small leads. She knew her arrangement was different than the other salespeople, who were mostly on straight commission and with a percentage much larger than hers, but she was thankful for the chance. If she worked at it, she should be able to bring herself in some decent cash, enough to tide her over until she figured out what she wanted to do with her life. She was certain selling “trinkets and trash” wasn’t it, but it would do for now.
“Does our usual bet stand tonight?” Hope asked, winking. She settled her diminutive form on her barstool with her back against the bar, while Angie sat forward propped on her forearms.
“No,” Angie said firmly. “No way. This is my night for celebrating, not watching while my straight friend gets hit on at the lesbian bar a dozen times more often than I do. Yet again. My ego is happy tonight. It does not need to be shot down.”
“Fair enough,” Hope said with a nod. “You do know it’s because you intimidate these poor women, right?”
Angie snorted. “Yeah, that’s me all right. I’m so intimidating.” She punctuated her words with an eye roll.
Hope leaned in closer. “Most beautiful women are.”
Angie felt herself flush and took a pull from her beer.
“I, of course, am special and therefore undeterred by your stunning good looks,” Hope went on in her best theatrical tone while Angie grinned. “And if you had that one thing I require of my lovers, I would swoop in and ruin you for all other women.”
“Hair on my chest?”
“The other thing.”
“Oh yeah. That. I could get one, you know.”
“I prefer the real thing, my dear.”
“Damn my luck.”
They sat looking at each other with twin expressions of joy in their friendship, which was still new but definitely a keeper.
“I’ve got to hit the little girls’ room,” Hope said. “Order me another?”
Angie ordered another round and spun on her stool so she could look around the bar. It wasn’t busy. Honestly, she wasn’t sure it looked any busier—or much different—than when the previous owners had managed it. A small group of older women played pool. A young couple stood in front of the jukebox with their hips touching, bouncing to the Paula Abdul song it broadcast. A burst of laughter emanated from the group at the corner table. Angie squinted at them, wondering if she knew any of them. There were five women, and they seemed to be around her age, or not far from it. Two were an obvious couple, hanging all over each other. The brunette looked vaguely familiar, but Angie couldn’t place her. The lighter brunette didn’t ring a bell at all. The blonde . . .
Angie swallowed her beer wrong, and turned back around on her stool as she coughed. Trying to cough quietly, or not at all, was no easy feat, but she managed to keep it together. Hope returned to her seat, took one look at Angie’s red face and watery eyes, said, “What the hell happened to you?” and rubbed a hand over Angie’s back.
Several moments later, Angie finally felt like she could speak. “Ugh. Down the wrong pipe.”
“I hate when that happens.” Hope dipped her head to catch Angie’s eye. “You okay?”
“I think so.” Angie took a deep breath. “Now I’m just embarrassed. I hope nobody saw me.” She hazarded a glance toward the corner table, but nobody seemed to be paying her any attention. Of course. “I need your advice,” she said to Hope.
Hope’s eyes twinkled. “I am nothing if not helpful.”
“Remember I told you about that softball game last summer? The one my friend dragged me to watch?”
“Even though you hate all things sports-related? Vaguely, yeah.”
“Hey, keep your voice down! They can take away my lesbian card for that.”
Hope chuckled.
“Remember I told you about that cute blonde?”
Hope squinted as she searched her memory banks. “Oh! The one who slid.”
“That’s the one.”
“I remember you talking about her, yes.”
“She’s sitting at the corner table with her friends.”
“She is?” Hope whirled in her seat. “Where?”
Angie ducked her head down like a turtle trying to retreat into its shell, at the same time grabbing at Hope. “Would you stop being so obvious? Jesus.”
“You should go talk to her,” Hope said, an unspoken “duh” in her tone.
Angie sighed. “I can’t. Too forward. What if she’s with one of those other women?”
“Hmm. Good point.” Hope took a swig from her beer, thinking. “Maybe we go the old-fashioned route.”
Angie raised her eyebrows in question.
“Send the girl a drink.”
It was the right call, Angie knew. Her stomach flip-flopped anyway as Hope gestured to the bartender and asked what the blonde was drinking. She did all the work and then pointed to Angie. “It’s from her.” Angie grimaced at the bartender and received a sympathetic smile in return.
“I can’t look.” Angie kept her back to the table, surreptitiously glancing at Hope every now and then, as her friend had no qualms about sitting once again with her back to the bar and openly watching the corner table. “God, you’re so obvious.”
“Well, somebody has to see the reaction. Okay, she’s got the drink. The waitress is pointing. The blonde is looking.”
“Oh, god. This was a mistake.”
“No, no. It’s okay. She’s smiling. Now I’m pointing to you. The whole table is looking over here.”
“Christ.”
“And she’s lifting her glass. Mouthing ‘thank you.’ Nice.” Hope turned back around. “I like her. And you’re right. She’s very cute.”
