Formerly Fingerman

by Joe Nelms

  FORMERLY

  FINGERMAN

  JOE NELMS

  For Amy, Zoe, and Rufus

  The commonest thing is

  delightful if only one hides it.

  —OSCAR WILDE

  Brad

  It had to be a hundred and five degrees in the chicken suit. Everyone else was enjoying an unseasonably pleasant fall day, but Brad was sweating balls.

  “Half-price Chicken Lickens today, ma’am.”

  His feathered arm stabbed out into the air, and the flier it held flapped impotently at a passing pedestrian. She continued without breaking stride or making eye contact, a decisive dismissal lacking even remote consideration. That was the general policy of Manhattan women. Despite the implied legitimacy of corporate backing his costume would seem to provide, Brad couldn’t offer up an honest-to-goodness deal on chicken fingers without having them think it was some sick come-on. Chances were there was a guy across town dressed exactly like him and employing a similar approach, but not affiliated with a restaurant of any kind. So Brad was largely ignored.

  A Cornell graduate handing out fliers in a chicken costume wasn’t such an impressive career trajectory that his former professors would ask him to come back and talk to the seniors about it, but it did put some walking-around money in Brad’s pocket and gave him somewhere to go every morning when he pretended to leave for a real job. Also, the anonymity the enormous chicken head gave him ensured that he wouldn’t be discovered accidentally by his wife or her friends, three of whom had passed by already today. This was a temporary job, after all.

  “Like to try a white-meat wrap, sir?”

  “Shove it, asswipe.”

  He had found an unlikely ally in the chicken suit next to him, manned by a fellow named Owen. Like Brad, Owen’s status as a hands-on marketing representative for the Chicken Shack was intended to be short term only. Owen had big plans. He just hadn’t gotten the break he needed yet.

  Owen had failed his NYPD cadet evaluation. He hadn’t quite passed his fireman’s test. There had been no word on the results of his nurse’s aide exam, but it had been two years so he was assuming the worst. His newest plan was to become a bailiff, ripe with potential since it was a position of authority and the uniforms looked sort of cop-ish.

  Owen had earned his degree in criminal justice from an accredited online university, studied his thrift store criminology textbooks every night, and watched plenty of Judge Judy to supplement his book knowledge with what he considered higher theory and practical psychological application. Surprisingly, it was going better than his previous endeavors.

  He had passed the physical exam and, to Brad’s secret, cheek-biting surprise, the intelligence exam. Now, the only thing between Owen and a promising career within the city’s courtrooms was a psychological evaluation. Thanks to the privacy his own chicken mask provided, Owen was able to spend several hours a day practicing what he considered to be meaningful and significant courtroom-appropriate facial expressions in preparation for this final hurdle. Most passersby didn’t even realize they were being used as rehearsal partners.

  “Chicken Toes, three for a dollar, today at lunch.”

  “You’re blocking the sidewalk.”

  “Please be seated.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Owen claimed the curses didn’t bother him. He would have to get used to that type of behavior if he was going to work in the criminal justice system. He looked at the hostility as good training. Sort of a blessing.

  Brad and Owen spent a good deal of their shifts critiquing and finetuning Owen’s performance. It was a helpful process for Owen. And it kept Brad from falling asleep.

  “How was that?”

  “Did he sit down?”

  “No.”

  Somewhere in the recesses of his chicken torso, Brad’s phone rang. From the Miley Cyrus ringtone he knew it was his wife and not a recruiter. He had no exciting news for her. He had not landed a big job interview. He was not considering any offers he needed to sit down and discuss with her as a couple. He let the ringtone run its course, blaring through the overly ambitious phone speakers, providing an incongruous, temporary soundtrack to his flier distribution activities. Mercifully, the call finally went to voice mail.

  As usual, Brad would call Gracie back when he took his bathroom break (urinating was a fifteen-minute affair involving partial to full disrobing, and therefore limited to predetermined intervals). That was a good half hour away, which would give him plenty of time to make up a story about whatever meeting he would pretend to have been in. Perhaps a brainstorming session for a new client. Or a briefing for a pitch. Either one was the opposite of the truth.

