One of the subsidiaries of Burns Industries, owned by billionaire Burns brothers Fred and Donald—a huge conglomerate with all sorts of holdings in everything from petroleum and chemicals to paper production and ranching—had reached out to Celeste not long after one of those nonprofit news organizations had exposed the Burns brothers’ shadowy ties and secret money-funneling to a number of extreme political organizations. Some of them so extreme, in fact, as to be flat-out racist. A tape had been released of a meeting between the Burns brothers and one of these groups in which the n-word had been used, and the k-word too.
The best way, as all bigots know, to seem unbigoted is to make a buddy: I don’t hate [BLANK] people, just look at my [BLANK] friend! Burns Industries was hoping to do just this with a new PR campaign featuring rapper Kanye West and Mort Stillman, one of the country’s most beloved Holocaust survivors. They didn’t want any art from Mort—they didn’t care about his cartooning—but were hoping for a photo spread, Annie Leibovitz–style, of the man in his studio, along with a few quotes about how Burns Paper was the best paper and the only paper he uses, or something. In return Burns would not only pay Mort handsomely, but put up a whole bunch of money to renovate Milwaukee’s Jewish museum and establish two new wings: one with art by Milwaukee’s Holocaust survivors, and one devoted entirely to Mort’s life and work.
Mort listened with various degrees of attention—at some points it seemed to drift off to somewhere far outside the window—as I talked. He refilled my coffee without my asking and brought out jam for me to spread on the saltines. I don’t think his eyesight was very good, because there were specks on the jelly spoon from its last outing. I also don’t think his health was very good, because he was sort of listing to the side.
“Do you want some ice cream?” he said when I was done with the pitch.
“Ummm…sure,” I said. He shuffled off and came back with two Häagen-Dazs bars.
“There are worse things than not having any money,” he said after I’d unwrapped his bar for him.
I unwrapped my own bar, took a bite, chewed. “It’s true,” I said with my mouth full. There was a bit of chocolate on the side of his mouth. I wanted to rub it off, but I didn’t want to embarrass him.
“Americans, I tell you,” he said. “You’re not used to suffering.”
I bristled. “We suffer plenty.” For example, I wanted to say, I’ll have you know, I just walked out of a very difficult luncheon with my mother.
“I never said you didn’t. I said you’re not used to it.”
I looked down, and all my ice cream was gone. How did that happen? I wasn’t even hungry. I’d read an essay he’d written, one that Simone had included in his dossier, about his wartime experiences. Before the Germans had captured his family, they’d lived in a hole in the ground for two years in the forests outside Warsaw. When the soldiers had dragged him out, his legs were so atrophied they collapsed out from under him. I wanted to ask him how a person survives something like this, how a person can possibly go on being a person, but I didn’t know how. He was eating his ice-cream bar quietly. It seems like the more people have lived through, the less likely they are to talk about it. So much of what happens to us, I guess, isn’t cut out for chitchat.
“Sometimes I look around,” he said when he had finished his ice cream. “And I don’t recognize this country.”
“What do you mean?”
“All the lonely people,” he said. Then he smiled. In his scratched-up, still-accented voice he sang, “where do they all come from?”
I paused and looked out the window. A flock of black birds swooped across the overcast sky.
“All the lonely people,” I sang, turning back to him. “Where do they all belong?”
The song hung there for a second.
“Maybe they belong in Milwaukee,” I said finally.
Mort laughed. “You’re a good kid.”
“I don’t know about that.” There were papers from a racist multinational business conglomerate in my bag, after all.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’ll let ’em take these photographs—”
“You don’t have to,” I interrupted hastily. Now that he was agreeing to it, I wanted to backtrack immediately. I didn’t want anything in front of him that was not beautiful.
“—if instead of giving me a wing in the museum they put together a classroom and a little teaching studio. My work doesn’t need a mausoleum,” he said. “But if we could get some teachers in there. Help the kids draw, make pictures. Saved my life a hundred times over, making pictures.” He shook his head. “You never know, maybe it’ll save theirs too.”
