by Wendy Wax
They got out of the car, slammed their respective doors, and stalked—side by side—through the parking lot. In the lobby they made a beeline for the elevator, barely waiting for the doors to close before lighting into each other.
“I just laid a bet on Schwartz and Associates,” Shelley ground out. “And I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure we win it.”
At the fourth floor, they stormed off the elevator and whipped around to face each other. Afternoon sun poured through the huge industrial window and spilled over them like a stage spotlight.
The receptionist’s greeting died on her lips. People froze in the hallway while Shelley and Ross squared off.
“You’d BETTER win it,” Ross said in that infuriatingly dead-calm tone. “Or those fees he doesn’t pay will come out of your salary. Not your BUDGET. Your salary.”
“FINE!” she said, putting all of her anger into the capitalization process, determined to appear as icily calm as he did. “I have no problem with that.” She turned and took in the audience surrounding them. “I believe in these people.” She turned back to face him and held him with her eyes. “Letting people know you expect them to succeed can be a great motivator. You should try it sometime.”
And then she turned on her heel and stalked away from him, down the hallway to her office, where she slammed the door as hard as she could.
It wasn’t quite as satisfying as shouting, but it came damned close.
Shelley vibrated with unreleased anger for hours. Unable to get back to work and too upset to eat a late lunch, she went to the health club and worked out until some of her anger began to dissipate. Then she sat in the sauna, trying to sweat the rest of it out of her skin while she pictured Ross Morgan evaporating into a puff of steam and disappearing into the air.
By three o’clock, when she’d showered and dressed and applied a fresh coat of makeup, she knew she couldn’t go back to the office. Without conscious thought, she headed toward her parents’, only remembering when she saw the cars parked in the drive that Monday meant mah-jongg in her mother’s world, and that it must be her turn to host the game.
Just what she needed—a whole living room of Jewish mothers.
“Come, let me have a look at you.”
“I think she’s lost weight, don’t you think she’s lost weight, Sarah?”
“What, aren’t you eating, little one?”
Her mother’s mah-jongg group sat around a card table set up in the living room, their tile-holders in front of them, the pool of discarded mah-jongg tiles spread across the center of the table. Bowls of snacks sat within a hand’s reach, provided—in addition to the lunch they’d consumed before starting—in case anyone should grow faint from hunger.
Their voices and the clack of tiles transported Shelley back to girlhood, when she’d come home from school on her mother’s Monday and find the women in the midst of their game, happily dissecting each other’s lives, and the lives of their all-important children.
“One bam, three crack.”
Her mother had been playing mahj with these same women, with occasional substitutions due to arguments or travel, for the last forty years. Her father played a regular Saturday morning golf game with their husbands. Like the Mendelsohns, they’d always been “Aunt” and “Uncle” to Shelley and Judy. And every one of them was as concerned about Shelley’s unmarried state and eating habits as they were about their own offsprings’. But she’d been a child then. Now she was an adult on a mission.
Shelley came up behind Sally Casselbaum and plucked a chocolate-covered peanut from the glass bowl on the snack tray beside her, and hugged Myra Kurtz, whose last bout with cancer had left her with bony shoulders and a platinum wig. “Hi, kiddo,” Myra said. “I gave my nephew Jared your number. A friend of his is moving to town.” She smiled and threw out a tile. “Two crack,” she said. “He’s relocating with Goldman Sachs.” Her smile broadened. “An investment banker.”
The other women nodded approvingly. Shelley sighed. Myra was fighting off cancer and still had the time and energy to arrange a fix-up.
“That is, unless you’re seeing someone?” Myra said.
Shelley would have mentioned Trey, whom she’d been seeing now for almost six months, except Trey wouldn’t count for these women. “Seeing someone” required at least one Jewish parent and acceptability—in their minds—as a marriage partner. A buff body was not required.
“There’s tuna salad in the kitchen if you’re hungry,” her mother said from over her tiles. “Judy’s our fifth today; she’s back in the den with your father.”
Good, that was just what she needed. Shelley took a bunch of grapes and carried them with her into the den. Judy sat on the couch with a heavy photo album in her lap. Her sister leafed through the album, occasionally pausing to study something, a thoughtful expression on her face. Their father was ensconced in his favorite chair and had The New York Times open in front of him.
Shelley gave her father a hug. “You’re looking good,” she said truthfully.
“People wait on me hand and foot and I get to play golf whenever I want to,” he said. “Who wouldn’t look good?”
Shelley turned to Judy. “What are you looking at?”
“My wedding album.” Judy’s brow furrowed and her tone grew wistful. “It was a beautiful wedding, wasn’t it?”
“Gorgeous,” Shelley replied. “You were the one in the really beautiful white dress, right?” She came over and sat next to Judy, unable to miss the fact that even seated she towered over her. “I was the one in the taffeta torture device.”
With her finger, Judy traced a picture of her and Craig standing under the wedding canopy, then turned the gilt-edged page. They both stared down at a close-up of the bride and groom’s beaming faces that the photographer had superimposed over a wider shot of the wedding party. Judy’s shoulders slumped.
“What’s going on?” Shelley asked quietly.
