Formerly Fingerman

by Joe Nelms

  Gay couples in Manhattan tend to land in a juicy financial demographic, often with the high net worth associated with ambitious professionals who don’t have kids. Closets full of Jimmy Choos. Duplexes with views of the park. Vacation homes in the Hamptons. Money.

  Legally married or not, these disentanglements always involved plenty to sort out, and by the time the rest of New York’s tony law firms had figured it out, Gracie had firmly established herself as the lawyer of choice among the homoccenti. Now she set her own hours, worked from home a good deal of the time, and was making a boatload of money doing it.

  Not that Gracie was driven by money. She wasn’t. What she craved was success. Which meant the net effect of her gay divorce domination was that she wasn’t exactly a stickler for financial details in her own life. She was too busy working to care. She could tell you precisely what the cheating cocksucker her client was suing had spent on Polish hookers and Cialis in the month of October two years ago, but ask her what her own cable bill was and she’d have to hazard a guess that it was somewhere between three and four hundred dollars. It was one fifty.

  In her mind, if there was cash in the account, there was cash to spend. And there was always cash in the account. As far as she was concerned, Brad’s salary was a cute addition to their bank statement. Hat money.

  But still. As a point of pride, Brad wanted to contribute. Actually, he wanted to be the breadwinner, but that would mean doing something big. That would take nothing short of creating and selling a groundbreaking campaign comparable to the “No Means Yes” campaign for Brass Balls energy drink that recently swept the Cannes award show and had become overnight, to the dismay of N.O.W., the national let’s-do-a-shot catchphrase of backward-hat-wearing meatheads. It was, incidentally, a campaign that was done at Red Light.

  So maybe he was close.

  Gracie, Champ, and the Vodka Job

  Brad’s walk home had taken him a good fifteen blocks out of his way. He wished it were more. These days there always seemed to be an excuse to stop by the grocery store or pick up the dry cleaning or sit by the river on the bench between the Latino fishermen and the crazy homeless guy and not talk about his day for forty-five minutes. Once he got home he would put on his Happy Brad™ face and dodge and parry and worry that he was a painfully transparent lout. But not yet. Just a few more seconds, please.

  He certainly wasn’t going to jump into the river, but it felt so good to sit and stare and pretend he was going to. He would hit the water and sink peacefully into the silt at the bottom without worrying that all the toxic waste and spent needles were ruining his Scotch & Soda blazer. Impossible on all levels, but satisfying to imagine.

  One day he and Gracie would laugh about the whole Brad-got-fired-and-lied-about-it thing. At some point, years from now, Brad would have a hell of a dinner party story to tell as he and his fellow titans of industry sat amidst some perfect New York City elite social circle tableau. Probably on the Upper West Side. Brad would close his eyes and shake his head with an aw-shucks smile as he took a sip of his cabernet while his wife told him to go ahead and tell everyone. Gracie would laugh and maybe wink at him knowingly, although he honestly couldn’t remember her ever winking before and would she really pick up a habit like that at this point in her life? Maybe. Maybe she would wink at him, now that things were all better. It helped to think that these things were possible.

  In a few months, the benches would be too cold for anyone but the filthy gentleman sitting ten feet downwind. Then what? Brad would kill time walking the streets in the bitter cold? Camping out at a coffee shop? Oy. Running an errand in the late afternoon could be explained away with relative ease. But sitting blankly in front of an untouched latte on the tail end of a work day? Risky business. Something had to change before then.

  Gracie stood at the stove in the kitchen cooking dinner. She was a strict vegan, so the safe bet was that it was some form of tofu. Tofu-shaped chicken cutlets. Tofu cut to look like steak. Tofu flavored to smell like barbecue. But probably tofu. That was the thing about vegans. They’re happy to wax poetic about how good the lifestyle is for you and deliver smug lectures about the wide variety of food options you can have when you’re a vegan. Usually though, things boiled down to one question: What shape would you like your tofu?

