The Pursuit of Other Interests: A Novel (11 page)

“I understand that. But all I am saying is that you should at least consider what the test is telling us.”

“Fine. I’ll go clean animal hides. Now, can we talk about the column?”

Ned sat up straight. “Forget about the column, Charlie. You can’t change what happened. It’s wasted energy. It’s such a small mention and no one reads the paper anymore. Besides, what do you expect to do about the paper?”

Other than demanding a retraction,
Charlie Baker Not Frenetic
, Charlie knew Ned was right. “Okay.” He exhaled. “I’m still going to talk to a lawyer,” he said, but not very convincingly.

“That’s your prerogative. Now, what about that résumé? How’s that coming along?”

“Do I really need one? I mean, come on, I’ve been working for close to thirty years. Everyone knows me.”

“Everyone needs a résumé.”

“I don’t think I do.”

“You do. Please, trust me. People are going to ask you for one. What are you going to say? ‘I don’t have one, because everyone knows me’?”

Charlie thought about this. “All right, okay. Maybe I’ll get going on one.”

“Today might be a good day.” Ned raised his eyebrows. He had, Charlie noticed, a very square face.

“Okay, I’ll get started.”

“Today?”

“Today.”

Ned acted like this was incredible news. He jumped up in his seat. “Really, right now?”

“Relax. Yes, right now.”

Ned snapped his fingers. “Excellent! Now you’re talking! I’ll set up you right up.” He started to rise from his chair.

Charlie didn’t move. He was hesitant about what he was going to say next. “Hey, Ned. Do you have another minute? There’s something else I think I need to talk about.”

Ned seemed apprehensive. “Oh? Yes. Of course.” He reseated himself and placed his hands flat on the table in anticipation. “I am at your service.”

Charlie hesitated again, then decided to take the plunge. While Ned was annoying, he had to talk to
someone
about the situation with Donna. He started slowly. “I haven’t really, officially, told my wife yet,” he said. “My life partner.”

Ned looked blank. “You haven’t told her what yet?”

“You know, about me…my employment situation.”

Ned’s face remained expressionless, then all at once exploded—his eyes wide, his mouth open. “You mean you haven’t told her about being fired?”

Charlie moved his coffee cup a little to the left.

“Oh, Charlie! I mean, she’s going to read about it in the paper. Everyone’s going to see that. Everyone reads the paper.”

“She doesn’t read the paper. At least not the marketing column.”

“But still, the chances of someone else seeing it and telling her…”

“I know.”

“This is very bad.”

“I know.”

“Very, very, bad.”

“Can you stop saying that?”

“She has a right to know. How long has it been? Over two weeks?”

“I don’t know. Something like that.”

“I’ve heard about situations like this.” Ned fell into thought, ransacking his memory for similar case histories. “Logistically, this doesn’t seem possible. What are you telling her?”

“It’s not as hard as you think. For us. We didn’t…we don’t see each other all that much.” Charlie looked over Ned’s shoulder at some thin, flat clouds that looked like paste against the still-pink sky. “I’m not sure how to approach it. I’m not sure what to do.”

Ned chewed on his lip, then abruptly stood and hooked a hand in a side pocket of his blazer. “I know exactly what we have to do. And we have to do it now. Immediately.”

Charlie stared at a framed poster on the back of the conference room door. This one featured yet another senior citizen, an old woman with a shock of gray hair, running downhill in a foggy mist, her body bent forward, her face a mask of determination.
ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS!
He wished that all he had to do was run down a hill. He picked up the phone, ignoring the pain in his chest, the numbness in his arm.

“Hello. Donna?” He cleared his throat. “It’s me. Charlie.”

“Who?”

“Charlie, your husband. We’re married, remember?”

“Yes, dear?”

Dear. He paused and cleared his throat again. “I have some bad news.”

“Before I forget, can you pick up some items from the market prior to coming home? We need some jam.”

Charlie glanced at the receiver. Then he glanced down at a pad of paper with the message points Ned had developed. “I have some bad news. I was let go from my job. I was fired.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line, then, “When were you terminated?”

“About two weeks ago.”