  The phone’s message alert chimed about ten seconds after the phone stopped ringing, so the message was probably something short in the family of universal husband/wife check-ins. Hi, it’s me. Call me when you can. Love you, bye. Her usual mix of efficient and arguably sweet. Poor thing. She had no idea.

  “Did you tell Gracie you got laid off from Overthink yet?”

  “Of course not. I told her I got promoted to senior art director.”

  Owen considered the lie for a brief moment before nodding inside his mask.

  “Smart.”

  Actually, it was. If Brad’s plan worked out.

  He lacked the courage to tell his wife on the day his humiliating downsizing had occurred. Reeling from the suddenness of the blow, he had decided perhaps he would wait until he found the perfect time—over a glass of wine or maybe after he won the lottery—to gently break the news of his underemployment, followed quickly by a lengthy and/or charming explanation of why it was actually a good thing. A door-closing, window-opening, Japanese-word-for-disaster-and-opportunity sort of thing.

  Certainly there are those who would have classified his reticence as cowardice. And they would have been right to an extent, but it could also have been argued that Brad recognized in his life a tendency for things to work themselves out. Not in the world-changing Oh-Dr.-Fleming-would-you-mind-cleaning-up-these-petri-dishes-Hey-look-you-discovered-penicillin kind of way. More in the Oh-no-I-got-a-flat-tire-Hey-look-I’m-right-in-front-of-a-tire-store manner. Lukewarm luck.

  When Brad broke his leg in high school, he spent his recovery period working on the oil paintings he had always talked about but had never done. The experience ended up rounding out his résumé enough to qualify him for acceptance to Cornell. A few years later, when he lost his apartment because it turned out sub-sub-subleases usually end that way, he crashed on a buddy’s couch. A month later that buddy jumped off a bridge, which meant as long as Brad kept his mouth shut and paid the super cheap rent on time, his buddy’s centrally located one bedroom was Brad’s. One time, when he forgot his wallet, it happened to be the day that management bought the whole office lunch. Things just always seemed to work out.

  In recent years, awareness of this pattern had bubbled up to the top of Brad’s consciousness. Not so much that he would count on low-octane good luck prevailing in every situation, but enough that he felt he could afford some ennui-fueled gambling, vaguely understanding that chances were, while he might not win big, he probably wouldn’t lose his shirt.

  Whatever the crisis was, there was usually a vine waiting for him when he finished swinging through it. And like a lazy, mildly bored Tarzan he would grab it and swing away to his next adventure, usually in an upwardly mobile and generally happier direction. It was an unpredictable methodology but with the track record laid down so far, it was hard to argue with.

  So when he got shitcanned, he decided to wait and see what happened before taking any drastic measures. The morning after, he showered up and hit the road the same as usual.

  After a few hours on his laptop in a coffee sho
p polishing up the old curriculum vitae, tightening his portfolio site, scouring employment postings, and submitting himself to every agency within the tri-state area, he spent the day meandering, wandering the city streets, eventually ending up tired and hungry outside the Chicken Shack. A large chicken on the sidewalk in front handed him a coupon and then informed everyone in the vicinity that the honorable Judgey McToughGuy would be presiding over today’s proceedings. Brad took it as a sign and went in.

  The break from his aimless walk gave Brad some time to reflect on his predicament without having to worry about avoiding slow-going fatso tourists and sketchy homeless guys. And to wallow. Free time was horrible like that. Rife with the potential of self-doubt.

  What now? What if this time nothing happened? What if there was only a certain amount of luck one was allotted in life and Brad had already pissed his away on primo parking spots and avoiding DUI checkpoints? He stopped short of anything as trite as Why me? but he was definitely in the neighborhood. He had been unemployed for nineteen hours already, after all.

  “Brad?”