  Gracie being a militant vegan made Brad a vegan. Sort of. He was vegan when Gracie was around. Mainly because she did all the cooking, ordered all the food from Fresh Direct, and spent her Saturday mornings at the Union Square farmers’ market. Outside of the apartment and left to his own devices, though, Brad was perfectly fine with a slice or a cheese steak or a stick of mystery meat from the guys with the carts who called him my friend. Didn’t matter. We’re all going to die soon enough.

  At restaurants with Gracie, Brad stuck with the rice dishes. It was easier than listening to a mini-lecture on exactly how the steak he was savoring was killed and hung by a hook through its ribs in a meat locker until it could be served as a rotting corpse. Gracie always claimed she could smell the rage of the dead cow seeping through his pores for days afterward. It wasn’t worth it and he liked risotto.

  So really, he wasn’t a vegan. More of a vague-an. A very strict diet of organic, pesticide-free, sustainable, biodynamic, hormone-free, non-GMO, locally grown, free-trade products. Unless he was eating a bacon cheeseburger at the deli next to his office. Somehow Gracie never smelled any rage from the stuff she didn’t actually see him eat.

  Her attitude toward consuming meat was another reason to keep the whole Chicken Shack thing on the DL. As if wearing the chicken costume/sweat box weren’t enough. Handing out coupons for rotting corpses of rage would definitely set her off. Being underemployed was complicated.

  Brad remained in the doorway of the kitchen. He wanted a beer badly, but not quite badly enough to disturb the serenity of Gracie not noticing him. She was beautiful. And successful. And focused. He should have stayed out longer. Pretended he was working late.

  Did she suspect? She was so smart, so sharp, it was hard for him to imagine that she hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. Some of the subconscious tells he must be showing. A disturbance in his psyche. The whimpering nightmares that started out of nowhere. Something. Or was her shrewd lawyer mind willfully overlooking what must be at least a tiny bit apparent to her? Did she love him that much? If that was the case, Brad had no choice but to consider himself a lucky man. His wife cared enough about him to let him act like a jackass. No judgments. Just unmolested jackassery. Would he do that for her? He would now. Brad decided then and there that if she ever got herself into a situation like this, he would totally overlook any crazy machinations and bad acting she might employ. But he really, really hoped it would never happen to Gracie.

  Finally she looked over.

  “Dude, you smell like shit.”

  Gracie was never one to mince words. It was something Brad had come to accept. He wasn’t sure if her cut-to-the-chase word choices were a result of her chosen profession or if that was the way she was wired and accordingly had become successful as a no bullshit attorney. Dude was what she called him when she was happy to see him. You smell like shit was what she said when he didn’t smell good.

  “I went to the gym.”

  Change the subject, you idiot. Make up some work gossip.

  “Hey, looks like they might go with my taste test campaign. If Garbarini doesn’t screw it up. Did I tell you he’s cheating on his boyfriend?”

  “Does he need a lawyer? Have him call me.”

  “Oh, uhh . . . I . . .”

  Dammit. Should have thought that one out more.

  Brad bent over to look a little deeper in the fridge.

  “Grace, didn’t I have some—”

  “Hey, pisspants, you’re out of beer!”

  The voice came from the living room, but it wasn’t hard to hear. It belonged to a person to whom talking loud enough to take over whatever space he was in came naturally. There was no mistaking its owner
. Brad stood up and took a moment to let the situation sink in. He turned to find a somewhat apologetic Gracie, and then stated the obvious.

  “Your dad is here.”

  “For dinner.”

  “And you forgot to tell me.”

  “Oops.”

  Brad nodded, accepting that his life sucked a lot right at that moment. He begged himself to think of the glorious potential that tomorrow held, but it couldn’t quite outweigh the sheer gloom of what lay ahead in the next few hours. An evening with Champ Bailey.

  Champ wasn’t a big man, but his overabundance of alpha-male charisma made him seem ten feet tall. Loud, opinionated, and loaded with plenty of F.U. money. Champ had retired at the ripe age of fifty-two, thanks to the lung-out case.

