by Ali Eteraz
For a little while it had been unbelievable to me that, given the disparity in our sizes, Marie-Anne would want to be with me. When I pressed her about this she told me that she actually wanted to be with a man smaller and thinner than her. It was because of her only high school boyfriend. His name had been Emmit Thomas. A varsity football player whom she dated precisely because she thought she was meant to be with a bigger man. He had six inches and a hundred pounds on her. He forced himself on her in the car. He hadn’t gotten as far as he wanted. But neither had she been able to stop him from overpowering her and getting some fingers into her before she managed to escape. It had been a watershed moment for her in terms of love. She would never again let herself be attracted to a bigger man; she feared the physical violence a male might inflict upon her more than the social consequences of flouting the aesthetics of gender relations. “It’s not strangers that scare me,” she had said. “I am scared of being scared of the ones closest to me.” My smallness, in other words, imparted security. It had made sense to me, the way a doorstopper could hold an entire door.
Now here we were. More than a decade later, I was still propping her up. I put the picture down, smiled, and came to bed, the sleet outside slicing at the window. Marie-Anne was facing the other way in bed. I tucked myself into the depression around her body, wedging my nose and eyes between the bed and her fleshy back. I liked having my face covered. It kept nightmares from getting into the mouth.
Chapter Two
Plutus was a full-service public relations company. We made and then kept things famous. We did this for our clients because they believed that fame translated into sales. Although this wasn’t empirically true, or even verifiable, we didn’t challenge their belief. Marketing was a religion that paid well and we would have been foolish to cast doubt upon our deity. Once a client sat down in our conference room overlooking the newly refurbished city hall—gleaming white from having been cleansed of its ashen scales—we promised them that their brands, their art, their accomplishments, their whatever, would make its way down to every lobbyist, governmental figure, reporter, blogger, product reviewer, critic, radio personality, local TV producer, bar, club, lounge, restaurant, and even the self-styled celebrities. “Your name will be known,” we promised everyone. Communicators. That’s what we were.
When I first got into the job, the snappy press release had been our most important tool. We would send the press release out and then go around to conventions, industry events, trade journals, business parties, and approach people of influence and hold conversations that were prefabricated and premeditated in every way. Using psychological cues, we would drill the name of the chosen product into the target’s psyche.
The Internet changed the course of our work. Every mastodon on the street started thinking she could stamp around on the virtual highways and swing her tusks and pin people down long enough to tell them about a product or two. And for a while, yes, the firm teetered and tottered. In fact, that was when Richard Konigsberg had gotten pushed out. Ultimately we recovered, however, because in the end the Internet became too crowded, too chaotic, and there was a need for nodes, for guardians, gatekeepers. With our long list of contacts and friends we were perfectly poised to take that role. Individuals couldn’t compete against an institution. We brought order to the savage web. It was like taming the Wild West, an act of enlightened imperialism.
I had gotten my start in boring industries. My first clients were a group of small wood-laminates manufacturers. They taught me about resin and bonding and adhesive and how school desks were made. Most of the big hitters in their industry had been based in the Deep South and looked at me funny when we first met. But after I told them my backstory and invoked SEC football and mentioned Marie-Anne, they seemed to open up.
Later I worked with the milk industry; horseshoe manufacturers; and a woman who built wood blocks for children. All these people were afflicted with the perennial inability to translate desire into persuasion. I bridged that gap for them.
Plutus used to have a good bit of competition in Philadelphia; but the other companies couldn’t keep up with us. Yet recently we were confronted by a guerrilla marketer by the name of Ken Lulu who used to work for the conceptual artist Jenny Holzer, but had decided to branch out and bring art into marketing. He had moved to Philadelphia from Montreal, where he already had an operation going. His approach to marketing was very different from our institutional sort. He bypassed everyone and went straight to the consumer, using the walls, roofs, cupolas of public places and buildings. His most recent caper had been to have the sad logo of a bicycle manufacturer appear on the Comcast Tower, with the bicycle taking a trip up the building to the sound of “Clair de Lune” by Debussy. I wasn’t very fond of the anarchy that Ken Lulu represented. He was like a fish in a pond, whispering and nipping at the other guppies. To me, the only ones worthy of respect were those who swooped down from on high, like eagles. Still, I liked to keep tabs on him and did that through Candace who had some mutual friends with Ken.
Over time I moved on from industrial work and came to the department headed by Dinesh. This was the most sought-after team because of the mix of work it did, involving museums, local celebrities such as columnists and politicians, leading law firms, insurance companies, cable companies, and the foundations. There was always an event to go to, and nearly every event had glamorous or ostentatious presentation, food, and the associated gravitas. I had been into the homes and offices of all those who lorded over this stretch of the Atlantic. Not quite the rapacious lords of finance in New York and not quite the lords of war produced by Washington, DC. Ours had a less aggressive view toward the world. Where New York and Washington conquered, the lords of Philadelphia went to explore and categorize, to discuss in magazines related to crafts, to show off in museums, to have academic symposiums about, and all under the cover of the Quaker liberalism that allowed Philadelphia to sustain a posture of purity, of innocence. New York and Washington were Zeus and Hades, the dominant and the destructive. Philadelphia was Poseidon, the beautiful moderate. It was no surprise that his statue sat in one of the ovals near Center City.
