Higher Mythology

by Jody Lynn Nye

  “Except for Albert Einstein, who the hell is going to know what a philosopher looks like?” Sean said, looking bored.

  “‘Yum! Much tastier than hemlock,’ says Socrates,” Brendan snickered.

  “Why not?” asked Meier. “Come on, this is what brainstorming is all about. You may not get the best ideas right away, but they’ll come if you feel relaxed about what you’re doing. Keith here may have looked like he was catatonic, but his mind was racing along.”

  “You’re right about him looking catatonic,” Sean said.

  Keith made a good-natured face at him, too preoccupied to think of a retort. He’d been a million miles away, thinking of Dola and baby Asrai.

  Meier still looked thoughtful. “Keith, I’m going to take this to the committee.” The others looked dismayed. “Come on, guys, it couldn’t hurt. The pros have flunked out on this one. We’ve gotten a lot of self-righteous claptrap about wholesomeness, a couple of environmental fire-eaters offering obscure suggestions, some overly cute b.s., and a lot of blank stares. The four of you have done better on Sarter Fruit in less time than anyone else to date. This could spark the right inspiration in someone’s mind. If they don’t want Sartre, the raisin d’etre.” He chuckled.

  Brendan regarded Keith with a look of pure hatred. Keith smiled innocently at him, fanning the fury still higher. If you can’t join ’em, he thought, annoy ’em. Keith turned to Meier. “Same understanding as before,” he said.

  Meier nodded. “I appreciate your trust, kid. I won’t take advantage of you. If they’ll take it with your name on it, it’ll be there.”

  The door to the little conference room swung open, and a man leaned in. He was tall and slender, with dark, well-coifed hair that had just the faintest suggestion of gray at the tips of the sideburns, and a health-club tan. He glanced at the young folk, and his face lit up. He turned to Meier.

  “Paul! Here you are. I’ve been looking for you.”

  Meier made the introductions.

  “Doug Constance, one of our creative directors,” Meier said, sweeping a hand around the table. “Doug, this is Dorothy Carver, Brendan Martwick, Keith Doyle, and Sean Lopez. My latest crop of interns.”

  “I know! That’s why I came in,” Constance said, grinning at them.

  The four students favored the newcomer with big, hopeful smiles. “What can we do for you, Doug?” Meier asked.

  “Well, we’ve got a new client we’re pitching coming in this afternoon,” Constance said. “I thought one of your interns might like a chance to see how it’s done, maybe throw in a few suggestions, be right in from the beginning. What do you think?”

  Keith sat up straighter. It would be a great opportunity to show his stuff. He could see that all three of the others had the same thought. Without waving his hand and yelling, “Me! Me!” it was difficult to make himself stand out from the group. He concentrated on looking bright, alert, and he hoped, creative. He smiled at the account executive, trying to meet his eyes.

  But Constance’s eye lit on Dorothy and her ubiquitous sketchbook. “There she is. How about her? Paul, we’d like to borrow this very talented young lady for the afternoon. We’d appreciate her input on Natural-Look Hair Products, and maybe she could do some sketches for layouts. She’d enjoy it, wouldn’t you, Dorothy? Could you lend her to us, Paul?”

  Paul looked at Dorothy, whose eyes were glistening beacons. “Sure, if you want. Go ahead, honey.”

  Dorothy rose with alacrity, her sketchbook clutched to her chest, and headed out of the room. Constance held the door open for her, then shut it behind them, with a final wink at Meier. “See you later!”

  Disappointed, Keith spared himself one uncharitable thought as he sank back into his chair, that Dorothy would undoubtedly use this opportunity to promote her chances at getting the PDQ job. Maybe he’d have done the same under similar circumstances, but he wasn’t so sure.

  “Now, knock it off,” Meier said, breaking into his thoughts. “I can see what you three are thinking. No decision has been made yet on who’s going to be picked for the job—if anyone—and you’ve still got to earn a grade out of this term, so give me your attention. Got it?”

  The three young men eyed each other. “Yes, Paul,” Keith said. The other two murmured their agreement.

  “Sorry, Paul,” said Sean, cocking his head sheepishly to one side.

