Amberville - By Tim Davys Page 0,100

who worked at the agency became used to the office-supply storeroom being inventoried and replenished.

After a year of assiduous labor, my exertions produced results. Thanks to my exactitude and my absolute conception of right and wrong, Wolle & Wolle had become a model of business practices in the industry.

Naturally there was no one in the agency who saw what I’d accomplished. For these self-centered designers with colorful clothes and flexible consciences I remained a gray mouse without apparent purpose.

Good.

In contrast to them I had no need of winning their ironic competition. I knew my value.

It was greater than theirs.

Considerably greater.

“Come,” said Wolle Hare, “then I’ll tell you.”

I showed no enthusiasm. In one leap, Wolle was over at my desk, taking me by the arm. He pulled me up out of the chair. Brutally he shoved me out of the office. I felt secure inside my office. My binders and document files controlled my professional life, set its limits and gave it meaning. Out in the office landscape that was the advertising agency itself, a different order prevailed.

A lack of order.

My status made me invisible, but this morning as I was shoved across the floor by Wolle Hare, I received numerous glances. Some wondered who I was. Others wondered enviously why Wolle Hare was devoting attention to me in particular.

I shared that wonder.

Wolle Hare and Wolle Toad had furnished a joint office in a corner room that extended into a conference room overlooking Place Great Hoch. Toad was waiting for us at his desk when we came in. A small group of designers who were called in for especially significant pitches was sitting at the conference table. I knew them all by name.

“Here he is!” the hare cried out triumphantly and pointed at me. “Didn’t I say that he would help out?”

The exhilaration in Wolle Hare’s voice was not met by any reaction. The group at the conference table looked skeptical.

“Who is that?” someone asked.

“No idea,” answered someone else.

“Are you volunteering, Teddy?” asked Wolle Toad.

I didn’t know what this was about. I shrugged my shoulders.

“They want to use you in an ad,” said the toad, making a gesture over toward the creative group at the table, and toward the hare. “It’s about banking services.”

“Me?”

No one in the room could take my question as being coquettish.

The toad nodded.

“It’s about building trustworthiness,” he said in order to explain why the choice had fallen on me.

I was completely unprepared. Before I had time to collect myself, Wolle Hare placed an arm around my neck and led me away from the toad’s desk.

“This is a chance for you, Teddy,” he explained in a low voice. “You can’t be an administrative assistant at an advertising agency your whole life.”

“I’m very comfortable with…”

We had stopped halfway between the creative group at the conference table and the toad at the desk.

“I don’t mean that you have a career as a model ahead of you,” Wolle Hare clarified. “But if you volunteer for this type of thing, it’s not inconceivable that we’ll have you in mind the next time a management job comes up.”

“Is it the head of accounting’s job that you…?”

Our accounting head was an old blue jay who was going to retire at the end of the year. So far I hadn’t heard about a successor.

“There’s no reason to be that specific,” the hare interrupted me. “And this is of course not a punishment we’re talking about, appearing in a commercial for the Savings Banks’ Bank.”

We were standing in front of a large whiteboard. I looked over at the designers, but they didn’t seem to care about us anymore.

“The Savings Banks’ Bank?” I repeated. “But we use Banque Mollisan. I don’t know anyone at the Savings Banks’ Bank.”

“We’ll make an attempt, then,” Wolle said smoothly without having heard my objection.

“I don’t even know if I…”

“So the job is yours, shall we say that?” said Wolle. “Head of accounting, you said? That’s not so bad, is it? Shall we say so?”

“I don’t know if I…”

“Good,” he called out, patting me on the back in confirmation.

The designers looked in our direction. I thought I glimpsed a smile or two. Perhaps it was only because Wolle sounded happy.

“Teddy’s on board,” shouted Wolle Hare.

The hare went over to the others to discuss the consequences of the good news. I remained standing by the whiteboard. No one seemed to notice me. The designers and the hare talked, the toad sat at his desk and wrote. Should I leave? Before I had time