Fire in the Firefly

by Scott Gardiner

  Roebuck has to think. “Yes. Hunters use moose calls, so moose must too. Yes, definitely. Moose make mating calls.”

  “Then they’re likely to be loud. Perfect. When he hears the call, our moose turns his massive head, immediately searching for the source of the sound. Then the image changes. To what? To a lion! Do lions call?”

  “I don’t know …”

  “What animals call?”

  “Well, birds. Lots of birds … Wolves. Wolves howl.”

  “Wolves! Wolves are good! Yeah. Wolves are perfect. So now we see a wolf, gliding through his forest. Suddenly we hear a howl, off screen—everybody recognizes a wolf howl—and instantly our wolf stops dead and turns to look. What other animals? We need a few. What other animals make good mating howls?”

  “What am I, Marlin Perkins?”

  “Who’s Marlin Perkins?”

  “Never mind. How about loons? Loons make excellent calls.”

  “Not sure. Loons have a bit of an image, but maybe that’s good. Whatever. Let’s go with loons for now. Same style of shot, then, but this time it’s a loon, paddling around on some glittering lake. He hears that famous call and frantically points his bill, searching … searching … Maybe he fluffs his feathers, looking eager. Or maybe there’s a group of loons, suddenly all getting worked up. With me? It’s a sequence of shorts, all animals—four or five different kinds, if we can squeeze them in—all responding to mating calls, all of them hard-wired by instinct to follow that sound.”

  “I see what you’re saying. But where is it taking me?”

  “So here comes the finale. Underneath it all we lay down your drag and clop soundtrack; running right through the whole segment. Very faint at the beginning; so soft you can hardly hear it in the moose sequence. But getting louder as the spot goes on. By the last vignette—the loon or the wolf or whatever—it’s definitely audible, but it’s still a mystery to the audience because it doesn’t fit, this weird sound threading through the background of all these Nature Channel images. The last one’s the reveal. Suddenly there’s a woman on-screen. Or maybe we never even see the woman herself, just her feet—that might be effective—she’s wearing the brand of shoe we’re marketing, walking, walking … Drag and clop, drag and clop goes the soundtrack, and now we’ve identified the source of that incongruous sound. With me so far?”

  Roebuck spins a finger.

  “Okay, so the very last sequence—the scene that everything else that’s happened so far has been teeing-up—is a man … or possibly a group of men … sitting in a café, let’s say. They’re minding their own business, intent on whatever they’re doing, talking, laughing—until they hear that sound: that mesmerizing sound of a woman walking by in heels. The instant they hear it, the very second, they stop, they freeze, all of them stare in the same direction—just like all the other animals we’ve been watching—because nothing else matters now, but locating the source of that sound. Then we run the tag. Call of the Wild or something like that, alongside the logo. What do you think?”

  “Call of the Wild … That’s good! You could build a whole campaign around a theme like that. I definitely like Call of the Wild. Wonder if the copyright’s expired? Jack London’s been dead at least a century. Funny, Zach and I read it just last week.”

  Greenwood isn’t listening. “The premise is that the sound our product makes appeals straight to men’s animal instincts. The reptilian brain, and all. There’s a lot you can play with. And you’re right; it would be fun to pitch. It’d be one for the history books, for sure, if we could get away with it. It could do well on the Net.”

  “Agreed!” Roebuck is up on his feet now, too. “But I’m a little worried about all that nature footage. Not exactly up our alley. Where’d we get the video? It would cost a fortune to commission.”

  “You’d be surprised how much of that stuff is out there in stock. Some of these wildlife guys spend weeks in the woods, filming, hiding in the bushes, and what not. For them that’s the money shot. That’s how they make their living.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “It’s my job.”

  “So it is.” Roebuck returns his mug to the tray and does the same with Greenwood’s. “Where did you find that poster?”

