Open Eyes (Open Skies) (5 page)

Vicky blushed a bit. “Well, ummm… I have an idea for an ad.”

“You do?” Lindsey said.

“Yes. I worked on it last night, at home.”

Rob stared at her, impressed. “OK. Let’s see it.”

“It’s really basic…” She was floundering again, losing confidence.

“Vicky,” he said gently. “That’s OK. Let’s see it, alright?”

She swallowed and clicked on her laptop. “OK. Here… here it is.”

Rob sat down next to her and looked at the ad. It was rough, sure, but it was all there, everything they had wanted: it was warm and inviting and featured a family. Julie really wanted to promote Open Skies as a place for families to come to ski, horseback ride, and skate. Vicky’s proposal would appeal to both parents and to kids.

She was twisting her fingers. “I was thinking, you see, about a piggy-bag kind of thing – this ad could run first, but it’s really just the first of three. I have ideas here for two more ads.” She handed Rob a stack of papers covered in hand-written notes and hurried sketches with an apologetic expression. “I can type it up for you, of course, I just didn’t have time yet. But I suggest running this first ad, the second one two weeks later, the third one two weeks after that.” She tapped the notes. “I picture the three ads as three separate parts of a bigger picture.”

“Like a running story?” Lindsey said. “Each ad gives a bit more information about the family and our services?”

“Exactly. And by doing things this way, we actually buy some time – we can stagger the release of the ads and sort things out with Robinson. If we can’t get them to agree to do the work at a significant discount for the little trick they pulled and which lost us over a month, we still have time to approach someone else.”

Rob leaned back and surveyed Vicky. The woman was nothing if not a surprise.

“How did you come up with this whole concept so quickly?” he asked.

I just imagined the way I’d want to spend Christmas at Open Skies with Sonia and Mom. After that, it was easy.

Vicky shrugged. “It just came to me.”

“Well, OK,” he said. “I’m glad it did. We may be able to pull this off yet.”

Lindsey nodded.

“Lindsey, please call Teddy over at Robinson and set up an emergency meeting for today. No excuses, OK? Today.” He grinned at Vicky. “And I want you to come with me to the meeting.”

“Me? Oh. Oh, no…”

“Yes, you. You are going to come and show them the ad they couriered over yesterday and the one from four years ago. You’re also going to show them what you managed to come up with in just one night. They have a lot to answer for, I think, and you’re going to
make
them answer.”

Vicky was about to protest again and then a small voice inside of her spoke up:
What are you doing? Come on, Vicky. You used to eat lazy studio layout designers for breakfast… go on and do it again. Hell, you may even enjoy it.

She squared her shoulders and looked up at Rob. “OK. I’ll come with you.”

**

“You should have
seen
her. She kicked their asses from one side of the meeting room to the other – and she was so totally polite the whole time. I think Teddy and Gordon were shocked and awed to the point of terror. I kid you not.”

Julie, Jake and Tammy laughed.

“So, do we get our first ad for free?” Julie asked as Rob – ever the attentive dinner host – poured her some more wine.

“Nope,” Rob said. “Teddy offered to do that and Vicky very sweetly told him that the first ad was
already
free – because she had done it for them.”

“Oh, my God,” Tammy said. “I love her.”

“So then Gordon jumped in and said that they’d do the first
two
ads at no charge. Vicky thought about that for a minute and finally agreed, like she was doing them a big favor by accepting the free work. But she said that she’d be supervising them personally and no more nonsense. She actually said ‘nonsense’.” Rob shook his head. “I damn near
hugged
her, I swear.”

“Wow,” Jake said. “It seems that Ms. Thompson is going to keep those boys in their place, huh?”

“With smiles and sweetness,” Tammy said. “So much more effective than yelling.”

“You know,” Julie said. “Phil was right, I see now. About her being tough under that meek exterior. I think there is way more to Vicky than meets the eye.”

“Yeah,” Rob said. “But haven’t we known that, right from the start?”

Jake raised his glass. “To Vicky, ass-kicker
extraordinaire
. May she keep shining.”

“We’d better invest in some sunglasses for the office,” Rob said. “I get the feeling that she may well blind us all.”

