Truth in Advertising Page 0,7
keeps hitting on me.”
“Shut up.”
I say, “What’s up?”
“Nothing. I’m bored with you and Ian gone. And Carlson wants you to call him.”
Martin Carlson, my boss, executive creative director of the agency.
I say, “Why can’t he call me himself?”
Phoebe says, “He’s too important. He said it’s urgent. And that he wants you in a new business meeting Thursday.”
“Thursday. As in this Thursday? Christmas Eve? Not possible. I’m going on vacation that day. He knows that.”
“I know that.”
“Did you tell him that?”
“Did I tell him that he knows you’re going on vacation Thursday?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Is this a logic test?”
“I’m not canceling another vacation.”
Phoebe snorts. “You mean unless he asks you to.”
“Exactly.”
Seconds go by. I can tell she’s reading an e-mail, looking at her computer. I stare at a key grip’s ass crack as he adjusts the base of a lighting stand.
I say, “Do you tweet?”
“Sometimes. I follow some people.”
I say, “Do you have a lot of friends on Facebook?”
“Not really. Not compared to some people I know.”
“I have one hundred and nine, but there’re about twenty I’ve never met.”
Phoebe says, “Oh.”
I say, “What? How many do you have?”
“About twelve hundred, I think. Maybe more.”
I say, “I’m feeling great inadequacy right now.”
Phoebe says, “Run with that.”
The key grip stands and turns to see me staring at his ass crack and gives me a look that suggests he might do physical harm to me.
Phoebe says, “Also your brother Edward called. Is he the one in San Francisco?”
“No,” I say. “That’s Kevin. Eddie’s in Boston.”
“He left his number.”
I say nothing.
“Fin?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you want his number?”
“No. What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Tell him it’s about his father.’”
How nice. Hi, Daddy!
One word, one blink, and I am back in the basement of Saint Joseph’s Rectory. A winter night. I am in the Cub Scouts. I am eight years old and I wear a dark blue Cub Scout shirt and yellow kerchief and military-style enlistedman’s cap. Tonight is the Pinewood Derby, for which they give you a small block of wood and plastic wheels and ask you to carve it into a car. Kids spend weeks with these things, mostly with their fathers. He’ll show you how to whittle, say, or paint, or put the wheels on. He’ll gently ruffle your hair the way they do in TV shows from the sixties or present-day commercials. An experience you will always remember, that perhaps you will one day share with your own son. Tonight, on a small wooden track, they will have a race for the fastest car. Happy fathers and excited sons. Lots of prizes and trophies. Everyone goes home with something. And then there’s my father, who’s just screamed at my mother and made her cry, and who stormed out of the house with me in tow, the silent drive to Saint Joe’s. I’m holding a Stride-Rite shoebox with my pathetic excuse for a car in it, confused as to whether to be more terrified of my father in one of his moods or of the reaction of my fellow Cub Scouts when they see my car, which my father has not helped me with, and which, as I have no affinity for carpentry, is still largely a block of wood, except for the paint I put on it. I don’t want to go. That was what the fight was about. My mother said I didn’t have to go. I told her about my lame car. But my father said I had to go, that I was wimping out, that I should have worked harder. I briefly imagined a storybook ending (the budding copywriter), wherein my hideous, misshapen block-like car thing would somehow speed to victory in record time, stunning the crowd of vastly superior Scouts. Reality was crueler. I came in second to last, just besting Tommy Flynn, whose wheels fell off. He burst into tears, his father holding him. And my father? My father said, “Well, that was a waste of time, wasn’t it?”
He’s dead. He must have died. That’s the only reason Eddie would call me about “my” father. And since when did he start calling himself Edward?
Phoebe says, “I hope everything’s okay.”
I say, “I’ll call him.” But I won’t. And maybe Phoebe senses that from my voice.
Phoebe says, “Do you have his number?”
“Yes.”
She says, “You’re lying. What is it?”
“There’s a seven in it.”
“I’m texting it to you. Call your brother. Also he may be calling you since I gave him your cell. And call Carlson. Can I come to the shoot this afternoon?”
“You’d be bored.