My progress came to an end when I got shoved into Special Projects. I was atomized. Any team that had a project they didn’t want to do pushed it toward me. My first order of business had been to create a database of all the wholesale perfume sellers in the Mid-Atlantic. I had to follow this with creating a database for the entirety of North America. It was a lot of sitting around with industry newsletters.
I probably would have continued on the database forever had it not been for a contract that came in via Tony Blanchard and the wife of a general who sat in the Pentagon. The job required taking military wives and their children, and finding positive stories among them and blasting these to media. It involved getting military wives onto TV shows to get makeovers, both personal and for their houses. It involved finding home footage that cast soldiers in a positive light. A dog greeting his owner after he came back from Iraq. A family surprising a mom after she came back from Germany. The feather in the cap was that wife or mother whose husband or son had gotten killed in combat but who, rather than giving in to stultifying depression, had transmogrified her misery into doing positive things for society, whether it involved sending care packages to others, or providing for abandoned pets.
Even though it was just a contract, I hoped to do good work and potentially turn it into my niche. Perhaps one day I could find a military wife, ideally with children, who upon learning of her husband’s death would announce that she was going to join the military as a form of revenge against the enemies of America. Her I would make huge. I wouldn’t just get her on every major TV show; for her I could get big-time agents, a movie, a book, a national campaign. She just needed to be found.
* * *
I came to work on Tuesday. I had taken the Monday off to spend a little time with Marie-Anne. The atmosphere at the firm felt like the inner sanctum of some criminal conspiracy.
Those who had been invited to my party walked past each other evading me and giving sideways smiles. It was quite something to have entertained in my home, fed and intoxicated, lurched from laughter and hilarity with all these people who otherwise were strangers to me, with many who otherwise thought me subservient. Now we had a quiet equality. I was sure of it.
I arrived early, took the spiral staircase down to the storage room that had been converted into my office, and after a couple of hours went to get lunch. I brought it back to my desk and ate it while reading an article on my phone. I had just leaned back with a drink in hand when I was startled by Candace. She stood waiting for me by the coat rack. She wore her peacoat because she tended to get cold easily. She always said it was on account of her minimal body fat.
“You scared me,” I said.
“I’m sorry.”
“What can we do for you in the Underdark?”
“In the what?”
“It’s what Mark calls this area.”
“That’s weird. Anyway, I just came in to tell you that George stopped by my cube asking where you were. He told me to bring you to him when you got back.”
“George Gabriel?”
“The one and only.”
I tossed my food in the trash and headed up. Candace came up behind me and grabbed my bag from the desk.
“He said you should bring your stuff.”
I wondered what George wanted. Did he want to go somewhere for lunch? Put me in a different office? Was there a meeting at the Sheraton, perhaps? For a brief moment I let myself imagine that my party had engendered such goodwill in him that he had a new team for me.
I made my way toward George Gabriel’s office. It required passing through the firm’s vast central area, where the cubicles were spread about in the shape of a chessboard. I remembered when Richard Konigsberg and I had come up with the idea, back when I had been an essential part of Plutus. Some of the workers had said that the design likened them to pawns. Richard had replied that for every pawn there were multiple bishops, queens, knights, and kings. “And you can be that one day, if you want to be.” It had made the chessboard much more palatable. We were even able to get Ingrid Glass, the architecture critic from the Philadelphia Inquirer, to come and write about our unique offices.
Maybe it was the way people looked at me, or the vibrations in the air, but with each additional step toward George there was an upwell of something hard and edgy in my throat. It filled my larynx. I slowed. A part of me wanted to ignore this invite, to just go back to my office and pretend I hadn’t heard.
I turned to Candace to take my mind off this meeting. “Any word on what the guerrilla guy is up to?”
“Ken Lulu?”
“Yeah.”
“Why are you asking me?”
“Didn’t you say you knew the guy?”
“Well, yeah.”
“So what is he up to?”
“Nothing. Not since he came back from doing the thing with the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi.”
“So this can’t be about Ken then . . .”
I reached George’s office and slid past the secretary. George was at his desk, a pencil in hand, but without a pad or paper, as if he was just trying to appear busy.
He wasn’t alone. Two women, one from legal and the other from human resources, both in pinstripe suits and wearing dour maquillage, stood on either side of him, like mummified cats around a pharaoh.
