by Rita Ciresi
“Take off those goddamn glasses!” Thomas growled back.
In any case, there was a whole lot of growling going on.
I stared at the screen in amazement. Was it possible that I had just written something even more preposterous and simplistic than the sexual-harassment movie?
Yup.
Was it true that it was easier to be an editor than a writer?
Maybe.
What was my sage editorial opinion on what I had just written?
This scene sucks the big one, I thought. But unless I wanted to abandon my dream altogether of writing something worth reading, there was no other option but to delete and proceed, delete and proceed. I kept on going.
That week it was double the fun and double the agony at Boorman, at least when it came to meetings with Strauss. On Thursday Strauss—as VP for new product development—was going to preside over a conference with the Marketing division, where Hook Roberts would unveil the preliminary boards for a new ad campaign. Boorman was launching a new and improved version of their standard over-the-counter pain reliever. An unusual hushy-hushness had surrounded the marketing of this painkiller—for instance, I routinely saw the ad boards before they went into production at the art shop, but this time I hadn’t been allowed a glimpse. This was Hook Roberts’s first big chance to woo and win over the upper levels of Boorman with his vision. I hated that word, which implied that creating a nine—by—eleven ad for a glossy magazine was equal to Saint Teresa swooning in ecstasy.
To avoid bumping into Strauss in the hall, I waited until one minute before the meeting was due to start before I gathered my mechanical pencil and leather binder and marched down the hall. Just my luck his strategy was identical to mine. We rounded the corner at opposite ends of the hall at the exact same moment, and so we had the long length of carpet to traverse and pretend we had not noticed one another, until the moment when we both reached the glass door that led to the meeting room.
“Good afternoon,” he said, then lunged to open the door. I was careful not to brush against him as I passed.
I hoped I was imagining it, but everyone in the meeting room seemed to fall silent as we came through the door. I took a chair far down on the right-hand side of the table. Strauss frowned at the folks still messing around at the coffee maker. He had a three o’clock train to catch, so he asked those who were presenting to be brief. As if to mock him, the coffee maker let loose a wild rip of burps and gurgles. Everyone laughed. Even I had to look down at the table and smile when Strauss said, “Anyone mind if I unplug this goddamn thing?”
It seemed to me that Strauss had been doing a fair amount of swearing lately. In any case, he muttered a barely audible shit as he rocked the reluctant plug of Mr. Coffee out of the stubborn socket. He took his seat at the head of the table. I wondered where he was off to that night. Probably taking the Metroliner down to D.C. Good thing I wasn’t going along—he obviously was in a foul mood and we’d probably only get into another fight about Maria Von Trapp in the National Portrait Gallery.
“Floor’s all yours, Hook,” Strauss said.
“Thank you, sir,” Hook said, and rose from his chair. I half-expected him to adjust himself before he went over to the easel covered in black cloth. Contrary to Strauss’s explicit instructions, he gave a very unbrief speech about the need to infiltrate the market and saturate the public with information about this new and improved product. He said it was time for Boorman to stop pussyfooting around and to take an aggressive stance with consumers who were too stupid to figure out why they bought what they bought anyway. It was Boorman’s job to appeal to their gut instincts, make ’em sit up and pay attention, go for the gusto, grab life by the beans, etc., etc.
From where I was sitting, I couldn’t see Strauss, but I knew he was lifting his cuff and looking impatiently at his watch, because Hook finally put a lid on his bullshit, stood in front of the easel, and yanked down the black cloth that covered the art boards as if he were ripping an evening gown off a starlet he was about to mount and penetrate. Underneath the cloth was a photograph of the very kind of starlet I imagined would drive Hook wild: a blond, white—shouldered, heaving—bosomed woman wrapped in a black velvet cloth, whose puckered lips seemed to invite her audience to respond to the un—grammatical message written right above her:
JUST TELL ME WHERE IT HURT’S
Silence reigned after the unveiling. We all scrutinized the photo, and a few audible sighs from around the room made it clear that this bombshell had captured the imagination of most of the men. A few of them actually pulled their chairs closer in to the table.
