The Pursuit of Other Interests: A Novel (22 page)

“Sometimes the only way we can help people is to put up with them. Simply let them be. Sometimes that’s all we can do, Charlie, sometimes that’s all we can do.”

Charlie took his time processing this information before asking, “Is all that true?”

“Of course it is.”

“How bad is his wife?”

“It’s quite serious, I’m afraid.”

Charlie nodded. “I didn’t know that. I didn’t know any of that about him.”

Ned raised an eyebrow. “One more thing you apparently don’t know about Walter.”

“What?”

“He used to work for you.”

Charlie was confused. “Wait, what? What are you talking about?”

Ned adjusted his glasses. “Years ago. He was there at your old agency. He was a copywriter. On your first day here, he told me he knew you.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Charlie said but then, of course, all at once he finally placed Walter: a plodding, not particularly imaginative copywriter who worked on a number of consumer accounts at Collins and Park, the old agency. He was heavier then and had more hair. “I guess I do remember him.” He swallowed. “I don’t think we worked together very long, though. Why didn’t he say something to me?”

“I thought he had, actually. I can’t believe you didn’t remember him.”

“I’ve worked with a lot of people. Do you have any idea how many people come and go at agencies? It’s a transient business, full of gypsies. I can’t remember everyone. I’ve worked with hundreds of people, maybe thousands.”

Ned shifted uneasily in his chair. “I would think Walter would be one you remembered.”

“Why?”

Ned grimaced and looked down at his hands.

“Why?”

“Well,” Ned finally said, “according to Walter, you fired him.”

The next morning, Charlie sat in the salami office and tried to recall Walter. Sketchy images came to mind, flashbacks of an overweight man with black, horn-rimmed glasses sitting against the wall in the back of conference rooms, doodling. He remembered nothing specific about him other than a concept he’d had for the Midas account, something about a talking car. Joan Rivers would do the voice-over for the car and insult the Midas mechanics, who would remain cheerful throughout. He remembered thinking the idea ridiculous and Walter not bright.

He had no memory about firing him, however. He concluded that it must have been during the recession of the nineties, a bad time for agencies and business in general. With billings in a tailspin, he was ordered to lay off about half his team. He did this on a Friday afternoon in a short memo, drawing from an initial list of names his directors had compiled. After submitting the list to human resources, he remembered beating a fast retreat to the bar at the 410 Club. Walter’s name, he concluded, must have been on that list.

He was trying to decide the best way to deal with Walter, acknowledge their shared past, or just ignore it, when the Wizard called. He sounded unusually animated, his voice warm and gooey.

“Charlie Baker. Got something for you,” he said.

“The Xanon thing?”

“I floated your name out there, and they liked it. Liked it a lot.”

Charlie felt a burst of elation. “What’s not to like?”

“They want to chat. And soon. How are you this Friday?”

“This Friday works.”

“Terrific. Why don’t you shoot me your résumé and we can get going on this.”

Charlie paused. “When do you need that?”

“As soon as you can.”

“How about tomorrow?”

“Fine. Once I get it, I’ll give you a call with the details. Got to run now.”

“Wait. This is the CMO job, right?”

“Right. Top dog. Bark, bark.”

“What else can you tell me about it?”

“I’ll call back. In the meantime, you might want to bone up on cattle.”

“Cattle.”

“Hogs too, chief, hogs too.”

Charlie spent the rest of the afternoon with his sleeves literally rolled up, working on his résumé. Faced with a deadline, he finally found the clarity and courage to cut and reorganize his life. He reduced his awards mentions, dropped three campaigns from the eighties, and cut back on his work on the Ad Council, a nonprofit organization he once chaired. When he finished, he meticulously proofread everything, searching then correcting grammar and typographical errors. At five o’clock, he took one last look at it and let out a deep breath. He had actually finished it. He had a résumé just like everyone else. In the end, he was no different than the next guy. This realization briefly saddened him, but he quickly brushed the thought away and e-mailed it off to Preston and left for the day.

In the train station and later on the train ride home, he boned up on Xanon. He checked their Web site on his laptop, read recent press releases, studied last year’s annual report. They were big, a $50 billion company and profitable. Unfortunately, they weren’t spending much of those profits on marketing. According to the annual report, their ad budget was a relatively small $50 million. He wasn’t sure he liked that.

He also wasn’t so sure he liked the field. Animal pharmaceuticals. Drugs for cattle. Though he had worked with kittens and hamsters, cows were uncharted waters. He was used to fun, if not downright wacky, creative campaigns with big budgets, celebrities. He liked hoopla and he thought there was little of that in promoting cures and chemicals for mad cow, bovine foot disease, cow tuberculosis, and, shockingly, the pinkeye cattle virus. This last disease shook him. According to the Xanon Web site, it was a worldwide problem. And while he sympathized, he had zero desire to work on campaigns featuring a cow wearing a black eye patch.