  “Good,” Meier said firmly, spreading out a sheaf of photographs from a folder. “Now, I’ve got another product I want your best thoughts on. It’s one of my new accounts. Listen up. I’m going to give you these to chew over, then I’ve got a couple of meetings of my own.”

  “Come on, Doyle, I know what bifurcated means, and you know what bifurcated means, but the average jerk on the streets is going to think it’s something dirty.” Brendan shook his head at the ad copy Keith had scribbled on a mock layout.

  “Hey, sex sells,” Sean said, laughing.

  “It’s got nothing to do with sex, and I think it sounds dumb. Just like everything he comes up with.” Brendan threw an annoyed gesture toward Keith who turned his hands palm upward in appeal.

  “No, look, it’d make great copy. It’s supposed to be obscure, then you come to the tagline, which would read,” Keith held up his yellow pad and declaimed, “‘But instead of wading through our grandiose verbiage, why not come and see how our tire sails through water.’”

  “Too wordy for anyone except the New Yorker,” Brendan said, drumming his fingertips. Keith shrugged, and started drawing lines through his copy.

  “When you’re right, you’re right,” he conceded. Brendan looked surprised to have Keith agree with him, then sat back smugly. He put his heels on the table.

  Meier opened the door. Brendan immediately swept his feet off and sat up straight. Teacher’s pet, Keith thought in annoyance.

  “Nice to see little birds in their nests agreeing for a change!” Meier said cheerfully. “Dorothy not back yet?”

  “Nope,” the three young men said in unison.

  “Okay,” Meier said. He flopped into his chair and sighed deeply. “What a day! Okay. What’s Dunbar PLC’s new centrally-grooved aqua-handler tire going to be called?”

  “The Brain,” said Sean.

  “The English Channel,” said Keith and Brendan together.

  “No consensus, eh?” Meier asked. “Typical. You sound like you work for an ad agency. All right, Sean, why ‘The Brain’?”

  Sean turned his photograph of the product and his rough sketches toward the instructor. “Because it looks like a brain, or the top of it does, if you see it straight on. I wrote, ‘Your car is five times as smart when you add four Brains to the one behind the wheel.’”

  “That’s not bad,” Meier said, nodding. “Doesn’t hurt to flatter the customers.”

  “I looked at the bottom of the tire where it hits the pavement,” Brendan said, “and to me it looked like the rear end of the girl on the beach in the Bahamas tourist commercials, but you don’t see me suggesting we call it The Tush.”

  “Why ‘The English Channel’, then?”

  “Because nothing handles water like the English Channel,” Keith tossed off patly. “Dunbar’s an English company.”

  “Americans like things that are English,” Brendan added. “It makes you think of people swimming the Channel, which is a real accomplishment. We’re riding on that,” he finished, cocking a distrustful eye toward his erstwhile partner.

  “Har, har,” Keith said obediently.

  “True, true,” Meier agreed. He glanced at the clock, which showed 5:15. “Okay, you wanna leave me all of this stuff, and I’ll look it over tonight? I’ll give you my thoughts on it tomorrow, and you can let me know if you want me to propose your ideas or not. Good work, gentlemen.”

  Keith rose and gathered up his belongings. He realized guiltily that he hadn’t thought about Dola’s plight in hours. Still, there was nothing he could do for at least another twelve hours, and there was the chance that he could get a
call any time that Holl and the others had found the kidnappers and managed to pull off a rescue without him. The important thing was that the children were alive and well.

  He carried his coffee cup down the hall and into the employee lounge to wash it out. Only one light was on in the long, narrow room, over the sink at the far end. The flat-napped carpet swallowed up his footsteps, so that the only sounds were his breathing and the water running as he rinsed out his mug. Until he heard the sob.

  “Who’s there?” he asked gently into the gloom. He made out a shape at the table next to the window, and thought he recognized the outline. “Dorothy, is that you over there?” There was no answer. He turned off the water and put the cup down.

  His eyes became quickly used to the gloom as he went to sit by her. Her makeup was smudged, leaving matte streaks on her skin, and she looked miserable. He scooted his chair close to hers.

  “You were gone all afternoon. How’d it go?” he asked.