“Any comments?” Strauss asked, in a voice so neutral I knew he was appalled.
There was a long pause. Then I opened my big mouth and said, “Hurts is a verb, not a possessive.”
Hook waved his hand as if I had just made some irrelevant point. “In other words, switch the apostrophe?”
I wondered where he went to college. “No apostrophe is necessary at all,” I said.
“Thank you, Editorial,” Hook said.
“You’re most welcome,” I said.
Strauss frowned. “Any comments on the content?”
Everyone hesitated. Then Strauss’s question was taken as an open invitation for mirth. There was laughter and ribald comments. After all, we worked for a corporation that had made its biggest buck off a lubricant to relieve vaginal dryness. Since I’d been with Boorman, we had launched or modified ad campaigns for all sorts of weird, embarrassing products that probably made the majority of consumers mumble and flush as they placed their order with their local druggist—antibiotics targeted for bladder infections, a solution to dissolve excessive earwax, hemorrhoid pads, and a medicated douche to ease the itching due to herpes and genital warts. But we never had marketed any of those products in quite this way before. The big-boobed starlet in velvet definitely was something new, and every man at the meeting was eager to voice an opinion on her, their comments only slightly tempered by the fact that three—counting me—women who didn’t have half as big breasts were sitting at the table.
Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. I pointed out that half the world was female and that the ad targeted the male consumer only.
Hook gave me a snarky smile. “Good point, Editorial,” he said. He took down the board of boobs. Underneath, there was another photo—all muscle and bulging crotch. It showed a sweaty Joe in boxer shorts rubbing his aching bicep. Underneath was written the same message that had crowned the starlet:
JUST TELL ME WHERE IT HURT’S
“You like this one better, Lisa?” Hook said.
“Not half-bad,” I said, and took up my pencil. “Got his phone number?”
Strauss let me enjoy my triumph as class clown until the laughter died down. Then he asked Hook, “What are we selling here, sex or drugs?”
“It ain’t rock ‘n’ roll,” Hook said.
“You know Peggy will never go for this.”
“What’s Peggy got to do with it?” Hook asked sharply. Then he must have remembered how complicated the chain of command was at Boorman: what displeased Peggy might also displease the CEO, etc. “No offense, Strauss,” he said, “but Peg’s idea of a zippy ad probably is a full-page diagram of the molecular structure—or whatever you call it—of a drug.”
Strauss was not amused. He reminded Hook that Boorman always had presented itself as a prudent, conservative corporation concerned with the health and welfare of the American family, and ads such as these did nothing to support that reputation.
“Maybe it’s time to change tactics,” said Hook. “Swing with the times. Sex sells movies and books—”
“So do swastikas,” Strauss said, “but does that mean you would use them as an advertising tactic?”
“Hey, I never suggested that,” Hook said.
Everybody went quiet. I looked down at the table, suddenly fascinated by the whirls and swirls in the wood grain. I actually would have felt bad for Hook if I hadn’t
felt so sorry for Strauss. I knew more than anything he hated to lose his cool, and there he sat, right in front of me, displaying exactly the kind of behavior he had roundly criticized in his own brother-in-law. Yet the remark had been made. He could not take it back.
Men (I had noticed over the years) had a real knack for dodging apologies. I was surprised when Strauss said in a tired voice, “I spoke out of turn. I mean, out of line.”
“No big deal,” Hook said.
After a moment Strauss looked at his watch and said, “I’ve really got to get that train. We’ll have to discuss this when I get back, Hook. Meeting adjourned, unless you guys want to stick around and talk.”
