Watermark

by Karin Kallmaker

  "What did you think of her?" Diego's network message popped up on her screen. Everyone preferred them when you wanted to have a private conversation, something not possible in the all-cubicle setup.

  "I thought she was nice, like you said," Teresa typed back. No need to tell Diego that they'd met before. That she had in fact thrown her job in Rayann's face, then attempted to seduce her. Put that way it didn't exactly do Teresa credit. But it hadn't been all her fault. Rayann had been a bitch to her.

  She went back to work on her latest stack of

  display ad edits. They were tiresome, but she could do them in her sleep now. Clip, adjust, size, type, print. Next.

  She heard the thump of running footsteps and popped up to see who was going where. Jena Davies and Tori Raguza were hustling across the floor from the elevators to Rayann's office.

  Other people were prairie-dogging, and Diego said irritably, "What's going on?"

  "Looks like a fire drill," Mike said. "Not me this time. No way. I got tickets to the opera."

  Rayann came out of her office and smiled when she saw all the heads looking expectantly in her direction. "It's a fire drill," she announced, raising her voice. "Anyone who has no private life planned for the next forty-eight hours raise your hand. I need video, sound and art."

  Video? Teresa's hand shot in the air. She was dying to work on a video project. Across the cubicles, Teresa saw Jim Dettman's hand go up. Good — Jim was reputed to be a video god. Tony Green came out of the break room saying, "Tony is your man for sound."

  Henry was behind Tony. "Conference C is all cleaned up. I'll bring coffee." He pulled a fireman's hat into view and put it on, smiling broadly when everyone laughed.

  I like this place, Teresa thought. Let's see if I can survive working with her.

  Rayann had shed her jacket. The extent of her weight loss was more obvious — Teresa could hardly believe it. Maybe she had been ill. There seemed to be plenty of charm on the surface, but what had happened to make the interior so cold?

  None of your business, she thought. She put her sketchpad and pencils on the table and noticed that Jim had brought one as well.

  "I suppose I didn't need this," Jim said, indicating his pad. "I don't do it near as good as you."

  Tori automatically said, "Nearly. Nearly as good."

  Jena was saying to Rayann, "I've already sent an alert over to media to pick up the spots." She turned to the rest of them. "This is really very exciting. Halon Technologies is a small client that we've been working with for a couple of years. Mostly little mailers and shareholder brochures because they haven't had a product to push. For the last two months we've been hammering out the media cam¬paign for when their first product gets FDA approval and rolls out. That was supposed to happen this fall. They got FDA approval today."

  Tori, whose primary work was copywriting, said, "Fortunately all of the legal disclaimer work is done. We also have the video spots planned, but they're live-action. Halon still wants to go with that plan in its entirety, but we can't bring it to market in less than two weeks without its looking like a rush job. So the client agrees we should complete the original plan properly, another two months, because when you're selling medicine you have to look competent."

  Rayann chimed in. "So Halon wants to do a series of information spots on the news networks to fill the gap. The spots are aimed at potential users and their doctors. Because they're going to market early, they're willing to spend some major dollars on prime-time spots. CNN, HNN, MSNBC, Fox and major-market

  number-one news shows. That's a lot of exposure, and what we put out there must look competent and poised."

  Jim steepled his fingers. "So no live action? Text on a background?" He glanced at Tony. "Voiceover?"

  "Tony approves of voiceover."

  Tori pursed her lips. "Tony, buy a pronoun."

  "No bickering," Rayann said. She glanced at Teresa. "Any thoughts?"

  "I have thoughts," Teresa said slowly. "I believe I'm probably thinking what all the people who will be watching this commercial will be thinking."

  There was a silence, then Rayann said, "And that is?"

  "What the hell is the product?"

  Rayann blinked, then burst into laughter. "I have no the hell idea! Oh my God!" She laughed as if she hadn't done so in a long time. Teresa had to con¬sciously shake the happy sound of it from her ears.

