they needed him. He avoided what was in all three of their minds: The door’ll be open if you think of something worth talking about.
Rob had every right to look glum. He was a Vietnam vet who had lost a leg in the Tet offensive. He had opened I-E Studios in late 1970 with his disability money and a lot of help from his in-laws. The studio had gasped and struggled along since then, mostly catching crumbs from that well-stocked media table at which the larger Boston studios banqueted. Vie and Roger had been taken with him because he reminded them of themselves, in a way—struggling to make a go of it, to get up to that fabled corner and turn it. And, of course, Boston was good because it was an easier commute than New York.
In the last sixteen months, Image-Eye had taken off. Rob had been able to use the fact that his studio was doing the Sharp spots to land other business, and for the first time things had looked solid. In May, just before the cereal had hit the fan, he sent Vie and Roger a postcard showing a Boston T-bus going away. On the back were four lovely ladies, bent over to show their fannies, which were encased in designer jeans. Written on the back of the card, tabloid style, was this message: IMAGE-EYE LANDS CONTRACT TO DO BUTTS FOR BOSTON BUSES; BILLS BIG BUCKS. Funny then. Not such a hoot now. Since the Zingers fiasco, two clients (including Cannes-Look Jeans) had canceled their arrangements with I-E. and if Ad Worx lost the Sharp account, Rob would lose other accounts in addition to Sharp. It had left him feeling angry and scared . . . emotions Vic understood perfectly.
They had been sitting and smoking in silence for almost five minutes when Roger said in a low voice, “It just makes me want to puke, Vie. I see that guy sitting on his desk and looking out at me like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, taking a big bite of that cereal with the runny dye in it and saying, ‘Nope, nothing wrong here,’ and I get sick to my stomach. Physically sick to my stomach. I’m glad the projectionist had to go. If I watched them one more time, I’d have to do it with an airsick bag in my lap.”
He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray set into the arm of his chair. He did look ill; his face had a yellowish sheen that Vic didn’t like at all. Call it shellshock, combat fatigue, whatever you wanted, but what you meant was scared shitless, backed into a rathole. It was looking into the dark and seeing something that was going to eat you up.
“I kept telling myself,” Roger said, reaching for another cigarette, “that I’d see something. You know? Something. I couldn’t believe it was as bad as it seemed. But the cumulative effect of those spots . . . it’s like watching Jimmy Carter saying, ‘I’ll never lie to you.’ ” He took a drag from the new cigarette, grimaced, and stuffed it into the ashtray. “No wonder George Carlin and Steve Martin and fucking Saturday Night Live had a field day. That guy just looks so sanctimonious to me now . . . ” His voice had developed a sudden watery tremble. He shut his mouth with a snap.
“I’ve got an idea,” Vie said quietly.
“Yeah, you said something on the plane.” Roger looked at him, but without much hope. “If you got one, let’s hear it.”
“I think the Sharp Cereal Professor has to make one more spot,” Vic said. “I think we have to convince old man Sharp of that. Not the kid. The old man.”
“What’s the old prof gonna sell this time?” Roger asked, twisting open another button on his shirt. “Rat poison or Agent Orange?”
“Come on, Roger. No one got poisoned.”
“Might as well have,” Roger said, and laughed shrilly.
“Sometimes I wonder if you understand what advertising really is. It’s holding a wolf by the tail. Well, we lost our grip on this particular wolf and he’s just about to come back on us and eat us whole.”
“Roger—”
“This is the country where it’s front-page news when some consumer group weighed the McDonald’s Quarter Pounder and found out it weighed a little shy of a quarter pound. Some obscure California magazine publishes a report that a rear-end collision can cause a gas-tank explosion in Pintos, and the Ford Motor Company