The Last Manly Man (19 page)

Jack didn't kiss ass, he approached Gill as the equal he was, as a guy who had something to offer Gill—worldwide advertising for the price of domestic, and with great demographics. Gill listened with interest, pointing out potential pitfalls in advertising on Jack's network, and it reminded me of a shopping expedition I went on with an Indian exchange student in college. The salesman tried to sell her a carpet, she pointed out its flaws to him and tried to bring the price down. Jack and Gill were playing a similar game. It was very cordial, though I suspected that had I not been there, the dialogue would have been rougher and more manly, more David Mamet or Martin Scorsese than Miss Manners.

“We'd get better numbers on the broadcast networks,” Gill said.

“Ostensibly,” Jack said. “But they are confined to domestic coverage. You're a worldwide company. Overall, you get greater global numbers with us. And let me tell you, we have very high demographics among women overseas. Women are still your biggest customers, Gill. Have you been watching the coverage of the women's conference? You know, India has a huge middle class, which is rapidly growing, and a lot of disposable income, and they love ANN.”

“And what do you think, Robin?” Gill asked, and he leaned over toward me so our knees touched. I was sure it wasn't a mistake. He liked me.

“I think you can't do better than to advertise on our networks, because you reach people of influence all over the planet,” I said. Was I the Company Girl or what? I didn't even pull my knee away.

“I may just listen to you,” Morton said. “It was your request for our archive materials that got me thinking about our next ad campaign. We're gonna update those old twenty-first-century ads from the fifties and sixties. We're gonna show a new vision of the future. Want to see the sketches? Just got them couriered out last night.”

“Sure,” Jack said.

Gill leaned over to a flat panel on an end table and pressed a button. “Roger, bring in that portfolio the messenger brought last night. It's in my bedroom.”

So puffed up was I by Morton's praise, I almost forgot he was a polluter who kept and killed doves. Oh, how we come to love our flatterers. Jack's interest in me wasn't as flattering, because he has these whims and elevates people to his confidence fairly often—one of the cafeteria ladies, a video editor named Valerie, a philosophy Ph.D. Jack sat next to on a commercial flight and now introduced as his “official ethicist,” all these folks were part of Jack's loose-knit, wide-ranging “feedback network.” But Gill Morton was different, and suddenly I wasn't a mid-level manager going nowhere fast. I was consultant to moguls. When I talked, moguls listened, and all because I got drunk one night with Jack Jackson.

“Have you seen these?” Gill asked, handing me a different portfolio of print materials while we waited for the new portfolio. “This was the magazine campaign we ran in 1959, post-
Sputnik
.”

More RetroFuture stuff. If the Madison Avenue seer behind this campaign was to be believed, in the year 2001 Dad and Son would wax the family rocket with Morton Gleamwax, while Mom, Sis, and a team of robots prepared Space-Age Tuna Casserole on a Morton “atomic” range from a recipe provided by the Morton Family Test Kitchens. I'm not sure what made it “space-age.” The canned tuna, macaroni, Morton creamy cheese soup, or canned peas?

“In the year 2001, you and your family may take a vacation to Mars!” said the caption in an ad that had run in
Life
magazine.

And there's Dad, in his hat and tie, piloting the family rocket, while Mom, in dress and gloves, hands out sandwiches in individual Mortonware sandwich packs to the kids, a freckle-faced boy in a striped shirt with a cowlick and an angelic girl in a dress, bow in her hair. Mortonware, you may recall, was the company's short-lived attempt to take on Tupperware in 1957, halted after a chemical in the plastic was found to cause nerve disorders in small children, though no mention of this was made in the documentation.

A young man brought in another portfolio and Gill moved closer to me and opened it.

“These are the sketches for the new campaign,” he said.

“
IN THE YEAR
2025” said the heading. Essentially, the sketches showed the same things as the 1959 ads, but more high-tech and with different clothes. The family was still on its way to Mars, for example, but the rocket had a more stream-lined shape and a more complicated-looking control panel, the clothes were distinctly Trekkie, and the Mortonware was missing. Mom and Sis still made dinner but Space-Age Tuna Casserole was out, and a recipe for Chicken of the Future, a healthy stir-fry using Morton-brand olive oil, was in. Women and their robots still were responsible for running the home.