“Is it worth it, though?” I said. “Are you sure?”
“Ah, they can’t hurt me,” Mort said. “I’m an old man, I’m tired, and I’ve seen things they couldn’t even dream up. I’m not afraid of them. And by doing this I force them to do one good thing with their power.” He held up his index finger. “One good thing.” He turned his index finger toward himself. “And that’s my victory, and their defeat.”
On my way back from Milwaukee, when I was still ten thousand feet up in the air, the ground beneath a patchwork quilt of farmland, I asked myself what in God’s name I was doing getting Mort Stillman to shill for the bloody Burns brothers for, what, a ten percent raise and the flush of Celeste’s attention? Was I really, as Louise had insinuated, the spitting image of Rake Pendergast? I didn’t think so, I hoped not, but since Celeste first brought up Blue Ocean, it felt like I’d put my forehead on a baseball bat and run around in circles; the whole summer I’d been staggering around the country like a punch-drunk kid. The rightside-up world was still out there, I was pretty sure, but it was hard to get back there after so much centripetal motion.
Which I guess is what Susan had always tried to get at: I was too eager to belong to something larger than myself, regardless of the larger thing’s broader and more insidious implications. But as she also tried to get at earlier that summer: you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make a horse establish her own morality and make her life choices commensurate with them.
If only I had time, I concluded by the end of the flight, if I just had more time, if I weren’t so busy all the time, my center point would return, the way out of my moral dilemma would become crystal clear.
The next day, a Saturday, was the annual company picnic. I decided it would be the perfect time for me to break the news to Celeste that I needed some time off. A brief sabbatical, as white-collar people say, or a two-week vacation for research and reflection. A respite from the trials of the world, so that I might, as the CrossFit gym across the street from my condo advertised, pursue my legend.
I slipped on a floral sundress and gladiator sandals and picked up Ben on my way to the riverside park where the picnic was always held. As a client, Ben’d been invited separately by Celeste, but we decided there was no time like the present to make our relationship known. As we arrived, hand in hand, I noticed three giant inflatable enclosures—a castle, slide, and what looked to be a strange sumo wrestling pit—behind the elegantly catered barbecue. The event planners had put white tablecloths on the picnic tables, and my colleagues were drinking champagne from real stemware. The tacky inflatables must have been a concession to the growing cadre of mommies in the office, whose lobbying for various rights for their offspring had swelled lately.
Around the adults, little kids were running around in white polo shirts and dresses. It was a contest among a certain subset of ambitious parents, seeing whose kids could remain pristine the longest.
“Give me a sec, will you?” I said to Ben, and squeezed his hand. He was wearing a short-sleeved madras shirt and cutoffs. He looked so cute I wished I could cut away the rest of life and focus my efforts solely on pouncing on him. “I’m dreading it, but I think I’d rather get it out of the way first.”
“G
ood luck,” he said, and squeezed my hand back. He’d thought my taking time off was a good idea, not necessarily for any abstract notions of good and bad, but because he could tell how awful I felt about my present situation. “Who knows, maybe that’s all you need,” he’d said, kissing my forehead, “a couple weeks to clear your head.”
“I doubt it.” I’d solemnly put my hand on his leg. “I read my horoscope. I think this is the start of my Saturn Return.”
I began weaving through small clumps of small-talkers trying to get to Celeste, who was holding court with a group of older, well-heeled, prosperity-bellied men. They were in business attire, though the temperature was well into the eighties. Celeste was wearing a white linen sheath with a white gauzy scarf around her neck and with these men looked—not happy, but almost happy. Immediately I became alarmed. Celeste did not wear white, or look happy. I thought: something must be terribly wrong.
