Bicoastal Babe (30 page)

But then I hear footsteps behind me.

“Something wrong with the front door?” Jen asks.

I groan and keep walking. “Just leave me alone.”

“And where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m going home. Then tomorrow I’m going back to New York.”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

I stop in my tracks and turn to face her.

“Excuse me?”

“Lindsey, why don’t you go trend-spot yourself a clue. The agency’s fucked. We’re fucked.
The Pulse
is fucked. It’s all fucked.”

“What do you mean?”

“Len Taylor resigned to start his own company, and he’s taking their top three clients with him. Those three companies are the agency’s bread and butter. Liz’ll have nothing left but a bunch of small and midsize clients that suck the life but don’t pay the bills.”

I can feel the cold Chicago wind whipping in my face, taking my breath away along with this news. “How do you know all this?”

“I’m an observer, Lindsey. That’s what I do for a living.”

“But when did all this happen?”

“It’s been happening for months! You’re the one who was shacked up with Liz in L.A. while Taylor’s fat ass was tied up in court hearings. If you’d open your eyes and ears once in a while, you’d have caught all this a long time ago.”

“But…what does all that have to do with us?”

“Are you kidding me? As of, well, pretty much
right now,
Liz won’t have the money to buy us lunch from the Taco Bell Value Menu, much less fly us back and forth between New York and L.A.”

“So why the talk show? Why the party?”

“It’s not being announced until tomorrow. Appearances are everything. If Liz is going to rebuild her empire, she needs all the exposure she can get.”

I can feel the tears welling up in my eyes. “So, what are you going to do?” I whisper.

“I’m going to go have a martini.”

“Yeah, but… then what?”

“Then I’m going to keep trend-tracking.”

“How?” I ask in shock.

“I’ve got a lot of tools.” She smirks. “Tune in to
DayLine NBC
on Monday. You’ll hear me talk all about them.”

“Lindsey.” I hear a voice behind me and turn to see Liz standing in the doorway. “Come into my office, please.” She looks at Jen. “You too. Get your phony ass in here.”

Silently we follow Liz into the building, down the beautiful hallway of Gordon-Taylor, and into her gorgeous office. She shuts the door and walks behind her desk. Then she turns to us with a solemn stare. “Is it true?” I ask quietly.

Liz looks down at her desk. “It’s true.”

I
t was only for a brief period of time, but I once dated a guy who referred to his penis as “Mr. Weiner.” He addressed Mr. Weiner in the third-person pronoun, as if a third party were actually in the room, requesting by way of a messenger (that would be the guy) to drop everything and pay attention at once. A random example might have been something along the lines of, “Hey, Lindsey. Mr. Weiner really wants to see your boobs.”

I also dated a guy, also for a short time, whose penis was affectionately dubbed “Mr. Peepers” (though not by me). The thing about Mr. Peepers was that he would surprise you by poking you in the back of the leg as he quipped, “Eat me!” in a nasally Pee-wee Herman voice. (The voice really belonged to the guy, but everyone in the room was expected to believe that it was actually Mr. Peepers.)

The disturbing nature of these tendencies never bothered me to their full extent until after both of these little gentlemen had been flung to the wayside (along with their respective owners). In fact, sometimes when I was bored in business meetings, I’d giggle at the thought of Mr. Weiner and Mr. Peepers dueling it out in a fencing death match fought to win back my love.

And then I dated Steve. And because I loved him and thought I had a real future with him, I closed my ears to that one fateful night when, as I rose from the bed and floated toward the bathroom in post-coital bliss, he called out, “Baby, can you grab Mr. Donger here the small towel by the sink?” I closed my ears on that night and every night after, and I’ve never spoken of the topic again. But if anyone out there can explain the misguided compulsion of the male species to depart from the timeless simplicity and elegance of “my cock,” please send a postcard to Lindsey Miller, care of Gordon-Taylor advertising, Chicago, Illinois. And you’d better hurry. Because you only have three weeks left.

•   •   •

You see, apparently it’s not all
entirely
true. The agency isn’t technically dividing for another three weeks, so that still leaves one more issue of
The Pulse
that Liz’ll be able to afford. Which means two more weeks for me. One in New York. And one in L.A.