I mentioned this and Morton said, “Well, we want people to be cleaner in the future. We want to promote housecleaning. A couple of years ago, the
New york Times
did a story about how housework has fallen off nationwide.”

“My point is, men do more of those tasks now. You only show women involved in those tasks in your proposed ads.”

“Good point!” Morton said as if it hadn't occurred to him.

Sometimes men aren't too bright. It made me wonder about them anew, and made me wonder how many ideas that ostensibly came from men throughout the years had originated with women, who never got due credit.

We were interrupted then by another of Gill's men, who came in and said, “The neighbors say they weren't shooting today. But one of the gardeners says he saw a late-model car, black or dark blue, driving away on the access road. We were unable to track it, but we alerted the local police.”

It must have been those thugs, I thought. How did they know I was going to be out here? Who had I told?

“You know who it was, Gill?” Jack asked.

“No, no idea. Wouldn't count out the neighbors though. We're involved in a property dispute and they might not want to admit a shooting mistake while we're in litigation. The car must have been driving by. Did the gardener say if he saw the car stopped, or saw its occupant?”

“He didn't,” said Gill's man.

“All right. Keep an eye on the neighbors. Thanks.”

The butler called us for lunch then, and as we were led to a table in the sunroom, Gill said, “Have your advertising guys call my advertising guys, Jack. I think we can do business.”

The butler poured us wine and served another appetizer made with some kind of goat excretion. The combination of winey goat cheese and being shot at made me queasy.

When a dead dove was placed in front of me, I lost it.

“Where's the jo …bathroom?” I asked.

“Around the corner and down the hall …”

“Excuse me,” I managed to mumble, flying from the table, down the hallway, to the john, where I just barely missed the toilet and threw up all over the pink marble floor. I managed to get my head to the bowl for the second wave of goat cheese canapés and brandy-spiked tea. I sounded like a laryngitic whale in labor—they had to be able hear me in the sunroom. A third wave came, and I felt the first tremors of a fourth, but it subsided.

Using the very soft pink toilet paper, I mopped up the floor before splashing cold water on my face and rinsing my mouth out a few dozen times with the Scope in the medicine chest. I had to flush the toilet repeatedly, waiting each time for the tank to fill. When I was done, I stood there for a moment to get my composure, go out and face the men who had been listening to me puke and flush for the last fifteen, twenty minutes. I knew they had heard me because I could hear them. I stood there and listened for a moment. The tone of their conversation had changed somewhat.

“So this girl isn't your girlfriend, is she, Jack?” Morton asked.

“No, no. Can't do that, she works for me.”

“Not like the good old days, eh, Jack. The pussy I got on the job in the old days. These days they sue. Might as well hire ugly women now.”

Jack didn't answer, but started coughing, a diplomatic avoidance cough, I figured, a good excuse not to respond to Morton.

“Of course, ugly women sue too. Look what happened to Wally, and while his divorce was going on,” Morton said.

He was talking about Wallace Mandervan, who had been sued for sexual harassment by a woman employee who claimed she could identify his distinctive penis. The woman lost, but not before Mandervan submitted to a court-ordered physical exam to see if he did indeed have an eleven-inch Bubba. He did not, not even close, though he had claimed to for many years. On the upside, he won the case. On the downside, his self-aggrandizement leaked out to the media. Not long after, his bitterly fought divorce came through, and Mandervan disappeared from public view.

“You seen him lately? Mandervan?” I heard Jack say.

“The cocksucker is a recluse. Finishing his book out on his island. I'll be anxious to read it, see what he says is going to happen.”

“I hear he's really gone off the deep end.”

“Yeah, you hear a lot of things. Is that girl okay? She's been gone a long time.”

“Maybe we should check on her.”

They were talking about me.