**

For Vicky, her first weeks at Open Skies passed in a blur of activity and determined focus. Overnight almost, autumn became winter. Vicky stood in her living room looking at her first snowfall in the mountains. It was breathtaking.

She snapped a few pictures on her cell phone and sent them to her Mom. She had just poured a cup of coffee when the burner phone rang and she smiled.

“Hi, sweet pea.”

“Mommy! The snow!”

“I know, baby girl. It’s beautiful, huh?”

“We don’t have any yet.”

“None?”

“Nope.”

“Well, it’s only November,” Vicky told her. “Winter comes a bit sooner in the Rockies. But I am sure that you’ll get plenty of snow your way soon enough – more than enough to make a snowman, I’ll bet.”

“Ben says that we can gather fresh snow and bring it in the house and put syrup on it. He says it’s delicious.”

“I think Ben is right. It’d be like ice cream.”

“Yummy.”

“So, what are you and Granny and Ben going to do for Thanksgiving?” Vicky asked.

“I don’t know. I think we’re staying here.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Granny says we can go to the waterpark, though. Go swimming.”

“Now
that
sounds like fun.”

“It would be more fun with you. Can you come for Thanksgiving?”

Vicky closed her eyes for a brief second; the pain of missing her daughter was sharp and immediate. “I’m sorry, Sonia. I have to work next weekend.”

“Why?”

“Because I work at a hotel, and we’re open that weekend. In fact, we're full-up with guests! All seven cabins are booked.”

“Really?”

“Yep. Lots of people want to spend the holiday here. It’s beautiful and the food is good…”

“And they can ride the horses?”

“They can.”

“Huh.” The little girl thought about that for a minute. “Maybe next year I can be there for Thanksgiving?”

Now Vicky’s cheeks were wet with her tears. “I hope so, sweet pea.” She took a deep breath. “I’m counting on it.”

**

“OK, guys… are you all ready?”

Everyone nodded and settled in to their chairs. The whole ‘backroom team’ as Julie called them was present at the meeting this morning: everyone from Sales and Marketing, and Julie too.

“Well, I know it’s only November now,” Julie said. “But Rob and I have been talking about the summer promotions already. We want to do something big for this summer – much bigger than just some ads or online media stuff.”

“Really?” Allison Sabler’s eyes were shining. “How big?”

Rob smiled. “About seventy-five-K big.”

Everyone gasped. That was the biggest budget ever set for a single campaign at Open Skies.

Allison looked at Vicky and grinned. The two women had become very close over Vicky’s three months at the office, despite the age gap of almost fifteen years. Allison was bright and airy and fun, and Vicky admired her exuberance and sheer love of all things creative. The younger woman reminded Vicky of herself at the same age: so full of hope and brimming with possibilities and optimism. She prayed that Allison never met her own version of Carl, and if she did, she never let him in to her life.

Vicky pushed thoughts of Carl away and focused on Rob.

“So, Julie and I want to do something a bit different this time, OK? We’ll try it, see how it goes. We’re going to ask each one of you in Marketing to pitch a campaign idea – just one idea, OK?” He nodded at Vicky, Allison and Peter Kingsley. “I’ll pitch one too, so I’m putting in as much time on this as you all are. We’ll need to work closely with Sales, to hear about any feedback you may have heard from clients and partners.”

The Sales team – Fred, Wendy and Bill – all nodded.

“We’ll have the pitch meeting in three weeks – the second Monday after the Thanksgiving weekend. That’s plenty of time, since you can pretty much focus on it exclusively. The Christmas ads project is wrapping up tomorrow or the day after, and Vicky and I will be keeping an eye on that. But the hard work on that has all been done by Vicky, so we have some time now to think about summer. OK?”

Everyone murmured and agreed.

“Any questions?” Julie asked.

“The pitch,” Allison said. “Full presentation? Budget, expenses projections, timeline, sample ads and visuals?”

“Everything,” Rob said. “You have three weeks, folks. Use them wisely.”

Vicky nodded, excitement squirming in her stomach.
Oh, man. This is going to be fun.

**

A few days later, Vicky was getting dressed. Or, rather, she was
trying
to get dressed, but she was encountering two serious obstacles in the process.