  Brad didn’t have to see who was calling out to him to immediately understand that he was in a bit of a pickle as he sat there in the back booth of the empty Chicken Shack, wiping guacamole off of his lower lip. Someone recognized him. Now what? Brad would have to explain why he was sitting alone in a dumpy fast food restaurant when he should have been hard at work, or at least in an office, across town. Truth be told, who would give a shit where Brad Fingerman ate lunch? But this was not the mindset he was in. At the moment, his worldview was thoroughly tainted by shame.

  Brad turned to find the chicken from outside standing next to his booth, now headless to reveal the sweaty face of Owen. He hadn’t recognized Owen when he heard him outside, but that was probably because they hadn’t seen each other for years and Owen was using one of his court voices. Most likely “Rusty.”

  Brad knew Owen from his earliest days in the city when he had dabbled in hipsterism. Owen had worked the counter of a store in Williamsburg that sold some “hilarious” T-shirts, a line of 1970s sitcom-themed lunchboxes, and a few old school straw fedoras, but mostly irony. Owen didn’t really understand the attitude. He genuinely thought the T-shirts were funny.

  Brad quickly outgrew the trend, ditching the pornstache and the fixed-gear bike in favor of a look that was more upwardly mobile. He did not ditch Owen, however. Their relationship had begun as a satirical endeavor on Brad’s part, but had blossomed into a genuine acquaintanceship. And while they hadn’t physically seen each other in a dog’s age, Brad would non-ironically “Like” the occasional Facebook post from Owen. So technically, they were still friends.

  “Owen? How are you? I thought you worked in Brooklyn?”

  “They closed. The owner said the shop was getting too commercial.”

  “Ah.”

  The chances of Brad and Owen having overlapping social circles could be measured in the millionths of percentage points. In fact, Brad may have lucked into the one person in the city he could be completely honest with. He could lay the whole story out for Owen and not worry an iota about him accidentally spilling the beans to anyone Brad knew these days.

  “Sit down, Owen.”

  “Oh, I can’t. My boss says a chicken eating chicken makes the customers uncomfortable.”

  Brad picked up what was left of his quesadilla and joined Owen in the break room to catch up and unload. Half an hour later, Owen had to go back to work and Brad had decided to join him.

  It was perfect. Brad couldn’t spend his days walking around the city like a vonce. Someone who knew him would see him and mention it to Gracie or tweet it or something, and he would be caught off guard when he was inevitably (and most likely innocently) asked about it. If that were a one-time only risk, he could probably talk his way out of whatever suspicion it brought. But his term of unemployment would be an unpredictable length, and he could only tell so many stories before the walls crumbled.

  But this. Standing around wearing a costume that no one could possibly recognize him in for what would surely be the short while it took for him to be picked up again professionally. This was just right.

  This was the vine.

  It was three weeks before Brad got a response to his many job applications. Apparently, there was one single agency in town that was both hiring an associate creative director and hadn’t heard the story of Brad’s imposed hiatus from the business. Red Light District Advertising.

  He was perfect for the Red Light job. Now he just had to get hired before someone over there talked to someone who talked to someone who talked to someone back at Overthink—which, considering how small the world of New York advertising agencies was, would probably be by about four thirty the following afternoon.

  But his interview was the next morning. If he nailed that, he had a fighting chance. And fight Brad would. Red Light was a much better agency than Overthink, and the new position would include a paycheck that was a schload bigger than his old one.

  In the meantime, Owen tried his best to keep Brad’s spirits up.

  “Hey man, you’ve got to see the bright side of the situation. You’re a smart guy with a hot wife. You have an interview at your dream job tomorrow. And your hamburger commercial is going to run on America’s Biggest Hair tonight.”

  “Pizza commercial.”

  “Even better! Brad, you’ve got to make the best of it. Look at me. I have my last test next week. And you’ve got your interview tomorrow. You never know what could happen. We’ll both be moving on to bigger and better things before you know it.”

  “Fingerson!”