“Two weeks ago? How very unfortunate! What are we going to do? How are we going to live? Why didn’t you share this information with me, this news, sooner?”

“We’ll be fine.”

“Exactly why do you think it’s going to be fine, dear?”

“Because it is.”

“Well, what about our one child, our precious son, Clancy?”

“Clancy?”

“I mean Kyle. Of course I mean our son Kyle, dear.”

“Stop calling me dear!” Charlie slammed down the phone. A few seconds later, there was a soft knock on the door, then Ned entered.

“Why did you hang up on me?” he asked.

“It’s ridiculous. I can’t do that.”

“Role-playing is important. You need the practice. You need to rehearse this conversation. Keep to your message points.”

“My wife never calls me dear.”

“I was just trying to make it realistic, Charlie. You need to practice getting straight to the point. Not be sidetracked into mundane chitchat.”

“My wife has never,
ever
asked me to pick up jam, okay? And we don’t chitchat. We barely talk to each other.”

“Oh,” Ned said. He touched his mouth and looked at the floor. “I see.”

“This is going to be tough. Complicated. More complicated than you think.”

“Oh, I see,” Ned said again. “Can I help in any way?”

“Yeah, why don’t you tell her?”

Ned seemed to seriously consider this request. “No, I don’t think that would be right, Charlie, I really don’t.”

“I was kidding. Do you know anything about sarcasm?”

“To be honest, I’ve never been good at detecting that.”

Charlie shook his head. “Everything’s falling apart,” he suddenly said.

Ned studied him with sad, concerned eyes. “It just seems that way.”

“No, it is. My job, my family. My wife. It’s…it’s bad. I just don’t know how to…” his voice trailed off.

“Don’t know how to do what?”

“Do anything. I got wrapped up in the bullshit, that’s all. Just wrapped up. I lost balance. I just lost it.” He exhaled. “Do you have anything to drink? I think I need one.”

“You don’t need to drink,” Ned quietly said. “Just take it one day at a time, put one foot forward, one after the next. Before you know it, you’ll be getting somewhere.”

Charlie fell quiet, and briefly let despair fill him. He rubbed a hand over his face. He wasn’t sure why he was telling Ned this. He was, after all, a stranger. He quickly caught himself and pointed at the poster with the running old woman. “You sound like one of those,” he said.

Ned didn’t bother to turn. “I hate those posters,” he said. “They trivialize my work.”

Charlie slowly stood. “I’m going to go work on my thing now.” He waved a hand in the air. “My résumé.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Ned looked at him a little longer. “Right,” he said. “I’ll get you set up in another office, then. Follow me.”

Charlie spent the next three hours trying to compress his entire twenty-eight-year career onto two sheets of paper. According to the Rogers & Newman guidebook,
Transitions
, his résumé was not to surpass this page count if it was to prove effective. Anything longer would hurt “readability.”
Potential employers regard long résumés as pompous and defensive. They are generally frowned upon
.
Remember: Less is more.
The guidebook also encouraged the use of words like
initiated
,
coordinated
,
led
,
launched
,
created
, and
established
to describe accomplishments.
Be dynamic
, the book urged.
Show pride and confidence!

Despite this advice, Charlie’s initial attempt at a résumé stretched to five pages. He was having difficulty choosing and prioritizing his many achievements. He couldn’t decide which campaigns to showcase and which ones to drop. Bagel Man was an obvious inclusion. It had earned a permanent place in the consumers’ consciousness. It was his masterpiece, his tour de force, his
Beloved.
Other choices weren’t so clear-cut: the toilet tissue spot featuring the parachuting kitten in red boots, or the singing turtles for the beer company, for example, while not nearly as well known, still helped build awareness and consequently sales. As did the spoof of the
Godfather
films for the pizza company. While industry critics had dismissed that particular campaign as sophomoric and clichéd, it too had helped sales, particularly in the critical pizza-eating Northeast region. In the end, he decided to include all three, among others. He did manage to omit, however, the talking hamster. As far as Charlie was concerned, that never happened.

He also struggled with format; as hard as he tried, he couldn’t get the margins right and, as a result, his sentences kept bleeding off into space. He repeatedly tried to make the margins consistent from page to page, but to no avail. The left margin was too large, the right non ex is tent. He wished he had a secretary or an assistant to help him. It was ridiculous that they didn’t provide anyone.

