by Sue Margolis
“Ah, yes, I’ve seen you getting the coffee. Be a sweetie, would you, and fetch me a skinny cappuccino, hold the chocolate.” Had Graham not introduced Cyn as another copywriter it might just have been reasonable for Chelsea to assume she was one of the office juniors, but even then, her puffed-up, snooty manner was inexcusable. What made the whole thing worse was Graham standing there and saying, “I know it’s not really your job, Cyn, but maybe you wouldn’t mind.”
“Of course not.” Cyn smiled thinly, realizing she had no option but to go and get Chelsea her coffee.
As the weeks went by, though, Chelsea’s manner changed where Cyn was concerned. It never became warm, exactly, but she seemed to be making a real effort to be more friendly. Cyn put it down to guilt over the coffee incident. Soon Chelsea was inviting her out to lunch, and Cyn decided it would be churlish to refuse. She had even got round to apologizing over the coffee incident, claiming she didn’t realize at the time that Cyn was a fellow creative. “You know, I’m perfectly aware of how the men at PCW see me,” she said on one occasion, referring to the “Terminator” epithet, “but the fact remains that women still aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve in this business. The only way for us to push through the glass ceiling is to fight. You are clever and talented, Cyn. Women like us need to stick together—to keep faith with the sisterhood. Say, if you ever want to brainstorm some ideas with me or have me give you my opinion on something, feel free.”
“That’s so kind of you,” Cyn said. “I really appreciate that. And if you have any thoughts or ideas you’d like my opinion on, don’t hesitate to come to me.”
“Oh, how absolutely darling of you,” Chelsea simpered, smiling at Cyn over the slitty black-framed glasses she’d taken to wearing. Cyn couldn’t work out why she felt as if she’d just offered Nancy Reagan a joint.
Then a few weeks ago, Chelsea had said something to Cyn that made her feel even more uncomfortable and took her right back to the coffee episode. It was the day all three agency directors were taking Cyn out to lunch to say thank you for the work she had done helping secure a big shampoo account. Most people in the office had patted her on the back and said well done. Chelsea, on the other hand, had come striding over, all radiant smiles, her arms wide open. She wrapped Cyn in a huge bear hug and kissed her on both cheeks. The expression on her face seemed to convey genuine delight. “Well done, you,” she cooed. Cyn returned the smile and thanked her, but there was something about Chelsea’s emphasis on the word you that had felt not so much congratulatory as patronizing and condescending. It was as if Cyn was the class dunce, who had despite all the odds somehow managed to win a house point.
Later on, when she thought about it, Cyn told herself she was just being ridiculously oversensitive. When did she become so paranoid that she was starting to judge people purely on the emphasis they put on one word?
On the other hand, Cyn was no fool and she knew there was a strong likelihood that Chelsea was being bitchy because she saw her as a rival. One of the senior copywriters was leaving PCW and it was common knowledge that Cyn and Chelsea were both being considered for the job. Normally the agency wouldn’t have considered promoting somebody who had been there for as short a time as Chelsea, but since she was so talented the directors knew that if they didn’t promote her, they risked losing her. Cyn knew she wasn’t without talent—she’d won the Aqua Elite shampoo account after all—but since then, her professional life seemed to have taken a bit of a downturn.
First there was the stupid joke she’d made to Keith Geary. He’d been taking a conference call with a Japanese electronics company launching some new, very powerful loudspeakers, and she was sitting in. “Keith,” she giggled at one point, “tell them they could always say ‘The XL2000 speakers. The loudest you’ve ever heard. From the people who brought you Pearl Harbor.’ ” Of course they were on speakerphone and the Japanese heard everything. PCW lost the account.
Then a few weeks ago she came up with a pretty innocuous, fairly average slogan to promote Secure roll-on deodorant: “No more embarrassing underarm stains.” How was she supposed to know the deodorant people were going to market it in Nigeria where the slogan translated in one of the local languages as “Secure roll on—no more pregnant tadpoles in your armpit”?
In both cases, Graham Chandler had been gracious enough to see the funny side and told her not to worry, but she could tell he was cross, particularly about losing the Japanese account.
There was no doubt in her mind that Chelsea would get the senior copywriter job. Surely Chelsea knew that, too. How could she not?
“Anyway, I dug a hole and buried her in the garden.”