I kept my eyes on the table as he left the room. It just so happened that the guys did want to stick around and talk—more about the breasty starlet than about the viability of the ad campaign itself. I waited until I was sure Strauss was halfway back to his office before I got up from the table and made for the ladies’ room, where I got out my comb and tried to do something with my hopeless hair. I was joined at the sink by one of the new ad reps, a recent college grad who had sat silently across the table from me at the meeting. She obviously wasn’t au courant about office gossip, because as she washed her hands she asked, “What’s the matter with Strauss?”
I shrugged. “Maybe he’s doing drugs.”
She laughed. “Why did he say that about the swastikas?”
“He’s Jewish.”
“Well I know that,” she said. “I have two eyes in my head. I mean, why does he have to be so sensitive about it?”
As she scrubbed her hands with overly fragranced soap, I caught her eye in the mirror. “What’d you think of those ads?” I asked her.
“I thought that first one was disgusting—”
“So why didn’t you say so?”
“I just got here. It took me four months to find a job after I graduated—”
“What’d you think of the second ad?” I asked.
She smiled. “Total one—eighty. I mean, once Hook unveiled that guy, I thought, okay, I’m human too, and I don’t mind looking at this muscled hunk at all. Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Mind looking at him.”
“I don’t like looking at things I can’t have,” I said. But when I held my comb slack for a moment, I saw in the mirror a woman who wanted just that: who would give anything to go catch that train with Strauss.
“Doing anything on Friday night?” I asked the ad rep.
She looked apologetic. “Standing date. With my long-standing boyfriend.”
“Too bad,” I said. “I was hoping you might want to go pick up a couple of good ones in a bar.”
She laughed. “If this beau doesn’t propose soon,” she said, “I might take you up on that offer. But didn’t I hear you were getting married? I swear someone told me the other day you’re getting married. To a stockbroker in New York.”
“That’s supposed to be a secret,” I said.
“I won’t tell anyone,” she said. “If you want, I could spread a rumor that it’s just a rumor—”
“You don’t have to do that,” I said. “It’s just—I’m not so sure this relationship is going to pan out, and I don’t want to close off all my other options.”
“Namely—Hook Roberts?”
“Hook!” I said. “Gag me with a comb, girl.” I mimed sticking my Goody unbreakable into my mouth.
She looked at me in wonder. “Sleeping with him wouldn’t gag some women.”
“Hopefully his wife is among them.”
“He’s married? God, he sure doesn’t act like it. At that meeting he really was honing in on you.”
“Go on.”
“No, straight stuff. Weren’t you flirting back?”
“God, no—was I?”
“Come to think of it,” she said, “that’s probably why Strauss got pissed.”
My heart seemed to stop for a second. “Why should that piss him?”
“He seems kind of uptight.”
I nodded. “He’s definitely someone who doesn’t believe in sex outside of the marriage bond.”
“But I heard he was involved with someone in your department.”
“Right,” I said. “But she went on maternity leave after he knocked her up—”
“Are you serious? Come on, you’re shittin’ me now.”
I nodded again, and we both burst into laughter. Then she pointed to the sink. “Oh, my God. Look at that.”
I gazed down. Strand upon strand of my thick, uncontrollable hair crisscrossed the sink. As I hurried to clean up the hair with some paper towels, I told her, “Hormone drop—off. I just went off the pill.”
“That’s supposed to happen after you have a baby too,” she said. “Between that and the fat, it’s enough to make you want to get sterilized.”
“Or go lesbian.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Me neither,” I said. “Although it sure would make my life a lot easier.”
She watched me sorrowfully as I stuffed the paper towels into the wastebasket. “Maybe we could do a bar on some Saturday night,” she said.
I shrugged. All of a sudden I no longer wanted a couple of good ones. I only wanted one. But I couldn’t have him and he couldn’t have me, and my only consolation out of the whole business was that neither one of us could have anyone else until our second tests came back clean. For six months, at least, I was spared the gnawing pains of jealousy. But I developed my own substitute form of it: hunger.