  “Horrible!” Dorothy burst out, and her voice caught as she struggled not to cry. He could see that she was not only unhappy, but very angry. “Do you know what that big sell was all about? What they wanted me at that presentation for? A token! Natural-Look’s president is an African-American woman. PDQ doesn’t have any creative directors who’re both female and African-American, so they pretended they needed me there to help with the presentation. I just sat there and nodded the whole time. They listened to my ideas once in a while when I managed to speak up, but you could tell they weren’t really paying any attention. It was all phony! For looks! So she would think they were politically correct. She thought I was a staff artist. They never told her I was just an intern. I hate this place.”

  “Whoa,” Keith said. “Meier warned us that this business was tough and that practically everyone’s a rat.”

  “I’m just here as a token,” Dorothy said, her eyes burning with tears. She scrabbled in her purse with one hand. Keith handed her his own handkerchief. After a second’s hesitation, she took it and dabbed at her eyes and nose.

  “Nope, you are not here as a token. You’ve got talent,” Keith said firmly. “Come on, how many interviews did you go through to get in here? Same number I did. And you had to have the grades and the background even to be considered, right? After they offer you the job at the end of the year—”

  “Hah!” Dorothy said bitterly.

  Keith waggled a finger at her. “Don’t interrupt me when I’m complimenting you—you can start making changes here. You can move up to where clients are asking for you.”

  “You just don’t know what it’s like.” Dorothy turned her head to stare out the window at the dusk. Lights were coming on all over the city, little pinpoints of red, amber, and white.

  Keith thought about it for a moment, and gave a half-grin. “You’d be surprised,” he said. “Most of my best friends—”

  “If you say they’re black, I’m going to kill you,” Dorothy snapped.

  “Nope, only some of my friends are black. I was going to say most of them are elves,” Keith said. Dorothy gestured disbelief, but the tension began to melt out of her face. “You know, being the only Big Person in the crowd makes it difficult for me, sometimes, especially when they speak their own language, but we have a great time learning from each other. I don’t share their common background, so of course I feel left out a lot.”

  “Yeah, sure,” she said, but she was diverted from her rage. “You’re strange, Keith.”

  “My stock in trade,” he said, grinning.

  At that moment Meier appeared, silhouetted in the hall door. “What’s the matter, kids?” He came to sit down at their table, shoulders hunched forward over his folded hands. “Come on, tell Papa.”

  Dorothy turned to stare out of the window, leaving Keith to explain what happened to her. The lines of Meier’s face deepened, and his lips pressed into a thin line.

  “I’ll take care of this,” he said. His voice was calm, but the suppressed power in it told Keith how angry he was. “Dammit, they’re supposed to keep their damned games off you students.”

  “Why, so you can grab our ideas for yourself? So you can use us yourself?” Dorothy snapped.

  Meier turned his surprisingly calm eyes on her. “Dorothy. Ms. Carver. I always tell you when I’m taking your ideas, and when I’m not, and I tell you why. I am working for your best interests, although you might not believe me right now. You want the magic of seeing your ideas used by the clients? If not, tell me. I won’t propose any of yours. I told you there’s resistance to using unpaid interns’ suggestions. You agreed to that at the beginning of this session. You want to take it back, you can. It doesn’t make any difference to me. I’ve got my own ideas, and I get plenty from the rest of my creative staff. I don’t need yours. I was doing you a favor. There’s no reason for you to have to put anything else on the line. You can go on just learning from me about this business, and participating in the class. It won’t affect your grade, because it really just doesn’t matter to me. You can believe that or not. It’s up to you.”

  Dorothy’s eyes fell. “I’m sorry, Paul,” she said meekly. “I didn’t mean that. I just feel used. Dirty.”

  Meier nodded kindly, and slid into a chair. “I apologize, too, Dorothy. I work with these yotzes every day, but sometimes they even fool me. Like today. It’s my fault I let Doug get away with using you. And I do put your names on the proposals when I can, but you’ve got to understand how delicate the balance is we’ve got to maintain. We can’t let the client feel at any time that we’re incompetent. Okay, let’s look at it from another angle. You were in on the initial meeting between a client and a creative team—a crucial moment in the relationship. Did you get anything out of that?”

