15 Tales of Love (10 page)

THE GRAY JAY

Birds, Liv Armand thought, can be a lot like people, sometimes displaying quite human traits. Watching the collection around the old feeder outside her kitchen window made her wonder a little, about them and about one of her fellow workers. He was a new arrival at her workplace, a man she didn’t understand and was having a hard time working with, much less liking.

She wasn’t an expert in avian identification, but she knew all the common local birds: the chickadees, nuthatches, and titmice; two kinds of small woodpeckers, the occasional glorious cardinal, and the ground-feeding mourning doves and blue jays.

So she knew the odd bird was a blue jay; it just wasn’t quite the usual color, much too gray. She knew, from a check in her field guide, that it was not the gray or Canada jay, which did not have the prominent crest, and she knew birds could have color variations. After noticing the grayish bird, Liv watched her flock of blue jays more closely, the half dozen or so that came regularly to her yard, and realized there was considerable difference in the shading of the blue feathers, some bright sky blue, some tending more to lavender. Undersides varied from clear white through smoky gray. She wondered if the difference denoted gender, but the guides did not mention that. But, while different in the details, they were all blue jays. People varied that way, too.
And some can be downright disagreeable.
She squelched that thought. She didn’t know the new man well enough to make that judgment.

She checked, as usual, with her older sister Pam, who was much more into bird watching, but Pam was no help this time.

“Just enjoy it,” her sister suggested. “It’s what makes bird watching fun. They do have personalities.”

Liv liked the blue jays up to a point. They were lovely to look at, cheerful, bright and perky, but loudmouthed and offensive, pushing the smaller birds out of the feeder, and scattering the seeds all over the ground. And the odd one seemed to be more aggressive than the others.
Oh, well
,
it takes all kinds and they must have their place in the food chain. The other birds can pick up what they leave and the little ones have ways of getting around the jay.

She enjoyed the bird show with her morning coffee. It was a pleasant and relaxing way to start the day. She didn’t think much beyond the watching; if someone asked what she had seen that morning, she usually couldn’t remember.

Until now.

The odd bird was a pleasant diversion, something to think about besides work and the growing dissention around a new and disliked employee.
A real blue jay kind of man.
She hadn’t consciously thought that before, but she realized it was true.
Brick is an obnoxious blue jay, pushing us all around. He’s as bad as that gray jay out there.

Sally Thomkins, the middle-aged, long-time office manager, had told them a few weeks ago that the company had hired a new person, someone from outside the organization to update marketing strategies in a time of sluggish sales, and bring in fresh ideas.

“Some kind of high level consultant,” she’d said. “Whether it’s short-term or permanent remains to be seen.”

Knowing their company and their supervisor, they had all imagined a whiz kid, a bright young person right out of college, filled with all of the latest theories and little experience who would be no particular threat to their established routines. Such experts had been hired before and they either moved on after a while or accepted the realities of the job. A few people had snickered a little at the news but nobody worried very much.

But what they got was Brick Owens, a handsome, blond thirty-something who did not conform to anyone’s expectations. He declined to abide by the unspoken dress code of the office. He wore turtlenecks instead of a tie, a blazer and slacks instead of a suit. He had a diamond stud in one ear, tiny and discreet, but still an earring, in defiance of the tacit ban on body piercings other than women’s earrings.

Behind closed doors or out of the office, some people wondered if maybe Brick was a member of the owner’s family. How else could you explain him, since the owner was such a conservative, old-fashioned sort? And his awful name? Who could possibly name a child ‘Brick’?

Brick’s arrival caused all manner of consternation across the whole company, in sales and promotion and development, not just in Liv’s art department. No one knew how to handle the changes he proposed. Brick was totally sure of himself and not afraid to step on anybody’s toes. No person, no process, no tried-and-true way of working, was sacrosanct. It didn’t help that he was utterly charming in his ruthlessness.

In Liv’s considered opinion, Brick Owens had no compassion for the employees, no feel for their regular customers, and no grasp of their particular market. Handsome and charming as he was, she wanted no part of him, at work or out of it. Not that he had suggested anything outside of work, or even noticed her, the only unattached female in the art and development section. He was perfectly polite, but totally aloof.

Sally Thompkins had introduced her to Brick as Olivia, a name she rarely used outside of signing her paycheck. He had smiled engagingly and said, “Call me Brick.”

Liv thought it an odd name, but of course hadn’t commented. He came much too close to looking like her ideal Hollywood leading man, a circumstance that might make him difficult to work with, especially if he proved to
be
difficult to work with. She noticed that he had bright, expressive, hazel eyes with a touch of gold, and she refused to meet them directly. They were too unsettling. Men were not on her current agenda, even the well-built, athletic-looking, charming ones. She had other things to do: a career to build, a place to find in the world
. But still
,
it’s nice to have a good-looking man around for a change. Even if I have no interest in him.
She was sure that she didn’t.

Liv was part of a three-person team of artists who drew advertisements, mostly newspaper inserts. They designed the layouts, and chose whatever sort of artwork was wanted by clients, and they had some clients with very definite ideas about the image they wanted to project. She was proud of her work and of her hard-won degree in fine arts. If the job left her a little less than fulfilled artistically, so be it in the working world. There was only one Winslow Homer, and as much as she admired his work, she could not hope to reach his level, at least not in the foreseeable future. She was not about to become the proverbial starving artist and she had no source of income but her present job.

She was the only “real artist” on the team, as her partner Daphne Jonas called her. Daphne and Tad Morrow were technically and commercially trained and knew a great deal more about type fonts and newspaper layouts than Liv did, but she knew color, eye appeal, proportions, all of the artistic nuances. They worked well together.