  Through her chuckles, Jena said, "I rather left that out, didn't I? Well, if you know the Halon account, you know what they've been working on — inhalable insulin, just like asthma medicine. For approximately sixty percent of insulin-dependent dia¬betics, it means an end to needles."

  "Wow," Teresa said. "That's really big."

  Rayann wiped away a tear. "So what are your thoughts now?"

  "Obviously it'll need to be serious, but that doesn't mean boring," Teresa said. "I think that coloration can change the whole mood. This is something to celebrate, after all."

  Jim leaned forward. "How about going from black and white to color in the background. And have the voiceover go from pedantic to excited?"

  "That sounds good," Rayann said. "Maybe not that dramatic with the voiceover — remember, there's all the medical disclosures to be read — but I like where we're going. It'll produce fast and we can surprise the client with something for over the weekend."

  Jena emptied the file on the media campaign onto the table. "This is what we have to work with. The client promises they won't do fifteen levels of review so we can get this on as soon as' possible. We just have to stick within the groundwork we've already done. Here are the legal disclaimers." She pushed a sheet at Tony. "And here are the keywords, the color swatches. These are the performers lined up for the live action commercial." She tapped one of the head shots. "He has an interesting voice. A little gravelly, just a little. And he's local. With any luck at all we could have him in for recording tomorrow."

  In the end, Teresa didn't have a lot to do except watch and learn. Jim appreciated her perspective on the color shading and the placement of the product against text. By midnight he had the product video on bluescreen done. Being the least engaged, Teresa was the one who took a cab to an all-night deli for pro¬visions. Even with curb-to-curb service from the cab driver, she got rained on. She kept leaving her um¬brella at home because sometimes it was hard to tell fog from rain clouds.

  She carried Rayann's sandwich into her office, only to stop short when she realized the other woman had fallen asleep on the little couch in the corner. Even in

  sleep the tense expression and cool withdrawal hadn't changed.

  Teresa took a moment to study the photographs that had been set out on the credenza. She recognized the man in one of them — he'd been sitting next to Rayann when Teresa and Vivian had seen them at the Lace Place. There was a group shot which included that gorgeous redhead and her girlfriend, obviously taken pre-pregnancy. Another picture had to be of her mother, though there was little resemblance. She was very striking to look at. Thick, black and silver hair was blowing in the wind over a green hillside.

  Something about the woman's steady gaze re¬minded Teresa of her grandmother. Lord, that woman was irascible. She'd agreed to let Teresa stay with her while she went to school in Paris. Teresa had been grateful until she had realized her father's assessment of her grandmother's temper was not just a mother-in-law thing. She really was that bad. She was at war with the world over everything. The bread was not fresh enough, the prices too high and worst of all, she had only one grandchild because Teresa's mother had had the bad manners to contract a fatal case of food poisoning when Teresa was two. Teresa was blameless in that, her grandmother allowed, but Teresa's father was a trou du cul. Teresa had asked another student to translate. Trou meant hole. Cul at its most polite meant buttocks. A day hadn't passed that her grandmother didn't call someone a trou du cul.

  The woman pictured on Rayann's credenza did not have her grandmother's unhappy network of frowning wrinkles, however, nor
her thin lips. She didn't look

  quite old enough to be Teresa's grandmother's age, either. She looked as if her life was as complete and full as she could make it. It was in the angle of her neck, the way she lifted her face to the wind. She had probably been a great mother. Of course never having had one, Teresa wasn't sure what exactly a great mother was. Sometimes she wondered what it would have been like. But the fact was that her father had been good enough for two parents.

  He hadn't known anything about tampons but he had read the boxes with her. When he'd given her the last in a series of talks about sex, and how not having it was the classy choice for a girl her age, he'd given her condoms and said he trusted her to be an adult but he didn't trust teenage boys; after all, he'd been one once upon a time. He'd actually seemed relieved a year later when she'd told him that she felt "that way" about other girls. When her very first girlfriend had dumped her during her freshman year in college, he had been there offering hot fudge sundaes and sage advice about fish and seas. He was a great dad. She hadn't told him so recently. She'd have to rectify that as soon as possible.