  Dorothy looked at him in surprise. Even the puffiness around her eyes was beginning to recede. “Well, yes, I felt them measuring out what she wanted. It wasn’t easy. She had an image in her mind, and nothing we proposed seemed to match it. That was tough. She wasn’t good at seeing the potential in rough sketches. She needs to see finished mockups.”

  “Good assessment. They work out how much she can spend?”

  “Uh huh. I guess it wasn’t much. She has to aim straight at her demographics without a lot left for general advertising, so it’s up to us to figure out where her customers are and how to reach them. After being in research, I know how much it costs to put up certain kinds of ads, so I could see just what she could get for her money.”

  Meier nodded encouragingly. “And how far creativity, both in the ads and in the placement of those ads, can make that money go. Not easy, but you could begin to understand how we begin to form a campaign. You see? No experience is ever wasted, is it? You feel better?”

  Dorothy gave him a look of gratitude. “Yes.”

  “Great,” Meier said. He glanced at his watch. The shiny face picked up a few of the red and white points reflected in from the window. “Okay, I’ve gotta get out of here, kids. See you tomorrow.” He rose, chucking a friendly fist into Keith’s shoulder, and strode out.

  “I like him,” Keith said, watching the door swing shut.

  “I do, too,” Dorothy said. “And I like you. It was nice of you to come and sit down with me. How come you want to help me, when we’re competing for the same spot? We can’t both win, you know.”

  “Oh, I’ll get along if I don’t get the job,” Keith said reassuringly. “I’m not a type-A personality. There’ll be other opportunities for both of us, lots of them. Listen, want to grab a bite to eat? I just missed my train home, so I might as well have dinner down here.”

  “Sure,” Dorothy said. The luster was back in her cheeks, and she smiled at him. “Let me clean up first. I must be a mess!”

  The Chicago Loop empties out swiftly at the end of the workday. Most of the places the interns were accustomed to going for lunch were already closed. Keith and Dorothy found themselves on the uppermost floor of a shopping center, looking out the window at the city. Ribbons of red lig
hts marked the outbound traffic on the expressways. The river, snaking between high-rises and the Merchandise Mart glistened with the colors of sunset reflected from the sky. On the horizon, tiny planes to the west and southwest appeared in the sky, rocketing along an upward vector: the evening flights at O’Hare and Midway airports. The sulfur yellow of sodium vapor lights made an eerie graph pattern of the streets to the north of the Loop. Keith and Dorothy watched in companionable silence until their meals arrived.

  “Paul was right,” Dorothy admitted. After she had eaten a few bites of food, she was restored to her usual competent self. “This internship is doing me good, and I like it a lot more than I thought I would.”

  “Me, too,” Keith said. “Before, I sort of thought ads wrote themselves. I mean I wasn’t aware of the mechanism that creates commercials and print ads. Now I go around making up slogans and layouts for everything I see. Baloney Billboards,” he sketched across the sky, “For the biggest ideas around. Or the watch ad I thought up that no one will ever use.”

  “Oh?” Dorothy asked encouragingly, amused.

  “Yup. Shows a giant watch with its band fastened around the Tower of Pisa. Slogan: if you have the inclination you might as well—”

  “… Have the time,” Dorothy finished with him. Her laugh, a deep, throaty gurgle, was pretty. Keith beamed at her. “I should have seen that one coming. I know what you mean,” she said. “I’m doing it, too. I love it. I draw storyboards and magazine ads. I’ve got sketchbooks full of the weirdest stuff.” She turned serious for a moment. “I really want this job, Keith. It would mean getting right into the big-time business, without starting out in Podunk-ville.”

  “Great,” Keith said, without a trace of jealousy. “And when I graduate, you can hire me.”

  “I could use a good copywriter,” she said, mock-critically assessing him.

  “Why, with your brains and my looks,” he said, with a self-deprecating grin, “we’ll go places. You could have a great career.” He could picture her in an executive office putting people like Doug Constance into line. He could picture her holding Asrai, being hustled along by two large men—no, that was Dola being pushed, the baby clasped to her chest. Keith shook his head to clear it. He looked up.