“Who?” Cyn said, suddenly coming back to earth.
“Elizabeth Taylor,” her mother said. “You OK? You sound like you’re miles away.”
“Sorry. Look, Mum, I don’t mean to be rude, but I have to go. I’m almost at the car showroom. I’m picking up my new car.”
“Oh, yes, the Smart Car. Funny-looking thing, if you ask me. Shame they didn’t offer you a nice Renault Clio or a Fiesta. So much prettier.”
Deciding she wasn’t about to be addressed on style by a woman whose kitchen possessed an Alpine-style breakfast nook, Cyn said, “Look, I’ll phone you later when I’ve got more time to chat. Love you. Say hi to Dad for me.” Cyn flipped her phone shut just as the taxi was pulling up outside the car showroom. Casting thoughts of Elizabeth Taylor from her mind, she concentrated on the utter joy she was going to feel in a few minutes as she climbed into her new car and slid the key into the ignition.
Inside, the showroom smelled of rubber, TurtleWax and new car interior. She breathed in. She decided the smell was right up there with her other nonbottled favorites: her mum’s roast chicken, coal smoke and skin of bloke on a bitterly cold day. Of course the bloke had to be one she was seeing rather than blokes in general. Cyn looked down at her watch. It was ten past six. She and Chelsea had arranged to meet at the showroom at six. Chelsea had suggested a few days ago that it would be “such fun” for them to pick up their cars together. “Then we can go off and celebrate with champagne.” Although Cyn was aware that Chelsea probably felt threatened by her, the champagne gesture suggested she had a warmer side and that it would be a mistake to write her off.
Cyn glanced around the showroom. Behind the reception desk a woman with a caramel tan and matching hair was on the phone. At the back, a lad was fixing a plastic price sticker across a car windscreen. There was no sign of Chelsea, who had the day off work and was coming from home. Cyn was wondering what was holding her up when a stout, fifty-something chap—clearly one of the car salesmen judging by the gray-green double-breasted suit and chunky gold bracelet—came ambling toward her, smiling a greeting. Cyn explained that she was here to pick up her new Smart Car.
“Ah, Miss Fishbone. I’ve been expecting you.”
“Actually, it’s bine not bone.”
“Miss Bine.”
“No. Fishbein. As opposed to Fishbone.”
“Oh, right. Gotcha. So, you’re the lucky lady who’s won the Smart Car. You’ll love the power steering. It’s wonderful for all you girlies who need a space the size of Wembley Stadium to park in.”
She smiled. He seemed harmless enough. She decided not to take offense. “I’m meeting my friend here.” She explained about Chelsea winning the other car.
“Oh, yes, Miss Romanfelter.”
“That’s Roggenfelder.”
“Really? I was sure it was Romanfelter. Anyway, she collected hers last night.”
Cyn frowned. “Are you sure? She didn’t say anything to me.” It occurred to Cyn that Chelsea had probably left a message on her answer machine. She’d been out until late last night and had forgotten to check her messages this morning. “Oh, OK,” she shrugged. “No problem.”
“Your car’s over there,” he said, nodding toward the back of the showroom. They weaved their way past a row of gleaming, new and very long Mercedes. As they reached the
minuscule Smart Car, she noticed how the corners of the narrow metal grill under the hood turned up in a half smile. Ooh, it was Tiffany blue. Fab. She stood there feeling like all her birthdays had come at once. She ran her hand over the smooth, shiny hood.
“Now, you know about the corporate advertising on the side?” the salesman asked her. Cyn nodded. Chelsea had told her that both cars had come from drug companies. Since she didn’t handle their accounts, Cyn couldn’t remember the names. “Well, I have to hand it to you,” the salesman chuckled, “you’ve certainly got balls, if you take my meaning.”
“Don’t see why.” Cyn shrugged, still stroking the hood and making no effort to walk around to the side of the car to look at the ad. “God, it’s gorgeous. Really gorgeous. So, can I drive it off?”
“Absolutely. She’s all yours.” He said he would get one of the lads to move the car onto the forecourt.
