by Lea Sims
Eddie shouted another expletive and then stuck his head back in the window. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Anderson,” he said, a grin splitting his face from ear to ear. “Ain’t nobody messin’ with me today.”
Delaney thought about her conversation with Amanda about Rogue, and her jaw set in a determined line. She raised one beautifully arched brow at Eddie’s face in the mirror.
“Me either, honey.”
“It’s only very recently that women have succeeded in entering those professions which, as Muses, they typified for the Greeks.”
—Mary Ritter Beard
Eddie dropped Delaney at the front curb of Blue Muse Digital in Tribeca. She strode through the lobby, waved to Otis at the security desk, and swiped her access card to the elevator that would take her to BMD’s “Design Hub” on the 6th floor. Blue Muse was one of the most sought-after design agencies in the city. Delaney was Senior Director of Creative Design, overseeing a brilliant team of designers who created award-winning content marketing and digital media campaigns for their growing portfolio of corporate clients. She had moved up from a managing director’s role in brand strategy about a year ago to take over the creative design team, a big move for her and one that had put her in the right lane to make vice president in another couple of years.
She stepped off the elevator to the open collaborative space in the center of the floor. Blue leather sofas and bright yellow Louis IX armchairs were positioned around milky lucite coffee tables. A huge glass whiteboard hung on chrome chains from the ceiling. Two more chrome chains tethered it to the floor to stabilize it. It served as both a two-sided ideation center and a partition separating the first meeting area from the next gathering space—a long counter-height wooden table surrounded by stools that could seat up to twenty people. The whiteboard was made of smart glass, which could be rendered either transparent or opaque depending on the need to separate the two spaces. It could also serve as a projection space for digital display. There were chunky jute rugs spread out over high-end cork tile flooring, lush green plants in white porcelain pots on the deep windowsills of the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined one long side of the open room. Natural light flooded in, though inset electronic blinds could be lowered to darken the room for presentations and multimedia reviews.
Everything about the space conveyed “inspired innovation,” their core mission as a company. On one wall, there was a large painting that had been commissioned by their CEO just for the Hub. It was a mixed media piece depicting the nine Greek muses, all wearing varying shades of blue, from the ethereal pale blue toga worn by Terpsichore, the muse of the dance, to the voluminous electric blue robe worn by Erato, the muse of romantic poetry. What made it unique was that the traditional symbols for the arts the muses normally held in their hands had been replaced by modern digital technology. Calliope was holding an iPad instead of a scroll of parchment, and Euterpe had doffed her lyre for a sweet pair of Dr. Dre headphones. It was the heartbeat of Blue Muse Digital to marry the classic with the quirky.
Around this central hub of ideation, there were a row of “boxes”—square offices with smart glass windows and sliding paneled doors—where client teams worked four to a box. The boxes were fairly large and offered each designer their own work space but encouraged team effort, support, and accountability. They were all encouraged to “get out of the box” and come to the collaborative Hub in the center of the floor whenever they were stuck in ideation or needed team support on a campaign or design. There were also two “solitary” design rooms near the elevator that were small and well-insulated, about the size of a cubicle, where anyone could go when they needed complete isolation to focus and meet a deadline. It was a productivity strategy that worked very well for her team. The extroverts needed Hub time to process their thinking, and the introverts needed box time to process theirs. And just about everyone needed solitary time at some point each month when they really needed to crank out some design work. Delaney made sure every client team had a balance of introverts and extroverts, strategists and project managers.
If the events of the last year had made Delaney Anderson question who she was in her personal life, she knew exactly who she was when she stepped off the elevator and into this office. This was her zone. It was where she soared. As she walked to her office, she poked her head into several boxes to check in on her team. Ed Donovan, Lindsay Turner, Kim Chan, and Eric Masterson shared the first box. They were the healthcare team, managing BMD’s healthcare and life sciences accounts.