“Judy?” Their mother’s voice reached them from the other room. “You’re in!”
Judy closed the album gently and set it aside. “Time to get massacred.”
“Yeah,” Shelley agreed, “you’re toast. I filled in once. I still have nightmares about it. They won every penny I had with me, then refused to give me a chance to win it back.”
Judy stood and straightened her shoulders. “Maybe they’ll take pity on me.”
They looked at each other and shared a smile. “Nahhhh,” they said in unison.
Shelley watched her sister leave the room—the perfect daughter dutifully fulfilling their mother’s request. It was only recently that Shelley had begun to notice that Judy’s participation might be less than wholehearted. Still, she reflected as her father folded his newspaper and laid it on the ottoman, Judy Schwartz Blumfeld was a tough act to follow.
“So.” Harvey Schwartz settled back in the club chair and focused his complete attention on her. “What’s on your mind?”
“Oh, just the usual.”
“And that would be?”
“Ross Morgan.”
Her father’s eyebrow went up, but he waited for her to explain.
“We’re not seeing eye to eye on the list he gave me or the way I’m handling it.”
“You two don’t see eye to eye on the weather,” her father pointed out mildly. “So I suppose that’s not too surprising.”
“Why did you do it, Dad?” she asked, though she’d vowed not to ask again. “Why’d you choose him?”
Her father removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose; she’d seen him do the same thing in meetings right before he pointed out something no one wanted to hear. “Because he’s solid and responsible and he’s got that hunger in his belly that’s necessary to keep a company growing.”
“And I don’t.”
“You’re smart as a whip, Shelley,” her father said, “but no, you’re not hungry, sweetheart, not in the way Ross is. You’ve never had to go without or really fight for anything. It�
�s not your fault, of course, but there it is.”
Shelley hated the certainty in her father’s voice. But he was wrong if he thought she wasn’t hungry. She was absolutely starving—for Ross Morgan’s head on a platter.
“Believe me when I tell you the last thing Ross Morgan wants me to do is succeed. He’s watching over my shoulder, setting me up to fail. You should have seen how he reacted this morning when I told Uncle Abe that if we didn’t produce results for him we’d work for free.”
“You told Abe that?” Her father laughed. “I’ve been trying to get him to do more for years, but he’s such a penny-pincher.” He laughed again. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Shelley laughed with him, her heart lightening. “Morgan absolutely hated it, accused me of not THINKING. Me!” She laughed again. “Good lord, you should have seen his face.”
“Who else did he give you?”
Shelley recited her list, and her father whistled. “Definitely bottom of the barrel. So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head, unsure. “I’ve talked my way into the chance to pitch, and I’ve got some really good ideas.”
“But?”
“But trying to get him to trust me is like . . . I don’t even know what it’s like. I just know he makes me crazy.”
“If it’s too hard, Shelley, you can just forget it. I’d hoped you’d make a place for yourself at the agency, but if it’s too difficult . . .” He shrugged. “Well, you know we’re never going to let you starve.”
She looked into her father’s eyes and knew that his offer was made out of love; everything he’d done for her could be chalked up to that. But he was wrong about the lack of fire in her belly. She was not going to be defeated by Ross Morgan. Or herself.
“I’m not giving up, Daddy. I am absolutely not going to quit.”
“Well, if you’re serious, it’s time to sit down with Luke and fill him in on what you need. We have one of the best creative departments in the southeast. I know because I recruited it.”
“I can hardly wait to see Morgan’s reaction to me committing serious time and money to these accounts. He almost had apoplexy over a five-hundred-dollar falafel tasting.”
“The man’s interested in the bottom line, Shelley, and the only way to increase that is to bring in more business. That’s what you’re being paid to do.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “and that sounds great in theory, but I’m not sure how he’ll react to the idea of me actually succeeding.”
Not that she was exactly primed for handling the concept of success herself.
“Ross Morgan’s a big boy and he wants what’s best for the agency,” her father replied. “Sounds to me like it’s time you stop pussyfooting around and show him that’s what you want, too.”
chapter 13
Tuesday at noon Shelley swept into Creative Director Luke Skyler’s office bearing a bottle of Pellegrino and designer sandwiches from Eatzi’s.
To get there, she traveled from the end of the building that housed the hushed Account Services department, through the buffer zone of the Media Department, to the creative side, where music blared and bright color dominated. Though neither side would exist without the other and both were necessary to the success of any advertising agency, the two factions operated in a state of armed truce, each jockeying for control, all too often squabbling like children who simply could not see the other’s point of view. It took a strong president to make them play nicely together.
In the beginning, before she’d grown tired of trying to prove she was more than the boss’s spoiled daughter, she’d been drawn to the creative side. She was willing to take intuitive leaps that were frowned upon by her colleagues in Account Services, and totally respected the creative genius of Luke Skyler, whom his admirers had christened Skywalker. She still did, but until this morning she’d given up taking chances.
Luke was in his early forties with a head of wavy salt-and-pepper hair, an olive complexion, and sharp green eyes. When he wasn’t required to deal with clients, he wore jeans—crisp designer ones—that he liked to pair with white cotton button-down shirts and Cole Haan shoes, minus socks. He was totally hip, more than a little sexy, and married—incredibly enough—to his high school sweetheart.