It was only then, as she moved round to the side of her precious Smart Car, that she saw it. Shock seemed to render her temporarily dyslexic and it took a few moments for the three syllables to register simultaneously on her brain. First she read sol. That was Spanish for sun, wasn’t it? Hmm, maybe she’d gotten it all wrong. She hadn’t been listening that carefully when Chelsea told her who was giving them the cars. Perhaps this one had come from a company that made fruit juice. The next thing to hit her was the image of the giant tube. Toothpaste? Sunny, fruity toothpaste? Then she saw it. The twelve-inch-high lettering seemed to flash at her in brilliant neon: Anus. Her stomach flipped and she felt sick. She stepped back and read the words in front of her: “Anusol—shrinks piles, soothes itching.” Panic rose up inside her, and although she knew it was utterly stupid and futile, she couldn’t prevent herself rubbing at the words to see if they would come off.
“What the . . . ? I can’t. I mean people will see and . . .”
“Bloody hell, you didn’t know, did you?” the salesman said, barely concealing his amusement. She shook her head. By now she was completely lost for words. Her heart was pounding and beads of sweat were bursting through her foundation. She felt like Blanche DuBois going through menopause. She swallowed hard and turned to the salesman. “My friend, Ms. Roggenfelder, just as a matter of interest, could you tell me what her car was advertising?”
“I think it was Stella McCartney,” he said. “Bit of luck her getting here last night, eh?”
“Yes,” Cyn said. “Wasn’t it just?”
Chapter 2
Huge—aka the Honorable Hugh Thorpe Duff—was one of Cyn’s oldest and closest friends. Once or twice a week, if they were both at a loose end, he would pop round bearing takeout and a video. Usually he phoned first, to check if she was “at home to callers.” Tonight he hadn’t. He happened to pull up as Cyn was getting out of the Smart Car. Of course she had parked it directly under a streetlamp and he noticed the Anusol ad straightaway. He cracked up.
She gave a weak smile. She was doing her best to see the funny side, but it didn’t help that on the way home she’d stopped at traffic lights and a couple of drivers had started pointing at the side of her car and sniggering. She would phone the company tomorrow and see if they would agree to change the ad to something a bit more discreet.
“Blimey, it’s the Butt-Mobile. And two seats—one for Butt-man and one for Rub-in.”
“Yeah, yeah, very witty.”
He seemed to have noticed her rather pinched expression and was now doing his level best to contain his laughter. “Fab car, though. Great color,” he said, trying to keep a straight face and failing miserably. His eyes were practically watering with mirth. “But, the ad. I mean, God, what a pain in the arse.” His lips were twitching now. “So . . . um . . . I bet you were itching to drive it off.” More stifled laughter. She shot him a come-on-give-me-a-break look and opened the main door to the building. He followed her upstairs to her flat.
Cyn adored her flat. It was a small one-bedder in a fairly unremarkable Edwardian building in Crouch End, but it was the first place she’d owned rather than rented and that alone made it special. More than once she’d caught herself wandering about the place, affectionately patting the walls.
She loved the white paintwork and mellow yellow stripped floors, her brand-new Ikea kitchen with its brushed aluminum cupboards and Smeg fridge. Most of all she loved her bedroom. It had a pretty cast-iron fireplace. Cyn had painted the wooden surround the palest mint green. When she moved in, Barbara and Mal had clubbed together with her brother, Jonny, and Grandma Faye to buy her the Art Nouveau glass vase she’d spotted in an antique shop and had been going on about for ages. It sat slender and fragile on the bedroom mantelpiece, its swollen base saturated in iridescent pinks and greens. Although she adored the simple minimalism of the rest of the flat, the vase, along with the fireplace and the seventies imitation Palace of Versailles telephone table in the living room, softened the atmosphere and made it feel more feminine. She hated those cold, functional, art installation houses where you walked in and felt like saying, “Excuse me, which way to X-ray?” She tried to keep the vase filled with freesias. That way, the first thing she noticed when she woke up was the scent of flowers.
“You know,” she said to Hugh as she took a couple of beers out of the fridge, “it’s really great of you to pop round with food. As it happens, I was going to get takeout, but the thing is, I’m going out. It’s Tuesday. I’ve got group therapy at eight.”
“God, of course you have,” he said, pincering lint off his Dolce & Gabbana suit trousers. “My mind’s been full of work stuff today. I totally forgot you were off to madness . . . So, what are you wearing?”
“What I’ve got on. Why?”
He looked her up and down. “Really? O . . . K.”
