by Barry Ergang
Stuffed Shirt
Stuffed Shirt
Midpoint
STUFFED SHIRT
by Barry Ergang
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Barry Ergang
Originally published in Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine, Jan-Feb 2006
Cover photo by healing dream: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=989
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What follows is a work of fiction. All of the people, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real people, places or incidents is strictly coincidental.
Label it instinct, intuition, or clairvoyance—when I met Theron Claymore, I immediately sensed a predator in our midst.
When he strode into the department alongside Haskell, art director at Danforth Advertising, I thought Claymore was a model. Tall and blond, with appraising slate-blue eyes, he carried himself with the erect confidence one associates with a California surfer. He lacked only the deep suntan. Sensing his superficiality, I was astonished when Haskell announced him as the newest member of our ranks.
Claymore gave the room and the occupants of its glassed cubicles a conquistadorial scrutiny. Haskell then individually introduced him to us.
“This is Eric Dennison,” Haskell said, smiling benevolently beneath his heavy mustache, “our senior artist.”
Despite my repulsion, I shook his hand and murmured, “Nice to meet you.”
Within a short time my initial assessments were confirmed. Claymore’s work had a draftsmanlike competence but lacked the passion, if such a term may be used with regard to advertising, necessary to our type of illustration. Haskell, however, apparently took to it. Perhaps Claymore’s greatest artistry was his ability to sell himself despite the charming sophistry of the product.
Indeed, charm was his biggest commodity and he used it like a chameleon, adapting himself to suit the various agency personalities with whom he had to contend. His good looks and forceful manner endeared him to many of the women, but he was equally adept at bantering with the men. He had none of the newcomer’s reserve and quickly became the focal figure in the art department, magnet for the irreverent remark or salacious joke. Tales of the women he purportedly bedded were incessant.
Most of it I was able to ignore. In my five years at Danforth, I had for self-protective reasons kept distant from my colleagues, which allowed me to work with a relative freedom from interruption. What I could not ignore was Claymore’s camaraderie with Haskell, my immediate superior. Their time together was not spent exclusively on matters of agency business. They lingered in the corridors exchanging jokes and stories, they went out for drinks after hours, they lunched together—often with other department heads. During my tenure I had never socialized with the upper echelons; Claymore exerted a disproportionate amount of time insinuating himself into their circles.
My mother would have been appalled . When she returned to the workplace after my father died, she performed her duties diligently and reliably but shunned the intra-office politicking common among her colleagues and thus never received the promotions she deserved. “I don’t understand them,” she would say of the other women in her office, “fawning and bootlicking and backstabbing to be noticed. No woman—nor man either—should have to stoop that low.”
Up until her own death, she did not possess the pragmatism necessary to deal with Theron Claymore’s sort. She never knew her child did—never knew, for instance, that the disfiguring “accident” in high school chemistry which befell one of my classmates avenged an affront; never knew that during my first year at Danforth, the occupant of an apartment in the building next to mine died to prevent disclosure of what he saw when, upon arriving home from work one evening, I carelessly left the bedroom curtains open.
My disregard of Claymore succeeded for a while, but inevitably, like the schoolyard bully who cannot bear to be ignored, he intruded onto my parcel of the playground. I was bent over the layout on my drawing table late one afternoon when he entered my cubicle and peered over my shoulder.
“Which account is that for?” he asked.
“Ardis Cosmetics,” I said, not looking up.
“Oh, a biggie, huh?”
“Mm-hmm.” I had been handling the Ardis artwork for over a year, though I did not tell him so.
“Yeah, well, listen, man, a bunch of us are going out for a drink after work. What d’you say?”
“No, thank you.”
“Why not?” A faint edge in his voice implied he was unaccustomed to having his invitations refused. “C’mon, we’re goin’ over to Gerrity’s, check out the action.”
“Gerrity’s?”
“Oh man, you never been to Gerrity’s?”
I admitted I had not.
“It’s just the best place in the city to meet babes. C’mon, we’ll have a good time. You might get lucky and score.”
“Thanks just the same, I’d rather not.”
He moved to the back of the table, facing me, and leaned forward confidentially. “Listen, if you’re worried about striking out, don’t. I know plenty of broads there I can set you up with. Guaranteed you score.” He smiled raptorially.
The cavalier imprecision of his speech and the empty appetence it promised oppressed me. I had barely looked at him, keeping my gaze on the layout in the hope he would give up and leave. Glancing up now, I saw three artists, all of whom were single, standing just outside my cubicle. One of them frowned at Claymore and shook his head minutely, but Claymore winked and turned back to me, waiting for my answer.
“For the last time, no thank you. I’ve no interest in what you call ‘scoring’.”
“Don’t be such a stuffed shirt.” He grinned lasciviously, exaggerating an intake of breath. “After all, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”
“Then do it somewhere else if you please.”
“What’re you—gay? You like guys?”