  Throughout his career, Champ had been a workaholic pit bull of a lawyer working as a plaintiff’s attorney who shied away from no fight. He thrilled at competition. Champ lived to win, and the courtroom was the perfect arena for him. He had a reputation as a man who would sue his own mother if he found out she had mixed his formula with a little too much water when he was a baby. He worked long hours and took on way too many cases. It was exhausting, but it honed his skills to a razor-sharp edge. So when the lung-out case came along, he was, to say the least, ready.

  The call came on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Champ was in his office reviewing files and planning to stay well into the night when his phone rang.

  “Champ Bailey.”

  “Do you handle lung-out cases?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Do you handle lung-out cases?”

  “You’re calling a law firm, sir. Do you realize that?”

  “Yes. I need help with a lung-out case.”

  “What the hell is a lung-out case?”

  A lung-out case is a case in which an elderly, church-going, law abiding, African-American grandfather takes a particular brand of asthma medicine. He takes it as prescribed by a doctor like they tell you on the soothing commercials with the woman catching butterflies in a big field. The asthma medicine keeps his asthma in check and he lives a happy life. Until he starts wheezing. Then he goes to the doctor who sends him to a specialist who sends him to a renowned pulmonologist who sends him to the University of Pennsylvania pulmonary clinic because his right lung is failing and no one can figure out why. And then a bunch of people with the exact same wheezing all happen to be using the same asthma medicine. And they all have to have a lung removed. Lung out.

  Champ dropped everything to represent this group of one-lunged victims, knowing immediately that this would be his Mona Lisa. He sunk his pit bull teeth into the lung-out case like it was a bacon-flavored memory foam pillow and didn’t let go. He played the press like a cheap fiddle. He coached his clients like Bear Bryant. He wouldn’t bargain. He wouldn’t negotiate a settlement. He wouldn’t entertain any offers to pay his clients off. Champ Bailey knew he had this category-dominating global corporation by the short hairs, and he kept yanking and yanking until a panel of sympathetic jurors found the Pulmax pharmaceutical company very, very guilty and informed them that they were on the hook for close to two billion dollars. Naturally, a good chunk of that check went to Champ. And then he retired. Seems you can compete at golf, too.

  When he finally realized he was standing in front of an open refrigerator that held zero beers, Brad snapped himself back to the real world and closed the door. Might as well dive on in to the deep end and see what happens. He called into the living room.

  “Hey, Champ. How’s the hockey game?”

  “These fairies couldn’t outskate a peg leg.”

  That sounded about right. Brad now had a small, albeit brief, reprieve. Yes, dinner and the inevitably overbearing conversation that accompanied it would blow, but at least for the next twelve minutes Brad had something to do. A concrete task in which he could take pride and know that, when complete, he had accomplished something meaningful. Something real.

  “I’ll go get more beer.”

  Dinner was as painful as Brad had anticipated. Gracie talked and Brad prayed the conversation wouldn’t turn his way. But Champ smelled weakness and zeroed in on him.

  “So, Brad. How’s the ballet?”

  “I work at an advertising agency.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry. I always get women’s jobs confused.”

  “It’s fine. We’re doing great work. Good stuff.”

  “Son, why don’t you get a real job? Maybe go see my friend Jerry down at his dealership. He could put you to work tomorrow. Everybody loves Camaros.”

  “Yeah. I know. But I’m not really good with cars.”

  “You’re better with flower arranging?”

  “I’m not a florist. I’m an art director.”

  Brad began to sweat the tiniest bit. If only they were eating something spicy he could blame it on. They weren’t. He thought about baseball to calm himself down. If only he knew anything about baseball.

  Gracie squeezed his forearm and smiled.

  “Senior art director.”

  Champ grunted. “What’s the difference?”

  “It’s just that it takes time to climb the corporate ladder, Daddy. Brad, tell him about the interview.”

  Ah, well. That he could do. Brad paused briefly to both enjoy the moment and re-acclimate himself to the idea of telling the truth.

  “Well, Champ, I have a job interview tomorrow.”

  “To be what? A midwife?”

  He winked at Grace, proud of that one.