“Casey!” Celeste called out in a lighthearted voice, and waved me over. She introduced the men as Chet, Rex, Jeff, and Don, who in personality and aspect seemed all but indistinguishable. “They’re from Omnipublic.”
“Thanks for having us at your picnic,” Chet/Rex/Jeff/Don said, shaking my hand and chortling for no reason. “Boy, sure is a nice day out here, isn’t it? Warmer than they expected.”
“You’re…welcome?” I said, trying to wrest my hand away from his hammy grip. Omnipublic was one of the biggest ad agencies in the country. Something was rotten in the state of inflatable bouncy castles. I remembered the rumors of sales and layoffs I’d overheard Britney recounting in the kitchen, and my whole body tensed despite the sweltering humidity. Would Celeste sell PR just like that? Take the profits from PR and run?
The answer, of course, was yes. Certainly she would.
Celeste told the men to grab a plate of food before the hot wings got cold. I meant to wait at least five seconds after they were out of earshot before saying something, employ a teensy bit of tact, but the words burst out of my mouth: “Are you selling the company to these guys?!”
“For God’s sakes, Casey, keep your voice down,” Celeste said. She took me by the elbow and led me away from the picnicking throng. There are very few scenarios in which being separated from the herd ends up in the separatee’s favor, but it’s hard to remember that in the presence of a charismatic leader.
“Keep my voice down?!” I cried. “How, when for all I know we’re going to lose our jobs?!”
Celeste stopped. “You’re not. But the answer to your question is yes.”
A wave of relief crashed through my body, but it didn’t last long. “You are selling?” My voice cracked. “But why?! You built this place from the ground up!”
And you built me from the ground up! I added silently.
“And it’s time for it to keep building without me,” Celeste said matter-of-factly. She explained that for several years it had become increasingly difficult to find enough big-fish clients to keep PR independent. There were only about five real advertising agencies left in the country anyway, huge conglomerates owned by holding companies that gobbled up and merged firms just like ours. Just that morning she’d finished intense negotiations with Omnipublic so that PR could at least keep its own board of directors and essentially, she said, operate as a firm-within-a-firm. “No layoffs necessary,” she said, anticipating my inevitable next question. “Nothing will change for the employees—the transition is really in name only.”
I exhaled. “So I still have a job.”
Celeste looked at me like Don’t be a dummy. “You have more than a job,” she said. “For you, the sale is good news.” She explained that as the sale was being negotiated, she’d also set up Nanü as an independent agency, one not part of the sale to Omnipublic. With the venture capitalists’ investment, Nanü would soon be on the fast track to an IPO. “Which means equity for you and your team,” she said, putting a confidential hand on my back. “Especially you, given your leadership position.”
“Equity?” I didn’t know precisely what equity meant, but I could hazard a guess based on the television I’d watched. “What kind of equity?”
“Fifteen percent.”
“Fifteen percent of—” I couldn’t help myself. Curiosity killed the Casey.
“Last I talked with the VCs,” she said, “they were valuing the company at ten million. Which frankly,” she added, “I think is on the low side.”
I remember reading a famous study once about kids in a laboratory who were given two choices: eat a single marshmallow right away, or wait ten minutes and get two marshmallows. I knew as soon as I read it that I was a single marshmallow kind of gal. It is hard to think about the future when there is so much sugar in your mouth.
Fifteen percent of ten million was 1.5 million, and it would probably grow and keep growing. I had gone over to talk to Celeste about taking time off, but it was hard, vis-à-vis these numbers, to remember exactly why I wanted time off, given the spoils that were headed my way. What was I going to do with that time anyway? Nothing concrete, probably. Nothing productive. Probably I’d just waste it on going to the gym and watching TV. By requesting the time off at a tipping point like this, I would likely put this fifteen percent in jeopardy. Yes, fine, it had only been twenty-four hours since Mort had told me there were worse things than not having any money. But it was hard to remember that when you lived in a world where literally everything was about money; even the self-help gurus and psychologists exhorting otherwise were charging big bucks for their advice.