“Ah,” he said as Shelley entered. “She comes bearing lunch. Whatever could she want?”
Shelley laid her offerings before him. Whipping a glass out of her jacket pocket, she set it next to the bottle of Pellegrino.
“I need you,” she said as she placed a gold, beribboned sample box of Godiva chocolates and an artfully folded cloth napkin before him.
“And badly, by the look of it.”
“Well, actually, I need your wonderful twisted brain and all that good stuff that’s floating around inside it.”
“Aha.” He unwrapped the sandwich, lifting the edge of the crusty Italian bread to check it out. “Very good. Grilled veggies are excellent brain food.”
He unscrewed the cap of the sparkling water, poured himself a glass, and gestured to the picnic she’d spread before him. “Would you like something?”
“No, thanks, I’m good.”
“All right, then,” Luke said. “You talk, I’ll eat and think.” He checked his watch. “I’ve got a meeting at one, but I’m completely and totally yours for the next forty-five minutes.”
Her phone was ringing when she got back to her office. “Shelley speaking,” she answered happily, only losing her smile when she recognized her mother’s voice.
“I just wanted to remind you that you’re going to be getting a call from a friend of Jared’s.”
“Jared?” Shelley’s mind was still on the meeting she’d just had with Luke Skyler. “Jared who?”
“Jared Kurtz.”
“Mother!”
“Myra asked you to speak to him and, well, this could be Myra’s last request.”
“Mother, Myra Kurtz is in remission and it’s incredibly tacky of you to use her cancer to try to get your way.”
There was a shocked silence on both ends, which was immediately filled by an attempt to inflict guilt.
“I don’t know how you can speak to me that way.” Her mother’s tone was both wounded and indignant. “Myra Kurtz is one of my oldest and dearest friends. She’s known you since you were born. She’s been through a horrible ordeal—which she may have licked, though we really can’t be sure—and all she’s asking is that you take a call from a friend of her nephew.”
A friend of a nephew. She didn’t even rate actual relatives anymore. Shelley groaned. “Fine, Mother. I’ll speak to him. But not today; I’m really busy today.”
“Actually, I just got off the phone with him—he called to double-check the number. Be nice, Shelley. You never know. This could be THE ONE.”
Right, and she might be winning the lottery tomorrow. Or discovering the cure for the common cold.
Hanging up the phone, Shelley flipped open her legal pad and began to look over the To Do list she’d compiled during her meeting with Luke. The phone rang again.
“Shelley speaking.”
“Uh, Shelley? This is Josh Stein. I understand you know my friend Jared Kurtz’s Aunt Myra?”
This really sucked. Maybe she should just find someone to marry to stop all the attempted fix-ups. Like in those marriages of convenience that were so popular in romance novels.
“Yes, Josh, I was told you might call, but—”
“I don’t really know anyone in Atlanta, and I’ve just been transferred here. I’m in town going around with a Realtor, but I wondered if you might have time to show me around the city.”
That was her: Shelley Schwartz, pathetic unmarried daughter and Atlanta tour guide.
“I’m kind of busy today”—or at least she would be if she could ever get off the phone—“and this week is not good.” She wished she could just go ahead and say no, but she was too well trained for that. And then there was Myra. “But if you want to meet fo
r drinks tomorrow, I can introduce you to a friend who might be able to help.”
If Nina was contemplating becoming a member of the tribe, she might as well get a taste of the fix-up business.
Shelley hung up the phone and picked up her pen, but the phone was no sooner in its cradle than it rang again. Productivity in America had probably been much higher before the invention of the telephone.
“Shel? It’s Nina. Do you want to meet for a drink later?”
“Can’t.” What Shelley really wanted was to get to work. She didn’t even have time to think about what a novel thing that was. “But I have a new prospect for you. I can turn him over to you tomorrow at six at the Ritz.”
“Where does he live? What does he look like?”
“These are the unanswered questions that make blind dating so . . . intriguing. He’s a friend of Myra Kurtz’s nephew and his name is Josh Stein. That would make him totally and completely Jewish. And he’s an investment banker.”
“Oh.”
“I’ll see you there at six tomorrow.”
“Oh, OK.”
“And don’t say I never gave you anything,” Shelley said as she hung up. She’d barely put the receiver down when the phone rang again.
“This is Shelley.”
“Yes, this is the Darnell Day Spa. We wanted to let you know that you missed your scheduled manicure and pedicure this morning. And your massage and facial yesterday.”
Oops. She looked down at her fingernails, which were, in fact, in serious need of shaping and polishing.
“We will, of course, be billing your account.” There was a brief pause during which the woman must have noticed how much money Shelley regularly dropped there. “Would you like to reschedule?”
Yes, she would, but when she scrolled through her Palm Pilot she couldn’t find an open slot big enough to fix a single body part. This work thing was wreaking havoc on her beauty regimen.
Shelley hung up, repositioned her pad, and tried to remember what she’d been doing. The phone rang. Again.
“Shelley Schwartz,” she said with a groan.