“Hey, guys,” she said with a smile, leaning on the door frame. “How did the call with PerView go?” She was referring to the conference call her team had been on earlier with a virtual reality company out of Arizona that was launching an virtual reality solution for telemedicine. They had just contracted Blue Muse to design their website and content marketing strategy.
“It went well,” Eric said, shooting a look at Kim and grinning slightly. “They really liked Kim’s idea of making their entire website VR compatible. There are some concerns about what the site will look like for non-VR browsers, because not everyone has VR goggles yet. They’re becoming more popular and eventually most consumers will probably have them, but the market isn’t quite there yet. But Kim talked them through how that could be controlled through a gamified decision-tree at the front end, one that would require the viewer to choose an entry portal—either VR or non-VR. If a site visitor picks the VR portal, they can then be instructed to put on their goggles. We talked about how organic that marketing message is.”
Delaney had loved this idea when Kim had pitched it to her. “It really is,” she said, eyes lighting up. “Think about how that entry point inherently communicates the message, especially if you get creative with naming or designing the options. Can you see them presenting this website in a customer meeting or an executive briefing? I can just picture them showing the customer the non-VR site and then having them back out of it, put their goggles on, and go into the other portal.” They were all nodding, creative energy zipping around the small space, as it typically did when Delaney was present. “When you can let the experience communicate the message, few words are needed, which is pretty brilliant.”
She looked at Lindsay and asked, “Did you talk to them at all about an independent content and thought leadership site, Linz?”
Lindsay nodded and replied, “We were just getting to that discussion at the tail end of the call, and they had a hard stop at the end of the hour and needed to be on another call, so we didn’t get very far with that concept. I’m going to set up a follow-up meeting with them to explore it further.”
“Awesome,” Delaney said. “Before you get on that next call with them, make sure you guys spend some time spit-balling this idea in the Hub. I’d like to see your top three concepts by the end of the week. Ideally, we should get them warm to the idea on this next call by dangling a mock-up or two in front of them. Oh, and make sure to pull in Badger. He knows a lot about VR from working with Samsung.” Almost no one in the office referred to Devin Badger by his first name.
The next box was the creative space of one of Delaney’s three retail teams. The retail industry represented the lion’s share of their clientele. When she rapped on the door and slid it open slightly to poke her head in, she saw that Charlie Buttons and Divya Bajwa were on a web conference call, both of them on laptops watching and listening to an athletic wear executive walk through plans for their upcoming back-to-school campaign. They both turned to look up at her. “Where’s Elliot?” she mouthed to them. Divya wrote the word “Solitary” with a Sharpie on her legal pad. Underneath it, she wrote “Nordstrom anniversary event.” Delaney gave them a thumbs-up and slid the door closed.
She made her way down the row, checking on teams as she went until she reached her large office suite in the corner. It contained an outer office and seating area where her executive assistant Callie worked. A set of double doors led to her private inner office, a
spacious appointment with large corner windows that overlooked Hudson Street. Callie looked up from her computer as Delaney walked in. “How’d it go this time?” she asked, scrunching her face in a questioning grimace.
“It went.”
When Delaney didn’t elaborate, Callie knew it meant the meeting with the attorney probably went about as well as all the other meetings. Callie had worked for Delaney for just over a year. She’d never met Danny in person, but she’d dealt with his abrupt attitude and sarcastic comments enough on the phone to have gotten a good measure of him. He was a pill.
“Do you see this coming to an end any time soon?” she asked, following Delaney into her office. “Or is he waging war over the toilet paper now?”
Delaney dropped her laptop bag on the floor next to her desk and turned to laugh out loud at Callie, whose sense of humor and timing were always impeccable. “He is digging his heels in about my baby,” Delaney said, pointing to the framed photograph sitting on the credenza under one of the windows. The photo was a selfie she had taken of herself and Rogue lying on their backs in the green grass of Central Park on a slightly overcast day. Rogue was sprawled on her back with her paws curled up, huge doggie smile on her face and tongue hanging long out of one side of her teeth. She was cheek to cheek with Delaney, whose blonde hair was spread beneath them, bright blue eyes staring out from the picture as full of love as Rogue’s were. Delaney had used a selfie stick to capture the shot from above them. She was no photographer, but it was a stunning picture. Everyone who came into her office commented on it.