Still, he needed a job, and this was a good one. He thought that Xanon’s hugeness would anchor him, and the inevitable pressure to conform would keep him grounded, focused.

Most importantly, he suspected it would make him rich, or at least close to it. Based on the company’s size, he figured it had to pay north of $300,000, plus bonus. And, while he suspected he would be traveling frequently to their regional offices in Omaha and Tulsa, as well as two cities he had never heard of in Chile and Australia, it was headquartered in Chicago. He would be a fool not to pursue this with everything he had.

He was so lost in Xanon thoughts that it wasn’t until he was halfway up the front walk that he noticed the police car parked in the driveway. He stopped dead in his tracks, considered the car, took another step, reconsidered it, then warily continued up the steps. When he got to the front door, he took a deep breath and opened it, half expecting to see the chalk outline of his family on the foyer floor.

Instead, he found Donna and Kyle alive and well, sitting across from each other at the kitchen island. Donna was staring at Kyle, who was staring at nothing.

Charlie swallowed, and even though he wasn’t all that keen on a response, he asked, “Why is there a police car in our driveway?”

“Because the police came to visit Kyle,” Donna said.

Charlie looked around the kitchen. “Where are they?”

“Next door at Matt’s house talking to the Parkers.”

“What happened?”

“Ask your son,” Donna said. Her hair was tied back to reveal the tired, worried face of a mother.

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” Kyle said.

“Tell him, Kyle,” Donna said.

Kyle coughed. He was wearing a Wilton Lions T-shirt and red basketball shoes that looked enormous and clownlike. His eyes were large and sad.

“What happened?” Charlie asked.

“Matt and I did something.”

“Tell me it was something heroic,” Charlie said.

“Tell him what happened,” Donna said.

“It was no big deal.”

“Tell him,” Donna repeated.

“We just changed some signs. We wrote on some signs.”

“What signs? What did you write?” Charlie glanced at Donna.

Donna briefly closed her eyes and shook her head. “The high school Art Fair is next week,” she began.

“And?”

“And there are signs up and down the streets that say,
ART FAIR
, with an arrow telling people where to park.”

“Yes. And?” He was doing his best to be patient. Donna could be a maddeningly slow speaker, each word an eternity apart.

“And Kyle and Matt wrote graffiti on the signs. All of them. They changed them to say something else.”

“What did they change them to say?”

“You tell him, Kyle,” Donna said.

“What did you change the Art Fair signs to read?”

Kyle mumbled something.

“What? I can’t hear you. Say it louder!”

“Fart Fair,” Kyle said.

Charlie paused. “What?”

“Fart Fair,” he said.

“Fart Fair,” Donna repeated.

Charlie looked at her. “Well, that’s kind of funny.”

“What?”
Donna’s voice rose.

“I mean, that’s unbelievable!” Charlie turned back to Kyle. “Jesus, what the hell is wrong with you? Was this Matt’s idea?”

“No.”

“I don’t want you hanging around that kid anymore.”

“It wasn’t Matt’s idea.”

“Then whose idea was it?”

Kyle shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? You don’t know? Listen, kiddo, you can’t do things like this. You’re…you’re practically an adult now. You…you’re sixteen, you’re tall. I mean, Jesus Christ!” He once again glanced at Donna to see if he was being sufficiently angry. She nodded approvingly, her chin thrust out.

Charlie took a couple of steps closer to the island. Even though he was secretly relieved it wasn’t anything more serious, he recognized an opportunity to be a parent in front of Donna and decided to play his role to the hilt.

“Are you on drugs?” he asked.

“What?” Kyle looked shocked, as did Donna.

“You heard me!” He wanted to pound the top of the island, but was too far away, so instead he slapped his hands together like Richard Simmons leading an exercise class. “Answer the question. Are. You. On. Drugs?”

“No.”

“Is Matt on drugs?”

“No.”

Charlie shook his head. “Well, I’m very disappointed,” he said. “Very.”

“That we’re not on drugs?” Kyle asked.

“That you’re…you’re…” he looked at Donna again. Her eyes were wide with anticipation. She was waiting for what came next. “I’m disappointed that you’re a…”

“A graffiti-person,” Donna said.

He looked at her, then waved his hand at her like they were playing charades.

“A vandal,” she said.

Charlie snapped his fingers, then pointed at her. “Yes! A vandal!”