Chapter Fifteen
I Pray
Maybe it started right there in the ladies’ room, when I felt my comb was already down my throat, rendering me incapable of suggesting “Let’s do lunch” to this woman who obviously wanted to be my friend. More than likely it began that night at the gym. As my left foot hit the rubber track of the treadmill, I felt a hard spot—a toughness on my sole—that became a definite ache before I even dented five minutes into my favorite program: the Colorado Rockies Jog. As the machine picked up pace and I began the uphill portion of the routine, the ache turned into a definite pinprick of pain; the faster and harder I ran, the more it felt like a nail was being driven into the bottom of my foot. It hurt so badly I had to get off the treadmill, remount the Exercycle, adjust the pedal so the ball of my foot wouldn’t get too much pressure, and clock another half hour mindlessly cycling just to burn the requisite amount of calories.
In the locker room, I sat with my foot in my hand and pressed lightly on a hard ring of skin that dotted the bottom. Even though my first test came back clean, I still couldn’t believe that I didn’t have AIDS. Every morning I looked inside my mouth for the milky white signs of thrush; every night my fingers traced the lymph nodes along my neck for signs of swelling. The merest hint of diarrhea sent me into a panic. This weird callus on my foot had to be the first sign of terminal illness.
So what did I do? I bit my lip and ignored it. I put my two- and three-inch heels aside and wore my most sensible pumps to work. But still the bottom of my foot burned like crazy. A week later—only because I had to get back on that treadmill to keep myself from blimping out—I found myself in the podiatrist’s office. As the doctor directed the beam of his lamp onto the bottom of my foot, I winced when I saw I’d forgotten to shave the hideous black hairs that grew on my big-toe knuckle.
“You’ve got a plantar wart,” the doctor said. “You have two choices: either live with the pain or have it removed—but chances are it’ll grow back.”
“Sounds like a metaphor for my life,” I said.
“Pardon me?”
Already feeling queasy, I told him, “Dig it out. Now.”
“Did you drive yourself here?” he asked. “Because you won’t be able to put pressure on your foot once I’m done with you.”
He looked at me sympathetically. He was kind of cute, for a doctor—thirties-ish, sandy brown hair, gold—rimmed glasses, and, best of all, no wedding ring. What was it like to
sleep with a podiatrist? Very few women in the world, after all, had the opportunity to find out. I made a mental note to give myself a pedicure that weekend and made an appointment to return on Monday.
But Monday found me singing an altogether different tune about the foot-doctor profession. I wondered who could ever go to bed with such a sadist, a man who got his rocks off delivering such searing pain. A sharp whimper escaped me as the doctor needled the anesthetic into my sole, and my heart beat wildly as he turned on the whirring drill-like instrument. He left me passed out on the table after displaying to me, in a shiny silver pan, the bloody stump of hardened skin he had extracted.
The nurse held a vial of foul-smelling salts beneath my nose. I came to and took a cab home. After I limped up all twenty-six stairs to my apartment, I wept when I looked in the freezer and discovered I hadn’t filled one of the ice-cube trays last time I fixed myself a bourbon and water, which left me with only eight measly cubes from the second tray to pack my aching foot. I sat on the couch with my foot propped, and as I waited for the ice cubes to form in the freezer—two or three hours, I figured, at the very least—my loneliness seemed as acute and stabbing as the anesthetic injection I had just suffered. Who were my real friends? I thought. Where was my family? I didn’t even know my neighbors. I could have called Strauss—although I didn’t have the least idea what I would say—and hope that he would come sit by my bedside (after all, there was nothing moral attached to a plantar wart, although he probably could find something illicit about it if I gave him half a chance).
I could have called my mother. I could have called her but didn’t, which seemed to sum up in a nutshell our relationship.
I could have called Dodie, and while he was sure to sympathize, I knew his mind would be on far worse things—among them, a breakup with Homer—than my trivial foot blister. I was trying (all the while denying why) to train myself not to turn to Dodie with my problems. I had to learn to stand on my own. But when my despair became overwhelming, I finally buzzed Carol.
“Yo, Lise,” Al said. “What’s shakin’?”