“So what’s it gonna be, girls?” Liz reaches behind her desk and pulls out a bottle of Chopin vodka and a martini glass. We’ve just come in from the alley, and I’m still reeling from the shock of this news. My legs shaking, I sit down across the desk from Liz, but Jen opts to stand there, her arms folded across her chest in a defiant stance.

“I’m not wasting any more time with this,” Jen snaps. “I’ve got myself to think about. The iron is hot now, not in a month, after the world hears that Gordon-Taylor is a truck wreck and our newsletter’s the resulting roadkill.”

Liz sighs tiredly, sits down, and takes a sip of her martini. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m going out on my own. I’ll be a freelance trend consultant. Or I’ll work for one of the other trend companies. Or start my own company.”

“And you plan to do that… how, exactly?”

“By using the credibility that we’ve built over the last three months. Well, that
I’ve
built, that is. Lindsey’s come along for the ride and nodded like a sideshow puppet every time I’ve tried to promote us… but that’s her problem.”

“That’s not fair!” I protest.

“You’ll have to start from scratch with your methodology,” Liz points out. “
The Pulse
, and everything in it, belongs to the agency.”

“The hell it does,” Jen retorts. “I didn’t sign any contracts here. Neither did Lindsey.” She looks at me. “Did you?”

Confused, I shake my head.

“So everything we came up with is ours.”

“That’s not the case,” Liz says calmly.

“It actually is the case.” Jen’s voice is cold and sharp. “Do you think I’d be saying it if I didn’t do the research to know what I’m talking about?”

Liz sits there tapping her pen, watching Jen through slitted eyes. I can’t read her silence.

“Go then,” she finally says. Jen picks up her bag and walk out the door.

“I’ll deal with her later,” Liz tells me.

I wait a few moments, until I hear Jen’s footsteps disappear. “Can she really do that?” I ask Liz.

She sighs again. “I’m not sure. We make all our creative staff sign nondisclosures and agency-ownership contracts, but she’s right that we don’t really have one for what’s technically considered market research.”

“It just doesn’t seem right.”

“It’s
not
right. But it happens all the time. You know our new Cluck Cluck Chicken ads?”

I nod.

“Well, the copywriter who wrote those also did two alternate campaigns that were rejected, but a few months ago he took a job across town and tried to pass the rejected ideas off as original. Now, they
were
his ideas, but not for that agency – or their client. But in a few months, one of those campaigns is going to start running for KFC.”

“You should sue him!”

“Of course we’re suing him. But in the time that it takes all the legal bullshit to unfold, grandmothers in Idaho will be singing the new KFC jingle in their showers.”

“That’s so unfair.”

“It’s actually quite interesting – how the business world puts ownership on ideas and creative thoughts. Did you know that the woman who designed the Nike logo was paid only thirty-five dollars for it? She was a student interning at the company, so technically they argued that the idea belonged to them, and that they didn’t have to buy it from her.”

“Highway robbery.”

“In that case, it probably was. But legally,” she throws up her hands. “Who knows? Now listen, Lindsey. This may come as a surprise to you, but over the course of my career, I have made a few minor mistakes. Oversights, if you will. Not that I’d ever admit that in the boardroom. But strictly between you and me, not having you two sign ownership contracts may have been one of them.”

“So Jen could actually walk away and steal it.”

“She couldn’t steal
The Pulse
, of course. But she could claim rights to the methodologies.”

“But they’d be mine too,” I say. “Although she’s stolen the thunder on just about all of it, and appearances are everything.”

Liz looks at me for a long minute. “Lindsey, let me ask you something. When you were doing all those interviews, and today on the show, you never took any credit for your stuff. For everything you contributed, everything you invented, everything you came up with. Why?”

“Well…” I stumble. “I thought that since the newsletter was a team effort, I shouldn’t make it about me.”

“But you let
her
make it about
her,
every time.”

“I guess I just didn’t realize –”

“Lindsey,” she interrupts. “What I need from you is to go back and crank out one more issue. But think about all these things. And give a little thought to your future too.”