Whenever Delaney looked at the photo, as she often did when she was alone, she loved the faces looking back at her. The moment perfectly memorialized her dog’s personality as well as the love that tied them to each other. But Delaney spent a lot of time staring at her own face in that picture. The girl in that photo was relaxed, sure of herself, and full of zest for life. There were no dark shadows lurking behind her eyes and there was clarity in her gaze. She was someone abundantly loved and unafraid to love in return. She really liked the woman in the picture, and she secretly really wanted to be her.
“The note Amanda got from Danny’s attorney said that he was not going to sign until I agreed to either give up Rogue or negotiate a custodial visitation schedule.” Her eyes rolled skyward in disgust, and she dropped into her vintage Sheraton desk chair with a sigh. The chair was an 18th century replica made of rich mahogany and nubuck leather with brass casters. The best thing about it, however, was that it swiveled. When she really needed to think or strategize, Delaney would sink into this beautiful chair, turn toward the windows, and swivel to her heart’s content. Other than her shower, there wasn’t another spot in all of New York that quieted her mind and stimulated her thinking at the same time.
“Custodial visitation schedule? You have got to be kidding me!” Callie exclaimed. She had gone straight to the Keurig on the counter by the door to make Delaney a cup of coffee. She turned around now, aggressively slapping two packets of sweetener against the palm of her hand, and shook her head at her boss. “Do people do that? Share custody of a dog? That’s ridiculous to me.”
“Apparently, some do,” Delaney grinned at Callie. She was a thin waif of a girl with pixie-cut bleached hair, dyed magenta just at the tips. The way it sprung out in all directions from her head, coupled with her giant green eyes, made Callie look like an animé character, a quality that had captivated every male in the company under the age of thirty. Standing there now with her wild hair, green eyes flashing in indignation, she warmed Delaney’s heart. It was always nice to have someone take your side. “Danny’s attorney had some statistics to offer on that, which…seriously…I can’t even go there. I would have the patience to entertain that option if I thought for a second that Danny actually wanted Rogue, but he’s doing this just to get at me. He’s never been mean or neglectful to her, but he’s so not a dog person. Unless she needs to be fed or walked, he doesn’t give her the time of day. Most of the time, her need to follow you everywhere and be right on top of you just ends up annoying him.”
“Maybe you should try the custody thing for a few months,” Callie said, a sudden mischievous gleam in her eye. “As self-absorbed as he is and as much as he travels, it won’t be long before he relents. As soon as his visitation rights become visitation responsibilities, he’ll be dumping her on your doorstep in no time.”
“That’s brilliant, actually.” This was one of the reasons Delaney counted her lucky stars to have Callie as her assistant. She loved the way her brain worked. “And if it comes to that, I believe that’s exactly what would happen. I’m glad you said it so I can stop worrying about the worst-case scenario. But I refuse to let it come to that. I told Amanda that I wasn’t giving him Rogue.” She glanced back over at her smiling pup in the photograph. No way, Danny. Not my baby.
Callie whistled. “Good!! Glad to see you do it. You have to draw the line somewhere, Delaney.”
“Funny you used that phrase. That’s exactly what Amanda said. Danny has been drawing battle lines for the last year. Today I drew one. And I’m not letting him cross it.” She took her hazelnut coffee, that was more cream and sugar than it was coffee, and blew on it. “Thanks for this. You always know when I need coffee.”
“That’s my job.” Callie winked and then held out a napkin on which was sitting a French chocolate pain from Dean & Deluca. “And I’m really good at it.”
