to call it, I’ve been in this business long enough to believe that there wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house after that commercial was shown over a three- or four-week period. It would knock everybody on their asses. But—”
The beers came. The waiter said to Rob, “Mr. Johnson asked me to tell you that he has several parties of three waiting, Mr. Martin.”
“Well, you run back and tell Mr. Johnson that the boys are on their last round and to keep his undies dry. Okay, Rocky?”
The waiter smiled, emptied the ashtray, and nodded.
He left. Rob turned back to Vic and Roger. “So what’s the bottom line? You’re bright boys. You don’t need a one-legged cameraman with a snootful of beer to tell you where the bear shat in the buckwheat.”
“Sharp just won’t apologize,” Vic said. “That’s what you think, isn’t it?”
Rob saluted him with his bottle of beer. “Go to the head of the class.”
“It’s not an apology,” Roger said plaintively. “It’s a fucking explanation.”
“You see it that way,” Rob answered, “but will he? Ask yourself that. I’ve met that old geezer a couple of times. He’d see it in terms of the captain deserting the sinking ship ahead of the women and children, giving up the Alamo, every stereotype you can think of. No, I’ll tell you what I think is going to happen, my friends.” He raised his glass and drank slowly. “I think a valuable and all too short relationship is going to come to an end very soon now. Old man Sharp is going to listen to your proposal, he’s going to shake his head, he’s going to usher you out. Permanently. And the next PR firm will be chosen by his son, who will make his pick based on which one he believes will give him the freest rein to indulge his crackpot ideas.”
“Maybe,” Roger said. “But maybe he’ll—”
“Maybe doesn’t matter shit one way or the other,” Vic said vehemently. “The only difference between a good advertising man and a good snake-oil salesman is that a good advertising man does the best job he can with the materials at hand . . . without stepping outside the bounds of honesty. That’s what this commercial is about. If he turns it down, he’s turning down the best we can do. And that’s the end. Toot-finny.” He snuffed his cigarette and almost knocked over Roger’s half-full bottle of beer. His hands were shaking.
Rob nodded. “I’ll drink to that.” He raised his glass. “A toast, gentlemen.”
Vic and Roger raised their own glasses.
Rob thought for a moment and then said: “May things turn out all right, even against the odds.”
“Amen,” Roger said.
They clinked their glasses together and drank. As he downed the rest of his beer, Vic found himself thinking about Donna and Tad again.
George Meara, the mailman, lifted one leg clad in blue-gray Post Office issue and farted. Just lately he farted a great deal. He was mildly worried about it. It didn’t seem to matter what he had been eating. Last night he and his wife had had creamed cod on toast and he had farted. This morning, Kellogg’s Product 19 with a banana cut up in it—and he had farted. This noon, down at the Mellow Tiger in town, two cheeseburgers with mayonnaise . . . ditto farts.
He had looked up the symptom in The Home Medical Encyclopedia, an invaluable tome in twelve volumes which his wife had gotten a volume at a time by saving her checkout slips from the Shop ’n Save in South Paris. What George Meara had discovered under the EXCESSIVE FLATULENCE heading had not been particularly encouraging. It could be a symptom of gastric upset. It could mean he had a nice little ulcer incubating in there. It could be a bowel problem. It could even mean the big C. If it kept up he supposed he would go see old Dr. Quentin. Dr. Quentin would tell him he was farting a lot because he was getting older and that was it.
Aunt Evvie Chalmers’s death that last spring had hit George hard—harder than he ever would have believed—and just lately he didn’t like to think about getting older. He preferred to think about the Golden Years of Retirement, years that he and Cathy would spend together. No more getting up at six thirty. No more heaving around sacks of mail and listening to that asshole Michael Fournier, who was the Castle Rock postmaster. No more freezing his balls off