  “No, it’s for an associate creative director position in a better agency downtown.”

  Champ rolled his eyes. “Why the hell would you go from one Mary job to another one just like it?”

  Champ was not the kind of guy you could explain a situation of Brad’s type to. Not the vodka job, anyway.

  You see, Brad was the breed of cagey art director who bucked the strategy handed out by the Overthink Advertising account team. Their thinking had been to create campaigns for the big Molotov Vodka pitch with the theme Made from Russia’s finest potatoes. Research had shown that their target market of men aged 29–46, income over one hundred thousand, who considered themselves metrosexual but not gay, would respond to this notion. Research had proven it. And the client was expecting it. But Brad zigged when they zagged. Ho ho! They never saw this rogue thinker coming.

  Okay, maybe Brad wasn’t actually rogue. Or cagey. A better term would be lazy, or perhaps petulant. Attention deficit disorder could certainly be invoked if push came to shove, but honestly, if you looked close enough, it was clear to see that Brad had simply forgotten that the vodka ideas were due on the fifteenth. Until Phil Brenner’s assistant had called on that very day and asked if Brad wouldn’t mind sharing his ideas with Phil. At the time Brad and his copywriter partner Matt had been lounging in their shared office heatedly debating Madden cheat codes. Matt had forgotten as well.

  They panicked briefly and then did what any responsible creative team would do after dicking away two weeks of company time under the guise of making advertising. They made advertising.

  Any experienced creative worth the sack God gave him knows there are a few go-to formulas you use in a pinch. Tried and true chestnuts to get you through a famine of ideas: The frantic customer meets the super-confident sales guy, a phony competitor complaining that the product you’re advertising is putting him out of business (This vacuum cleaner is just too good!), a celebrity spokesperson, animals acting like humans, the hapless husband/savvy wife combo (also see dumb neighbor/smart neighbor), a cross-country road trip involving some contrived use of the product, the slo-mo montage over a chest-beating musical anthem, the old “We’re giving to charity with every purchase.” There were a million of them. If all else fails, throw a puppy in somewhere. You see these hackneyed, polished-up turds interrupting your sitcoms every day. They come from guys like Brad and Matt.

  In under half an hour they cobbled together a campaign featuring a series of images stolen off Flickr involving people w
ho’d had too much to drink along with the tag line “Maybe too good”—a variation of the complaining competitor scenario. On the way to present the idea to Phil, they spitballed an intro that included words like “gritty” and “organic” and “visceral” to rationalize the low rent art direction that held the ideas together. Naturally, the ordained strategy was nowhere to be found in the lot. They had forgotten that as well.

  Phil had been a tough read since his divorce, but like most creative directors under the gun to find the one shining gold nugget in a field of dung piles, he was willing to overlook laziness and shitty attitudes if the work was good enough. Plus he loved dick jokes.

  Brad and Matt sold the campaign like their lives depended on it.

  “You see this girl is holding her friend’s hair back while she vomits.”

  “And the copy reads, ‘Regret is for the weak. Molotov Vodka. Maybe too good.’”

  “Mmm hmmm. Go on.”

  “In this one, it’s a guy with his arms around two different hot girls. See, the blonde is passed out with her head in his lap.”

  “And the copy reads, ‘What, you think threesomes just make themselves? Molotov Vodka. Maybe too good.’”

  “Mmmm hmm.”

  “This one has a guy right about to vomit on his sister’s wedding cake.”

  “The copy reads, ‘At the very least, years from now you’ll have the best stories in the entire rehab. Molotov Vodka. Maybe too good.’”

  Silence.

  “I like it. Tell Krevolin to have his team retrofit the brief to cover this strategic direction.”

  The key to advertising is knowing your audience. And in this case, the audience wasn’t really the pretentious J.O.s referred to by the creative brief as the target audience. It was Phil, the overgrown frat boy of a creative director who was still staring at the threesome ad. In this case, the divorce might have tipped things for Brad and Matt. Phil had been on a bit of a tear. The threesome ad was particularly intriguing to him. He pointed to the blonde.