As Celeste went on about stock options and seed money, and dollar signs danced in front of my eyes, I decided that, hell, I might as well keep working and amassing my fortune with Celeste for a while, stay productive, and keep my moral dilemma—my pursuit of real happiness, or freedom, or purpose or meaning or whatever it was that I really wanted—as sort of a side gig. After all, over the past couple months I’d seen the best minds this country had to offer come to the same conclusion. These writers possessed knowledge, wisdom, and empathy, but none of it gave them power. Money gave them power. And we all needed some power, or we’d be eaten alive by assholes like Rex and Chet.
Not to mention that fifteen percent was a generous number, far more generous than I guessed that Celeste needed to be. I felt a warm rush of esprit de corps at her offer. It was a gesture, evidence I did matter to her beyond mere employeeship. I was family to her; I belonged. I looked forward to the day in the near future when she would sit me down on a giant pile of venture capital money and say, wow, Casey, I hadn’t noticed until this moment that you’re like the daughter I never had. I love you, and I’m so proud of everything you’ve done, and I’ll never give up on you, and what’s more I’m excited to see you evolve as an individual and not just an extension of my own massive ego.
“Well!” I said to Celeste, once I’d lifted my jaw up from the grass. “That is great news.”
“News that you’ll keep to yourself for the time being, of course,” she said, patting me on the back in a gesture of finality. “So when the time is right, I can announce it myself.”
“Of course,” I echoed gravely.
After wandering around tables of gourmet salads and summer cocktails, I finally found Ben inside the bouncy castle along with Annie and Lindsey. He’d met them several times before at summer happy hours. They were all drinking beers and idly taking turns bouncing up and down in their stocking feet. “Silly rabbits, bouncy castles are for kids!” I said, pulling back the mesh curtain over the entrance, yanking my sandals off, and adding them to the pile of footwear outside the castle before hopping up. The inside walls were blocked off in blue and red and yellow, which made me feel like I’d stepped inside a child’s paint set. I hopped gingerly on one foot, then the other, then hopped a little more vigorously. “This feels surprisingly good,” I said.
“There’s something cathartic about it, isn’t there?” Lin
dsey said, taking a big leap into the air.
“Totally!” Annie said, imitating Lindsey’s jump, but then she toppled over, spilling the small remainder of beer in her bottle all over the trampoline. “Owwwww” she said, rolling onto her back and pulling her knees into her chest. “My ankle—”
“Poor baby!” Lindsey said, hopping over. “What do you need?”
While Lindsey tended to Annie’s ankle with Reiki treatments, Ben hopped over and offered me his beer. “How’d it go?” Ben said. I pointedly shook my head at the bottle. “Right, right, the gluten.”
“Not exactly how I expected—” I began.
“I’m so proud of you,” Lindsey said, turning around, apparently finished with her ministrations.
Ben explained, “I filled these guys in already.”
Annie climbed hesitantly back to her feet. Lindsey hopped over to give me a hug. “A sabbatical!” She kissed my cheek. “I can’t believe it! You’re finally learning work-life balance! All it took was you falling in love!”
I started when she used the word love. Though I’d certainly been thinking about the word, neither Ben nor I had said it aloud to each other. Ben, luckily, appeared not to have heard, having begun earnestly giving Annie ankle rehabilitation based on exercises he’d learned playing soccer in high school. I pulled back from Lindsey’s embrace. “Ah, well, about that sabbatical. Something major just—”
“Did someone say major?” Simone appeared behind the mesh curtain, her dark hair keratined and glossy and topped with a Coachella-esque flower crown. How she was able to remain so unsweaty at an outdoor picnic was an aggravating mystery. “Mind if I join you?” Before anyone could answer, she was climbing up. Her jean shorts were so short I thought she might catch cervical cancer.
A Lady's Guide to Selling Out Page 17