“You do nice work,” Brick told Liv a week after he had arrived and had spent time with each of the marketing divisions. But you should branch out a little, try something new.”

She tried not to sound defensive. “Our clients seem to be happy with what we’re doing.”

He laughed. “Maybe they don’t know what they want, or what they would like if they saw something different. We should give them that option.”

She wondered what he meant. “Maybe. The company likes to stick with the tried and true.”

He hadn’t said any more then, just smiled and turned away, but yesterday he said, pleasantly as always, “I think we’ll try a different approach with this new supermarket promotion. All of the chains out there are doing the same sort of thing. We have to be different, unusual, if we want to keep the business.”

She asked, thinking herself rather clever, “So what more can you do with potatoes and canned corn?”

More sharply than usual he said, “Make shepherd’s pie.”

So how do you make shepherd’s pie out of a supermarket newspaper insert campaign? You include what you hope are attractive heads of lettuce and tomatoes, use bright, eye-catching colors, promote the coupons, and play up the savings. Like we’ve always done without any complaints. So what’s his problem?

But she didn’t ask. She would wait and see what he suggested.

Brick began his changes with Tad. “There are other kinds of letters out there,” he said. “Styles, shapes, sizes. Why do you always use the same ones? Why always in the same way?”

Taken off guard, Tad asked hesitantly, “Because I like them and we’ve always used them? Because no one’s complained?”

“I am,” Brick said. “Find something new. The computer’s full of them. That’s what you have it for.”

And to Daphne he said, “Do you have to arrange the fruit the same way every time? Why not put it in a basket instead of a bowl? Doesn’t the market have something besides apples and oranges even if they aren’t the ones on special? Can’t you try to entice the reader? How about pears and guavas?”

Daphne said, “I suppose.”

“Give it a try, do something different for once.”

Liv called her sister Pam, as she frequently did when she needed a shoulder to cry on, and they met for tea and scones in a favorite shop.

“He’s so impossible,” Liv said. “Things’ve been going fine, and then he comes along and wants to change everything.”

“Are you sure you know everything behind what management is doing? They don’t usually tell you, you know.”

Liv didn’t, and didn’t want to think about that, but she said, “As far as I know everything’s okay.”

“So he’s just throwing his weight around? The new big kid on the block making waves?”

Liv sighed. “I guess.” She stirred honey into her second cup of tea. “I’ve been watching this odd colored blue jay I told you about, how it’s taking over the yard. Brick’s just like him. He’s not like the rest of us.”

“Did you ever think he might have a problem, too?”

Liv looked at her over the top of her cup, not answering.

“Is he all that different?”

“He acts like he’s the leading man, the big star.” She sighed. “Unfortunately, he looks like it, too. He’s really nice to look at.”

Pam laughed. “You need a social life.”

Liv chose not to go in that direction. She hadn’t gotten into dating since she had left college two years ago
. I don’t have time
.
I have a career to manage. How can I do both? Even if it might be nice?

“Maybe he’s uncomfortable, too, Liv. Maybe the job isn’t the one he wants, either. Maybe he has to put on a show, just like your gray jay.”

Liv didn’t answer.

“Do you remember that bald-headed chickadee that was around one year?”

Liv remembered. “It didn’t have a black cap like it was supposed to. Its head was all white.”

“But the other chickadees didn’t seem to notice. To them, it was just another chickadee?”

“So it seemed,” Liv said. “Looks didn’t seem to matter. It acted like a chickadee.”

“Think about that. Seeing we are into bird comparisons, this Brick of yours might not be what he seems.”

“He’s not my Brick. And another thing he is not, is a chickadee.”

Pam laughed. “Just give it some thought.”

Liv sat at her kitchen table, sipping at her coffee, watching the birds, and delaying leaving for work as long as possible. The paler, grayer blue jay was dominating the feeder, squawking at the others, hogging the sunflower seeds while scattering them on the ground
. Acting
j
ust like Brick does! He’s taking over the whole place. He and his differentness.

She squelched that thought. She didn’t even want to think about him and ruin a lovely sunlit morning.

She glanced, as she often did, toward the wall by the window where she had hung one of her favorite Winslow Homer prints, “Gloucester Harbor,” a calm and soothing scene. She wished she had Homer’s ability to capture the sunset reflected in the gentle ripples of the harbor. She liked to sit and contemplate the picture: the sunlit bank of clouds, the white sails in the background, the people sitting contentedly in the rowboat. It was so different from some of Homer’s wonderfully graphic depictions of small boats in storms.

I wish I could paint water
. It was one of the hardest effects she had ever tried to achieve and it continued to elude her. She recalled a quotation she had found while writing a paper on Homer for an art history class, “Look at nature, work independently, solve your own problems.”

She had adopted it as her motto, her personal goal, and determined now to solve the problem of Brick Owens and his desire for “shepherd’s pie,” whatever that meant. It was probably his more sophisticated way of saying “work outside the box,” and she hated that expression, too. She mentally shook herself, steeled her will, and went to work, prepared for another long day of frustrations. It was scheduled to begin with a department meeting, never a good thing, and worse now with Brick running them.

And it went as she had envisioned it, except for Brick’s opening announcement.

“We have a new client,” he said, obviously pleased. “A national, upscale furniture company is moving into the area, and they are talking about a big campaign. Slick fliers in all of the area newspapers, big opening day promotions, everything. It’s a great opportunity for us.” He paused for a long moment, looking around the table at each of them. “But we are losing two of the old accounts. One store is closing, the other cutting back. We have to make up the difference.”