  Teresa shook herself out of her pensive mood and left the sandwich and cup of soup on the desk. She took Jim his food in the small video room and while they both ate, she showed him the color shift she could produce via computer. It was nothing fancy.

  Tony wandered in, pastrami sandwich in one hand, printouts in the other. "Did you know that one of the side effects of this stuff is death?"

  Jim scoffed. "We have to say 'death'? In a commer¬cial?"

  "Apparently so. The message of the legal dis-

  claimers is that this stuff should be strictly supervised by a physician."

  "Well, that makes sense," Teresa said. "Insulin can kill you."

  "Tony thinks that when a commercial says our product can kill you the product is what dies."

  Rayann had slipped in. "I'll talk to legal about it tomorrow. I don't see why we can't substitute 'life-threatening' for 'death.' " She rubbed her eyes. "The couch in my office is fair game for anyone who wants to catnap."

  "Jena's crashed on the one in the break room," Tony said. "Tony will take dibs on Rayann's."

  "I woke up because Tori buzzed me. She's got the copy ready. Thanks for the chow, by the way. The soup was exactly what I needed."

  Rayann and Tony headed for the conference room while Jim overlaid the product shot from the blue-screen onto the deep gray that opened the spot. Teresa set the computer to transition from gray to a vivid blue several tints lighter than the Halon logo. "Thirty seconds starts now."

  They watched the colors mutate. Halfway through, Teresa stopped it. "It's getting to blue by removing black. I want it to actually get there by going to deep purple, then remove the red. Just a sec."

  "That makes a difference," Jim said, when the colors started to shift. "Before, it seemed to take forever to change."

  "And right about here — in logo blue outlined in white — we'd see the phrase 'As easy as breathing,' then 'Halon Technologies.' "

  "Let's run it one more time and I'll record. We could be done in an hour."

  "Cool." She quickly typed the text in Halon's pre¬ferred font, and loaded up the TIFF of their corporate name spelled out. She added them to the computer display starting at second twenty-six, just before the final fade to white.

  Jim took the cassette to the conference room and Teresa's eyes drooped. A catnap would be a big help. Jena was nowhere in sight and Tony had opted for the larger sofa in the break room. Tony should tell Tony that Tony snored.

  She settled onto the little sofa in Rayann's office. As she closed her eyes she thought that never in a million years would she have predicted this end to the day. The faint hint of some scent prickled her nose and when she recognized it she turned into a great big goosepimple. She had smelled it before, on Rayann's skin.

  Now, cut that out, she told her nose. There was absolutely nothing productive to be gained from it.

  Whispered fumbling. Oh . . . soft. Not soft. Hard. Shit, she was waking up . . . oh, that was not fair. Teresa rubbed her eyes. Even her dreams were coitus out-of-luckus.

  It was the phone buzzer that had disturbed a really great dream. To her chagrin, Rayann was at her desk, looking as if she'd been there for some time. She was talking quietly, and mouthed "Sorry" at Teresa.

  Teresa swabbed her cheek. She'd even been drooling. How embarrassing.

  The clock said it was almost five. She'd had more

  sleep than everyone else, she realized. She got up as if she woke up in other people's office every day.

  "We're getting together again in the conference room," Rayann said, as Teresa was heading for the door. She had finished her call. "That was Henry. He said his mother will make us a coffee cake for break¬fast if we want it."

  "Henry's mother is an amazing cook. I hope you said yes." Teresa ran her tongue over her teeth. Yuck.

  "I said yes. And I asked him to pick up some Egg McMuffins for protein. You want some gum?"

  Teresa smiled without showing her teeth. "Yeah. For everyone else's sake. I keep forgetting to bring a toothbrush for these wonderful all-nighters."

  They walked together toward the conference room. Everyone was delighted to hear of Henry's mother's coffee cake in their future except Tori, who looked as if she'd just been poisoned. "Who made this coffee?"

  "Tony made the coffee," Tony said irritably.