Delaney squealed, eyes widening in delight. “Yes, you are!” She had fallen in love with the famous upscale grocery store almost the instant she arrived in New York. Their flagship location was in SoHo not far from her office, and Blue Muse had a great catering relationship with them. No matter how good or bad a day ever was, it was always made better by a pastry from D&D. Anytime they entertained clients in the office or brought them up to the Hub, they always ordered a tray of their madeleines.
“By the way,” Callie said suddenly, “Lexie came up while you were gone and wanted to know if you guys were still on for tonight.” Lexie had been Delaney’s best friend almost the entire time she’d been in New York. They had worked together at another design house, but when Delaney took the job at Muse in the brand strategy department, she’d brought Lexie with her. When Delaney was promoted to her current role, Lexie had become the managing director for her old group.
“Yeah, she texted me. We’re supposed to go to Silk tonight.” She flipped her wrist over to check her watch. “Which means I’ve gotta get out of here by five so I can take Rogue to the park.”
“I keep hearing about that place.” Callie shrugged, clearly unimpressed. She didn’t do sophisticated hipster joints. “You guys could always meet me at pHyziology,” she said with a toothy smile, then chuckled at the look of horror on Delaney’s face.
“Oh my god, no.” Callie was a club girl, and on any given Friday or Saturday night, you could find her at a club like pHyziology—one of a dozen or more underground EDM/techno clubs with crushing crowds on tiny dance floors. pHyziology was well known for its weekly themed house parties, where everyone wore costumes and you could expect anything from burlesque dancers to stilt walkers and sword swallowers to be part of the mix. Delaney mentally shuddered. But she was careful not to insult Callie. “You know me, Callie…I wouldn’t last ten minutes in there. Those places are just too loud for me.”
“That’s what headphones are for.” Callie said, shrugging. Delaney could just see Callie with earbuds in at a club oblivious to all the guys trying to talk to her, which undoubtedly made them try even harder. She was definitely a unique girl. “Anyway, do you need anything from me before I head out today?”
“Yeah, find Badger and tell him to head in here. I need to talk to him about the PerView VR strategy.” Callie nodded and headed out of her office, leaving Delaney alone to check her email and text Lexie to firm up their plans.
“Taking a thing apart is always faster than putting something tog
ether. This is true of everything except marriage.”
—Joe Hill
“Go to h—, Delaney.”
Danny Anderson turned on his heel and walked away. Delaney watched him stride angrily down the path toward the Balcony Bridge in Central Park, his perfect hair remaining annoyingly in place despite his stormy pace. He had met her along the Naturalists’ Walk, where she and Rogue went in the early evenings. Her loft apartment was not far from the West 77th Street entrance to the park, and this was usually where she would bring Rogue to get some exercise after a long day cooped up in the apartment.
They’d just had an argument about the dog, which didn’t surprise her given the ultimatum she’d had Amanda deliver to him that day. Danny had shown up somewhat unexpectedly along her walking route this evening, probably hoping to bully her in an open space about Rogue. He knew she despised public confrontations and airing dirty laundry around strangers. But she calmly told him he would get the dog over her dead body, and this had been his cursing response.
As she watched Danny move across the Balcony Bridge, she sighed sadly. The bridge was one of their favorite places in the city. It provided the most breathtaking views over the lake to the south end of the park and to the Fifth Avenue skyline. On the east side of the stone arch bridge was a set of balconies lined with benches. It was a frequent spot for nappers, book readers, and trysting lovers. Danny had proposed to her on one of those benches.
How did we get here?
Delaney pondered this for the umpteenth time. She thought about how happy she had been when Danny had walked her up to that bridge after a romantic dinner six years ago. It had been a cool fall evening and the park was awash in the radiant hues of fall, her favorite time of year. He had brought her to one of the balconies, sat her on the bench, and dropped to a knee to propose to her. It was typical of Danny—well-rehearsed and executed flawlessly. Delaney remembered thinking in that moment that everything from the meal to the weather to the romantic park setting was absolute perfection.