Truth in Advertising Page 0,19
that one shot?”) and who now bring a bitterness to the job in large part because they put off marriage and children in the hopes of achieving something professionally. The account people, jackets and ties, smart skirts and tops, the front line in client services (“I get to work with creative people and I get to work with business people. It’s really the perfect balance.”). The skinny Asian boys with bad skin who run the computer help desk and who laugh aggressively at inside jokes, hidden away somewhere in the subbasement (“Um, like, is that really how you set up your desktop menu?”). The fit, handsome, gay designers, gym bags at the ready, shirts tucked in, black belts cinched a hole too tight. The accounting department, thin men who blink a lot and bite their nails, and heavy-set women, most of whom are black, who leave at five-thirty on the dot every afternoon. Human resources, socially conscious people who put up flyers near the elevators (LEUKEMIA WALK SATURDAY!). The art buyers, twenty-eight-year-old women, chunky shoes, multiple piercings, amateur photographers, fine arts degrees that translate into nothing in the real world, body art at the base of their spine (and often, for a fashion reason beyond my ken, the top portion of their ass crack), revealed when they spread a photographer’s portfolio on the carpet and shake their head and use the word derivative.
So another day begins at Lauderbeck, Kline & Vanderhosen, a subsidiary of Tomo, Japan’s largest shipping company and third largest in the world. Almost five hundred people looking for a paycheck, a dental plan, and an intangible something that will give us a sense of purpose at the end of the day. Most often we settle for free soda in the refrigerators.
PASS THE GRAVY BOAT
Ian and Pam take a car service from the shoot back into the city, but I get carsick in a parking lot, so I take the subway whenever I can.
I make my way to Corner Bistro, where I find a seat at the bar. I eat a cheeseburger, drink a couple of beers, and read the Times, though often I stare at the TVs, which show a hockey game, a cable show with what appears to be a panel of eight people yelling at one another, and, for some reason, The Sound of Music. None of the TVs have sound.
• • •
I call Phoebe on my way home.
She says, “What if I had a guy over and was involved in an intimate moment?”
I say, “But you’re in bed, sort of reading, sort of watching The Bachelor.”
“That’s just weird that you know that,” she says. “Where are you?”
“Walking home.”
“I was reading a story in Vanity Fair about Johnny Depp. He owns an island.”
“Like I don’t?”
“Then I started reading that Billy Collins book you gave me.”
“Which one?”
“Picnic, Lightning.”
“I like a funny poet. Why are so many poets depressed? It’s always dead people and dead mothers and dead soldiers. Grecian urns. Epic poems. Why not a poem to donuts? To canned tuna?”
Phoebe says, “I loved Sylvia Plath in college. I loved Emily Dickinson.”
I say, “I’ve tried to read Emily Dickinson and I have no idea what she’s talking about. Love is the thing without feathers? That’s like a password in a spy novel. And then your contact says, ‘Yes. And Belgium is lovely in springtime.’ You stopped listening.”
“I was watching that new iPad commercial. They’re so good. How come we don’t do ads like that?”
“Those are done by the talented people. We do diapers.”
“You excited about Mexico?”
“Yes. No. I’m wondering if I should have picked someplace else.”
“You always do this. At some point you have to make a decision and actually take a vacation.”
“Why? I enjoy the planning.”
“You’ll cancel. I know you. You’ll end up home alone cooking a chicken.”
“Keats was twenty-five when he died. Byron, Shelley, Tennyson.”
“What’s your point?”
“I was just seeing if I could name some poets.”
Phoebe says, “How was the rest of the shoot?”
“Fine. We got what we needed. Barely. I don’t know how, considering the director, the client, and the agency.”
Phoebe says, “It always works out. You worry too much.”
I wait at the light and watch as a cab goes by with three guys in their twenties in the back, one of whom has pulled down his pants and is sticking his ass out the window.
I say, “One beautiful thing.”
Phoebe says, “I’ve got a good one.”
It’s a thing we do. Every day—well, most days—we have to describe a beautiful thing we saw that