  Tori snapped back, "When you see Tony tell him he makes shitty coffee."

  "No bickering," Rayann said. "Let's see what we have."

  Tori passed out the copy. "Tony has rehearsed it a couple of times to get it in the time frame. Since we're going with a male voice it'll be better to hear it done by a man now."

  They were still adjusting the timing of the copy-reading when Henry arrived with the promised coffee cake and a sack of breakfast sandwiches. He quickly departed to make a fresh pot of coffee.

  With food in their stomachs, everything seemed to click. Tori rearranged a sentence and they found two

  more seconds they badly needed. By the time the rest of the office arrived they were all hopeful that Philip would approve right away.

  People began clamoring for Rayann's attention on other matters, but she rejoined them when Philip popped down to see the final result, which Jim had just remastered onto production-quality videotape.

  Philip was pleased and a little sigh of happiness ran through everybody. "This is great teamwork, and they're not expecting this until tomorrow. Let's surprise them by making the evening news tonight. My sister is diabetic — she's going to be thrilled beyond belief."

  Jena, looking as weary as Teresa felt, took the final tape to the client and Rayann gave the rest of them the choice of going home then or taking Friday off. Teresa opted for the Friday. Maybe she could find a cheap fare down to L.A. to see her dad for a three-day weekend. Of course he and Melanie could have plans. If she stayed home she could get out, try to have something like a life. Meet somebody. Have some fun. Sure, she thought. Women just fall into your lap, uh-huh.

  Later in the day, her nose was just inches off her keyboard as she pecked out a text change on a display ad. She straightened up when Rayann leaned into her cube.

  "I just wanted to say good work last night. The client loved it. It starts airing this evening during the eight o'clock hour on CNN."

  "That's terrific. Sleep is where I'm headed tonight, so I'll probably miss the debut."

  "You and me both—" Rayann broke off, looking

  puzzled. She put her hand in the pocket of her skirt. "Oh my. I forgot that was in there." She pulled out a small object with a guilty smile, as if the vibration had felt a little too good. "One of those vibrating pagers. I'm carrying it around because a friend of mine is pregnant and I'm the backup." She glanced nonchalantly at the display. "Hospital." Her smile froze. "Oh my God. Oh my God. I have to go. Um. I have to go. See ya!" She fled toward her office and a few minutes later toward the elevator.

&nbs
p; Teresa sat there with the funniest sensation in the pit of her stomach. For just a moment Rayann's entire being had changed. The coiled purpose that she had exuded the first time Teresa had met her suddenly glowed in full force.

  She exhaled noisily. She'd never felt this mixture of butterflies and creepy tickles before. She shook her hands as if that would make it stop.

  She did not want to know what had caused it. She did not want to go on experiencing it. She wanted it to go away. Rayann Germaine was not in the least bit attractive and whatever this feeling was had nothing to do with her.

  Period.

  End of story.

  Finite.

  Crap.

  "Just give me the goddamned drugs!" Judy had Rayann's shirt sleeve clutched in one hand and the hospital bed rail in the other.

  "The anesthesiologist is on the way," Rayann soothed. "Dee will be here in a little bit. Why don't you try the nitrous again?"

  "It makes me dizzy." Judy gasped as she sank back on the bed with a moan.

  The midwife looked up from her conversation with the delivery nurse. "Things are really progressing quickly, Judy. That's why it hurts. Fast hurts more, but it doesn't last as long. This baby wants into the world."

  Judy gave a weak smile. "I'm sorry I yelled. I didn't know what to expect, and if we're just getting started and it hurts that much, I want drugs."

  "Your contractions are very strong," the midwife said. "You didn't get any warmups to give you a sense of perspective. I want to check your cervix again because I suspect the contractions are very productive, given the pain you're in."

  Judy closed your eyes. "Thank you for not calling it discomfort."

  The delivery nurse laughed. "Childbirth is not uncomfortable. It hurts. But it's the best kind of hurt you'll ever experience. Lie back, please."