Russell Wiley Is Out to Lunch

by Richard Hine

  Between shoots, she took the Me Soseki Crew into the Ghosh Music studios. Along with Kiko’s original songs, the group recorded Daily Edge–inspired versions of several eighties classics. Thanks to the efforts of leading music and video producers, session musicians and additional, uncredited backup singers and dancers, the Crew proved to be a surprisingly listenable, provocatively visual, instantly downloadable musical phenomenon. When their first single—“Edgemusic”—was released last week, it became the most-requested song on U.S. radio and entered the Japanese, British and Swedish record charts at number one, based on download sales alone.

  Today, Kiko has more than 1.5 million MySpace friends—second only to the legendary Tila Tequila—and she’s racking up seventy-five thousand new adds each day. Sally and Angela aren’t far behind, signing up new friends at a similarly frantic pace.

  By the time I get to my twenty-sixth-floor office, the pictures now being taken will be popping up on screens all over the globe. By the end of the week, Liz will conclude negotiations with the editors of People, Star and Us magazines. If she times it right, she’ll get a guaranteed cover for Kiko and the Me Soseki Crew, along with a live appearance on Letterman, just one week before the Daily Edge launches.

  I smile back at Liz, then turn and pass through the revolving doors of the Burke-Hart Building. I stride through the lobby, past the gauche corporate logo and toward the elevator bank. The headlines in the elevator confirm what I already know: the world has gone mad. Thankfully, I’ve realized the only sensible way to respond is by acting crazy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  I sit in the executive chair in the corner office I’ve inherited on the twenty-sixth floor. I look at myself in the large antique mirror that hangs on the north wall. From where I’m sitting, I see my own reflection, with Lucky Cat waving from the windowsill and, behind him, the clamoring lights and billboards of Times Square.

  I log on to the Ghosh Corporation intranet to make sure the new world disorder is holding. There’s a countdown clock built into the home page that informs the whole company the Daily Edge is launching in twenty-three days. Beyond that, there’s nothing new to worry about.

  I open my email. A few friends and colleagues have remembered my birthday and sent messages or animated greeting cards. Martin’s is headlined, “Remember: Thirty-eight is the new twenty-five!”

  There’s also a note from Sam. From a new email account. I have to press the “Not Junk” button before I can open it. It’s a simple birthday wish, delivered by email, our now-preferred form of communication.

  This is the first birthday I’ve celebrated without Sam since I turned twenty. I’m not used to being a grown-up without her. Most days, I’m not even sure I’m a grown-up at all.

  Sam’s living with Greg in his rented house in Massachusetts. Together, they see his kids on weekends. Maybe Sam and Greg’s ex-wife Karen reminisce about their carefree high school days during the awkward moments when the kids are exchanged. I try not to think about that. And I try not to think about sex, or my lack of it. These days I sleep alone.

  Instead of adding up days without sex, I’m focused on counting down to the launch of the Daily Edge. I’m keeping busy, working long hours, spending nights in a Burke-Hart suite at a hotel in the East 70s. I’m even using the fitness center a few times a week. Neither Sam nor I go to our apartment in Park Slope without telling the other. There are many issues we still have to deal with, but right now, we’re being polite.

  And today I’m thirty-eight. Which is somewhat different from being twenty-five. In my late thirties, I’m a single, unattached adult for the first time in my life. Meanwhile, Sam’s already making bold career decisions. According to her email signature, she’s the person “Delivering Nature’s Strength to West Springfield, MA!”

  “Something funny?” asks Ellen, bringing in the daily schedule and meeting folders she prepares for me. Having my own full-time assistant for the first time is another adjustment I’m trying to make.

  “Nothing,” I say. “Just someone I know has finally got themselves a job.”

  “Good for them.” She lays the details of my day across the desk. “You’ve got Barbara at nine thirty. You’re meeting with Jack at ten. Oh, and I moved your two thirty with Susan up to two because Hank says he needs to review bookings with you at three.”