  Greenwood follows Roebuck’s eyes to the image of the sleeping fawn. “Isn’t it great! I picked it up in one of those secondhand shops down in the Junction. It’s from sometime in the eighties, I think. So retro. Clients will appreciate the irony.”

  They intended something quite apart from irony, in Roebuck’s memory, those girls who taped that poster to the dorm walls of his youth. “So we’re set then. Good. I’ll be curious to hear what the rest of the group thinks.”

  “See you at two!” says Greenwood, smirking at his fawn.

  At 1:45 PM Anne walks past the receptionist and straight into Roebuck’s office. “News.” She seats herself in the chair on the near side of his desk.

  Roebuck pushes away his work. “I’m guessing it starts with a Y?” They study one another carefully.

  “She’s been in touch with several clinics. Apparently, if you want to be a donor …”

  “Which I absolutely don’t.”

  “…there’s a protocol. The clinic has to run a background check, test your blood, analyze your sperm, and so on. Then there’s a waiver and a bunch of legal disclaimers you’ll have to sign.”

  “You know as well as I do …”

  “Yes! Exactly!”

  But what, exactly, she means to say is postponed for the moment by the appearance of Daniel Greenwood, striding through the door of Roebuck’s office. “The meeting’s here, I take it. Oh, sorry!” Greenwood has skidded to a halt on Roebuck’s Tibetan rug. “I didn’t know you were with someone.”

  “Daniel, you haven’t met my wife. Anne, meet Daniel Greenwood. Daniel is shaping up to be a major acquisition.”

  “Hello, Daniel.”

  “A pleasure to meet you, Anne.”

  Roebuck has risen to his feet and come around his desk. “Daniel,” he says, “I’m sorry to say that something has come up. I’m going to ask you to flesh out your ideas with the team. By all means use this office, but Matrix Two is also available if you would be more comfortable there. You’ve floated some interesting concepts. Listen to what the juniors have to say and, remember, this is only ideation. There’s no actual client for the present.”

  Anne, too, has risen to her feet and is standing beside her husband by the door. Roebuck takes her elbow and steers them through.

  “Nice to meet you, Daniel,” she says over her shoulder.

  Roebuck leads his wife to a bistro down the block. “I didn’t ask you if you’ve eaten.”

  “I have,” she says. “Yasmin needed lunch. But I could use a glass of wine.”

  “I didn’t want to have this conversation in the office. Daniel can handle things for an hour or so. Besides, we haven’t been to lunch in months, just the two of us.”

  “He’s so young!”

  “Daniel? Older than he looks. He’s been around. More and more, I’m thinking he’s an ideal fit.”

  A server comes to take their order. Roebuck has already had a sandwich at his desk. They settle on a bottle of house white and a bowl of frites to share.

  He’s had the time to think things over and has decided that from here on in, it’s equilibrium. He will be content, from this point forward, to leave matters in the hands of fate. “I’ll tell you one thing,” he says, pouring for them both. “There’s no way I’m adding myself to the roster of a …” even the words feel uncomfortable, “… sperm bank. I just don’t have time for that. To say nothing of inclination.”

  “That’s exactly what I told her! Julius, don’t you see? This is our out!” Anne is looking happier than he’s seen her in ages. “She can’t expect you to put yourself at the service of some …”
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  “You think?”

  “Yes! Yes, absolutely!”

  “Well, it’s true. I don’t have time to take off work and sit around …” Roebuck lets the sentence finish itself. “I’m just not prepared to get into all that.”

  “And I don’t see why you should! That’s exactly what I said to Yasmin. I said, Yasmin, Julius has an advertising agency to run. You can’t expect him to go through all that … performance.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Well, she was disappointed, of course. But she agreed that you’re a busy man. I think it’s finally sunk in, how completely unreasonable she’s being.”

  “What else?”

  “What do you mean what else?”

  “What else did she say?”

  “That’s it. That she knows you’re very busy and that she understands that you want nothing to do with being a supplier, or donor, or whatever they call it.”