“I can’t believe I did that,” Angie said, wishing she could crawl into a hole and disappear.
“Did what? You didn’t do a thing. I did it.” Hope bumped Angie with her shoulder. “It was good,” she said, more serious. “Now she knows you’re interested. That was the idea, right?”
With a nod, Angie finished her beer, vowing never to turn around again. “One more?” At Hope’s agreement, she put in another order. “So, let’s get my mind off of all this. Tell me about work. What can I expect on Monday?”
It didn’t take long for them to fall into a comfortable conversation about the job, the company, the customers. Hope had been in sales for nearly ten years, though in the ad specialty business for only five. Angie was infinitely grateful that she was the one who would be training her. She knew Hope would be patient and thorough even as she furrowed her brows, lowered her voice an octave, and threatened, “Don’t even think about slacking, little missy. I will have none of that from you. You will work hard and do what I tell you, or I will have you fired immediately.” The absurdity of little, tiny Hope Maynard, with her funky glasses and mismatched earrings, swigging a beer while trying to sound harsh and intimidating made Angie burst out laughing. Two seconds later, Hope was right there with her.
As they pulled themselves together, wiping tears, still grinning, the bartender approached them. She slipped a folded piece of paper to Angie and said, “From the woman you sent the drink to.”
Angie kept her hand on the paper, her heart in her throat, as Hope swiveled to the corner table. “They’re gone.”
“I can’t look.”
“Oh, my god, you are utterly ridiculous, you know that? It’s a piece of paper. Look at it!”
“What if it tells me to fuck off?”
“Then it does. So what? Stop being such a wimp.”
“Okay.” Deep breath in, slow breath out, she unfolded the paper:
Jillian Clark
716-555-0217
Call me.
Four
Angie was not naïve; she knew sales was a tough trade. But it took a week and a half before she closed her very first order. It was more difficult than she’d anticipated.
Today, though. Today was a good day. She’d closed a sale. Her very first one. The order wasn’t large, but it was hers. She’d cold-called the company, gotten transferred to the right person, given her pitch. Hope kept telling her timing was everything, and such was the case with Jones Tree. She’d spoken to owner Matt Jones himself. Turned out, his company was fairly new in the landscape business, and he needed to outfit his team. He asked her to bring him some samples of T-shirts. She obliged.
One of the things she’d really envied the salespeople when she’d first started working at Logo Promo was their freedom. They came and went as they pleased, visiting clients and suppliers. Nobody punched a clock. For the most part, they were autonomous. On bright and sunny days, the idea of hopping in her car and zipping along to a client meeting seemed appealing.
Today, she got to experience that for herself as she headed out on her very first sales call.
Matt Jones was a terrific first customer, because he was as new to all of it as Angie was. They laughed as they each stumbled over details. He had a bare bones logo design that needed help. She’d forgotten to bring color options for the shirts. In the end, he’d placed an order for fifteen T-shirts for his five-man crew and one full-zip sweatshirt for himself. They shook on it, he gave Angie a deposit, and she headed back to
the office to tell Hope the good news, smiling all the way.
Now, in her apartment, she popped open a beer to celebrate while the mouthwatering scent of garlic and basil from the pizza in the oven filled the miniscule galley kitchen. It was silly to be so giddy. She knew that. The order was tiny by most standards. Her commission would total out at maybe twenty bucks when all was said and done. She didn’t care. It was still a successful day. It was still a step forward. It was still a taste of what was possible for her. What if she sold fifty T-shirts to somebody? A hundred? More? Hope wrote up an order for a thousand pens the other day and netted herself a couple hundred dollars in commission. From one order! That was the beauty of the ad specialties business. The possibilities were endless. The money was there. You just had to work hard to get to it.
Angie was nothing if not a hard worker.
Using an oven mitt, she took the pizza—her father’s homemade—out of the oven to see if it was heated through yet. He and her mother had been so proud of her, she felt like a kid again bringing home an “A” on a test. They hugged her and kissed her and told her to keep up the good work. She smiled as she remembered their faces, her mother telling her the sky was the limit for her. As she plopped onto her couch with a plate of pizza and turned on the television, she thought, Yeah, the sky may be the limit, but I need to get a bit higher—and fast. Twenty-dollar commissions aren’t going to pay my rent. Unless I get a few dozen of them a week.
“Then I’ll get a few dozen of them a week,” she said aloud, with determination, refusing to let reality creep in on her good mood. Instead, she savored the pizza, tried hard to solve the puzzle on “Wheel of Fortune” (failed), and finished the beer. As she set the empty can on the table next to the couch, her gaze fell on the piece of paper that had been sitting there for several days.
Angie picked it up, caressed the neat handwriting with her thumb, and saw a flash of blonde hair and dimples. In a split second, she decided to take advantage of the wave of self-confidence she was riding before it washed down to nothing and she became her insecure self once again. She picked up the handset and dialed as quickly as she could, not wanting her fear to catch up to what she was doing.
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