  “Right,” I say. “That old ‘three-o’clock-meeting-on-your-birthday’ trick.”

  Ellen looks surprised. “It’s your birthday? No one told me.” But then she winks and is gone.

  Alone in my office, I start thinking of the birthday messages I could send myself.

  Congratulations, Russell! You’re thirty-eight. You’ve survived the meltdown of your company and the collapse of your marriage. If you avoid any more fuckups, this could be the best year of your life!

  Or:

  Holy shit, Russell! You’re thirty-eight. What the hell are you doing, sitting there with that dazed expression, alone in the world, surrounded by someone else’s stuff?

  When this was Henry’s office, the furniture made sense. Dark wood. Leather. It felt comfortable, lived-in. Now it unnerves me. It isn’t mine. I don’t want it. But I haven’t had time to think about replacing it. And I don’t have anything to replace it with. One day soon, if I survive the launch of the Daily Edge, I’ll figure it out. Swap the old for the new. Find a modern, high-tech style I like. I won’t care what anyone thinks. Just nothing secondhand. That’s the first furnishing rule of my new adult life.

  Ellen sticks her head around my door.

  “Are you in for Fergus Larner, calling from Business Week?”

  “Sure. Put him through.”

  Within two days of Fergus’s Vicious Circle cover story hitting newsstands, he was weighing three new job offers. He started at Business Week three weeks ago. With Jack’s approval, he took his favorite columnist, Christopher Finchley, with him.

  “Hey, birthday boy. Good news. We’re making The Finchley File the featured blog on our home page this week.” Fergus is really enjoying his new job. He tells me he’s grateful for the security he feels as part of McGraw-Hill’s flagship, billion-dollar brand. I’m glad for him too. He’s finally landed at a publication that offers him some real long-term security. “You were our most viewed last week. People are linking to you from all over the world. We’re getting hundreds of emails and comments. Our book division wants to do a deal with you too.”

  “I told you that being Kiko Soseki’s number four friend on MySpace would help,” I say. “So are you still buying me that birthday drink tonight?”

  “Have you done something different with your hair?” I ask Barbara as she hands me this morning’s printouts. She blushes but doesn’t reply. Since I promoted her to manager of online auctions and digital rights management, she’s been taking fashion advice from Liz Cooke and one or two of the female sales executives. In addition to a sizable raise, Barbara now has a windowed office for the first time in her thirty-plus-year Chronicle career.

  “This is amazing,” I tell her, scanning the list of current bids for all the Daily Edge ad units we’re auctioning online. The “jewel box” square on the corner of our front page is now generating offers as high as $123,000. Full-page ads on our back cover are up to $212,000. These are more than double the standard prices in our rate card.

  “Supply and demand,” she says with a smile.

  It was only five weeks ago that Barbara came up with the idea of limiting the number of ads in the Daily Edge and auctioning a portion of them online. “You have to understand supply and demand,” she told me. “That’s how it works on eBay. Why is the 1957 water-carrying boy worth more than any other? You just can’t find one.”

  I took Barbara with me to a series of meetings, allowing her to sell her plan to Hank Sullivan, our new VP of sales, then Yolanda, and ultimately Jack. Within two days we had a plan to: a) cut the number of pages in the Daily Edge to a maximum of forty per day, helping us reduce our annual print budget by e
ighteen million dollars; and b) allocate seventy percent of the available advertising to clients who were already in the Chronicle and sell the remaining thirty percent exclusively by online auction.

  While online media auctions aren’t new, no other national newspaper promises its advertisers that it won’t print more pages to accommodate new ads as they are sold. In the Daily Edge, every page a client buys leaves less space for its competitors. Plus, the Daily Edge is the only national newspaper with secret weapons like Roger Jones and Kiko and the Me Soseki Crew. We’re offering our newspaper advertisers extra promotional opportunities they can’t get anywhere else, such as ad banners on Roger’s website or product placements in the Me Soseki Crew’s much-photographed lives.