It was a difficult moment, but I had to go back out and face them.

“You okay? You missed a great dove,” Jack said when I came back.

Mortified, I sat quietly after that. Morton entertained us with more amusing legends about his life, and I was grateful to have the time to get my stomach settled before we got back on the chopper.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

It was early evening when we got away. On the way back, the chopper ride was not nearly so enjoyable.

“What a character,” Jack said.

“Yeah.”

“You going to throw up again?”

“No,” I said. The bravado I had had before with Jack was gone, now that I had completely embarrassed myself in front of my patron. “Sorry about that.”

“Aw, it could have been worse,” Jack said. “You could have barfed at the table. Of course, that, uh, would have saved me having to eat a dove.”

I managed a weak smile.

“Gill got a good laugh out of it. No harm done. Did I ever tell you about the time I threw up on Lord Otterrill at a cricket match in London?” Jack said.

I managed a bigger smile. That's the kind of guy Jack was. He'd tell one of his own embarrassing stories to put you at ease about your own embarrassment.

“Thanks, Jack. Sorry I forgot to ask Gill about Bald Scot Island.”

“It's not that great a story. He won the island off a Scottish lord or laird or whatever in a poker game. A bald Scottish lord. You had a rough day, the hunting, then that stray shot fired …”

“And the puking.”

“Oh yeah, the puking,” Jack said, and laughed. “You like Gill?”

“He's okay.”

“He seems to like you … a lot.”

“He's too retro for me,” I said. “And he hunts.”

“Yeah, I didn't think he was your type. You got a boyfriend?”

“Kind of,” I said.

“Good!” Jack said, and seemed genuinely delighted. “Everyone should have someone.”

At that, he caught his breath and turned to the window. He was thinking about Shonny, I presumed.

When he turned back to me he asked, “What does it take to make a woman want to stick around these days?”

“I dunno, Jack. What does it take to make a man want to stick around?”

Neither of us had the answer. We both fell silent. Jack looked back out the window. I did the same.

Jack had two limos waiting for us at heliport, one for him and one for me. On the limo ride from the heliport, I had the driver stop at ANN, so I could pick up some tapes, and then wait for me at my place so I could change for my date with Gus. Romance was the last thing I was in the mood for, but I'd already blown him off twice, and the next week was shaping up to be crazy with work, so this was my only chance to make good with him. If all went according to plan, we could have sex in about a half hour, and I could come home and do a little work before I went to bed, unless Jason beeped me.

When I got back in the limo to go to the Plaza, I scoped out the street to make sure we weren't being watched or followed. I'm sure the limo driver thought I was a complete loon, though he was classy and betrayed nothing, wouldn't even answer my questions about men with anything more than, “I am really not in a position to comment on that.”

“You're a man,” I said.

“Yes,” he said, the only straight answer I got out of him. I understood. He worked for Jackson Broadcasting and didn't want to say anything provocative, anything that might land him in hot water and jeopardize his job.

As soon as I knocked on Gus's door at the Plaza, as soon as my knuckles touched door wood, Gus opened it.

“I'm so glad to see you,” he said, in a tone of voice he'd never used before, touching and sad. Then he hugged me and kissed me. He'd been drinking a bit and was unshaven.

“I'm glad to see you too.”

“Come on in. Can I get you something from the minibar?”

“Water?”

“Bubbles or no bubbles?”

“No bubbles please,” I said.

“How have you been?”

“Oh, you know, working at the think tank … it's tiring. Between the fistfighting thugs, the eccentric moguls, and the missing bonobo chimps …”

“Heh. That's funny,” he said with absolutely no enthusiasm, and didn't parry back. He handed me a glass of water and slumped down on the bed.

“How are you?” I prompted.

“My audition tomorrow was canceled. I heard from my agent this morning,” he said.

“A patient, you mean?” I asked, prodding him back into the game.

“Oh right, a … patient, second patient this week, fourth this month.”

The way he looked at me, I knew he wanted to talk awhile first, which was going to totally upset my schedule.

“Sorry to hear that,” I said.