I knew I had trouble when it wasn’t George who spoke. The tall white brunette to his right, with a sunken chest and wide hips, cleared her throat and started saying things that were all legalese and sophistry. She went on for a while. George remained expressionless the whole time, his arms on the desk, still, except for an occasional lifting of his palms from the surface. Sweat made the skin squeak.
“So I am being let go?” I asked the woman when she was finished. The statement was more for effect than confirmation. My eyes were focused on George. I wanted to make him speak.
“Yes,” he said.
“I didn’t hear a reason in there.”
He was about to say something when the women put their hands on his shoulders. He sawed at the table with the edge of his palms and grew quiet.
“Business decision,” said the brunette.
“This is all very mysterious,” I said. “Just tell me the reason.”
The brunette wasn’t having it. “Thank you,” she said, and gestured toward the door with her neck. George remained still and silent. I wondered what part he had to play in this. Was he the messenger? Was he the instigator? Had he been aware that I was going to be fired when he’d come to my house? This last possibility frightened me the most. Had he thought that I was a kiss-ass? Had I not kissed his ass enough? Did it have anything to do with Marie-Anne?
“I have been with this firm for a long time,” I said. “I deserve to be told the specific reason why I am getting laid off.”
The brunette ignored my request. She simply repeated how I should go about filing for unemployment benefits and how long my health insurance would remain in effect. I kept observing George, but for some reason his stony and severe face only added to my helplessness.
“Can I give you a little unsolicited advice?” he said at last, ignoring the cautionary looks given to him by the women.
“Yes.”
“I’ve been in this business a long time,” he said. “Seen a lot of changes.”
I nodded.
“And you know what I found, at the end of the day, that a person needs for success? Mind you, I am not suggesting you haven’t had success. I have read your reports. You have done some good things in your time . . .”
“Thank you.”
“But, as I was saying, the thing that really puts a person over the top, that gives them longevity, is being an advocate for your clients.” He raised his hand to squash my immediate protestation. “I know what you’re going to say—that you are an advocate. Yes, you probably are, but having gone over all the work you did for the past few years, you are not an advocate to the degree I want.” He paused and ran his hand over his head. “It’s almost like you are restrained in your advocacy; like you keep a part of you close to your chest . . .”
“Like, afraid?”
“Like, concealed,” he said. “Dormant. Latent. Mysterious.”
“What am I keeping dormant?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Just that I have a different vision for the kind of culture I want to incubate here. A more collaborative relationship between client and advocate. Democratic. And a freer exchange between all the coworkers too. Where your associates don’t have to be careful around you, to be cautious about your inclinations. This is purely a business-culture decision, as you can see.”
“You are entitled to your opinion,” I said, still sitting.
George received a nod from the women and stood to extend his hand. I looked at it and back at him. I didn’t want to shake it. He had taken something from me. I wanted to take something from him in return. Deny him closure. Deny him my acceptance. But that was not what I did. Hammurabian acts—deny for a deny—required a certain hardness that I didn’t possess. I was too much a man of this age. When I was declared unwanted, I accepted it.
I gave the handshake and left the office, bag in hand, head hanging, toward the elevator. The people around me, still working, had no idea what had happened. Life went on within the chessboard. I had always thought that upon the playing surface of Plutus, I was a back-row power, perhaps even a grandmaster who got to move the pieces. But if I had been once, I wasn’t anymore. That was the violence at the heart of chess. Anyone could be overturned at any moment.
I couldn’t get out with my dignity. Candace was standing at the elevator, trying to appear casual. She was actually whistling with her hands in her pockets and rocking on the balls of her feet. But her face showed even more worry than before.
I told her point-blank what had happened.
“That’s so shocking,” she
said, reaching forward to keep the elevator door open.
“Imagine how I feel.”
“Isn’t this coming out of nowhere?”
“You tell me,” I said. “You talked to him last. This morning and also at my party . . .”
“Nothing this morning,” she said, and got into the elevator because it had started to beep. “Just summoned you. That asshole.”
“And at the party?”
She shook her head and bit her nails. “He was really drunk.”
“What did you talk about? Was it Marie-Anne? Look, if it was Marie-Anne, I hope you will tell me.”
“Not at all,” she said. “He was all intellectual. Bored the fuck out of me. Totally killed my buzz. He was going on about history. I should’ve known he was an asshole. Historians are the worst people in the world.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I promise you it wasn’t Marie-Anne.”
“Well, that’s it, then,” I said, and patted her on the head. “Good luck, you. And thank you.” For a brief moment I wanted to kiss the top of her head. To muffle my mouth in her dark hair. To clutch her to me and be pained together. Then I put that thought out.
The elevator pinged on each floor like it was carrying on a xylophonic recitation.
We reached the ground floor and I stepped out. I didn’t even bother to turn around and wave a symbolic goodbye. You spun your arms during a drowning, not after.
* * *