  “Randy Baker just closed a twenty-six-page schedule with BlackBerry,” says Barbara. “He says the client and agency are really excited. We’ve made them the sponsor of the official Me Soseki Crew gallery on Flickr. And we’re guaranteeing that we’ll post at least two new photos of Kiko, Sally or Angela using their BlackBerrys at every event.”

  Before my ten o’clock meeting with Jack, I take a stroll through the sales department.

  Things are quiet, but I can sense the intensity. For the first time in years, our salespeople are getting their calls returned. There’s no time for chitchat in the corridors. They’re competing with each other to lock up the best positions for their clients.

  Before I turn the corner, I hear the sound of someone banging the large gong Hank Sullivan has set up outside his office.

  Booiiinnnnggggg.

  Every time one of the salespeople closes a deal, he encourages them to pick up the hammer and give it a loud bang. For the past few days, we’ve started hearing that gong echo through the halls several times an hour.

  Georgina Bird passes me on the way back to her office.

  “Kenneth Cole just came in,” she says. “Twelve pages. Can you believe it? Two months ago I couldn’t even get an appointment.”

  Hank Sullivan pops his smiling face out of his own corner office.

  “Have you heard? The launch issue is completely sold out,” he says. “And I’ve got North Face ready to commit a million and a half if we can get the Me Soseki Crew to wear their jackets in their next video.”

  “No problem. I saw the storyboards last night. Tell them we’ll guarantee a minimum of twenty seconds screen time and exclusivity in the apparel category. But we’ll need a signed contract by end of day—otherwise we’re taking it to Nautica.”

  I ride up to the thirty-fourth floor and head over to Jack Tennant’s office. Tyler Milken is posted outside Jack’s office. He waves me in.

  “Good morning, Russell!” Jack shouts, leaping up from his chair and pumping my hand. Jack’s a head shorter than me. His handshake is crushing, his smile broad. “Sit down, sit down. Hot chocolate, right?”

  “That would be great.”

  I sit in one of Jack’s antique guest chairs as Jack steps outside to ask Tyler to fix our beverages.

  “I’ve asked Yolanda to run up with the updated prototypes,” says Jack, coming back into the office and sitting behind his huge desk. “Is it too bright in here?” He jabs at a few buttons and three large, semi-opaque blinds start lowering along his southern wall of windows. “Have you seen the dashboard?”

  The dashboard is a daily email our corporate finance group sends out filled with our latest revenue information. As a VP, I’ve been added to the distribution list. I usually skim it for the Chronicle’s advertising and circulation figures—and for the data tracking how well the Daily Edge is doing.

  “Not yet,” I reply. “How’s it looking?”

  “See for yourself,” Jack hands me this morning’s printout.

  “Wow,” I say.

  “Look at the results from our latest circulation test.”

  I scan the numbers. We’re testing a new bundled offer where readers are being offered the Chronicle plus the Daily Edge plus their choice of any of our lifestyle magazines all at one low price.

  “These numbers are great.”

  “Barney tells me that we’re getting response rates ten to fifteen percent higher than our best estimates.”

  “Well, it’s a great offer.”

  “He says you came up with the idea—and that you discovered some amazing new envelope.”

  “That just fell into my hands,” I say. “A friend of my ex-wife’s is in the business.”

  “Well, I just gave Barney the go-ahead to mail another ten million pieces. He says his budget can handle it because of the special discount you were able to get us.”

  “It was a team effort,” I say. “The new corporate structure certainly helps us get things done.”

  Tyler appears at my side and places two cups and saucers on the desk. I thank him. Tyler’s not such a bad guy. He’s still a bit shell-shocked by Connie’s sudden firing, but I think he’ll be OK. Jack’s keeping him around at least while Nora is on maternity leave. I sip my hot chocolate.

  “Ad revenue’s holding up well in the Chronicle,” I say. “Most of the spending in the Daily Edge looks incremental.”

