Truth in Advertising Page 0,9

you Pam?”

Pam nods and says into the phone, “Sandy, I’m going to call you back in sixty seconds.”

Gwyneth’s assistant says, with a big fake smile, “I think there might be some mistake. We see here on the schedule that this is a two-day shoot?” She slowly shakes her head no. “We were under the impression it was just one day.”

Pam says, “What? No. No, no. No, it’s definitely two. We need her for two. We went over all of this with you guys. Like, twenty times.”

The assistant, still smiling, says, “I know, but that’s not going to work because she’s on a plane tonight to Berlin. The new M. Night movie.”

Ian says, “Is it about diapers?”

The assistant says, “Sorry.” But she’s not sorry at all. She turns and walks away. Everyone stares at Pam.

Pam says, “There are so many filthy, filthy words I want to say right now.”

She turns to Alan. “Talk to the client. Fix this blue-purple-gay thing. Do not tell them about the scheduling thing. Go.”

He snaps into action, and Jill follows him.

Pam turns to Saffron. “White baby, then M. Night. Ian. Come with me.”

I stand alone as three people attend to Gwyneth’s hair and makeup. I watch the director of photography and the second assistant camera loader change lenses. Gaffers adjust huge lights nimbly, quickly. I appear to be the only person on the set with nothing to do.

My phone rings. The display reads Martin Carlson.

Martin is English and famous in the advertising world and came to our agency about eighteen months ago and changed what was a wonderful place to work, if by work you mean not work very much, into a place where you have to work, if by work you mean work, a lot, nights, weekends. Martin loves meeting on Sunday afternoons to review work. His arrival has not gone over well.

Our previous creative director was a legend in the business. Ron Spasky. Ron lived in what was most certainly one of the heydays of advertising. Budgets were large, clients listened, you could scream at people and still keep your job. Who’s to say what caused his downfall. A misfire in the synapses, too much stress, bad wiring. Or just too many years of repugnant living. Like so many clichés in the business—men nearing fifty who dress far younger than their years, keep guitars they do not play in their expansive offices, wear bizarrely large wristwatches—Ron’s real downfall began with his hair, which seemed to have a direct line to his penis. The more hair he lost, the younger the women he dated, to the point where he began dating a twenty-four-year-old junior producer, the unfortunately named Fiona Finkel. Fiona was a curvy woman, a woman who knew the power of her sexuality over men of a certain age, an age when the supple elasticity of young female flesh can be mind-altering. She was promoted, rather abruptly, much to the dismay of others who had worked far longer and knew much more. One thing led to another, the other being working late with Ron, the odd late-night drink, a ride home in his car service, dinner at out-of-the-way places where coworkers—or anyone else, really—might not see them. During those late dinners way downtown and sometimes on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx (“Why are we up here?”) she would, using her foot, play with his Cialis-assisted erection through his trousers under the table. She had never before seen an American Express Black Card.

Later, Ron left his wife of many years, his wife who had increasingly found herself alone late at night, wondering when her husband was going to get home from the office, leaving him a little something on the counter, a note under the plate, Saran Wrap protecting the sandwich, the chicken leg, the piece of homemade cake. I miss you. Surely his wife’s mind drifted during the boring sitcoms that she watched after the children were fed and bathed and read to. Wandered from her quotidian life in Katonah to his exciting one in the city, in the company of young, interesting, attractive people. She wondered why he never invited her to join him for the occasional event. She could get a sitter, she’d told him. You’d be bored, he’d told her. They say she was on antidepressants for some time, her heart and ability to trust a kind of roadkill now. They say Ron found himself a particularly vicious divorce attorney, left her with very little, and certainly without pride.

Powerful Ron and