  A squat, stubby man wearing a short sleeve shirt and a nametag that read “Chuck—Ass. Manager” stood in the entrance of the restaurant scowling at the giant, schlumpy chickens in front of him.

  “It’s Fingerman.”

  “You and Owen clock out early. It’s too slow today. I’m losing money on you.”

  “But what about our dinner?”

  “You don’t work a full shift, I don’t feed you. You know the rules.”

  Brad could see Owen deflate inside his chicken suit.

  “Oh, man. I was counting on the money and the meal.”

  “Clock out.”

  Brad and Gracie

  Before the axe dropped at Overthink, Brad was pulling in a hundred and fifty grand a year. Not amazing by New York standards, but pretty good considering the effort he put in. Plus, he had a couple of marginally funny frozen pizza spots currently on the air.

  Aside from that, there had been a series of minor victories in his career—a few impressive print ads, some strong web stuff, and a couple of spec commercials made with a friend’s camera and a crew he paid with take-out Chinese, beer, and cigarettes. He had arrived at Overthink four years ago as an art director, and managed only to languish in relative obscurity. Brad presented plenty of good work to his boss, but, like ninety percent of the conceptual work in the industry, it never got produced for some reason or another—the account team changed the strategy, the storyboards didn’t test well, the client thought the background color was poopy, whatever. There was always something keeping him from scratching the itch that only produced work created solely by him could reach. But really, that’s why he was in this business in the first place.

  Advertising tends to be the refuge of cowardly artists—the almost-were screenwriters, painters, photographers, sculptors, glassblowers, novelists, and playwrights—who didn’t have the derring-do to try their craft without a comprehensive health plan and company-matching 401(k). Pussies.

  Brad’s chosen medium of unexploited talent was painting. He had always doodled, drawn, and even photographed, but his real love was painting. The thing that made him profoundly happy was capturing his unique vision on canvas. He just didn’t ever do it.

  Not anymore anyway. Once upon a time Brad spent late nights in the studio, alone with his brushes and paints and single-minded vision. He even had a few shows back i
n his hometown of San Antonio. Oh, big stuff.

  All it took was one overly practical college mentor to point out that most painters died broke and usually with syphilis. It was suggested that Brad find a major that used his talent in a more pragmatic way. How can you turn that wonderful vision of yours into a job? Advertising! Ah ha! Why make pretty pictures for free (if we’re being honest here) when you can make them for big corporations that pay you a lot of money? Then you can paint on your own time. It really is the safe way.

  And with that, Brad and his irrevocably cracked artistic foundation were ushered out of that sage advisor’s office to make way for a girl who was torn between a career in nursing or maybe helping out at her mother’s flower shop.

  Since then, Brad had spent almost a decade pumping out his share of close-enough-to-creatively-satisfying advertising ideas. They had served to sate his ambition the way a Kate Hudson movie makes you feel like you were entertained even though you know you weren’t. The effect is masturbatory, but short of taking an actual risk, there is little else.

  And then there was the vodka job. As far as onanistic art went, that was a game changer. A sort of make-good for the indignity of spending his twenties void of creative integrity. Maybe the best and worst thing that ever happened to Brad.

  The vodka job ended in disaster, of course, the proportions of which threatened to make a verb out of Brad’s name industry-wide. But it also gave him a taste of the possible. He wanted back in. And he wanted back in at Red Light.

  The position at Red Light would be a dream. The accounts were high-rolling, super visible, and inevitably award-winning. And it paid two twenty, which would be enough of a jump to quickly pay back all that he had borrowed from his savings to cover his lie to Gracie.

  Not that she would care. Or notice. Brad’s wife’s job as a divorce attorney paid very well. She had started specializing in gay divorces about ten years ago. Her bosses at Hunter & Partners thought she was crazy, but she carved out a niche and kept making them money. Eventually, she started making the firm so much money that they couldn’t pay her enough to stick around. Gracie pulled stakes and walked out to start her own firm. Gay divorce became all the rage and Gracie was in the pole position to take advantage of it.