“What do you mean, ‘O . . . K’? What’s wrong with how I look?”
“Nothing at all. I mean, it would be fine for anything apart from therapy.”
“Sorry, Huge, I’m not with you.”
“Well, if you take my advice, you’ll lose the lip gloss. Too glam. They’ll think you’re attention seeking. And the skirt’s gorgeous, but it’s got to go. Far too smart and businesslike. You’re running a serious risk of them thinking you’re a control freak. Now, personally I think the fishnets are fab, but has it occurred to you that the group might just think they scream sex addict?”
She laughed and explained that dressing for her very first session in group therapy had been worse than getting ready for a first date. “You wear black, they think you’re depressed. Red equals anger. Green says jealous. Now I’ve given up and I just go as I am.” She handed him two bottles of Rolling Rock and picked up the pizza box and two plates. “Come on, let’s eat in the living room. It’s more comfortable on the sofa.” It also meant they could get away from Morris. Morris was Keith Geary’s mynah bird, which was sitting in its cage on Cyn’s kitchen table. She was looking after him while Keith was away on a series of pitches in South Korea. Morris was no trouble except when he started talking. It wasn’t just odd words he repeated incessantly, often waking her in the early hours, but entire sentences. He could also impersonate any human voice perfectly. After having Morris for a week she had gotten utterly fed up with hearing him at five in the morning doing his Keith Geary impersonation, complete with impeccable Welsh accent: “Fucking ’ell, I am so desperate for a shag. God, I haven’t had a shag in three months.”
Hugh stopped at Morris’s cage to feed him a tiny bit of tomato off his pizza. “God, I’m desperate for a shag,” Morris said by way of thanks.
“Morris, there’s something you and I need to get straight,” Hugh said. “I’m gay, which means I don’t shag birds and that includes the feathered kind.” He followed Cyn into the living room.
Almost as soon as they sat down, he started teasing her about the Smart Car again.
“So, which way did you come home,” he said, crossing his legs to reveal a couple of inches of navy Paul Smith sock covered in tiny tennis rackets, “on the main road or up the back way?�
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“Yeah, yeah, most amusing. Look, I know you find this whole thing hysterical, but . . .”
“No, no. Hang on, I’ve got one more. This is brilliant.” He tore off a triangle of pizza and held it in midair. “Why are hemorrhoids called hemorrhoids? Surely they should be called arseteroids.” He was laughing so much he had to put down the pizza slice.
“Huge. Please.”
He wiped his eyes and looked at her with a meek little boy face. “OK, that’s it.”
“Good.”
“I promise. Not another word.”
“Excellent.”
A beat. Then: “So, er . . .” He cleared his throat. “Did you, um, drive carefully? I mean, you were in such a state you could have caused a . . .” pause for dramatic effect, “a massive pileup?” He lay back on the sofa cushions, laughing and kicking his legs in the air like an expensively suited beetle stranded on its back. Cyn located a spare cushion and threw it at him.
“Oh, come on, gorgeous,” Hugh said sitting up. “Give me a break. There’s not a gay man in the world who doesn’t like a good arse joke.” He took a swig of beer.
It was then that she noticed three black olives bunched up in the center of her pizza. Usually she adored olives, but she found herself stabbing them with her fork and sliding them to the side of her plate.
“But I agree,” he went on, gravely, “this whole thing is a total bummer.” His laughter was so contagious that this time, try as she might, she couldn’t stop herself from joining in.
“How is it that at the same time as annoying the hell out of me, you manage to cheer me up like nobody else I know? You know, Huge, I don’t half love you.”
He smiled and patted her knee. “Love you too, gorgeous.”
She’d known Hugh since university. They were both at Leeds. She was doing history, Hugh was doing mechanical engineering, which he loathed. His father, a retired brigadier general, said it was either that or the army. He was determined his son should reach the age of twenty-one having acquired a “proper skill.” When Hugh told him that he wanted to read English literature, his father said that was for “faggots and socialists.” Since Hugh rarely rose before midday, after which he bathed and partook of toast, thinly spread marmalade and a cup of Lapsang Souchong, he couldn’t quite see himself hacking it in the army. If he wanted his father’s financial support, engineering was his only choice. He had told Cyn recently that he was certain his father had always suspected he was gay and forcing him to do something macho was his way of trying to knock it out of him.