The first was simple mathematics, or physics, or logistics: her waist size had simply exceeded the amount of material in her skirts and dress pants. She had always been slim, but the events and stress of the past few months of her life had made her dangerously thin. She was gaining weight now, though. Lots of it. She figured that had easily put on twenty pounds in the past three months and although she looked and felt immeasurably better for it, her wardrobe was now in crisis.

The second obstacle was less concrete and far more aesthetic: she hated her clothes.
Hated
them,
all
of them. She stared in to the wardrobe and saw nothing but black, grey, dark blue, a bit of white. Where was all the color? Everything was shapeless and baggy and although she took care of her clothes, they just didn’t flatter her in the slightest.

Of course she knew, damn well and good, why her clothes looked like the kind of things that a ninety-year old nun would own. It was because of Carl, naturally. He had been so adamantly opposed to her looking pretty or attractive, even feminine. She had learned the hard way what happened to her if she brought home anything remotely figure-hugging, or attention-catching, or skin-baring.

Vicky knew there was a time when she had worn fashionable, fun clothing – way back when she worked with Alina. But when Carl had pressured her to quit and stay home to rest during pregnancy and then to take care of Sonia, it had slowly changed.

His jealousy (always present and which had stupidly and mistakenly taken for love in her naivety and inexperience) had flared, gotten out of control. Her isolation was complete and she was alone, with no source of income. When he had started dictating everything, including what clothes she put on in the morning, she knew she was in trouble. But by then she had a baby and she didn’t see a way out. She was tired and scared and everything hurt almost all the time, so she stayed.

Things were different now, though. Sonia was safe and her mom was safe and she was safe. She had a good job, a nice place to live. She was earning more than enough to send to her mother every month for Sonia’s needs, and she still had set aside money for herself. Staring in to the closet and getting increasingly depressed and disgusted by what she saw in it, Vicky decided that it was high time to go shopping.

She shook her head and reached for her long black dress. It was shapeless and horrible, but at least it still fit her. She added her simple gold necklace to try to look a bit less like someone heading out to a funeral and then applied lipstick. She gazed at herself in the mirror.

Still awful.
Goddammit
. In a rare burst of temper she reached up and yanked her hair out of its tight bun. Glossy and golden-red, it fell down her back and over her shoulders. She shook it loose and ran her fingers through it. The mirror showed her that she desperately needed a haircut, but at least she didn’t look like a mourner anymore. Or, not so much.

She sighed and gave her hair a final flick before heading out for breakfast. She piled her plate high with pancakes and bacon –
weight gain explained!
– and added some fruit for the look of the thing. She made herself a Cappuccino and settled at a table with her ideas notebook, to brainstorm some more about the summer campaign while she ate.

She was sitting and sipping her coffee, idly doodling in the corner of one page, when she saw what she had been drawing. It was Phil’s dragon tattoo on his forearm. Vicky stared at it and thought about him. She thought about him quite a lot.

Over the past three months, she had come to know Phil pretty well. Most of it she had figured out on her own – Vicky could recognize a person who had come from violence easily now – but some she had heard from others. In bits and pieces, she had put Phil’s life together and the picture that emerged was both sad and inspiring.

He had told her himself about his alcoholism and introduced Vicky to Kimana Beck, his sponsor at AA. She also knew that he’d done some serious jail time in his life, for some violent crimes and something to do with drugs. Mattie had told her about his teenaged years in Detroit heading up some street gang there. Apparently the tattoo was from those days – some kind of sign of leadership of gang membership, she thought.

After her own experiences with a violent man, Vicky had at first been chilled and horrified at being around Phil. She had pulled back, stood back, started observing from a distance. And what she thought about Phil now was both surprising and intriguing. The reality was that, on paper, Phil was a criminal, an ex-con, a dangerous man. But at this point in her life, ‘on paper’ didn’t mean that much to Vicky.

‘On paper’, her husband was perfect. He had an MBA and was handsome and had a terrific smile. He was wealthy and always bought the first round when he met the boys for a drink or four. He was successful and admired at work; he was an upper manager and had the respect of everyone he worked with. But in reality, Carl was a monster in human form.