  “It seems a little inconclusive …”

  “Not at all. If we stand firm on this, Julius, that’s that. This is our solution.”

  “Well, you know better.”

  “I do. And I think that we can finally put all this behind us.”

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  Anne raises her glass. They touch rims across the table.

  “God, it’s such a relief!”

  9

  Women recognize. Men discover.

  The Collected Sayings of Julius Roebuck

  Wednesday morning is a restful one in light of what’s ahead. Roebuck spends it on the telephone, reassuring clients that he thinks about them night and day. It’s religion with him, keeping up connections. Come a weekday morning, and Julius Roebuck is likely to call out of the blue, just to say hello. Mostly it’s the upper levels—Presidents, VPs, CEOs—though he always keeps a bright light burning for the good folks in the dimmer echelons as well. And it’s true that he genuinely understands their business: Roebuck really does think about his clients every waking hour. He is almost always ready with some useful piece of information he’s picked up to pass along.

  All morning, he’s been monitoring email. Nothing so far from Lily, which means by now the light must be green. It’s not uncommon for one of them to have to cancel last minute. But if something had come up, she’d have let him know by now. Roebuck has ensured that his own afternoon is in no way double-booked. He is contemplating whether to use the flower shop just down the street or a better one he knows on the far side of the viaduct when the phone on his desk lights up. For a moment he’s afraid it’s Lily calling to cancel, but this is the internal line.

  “I have someone here to see you,” the receptionist says.

  “I’m just heading into a meeting.” Roebuck makes a mental note to have another chat about the functions of front desk personnel. “Who is it?”

  “She says she’s your designer. She says to say it’s Yasmin.”

  It strikes Roebuck with an almost physical shock that the woman who walks into his office is the same one he was conjuring with Greenwood only yesterday. Exactly what his mind’s eye was presenting.

  “Hello, Julius. What are you mumbling?”

  “Yasmin. Hello.” Roebuck hurries to the door to head her off before she gets too far inside. “Only that I’m just on my way out.” He stops, steps back, and offers up a formal handshake.

  Yasmin takes his hand and slips behind him and into his chair, crossing an eternity of naked leg. “Then I won’t keep you.” One shoe dangles in the way of women who loll their pumps so perfectly. Roebuck breathes her scent. He perches on the edge of his desk and looks pointedly at the clock, certain that his pupils are dilating and his nostrils commencing to flutter. “Allergies,” he says, fishing out a Kleenex. It’s unlikely she dressed like this for lunch with Anne. Then again, she might have. Yasmin is more and more an unknown quality.

  “I know you’re busy, so I’ll come straight to the point.”

  “Honestly, Yasmin. Really, it’s …”

  “We don’t have to use a clinic.”

  “Sorry?”

  He watches her rise from the chair and step in close, just short of touching. “If you have a problem with a clinic,” she says, “we don’t have to use one. In fact, it’s easier this way.” She has positioned herself with her feet between his legs. There’s nowhere for Roebuck to retreat. Yasmin takes his hand in both of hers.

  “Yasmin. I …”

  “Next week,” she says, lowering her voice—Roebuck feels something warm pressed against his palm—“next week is when it happens.”

  “Next week?” His voice has died away from want of oxygen.

  “Next week,” she whispers, “I’m ovulating.”

  It takes him several heartbeats to understand that the thing in his hand is a plastic receptacle. Roebuck gazes at it mutely. Yasmin strokes the inside of his wrist. What he’s holding is a squat transparent jar like the one his doctor provides when he needs a sample for Roebuck’s yearly physical. There’s a paper seal with a label and an orange lid. He can feel her breath against his ear. “I’m regular,” she murmurs, “so I know it’s going to be next week. I’ll monitor my temperature, and when I’m certain, I’ll call. You just …” she walks her fingers up the jar; Roebuck feels it rocking in his palm, “…then I’ll wrap it up and take it home.”