She’s looking at me very strangely, and it’s making me uncomfortable, so I stand up to leave. As I lean over for my bag, Liz turns toward the window to stare out at the city lights.

“And one more thing,” she says as I reach for the door. “Those ideas for
The Pulse
. They actually were hers. And yours too. So if it turns out that the agency is entitled to the rights, both you and she are going to walk away empty-handed. You’ll have to begin from scratch. You’ll be back where you started, Lindsey. Think about how you feel about that.”

•   •   •

“That’s so weird,” Holly ponders. “I wonder what she meant.”

“It seems like she wants Lindsey to really question where she stands in the world. What she believes is right and wrong.” Danielle takes a sip of her coffee. “I mean, is it really fair that if you come up with a rock-star idea that a company rejects, you can’t even use that idea elsewhere? It’s your idea! And they’re never going to use it!”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Holly nods. “It’s not fair that they
own
it. It’s not even a concrete thing – it’s just an abstract thought, floating around, waiting to get shipped to the creative graveyard.”

“I think that Jen chick is smart for not signing any agreements. You guys did the work. You thought of all of that stuff, right?”

“Well, Liz sort of guided me along on a lot of it.”

“Yeah, but the ideas were yours. Were they not?”

I nod sadly.

“And now
The Pulse
is going to fold, and all those great ideas would just die right along with it. Not even get used. Jen was only thinking ahead.”

“But she’s stealing all of Lindsey’s ideas too!” Holly protests.

“Well, that’s why she needs to be shot. Then Lindsey can steal
her
ideas.”

I sigh. The three of us are sitting on a park bench near the local coffee shop a few blocks from my apartment. It’s a pretty fall day, but it’s freezing outside, so we’re drinking hot lattes and wearing our mittens.

“She also said to think about my future,” I recall Liz’s words. “And that one’s easy. It’s a polite but obvious way of reiterating that after the next newsletter, my ass is grass.”

“You’ll get another job,” Holly consoles me. “There are lots of trend companies who’d love to have you.” She puts her arm around me and I lean into her chest like a little kid.

“Okay, can we take a look at the more important issue here?” Danielle suggests. “Lindsey has an apartment here in Chicago. But a boyfriend in New York. And a boyfriend in Los Angeles. So forget the job crisis, because Holly’s right. You’ll get a job wherever you decide to live, Lindsey. But you tell us – where
do
you want to live?”

My brow darkens. I’ve been so caught up in worrying about my job that I haven’t stopped to consider the fact that after three weeks, I’ll no longer be bicoastal. Which leaves me with a choice indeed.

“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “It’s not just about the guys. I mean, it is, but… I love New York. But I love L.A. too. Although I guess I could move back to Chicago. I wouldn’t know how to decide.”

Holly and Danielle exchange glances. Then they both reach over to pull me up from the park bench. “Come on,” Holly instructs. “Lets do this the old-fashioned way.”

•   •   •

“Things I love about New York.”

This is the first time that being an obsessive pack rat has ever come in handy. I’d dug down into my basement storage space and pulled out the Hello Kitty chalkboard (with pink jumbo chalk sticks) that I got for Christmas in fourth grade, but could never seem to part with. And now Danielle stands with the pink chalk, drafting up the trusty pros and cons of each sphere of my life, as Holly and I share a bottle of wine on the floor.

“Um, okay, New York.” I try to focus. “Definitely the energy. High energy.”

She writes it down.

“The excitement. It feels exciting all the time.”

“What else?”

“The buildings. The sidewalks. The bridges. The delis and pretzel vendors on each corner. The lights. And the noise. I love the taxis and the horns.”

“What else?”

“The hustle-bustle. And the nightlife. The restaurants are… Well, you feel like you’re
somebody
when you walk into a nice place. Everyone looks over at you for a split second, and you feel like you’re a part of the thing that’s going on in the room. Like you’ve done something to be there, like you’ve earned the right to be walking in Manhattan and having people hold doors open for you.”

Hold doors open…
Danielle struggles to write all this down.

“I feel
successful
when I’m in New York. Like it doesn’t get any more successful than that. I’m on a confidence buzz. And Victor… well, that’s how he makes me feel too.”