In truth I adored women—their tastes and textures and smells. One in the Danforth sales department I found devastatingly attractive. But personal strictures forbidding intimate relationships which, in the event they fell apart, could lead to workplace disquietude, and the revelations I was unwilling to risk irrespective of success or failure, demanded that I maintain a chaste, professional attitude toward her.
“I already have plans,” I answered.
“I bet. Needlepoint? Or are you just gonna curl up with a book and some hot chocolate?” He laughed, dismissed me with a wave, and went off with the others.
The next morning, they regaled one another with tales of their previous evening’s putative conquests.
When I returned from lunch that afternoon, I found Claymore in my cubicle idly examining a series of layouts tacked to the bulletin board on the right-hand wall and others that sat on top of the supply cabinet beneath. “You got enough variations on this Ardis thing,” he said.
“Fussy client,” I muttered. Some clients have specific ideas they want us to delineate, some almost prefer to be told what their advertisements should look like. Others, like Ardis, want to see multiple possibilities from which they can choose. Assembling their layouts, after consulting with the account executive, the copywriter, and Haskell, often required weeks or even months of work.
“Is there something I can do for you?” I asked, removing my suit coat. I h
ung it up and slipped on the loose-fitting gray smock I kept on a hook on the left-hand wall.
“No, just takin’ a break. You always wear that thing, don’t you?”
As I sat down at the drawing table, I noticed a couple of other artists looking our way rather expectantly. “Yes.”
“Why?”
I scowled and adjusted the angle of the table. I did not answer him.
“You wear a suit every day, too.”
I nodded silently, my head lowered over another Ardis layout.
“You oughta lighten up, man.”
Except for the day we first met, when he had dressed in a faultlessly tailored charcoal-gray suit, Claymore wore blue jeans, boots, and turtlenecks or sports shirts. Sometimes he added a sports jacket to his ensemble. Casual attire was management’s concession to “creative temperament,” and it was true that most of the artists favored it.
“Did it ever occur to you I might be comfortable like this?” I said.
He snorted. “You don’t know how to be comfortable. You’re a stiff.”
“I’m very comfortable—when I can work without unnecessary interruptions.”
“A regular company man, eh?” He grinned back at his waiting friends before speaking to me again. “Regular loser‘s more like it.”
That elicited the snickers from the others he sought and, having attained his puerile victory, he left me alone. Anger and humiliation bubbled within me. He baited me, I surmised, from a need to assert his imagined superiority. But never before had anyone embarrassed me in front of my coworkers.
Over the next few months I periodically endured jibes about my sexual preferences, manner of dress, and conscientiousness. Although I bore it with an outward stolidity bordering on self-abasement, I grew steadily embittered toward his swaggering attitude which implied the agency was merely another place in which to “score,” the job a woman to be conquered.
I experienced a small victory of my own when, one afternoon, Claymore and Audrey Merriam, a copywriter, marched side by side into my cubicle. Claymore wore his too-familiar smug smile, Audrey a look of angry determination.
“Eric,” she said, “we’d like your opinion on something.”
“Yeah, man, we need you to settle a bet,” Claymore said offhandedly, his eyes scanning the latest series of Ardis layouts on the bulletin board.
“What is it?”
His slate-blue eyes fastened on me. “It’s about—”
“No, you don’t!” Audrey snapped. “Don’t you dare set him up.” Her voice softened when she asked me, “Do you think it’s still mainly a man’s world?”
So wholly unexpected was the question, it took a moment for me to collect my thoughts. Audrey’s dark eyes were tense behind her designer-frame glasses, her posture taut.
“I guess it depends on how you define your terms,” I said at length, “but if you mean women are still subservient with respect to salaries, benefits, and legislation, and chauvinistic and sexist attitudes fostered by the media, then I’d say it is. I recently read a study—”
“Pay up!” Audrey thrust out her hand, palm up, at Claymore.
Glowering at me as if I had betrayed an unspoken pact, he extracted a five-dollar bill from his pocket and smacked it into her hand. “Like I said,” he growled, “women have already castrated half the male population. This little wimp”— he jerked his chin in my direction— “is a prime example.”
***
In mid-summer, rumors began to circulate that Haskell would be promoted to a creative directorship in September. Management at Danforth believed in promotion from within; therefore, based on seniority, I was the logical candidate for the position of art director. An exciting prospect, it was something I had worked a long time to achieve, risking decisions with regard to my “life choices,” as psychologists call them, that no one knew anything about. I said nothing, nor was the rumor confirmed. The mere fact of its existence galvanized me, making even Claymore’s unwanted attentions bearable. I indulged a fantasy of firing him in front of the entire art department when I became the new director.
But then he went beyond verbal abuse, altering my fantasy and his own end.
After several months of work, I went to Haskell’s office to turn in the latest series of layouts for Ardis Cosmetics. Haskell examined them, nodded approvingly, and then cleared his throat. His expression was uncharacteristically sheepish.
“Very nice, Eric. Up to your usual standard. But…uh…I’ve got something I think they’ll like better.”
I gaped incredulously at him.