  “You haven’t heard the best part,” says Jack. “I just got off the phone with Ken Millard, the new guy at Livingston Kidd. They’re switching out of the Times and coming back to the Chronicle. Plus, they’re putting an additional million dollars into the Daily Edge so they can sponsor the Me Soseki Crew’s mall tour. Ken says he loves what we’re doing to attract younger readers.”

  “That’s great,” I say. “You really saved us on that one, Jack.”

  “You gave me the ammunition, Russell. I just pulled the trigger.”

  Yolanda Pew arrives with boards showing some new layouts for the Daily Edge, as well as screenshots for the companion website. As the Chronicle’s new publisher, Yolanda is working directly with our editors on product development—everything from the print edition to the website, to all of our audio and video podcasts and mobile news updates.

  For the most part, Jack and Yolanda are handling the serious side of our business strategy and giving me and my team free rein to pursue all forms of creative anarchy. Because I’m not spending much cash, it doesn’t matter whether the things we try actually work or not. If one idea flops, we simply try something else. Only after a concept takes hold virally and builds significant critical mass do we look for ways to link it to the launch of the Daily Edge and connect it to the packages we’re offering advertisers.

  While Jack and Yolanda review and discuss the new layouts, I hang back a step. Yolanda recaps the rationale for the latest changes in typefaces and graphics. Jack turns to me, puts his arm around my shoulder, and pulls me forward to join the discussion.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Erika Fallon appears at my doorway. She’s wearing a beige cotton turtleneck, dark brown corduroys, soft leather boots. It’s a low-key, conservative outfit. On her, it seems incredibly provocative.

  “Russell, can we talk?” she says.

  I clear my throat. “Sure. Come in.”

  Since we held hands and exchanged whispered secrets in Miami, an air of self-consciousness has hovered over our interactions. We haven’t spoken about what happened. Some days I wonder if Erika attaches as much meaning as I do to the moments we shared. Then, in the middle of a meeting, I’ll realize I’m gazing at her a little too much. She’ll realize it too and smile at me across the room. Those are the moments that sustain me.

  Erika knows Sam and I have split up. But that doesn’t create permission for anything. We still work together. I’m still her boss.

  Besides, we’ve both been working nonstop, combining our day-to-day Chronicle responsibilities with preparations for a major product launch. Erika has gotten us through Hank Sullivan’s holiday party and planned a series of road shows where Yolanda and our editors preview the Daily Edge for advertisers. When Sally Yun was co-opted by the Me Soseki Crew, I gave Erika the OK to use outside vendors wherever necessary. She’s hired the Benjamin Shapiro Company, B
en’s new event marketing firm, to produce the New York launch party for the Daily Edge.

  Erika sits across the desk from me. I gaze at her. In the mirror behind her I can see the reflection of her lustrous hair. The aura I used to see around her in the late afternoon is now present throughout the day. She smiles, studying my face.

  “I’ll just come out and say it,” she says. “Ben’s offered me a job. He’s got a lot of interesting clients. More work than he can handle. I told him I needed to talk to you first. I wouldn’t feel good about leaving before the launch.”

  I purse my lips, breathe deeply through my nose, feel my stomach expand. I exhale slowly. My mind is jumping ahead to the day when Erika and I no longer work together. We’re hosting our launch party for advertisers in twenty-four days. I start imagining all kinds of possibilities for Erika and me, starting the morning after that.

  I take another breath and choose my words carefully.

  “Professionally speaking, you know I will hate to lose you. You bring a style and flair to the Chronicle that we desperately need. You’re extremely talented, exceptionally well organized. You’ve got huge fans throughout the sales department. And, of course, a huge fan in me. But for all those reasons, I would never want to hold you back if you truly think this is a better opportunity.”

  “I know it will be very different. But it’s exciting. I would like to give it a shot.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you could just get us through the big New York event.”

  “Of course. And thanks, Russell. I knew you’d understand.”

  She gets up and walks toward the door. My heart contracts with every step she takes, every squishy squeak of her soft leather boots. I could commend myself for the way I handled that. Or I could curse myself for blowing an opportunity to ask her out.