  She steps away and smooths her dress. “I know you’re in a hurry, so I’ll be on my way. But the thing is, Julius, if you want …” Yasmin has paused in the doorway. “If you want, we don’t have to tell Anne. We can do this any way you want to do it.”

  They have never been the kind of couple who fall instantly to bed. They’ll talk before, during, and afterwards, too, time permitting. The relationship is highly verbal. But today he is hardly through the door before he has his hand beneath her skirt and her panties pushed below her knees. “Julius!” she says, hands against his shoulders. He has lifted her against the wooden casement of the fireplace, the fabric of her skirt caught up around her waist. “My goodness!” says Lily. Roebuck groans.

  “Only you …” But the act of considering how this sentence ought to end calms him so that he is able to withdraw and begin again more carefully and so acquit himself over the next few minutes—very few minutes, still—without too much cause for self-recrimination.

  “Okay,” he says, recovering his breath and kicking off his shoes. “I owe you one.”

  “How long have you got?”

  Roebuck lifts her arm and looks at Lily’s watch. “I absolutely need to be out the door by three-fifteen. Latest.”

  “Then I absolutely intend to collect. But first,” she says, pulling him by the hand, “I’ve made some lunch.”

  He has always loved her kitchen—pumpkin pine, raw ceramics, pots of basil in the windows facing south—her whole house, for that matter, a tiny east-end semi so different from his own. She has left her skirt and panties in the crumpled heap where he dropped them by the hearth and stands in the sunlight by the counter cutting bread, the tails of her long, loose cotton shirt trailing down her thighs. She’s humming.

  Weighing his timing, Roebuck clears his throat, clasps his hands behind his back, and like a schoolboy from another era solemnly declaims a verse he has been saving for a time just like today.

  The modest Rose puts forth a thorn,

  The Humble Sheep a threat’ning horn:

  While the Lilly white shall in Love delight,

  Nor a thorn, nor a threat, stain her beauty bright.

  “Delight? Did you say delight? You fuck me on the woodstove, come before I even know you’re there, and now you’re at me with William Blake? You’re too much,” she says, popping a heart of artichoke into his mouth and licking the oil she has spilled beneath his lip.

  Roebuck, chewing, marshals his reply. “ ‘He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.’ Besides,” he says
, reflecting, “that’s not a woodstove. I would describe it as a traditional brick fireplace.”

  “A scratchy brick fireplace. And don’t get me started on pestilence.”

  “ ‘The Eternal Female Groan’d! / It was heard all over the Earth.’ That one,” he says, “I admire in particular.”

  “Enough! Seriously! Enough with the Blake. Everything that guy ever wrote was rant. The only interest Blake ever had in any ideas outside his own was to refute them.”

  “I like rant.”

  “Well, at least that’s vaguely original.”

  What he adores about Lily is that she loves this pointless, lowbrow banter every bit as much as he does. Arguing for them is like sex: pleasure for pleasure’s sake alone, or so he’s always thought.

  “What are you working on?”

  Always, always he is flattered when she offers him her pages, tracing with a finger over passages she feels are not quite right, sounding out her cadence like a brush against his ear. Roebuck listens with his own eyes closed, sublimating syntax. On a good day he will offer a word she hadn’t yet considered and marvel at the jolt of pleasure if she pauses, tries it on her tongue, then nods, and writes it in. Roebuck keeps copies of every magazine and journal Lily’s verses have appeared in—tucked into careful nooks and crannies at his office or mixed discreetly with the books and periodicals that line his bedroom shelves—though he does not share her admiration for most of her contemporaries. Interchangeable, he tells her, as the voices of the boy bands his daughter makes him listen to on their morning drive to school. But he loves what Lily writes, and quotes it back to her by heart.

  She sighs, and he hears suppressed regret. “That’s on the back burner for now. It’s strictly meat and potatoes this week. The McCann gig ramped up sooner than expected. They wanted me in today, but I told them I had a doctor’s appointment.”