“Theron did some…extracurricular work. He had some ideas of his own and tried them out—on his own time,” he added hastily. “He saw what you were doing and took it from there.” He cleared his throat again. “His work is very good.”
“But Ardis has always been my account.”
“I know, Eric, but…Well, take the long view. We’re all team players here. You of all people ought to know that.”
“Yes, yes I do. But…why didn’t you tell me before?”
He looked at his desktop a moment, then back at me. “Honestly? Because you’ve always done excellent work for Ardis, and I wanted to see the finished product before I decided.” He shrugged. “My gut hunch says Theron’s work will go over better.”
“Why not show them both of our concepts and let them decide?”
He brushed at his mustache with a fingertip. “I know this is upsetting, but there’ll be plenty of other work for you—for Ardis and other clients. Besides, all Theron did was make a few improvements on your basic ideas. Would you like to see them?”
What I answered, or whether I answered at all, I do not remember. I did not return to my cubicle. I left the building and walked, I cannot recall where or for how long, in a feckless rage. It was suddenly clear that Claymore’s subtle dominion over the art department was part of a ploy to undermine my seniority and advance his own objectives. My grasp on the art directorship, I sensed, had been weakened by Claymore’s inveigling schemes. I could imagine him inverting my own fantasy and firing me. Or—worse, perhaps—keeping me on as the constant target for his verbal sallies. If I resigned and went elsewhere, I would have to start all over again, perhaps spend another five years establishing myself at another agency without the assurance of attaining a senior position.
When I returned to Danforth, I said nothing more to Haskell and he said nothing to me. Once, however, I thought I spied Claymore smirking at me.
By that evening I had calmed down, red fury turned to white decisiveness. Claymore was a steadily debilitating malignancy. Pragmatism dictated his removal. I had two weeks’ vacation coming up, and during that time I would kill him.
***
The Monday morning I returned from my vacation, the agency thrummed with shock and horror over the murder of Theron Claymore, by person or persons unknown, the Thursday before. My coworkers either moped mournfully or eagerly heaped on me the details they had gleaned from newspaper reports and from the police interrogators who had visited the agency. “You sure picked the right time to go away,” someone said. “This place has been somewhere between a morgue and a circus.”
By the time I arrived home that evening, I was simultaneously elated and enervated. After running the bathwater, I went directly to my bedroom and undressed. I hung my suit neatly, then removed my shirt and threw it into a hamper. I am small-breasted, and the bandeau I wear beneath my shirt to flatten my bosom does an admirable job of disguising my curves. I took off the bandeau and, wearing only panties, regarded my suntanned reflection in a full-length mirror. Slipping off the dark male toupee, I finger-fluffed my own short-cropped, almost mannishly cut brown hair. Finally, I stepped out of the panties and settled into the soothing bath.
Killing him had been an absurdly simple task. As planned, I flew to the Bahamas for my vacation. I immediately sent a postcard to the agency to establish that I had indeed been away. I spent my days on the beach, tanning and imagining how I would approach
Claymore without putting him on guard. After eight days, three fewer than the original reservation called for, I flew back.
Locating Claymore might present some difficulty, but I suspected that Gerrity’s was the logical place to find him. I went there in the middle of the evening on the day of my return, but he didn’t appear. The next day I arrived during “happy hour,” when the city’s businesses release their employees to their own diversions.
Gerrity’s was dim, noisy, and congested with people, strutting men and preening women, their faces hectic and brittle. There was a pathetic quality in the way some of them approached others in a travesty of the mating ritual.
Within half an hour of my arrival Claymore appeared, grinning his assurance, waving hellos to people he recognized, occasionally pecking the cheek or squeezing the shoulder of a woman he knew, “high-fiving” some of the men. I had dressed to enhance rather than to conceal my attributes in a reasonably snug blue dress and a longish red wig. The only demure touch was a pair of cream-colored gloves.
Catching his eye was easy, after which I engaged in the immemorial gestures of a woman desirous of a particular man’s attentions. Claymore took the cues without hesitation. After drinks and conversation laced with innuendoes, I suggested he take me to his apartment. There we had another drink, and I submitted to his kisses and touch, suppressed my loathing in the knowledge that intimacy would be his nemesis.
At length I urged him to take me into the bedroom. Mistaking my eagerness for lust—the impression I hoped to convey to gain the advantage I needed—he complied. Having brought no weapon, I would have to improvise, catch him at a vulnerable moment. The heavy glass ashtray on his nightstand declared retributive providence was my companion.
He kissed and fondled me as we stood alongside his bed. He unzipped my dress and I let it fall around my ankles. Stepping out of it, I unclasped my brassiere, let it slip slowly away from my body, and posed for him until he reached for me again. I suffered another embrace, then bade him huskily to undress. “We got plenty of time, baby,” he said, but obediently sank onto the edge of the bed to remove his boots. His vulpine grin flooded me with reminiscent fury—memories of months of supercilious smiles and caustic remarks.