“We didn’t break anything,” Kyle said. “It was just a joke.”

“Just a joke. I bet the cops were laughing their asses off. What did they want? Tickets to your next comedy act?” Donna nodded at this last salvo and Charlie knew parent points were rapidly accumulating.

“Did we get a ticket or what?” Charlie asked.

“They said it’s a misdemeanor crime.” Donna closed her eyes when she said the word crime and her bottom lip began to protrude. “A crime,” she said softly.

This word shook Charlie as well. First Tamales’s desk, and now this. Another Baker flirting with jail time. “Damn it, Kyle! A crime. A
crime
! You have a record. This is going to follow you around the rest of your life. Forget about college. You’re through!
Through!
You’re going to end up in the army or…or working at Gas City.”

“They’re not going to charge him,” Donna said. “They gave him a warning.”

Charlie settle down a bit. “Well, that’s good.”

“But we have to pay a fine. Five hundred dollars.”

“Five hundred dollars!”

“Plus we have to go out and change every sign tonight.”

“What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

“We have to change every sign back. From Fart to Art,” she said.

“How are we going to do that?”

She held up two black Magic Markers. “With these.”

Charlie looked at the markers, then at Kyle, then at Donna, then at the markers again. “How many signs are there?”

“Thirty-four,” she said.

Donna and Charlie used to sit in parked cars before they were married. The cars were their oasis, their hideout. He was living at home with his parents while attending grad school, and she was living with her father and brothers, and cars were the only place they could be alone. They used to cruise the South Side looking for empty parking lots and quiet side streets where they could take up temporary residence and have sex. Looking back on it, Charlie thought they were too old for that kind of behavior, but they didn’t have much choice. Money was tight and apartments or motels were not an option.

Parked under a streetlight in front of the closed Starbucks in downtown Wilton, waiting for Kyle to change the signs, Charlie’s mind flashed back to those times: how they would climb into the backseat and wrap their legs and arms around each other, how the windows would sometimes steam up in the fall and winter, how they lived in fear of a tap on the window. Donna had owned a number of used cars, rusted hand-me-downs from her brothers, and for a short time they served their purpose. Eventually, though, Charlie bought a new car, an accommodating Chevy Caprice, aka the Love Mobile. It was wide and comfortable and Donna cried when he finally sold it for the red BMW. He glanced over at her now, sitting silently next to him, and recognized the irony of the situation. The hope of having sex with her in a bed, much less a car, presently did not exist. He decided not to think about that and instead searched the street for Kyle.

“I wish he could work faster,” he said.

“He does everything slow. That’s the way he is.”

“He’s really slow. Is that normal, to be that slow?”

Donna didn’t respond. Charlie spotted Kyle about half a block up on Main Street and started up the Navigator to follow him.

They had been driving around the neighborhood, restoring the Fart Fair signs to their original, true meaning, for more than an hour. When they located a sign, Kyle would jump out of the backseat and blot out the
F
with a black marker, while they followed him. It was, Charlie realized, their first real family outing in years.

“Thank God it’s dark,” he said. He stopped on Ellenby Avenue, adjacent to Main Street, and watched Kyle perform his penance on another sign, this one attached to the front door of a bank. “Do they really need all these signs?” he asked.

“Everything in this town is overblown.”

“Why doesn’t everyone just park in the high school? Do they really need thirty-four signs to tell people where to park for an art fair?”

“The fair is in the art center, not the high school,” Donna said. She glanced over at Charlie, who was slouched all the way down in his seat. “You don’t have to sit like that,” she said. “It’s not like the paparazzi are after us.”

“Hey, I’m embarrassed by this,” Charlie said. He sank lower in his seat.

“It’s late. No one’s out,” Donna said.

They watched Kyle scurry across the street to another sign, this one on a streetlight pole.

“How come Matt doesn’t have to do this?” he asked.

“He has to do something else. Work at the art fair.”

Charlie lowered the window a crack and watched as Kyle reached another streetlight. It was close to ten o’clock and, other than Will’s, all the other businesses, the overpriced antique shops and clothes boutiques, were long closed, their lights out. Rather than appearing abandoned, Wilton looked never-lived-in.

“This is a weird town,” he said.

“You’re just figuring that out?”

“Maybe we were wrong in moving here.” He made this comment without thinking, and Donna looked at him.

“Little late for that,” she said.

“Maybe it’s not.”

“What are you saying?”

“We can move anytime we want. We can do anything we want. As soon as I get situated.”

Donna looked out her window. “I’ve been meaning to ask…how’s that going?”

“Okay. I have an interview coming up with Xanon. It’s a good job.”