He was in the middle of trying to align things one more time when Bradley popped his head into his office. He looked unusually cheerful, his face a healthy pink, his eyes clear and excited. “Got an interview today,” he announced. “My first one in a while. In four months, to be exact. We’re having lunch.”

Charlie sat back in his chair. “Hey, that’s great. Who with?”

Bradley smiled and straightened his red tie. “Don’t want to jinx it. Sounds good, though. It’s here in Chicago too. That would make things easier. It just fell into my lap.”

“That’s great.” Charlie tried hard not to feel jealous; Bradley’s hell might be finishing, just as his was starting.

“How did you hear about it? A recruiter?”

“Naw, I’m done with recruiters. Actually, I guess they’re more done with me. I’m off their radar, it’s been so long. This thing just fell in my lap,” he said again. “So, do I look young today?”

“You look eighteen.”

He laughed, a Texas accent emerging. Then he turned serious. “Saw the paper yesterday,” he said.

“Oh, that. Yeah.”

“Funny, you don’t seem frenetic.”

“I’m heavily medicated now.”

“That guy’s a prick to have written that.”

Charlie shrugged. “What are you going to do? Sue him?”

“Life’s a bitch,” Bradley said. “People pile it on when you’re down. Man, I know that.”

They both looked at each other for a moment, then Bradley slapped the side of the door. “Anyway, hang in there. Got to run.”

“Good luck out there.”

“I’m due.” Bradley winked and was gone.

Charlie resumed his attack on the margins. He was considering calling Georgia, maybe she could help him over the phone, when Karen Brisco, the PR lady, and Walter, the fish-eyed man, appeared in his doorway.

“How you doing today?” Karen asked. She stared at him searchingly. Walter too looked at him intently.

“I’m fine,” he said. Then he realized what was going on. “Oh, I mean, I’m pretty frenetic.”

Karen laughed nervously. Walter’s face, however, remained impassive.

“That was a cheap shot,” Karen said.

“I’ve been called worse.”

“I bet you have,” Walter mumbled.

Charlie glanced at him, not sure he’d heard him right.

“Want to grab some lunch?” Karen asked. “We’re running down to the deli.”

“No, I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

“You heard him, let’s go,” Walter said, turning. Before he left, he hitched his shoulder in a way that made him seem familiar. Charlie wondered if he knew him from the Ad Club.

“Come on,” Karen said. “We’re celebrating his anniversary. Walter’s been out one year. It’s a big day.”

Charlie was stunned by this. One year. Twelve months, no work, no pay. “Congratulations,” he said. “But I have to finish my résumé.”

“Want us to bring something back?” Karen asked. “They have good soup.”

“No. But thanks.”

Karen smiled again and Charlie smiled back. She looked especially attractive this morning, with her shoulder-length blond hair and ski slope of a nose. She was wearing a short skirt again and her legs looked tanned and toned. “I’ll get something later,” he said.

“You sure?”

“Yep.”

She smiled again and left.

A half hour later, having given up on the margins, he finally decided to put a call in to Preston Davis, the Wizard of Ads. Preston was a high-profile executive recruiter known for conducting the ad world’s Alpha Dog searches. Charlie had been putting off the call; up until now, he wasn’t sure he needed the Wizard. But Walter’s and Bradley’s situations had spooked him. He didn’t want to be celebrating any anniversaries eating soup at the deli downstairs.

He had worked exclusively with the Wizard for years, retaining him for countless searches. Based on the amount of work he had thrown him in the past, Charlie knew Preston would take his call and wasn’t surprised when Preston’s assistant put him right through.

“Charlie Baker. Been trying to reach you,” the Wizard said. His voice was deep and soothing, bordering on the breathless. Charlie always thought the Wizard sounded like a slightly more masculine version of Lauren Bacall.

“You weren’t trying very hard. I got fired, not deported.”

“I’m sorry. Please don’t get all frenetic on me, now.”

Charlie winced. “I’ll try not to.”

“How are you?”

“I’m doing all right.”

“It’s a shitty world, chief.”