Christopher Brookmyre - Parlabane 04 (14 page)

'That's Liz's roundabout way of saying she thinks my patter's rotten.'

'It's advertising you're in, isn't it?' asked Max Redman, seamlessly joining from a different conversation to his left with little more than a swivel of the hips and a moment's eye-contact. It was the kind of thing you could get away with without anyone taking the huff in a gathering of this size, with the company just too big for one conversation and just too small for the full roam-and-mingle game. It made for an easy and unpressured vibe, but the disadvantage was that you could begin a sentence addressing four people and find that two of them had been replaced by the time you ended it.

'Yes. We're based in Leith,' Rory replied.

'TV ads? Print? Billboards.'

'All of the above. Depends on the campaign. These days we can be doing anything from beauty products to government information.'

'Anything on telly at the moment that we'd recognise?' Joanna asked.

'Well,' Rory prevaricated, trying to think of something that was both comparatively recent and acceptably cool to own up to. His hesitation was fatal, Liz steamrolling over the top of his pause and gleefully bringing up the very thing he'd been intending to avoid.

'Beechtree Finance,' she announced. 'It's on the satellite channels all day, housewives and unemployed target market.'

'I think I've seen it at the gym,' Max said. 'Only time I see TV, to be honest. That's the one with the woman looking like she's waiting for the other shoe to drop.'

'That's it.'

'But by the end she looks like the weight of the world's been lifted. Yeah, I know the one.'

'Except it wasn't just the weight of the world that was lifted, was it, Rory?'

Liz chided.

Rory braced himself. It was at times like this that he rather resentfully felt as though he was the subject of a morality tale. He'd had his say, got his way, got results, cashed the cheque and taken the plaudits, but there was an outstanding bill to be paid, and Liz was ensuring it be met in full.

'What?' Max asked, intrigued and insistent.

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'Well, did you notice anything different about the actress between her "saddled with debt" appearance and her "weight off my shoulders" look?'

'She seemed sunnier. Younger, almost. But I thought that was the point.'

'I've got to hand it to you, Rory,' Liz said. 'You were right about one thing: nobody is going to admit to noticing it, even if they can't miss it.'

'What?' It was Joanna's turn to become impatient for the juicy revelation.

'Max is right. She seemed sunnier and younger. But what he's too polite or bashful to mention is that her tits got tighter and higher after she made the call to Beechtree Finance.'

Max blushed, red beyond the point of denial.

'Rory directed the ad himself, and he had the actress wear two different bras for the Before and After effect.'

Rory could feel himself redden, as much in anger as embarrassment. Robert Aldrich had a constant supply of ice on-set to keep Susannah York's nipples erect when they were shooting
The Killing of Sister George
. It flattered no-one to dissect whatever behind-the-scenes tricks were required to have a sometimes subliminal effect on the viewer. He didn't feel like he ought to be apologising for it, but he was definitely on the backfoot under these circumstances.

'You should have read the shooting notes,' Liz went on. 'She was supposed to go from looking "bovine, saggy and past it" to "busty, full-figured and desirable". The effect was achieved by putting her in a wireless bra that was actually two sizes too big and giving bugger-all support, then changing to Gossard's finest. The weight wasn't entirely off her shoulders, but it did have some serious uplift.'

Max nodded equivocally. 'All right, I did notice that, but I thought it was either my imagination or the fact that she went from slumped to sitting up straight. I never imagined something like that was, you know, a creative decision.'

'Got your attention, though, didn't it?' Rory countered. 'I mean, how many other loan outfit ads could you reel off, any of you? Liz rails me about this kind of thing all the time, but she's just shooting the messenger. Guys respond to these things, sometimes in ways they're not even aware of. It's my job to get people's attention and make them remember the information. What does it matter whether I do it with a cute catchphrase or a curvy actress? Why does everybody have to get so precious about it?'

'But you're using sex to sell personal loans,' argued Joanna. Her tone wasn't aggressive, but he could tell she wasn't just playing devil's advocate either.

'And Scott's are using it to sell porridge oats, but nobody's getting morally indignant about them parading a six-pack in a kilt, are they? Sex sells, sex gets people's attention. What's the point of pretending it ain't so? Would we be a better society if none of our ads exploited sexual attraction to sell 80

their products? 'Twas ever thus. People have been selling sex or using sex for ulterior purposes since civilisation began. That's why we talk about the oldest profession.'

Joanna looked away distastefully, the conversation having become uncomfortable though he hadn't meant it to sound aggressive.

'So you're basically saying you're a whore?' asked a voice, which turned out to belong to Kathy, having insinuated herself into the group. She was sporting a welcome smile to dispel the confrontational edge the discussion had threatened to take.

'Absolutely not. I'm saying I'm a pimp. Other people sell their sexuality -

I just find ways to market and exploit it. Assisted by Ms Ford, here, I might add.'

'No, no, Rory. You're the one going to hell. I'm only watching.'

'Save it for the judge.'

'No, I'm saving the Helen Lindstrom story for the judge.'

'Don't you dare,' warned Rory, who really didn't think she would dare, but was utterly chilled by the prospect. A bit of ribbing and point-scoring was one thing, but that would be low, that would be below the belt, that would be. . . another invoice in respect of that overdue morality bill. He felt his guts turn to stone, and took a sip of his champagne just to keep his hand busy and thus hide his nervousness should it encourage Liz further.

'Who's Helen Lindstrom?' asked Max.

Oh God.

'A model,' Kathy informed. 'Mid-ranking. Lads-mag cover status - where do they all come from, by the way, and why do we know their names? - and about eleven minutes into her fifteen.'

'Yeah, they just sort of appear from nowhere, don't they,' Rory said, hoping to re-route the discussion. 'There used to be your supermodels, your pagethree girls and your young TV and pop starlets, but now there's this indeterminate tier of sorta-celeb models, isn't there? Your Catalinas, your Jordans, your Jacintas.
Her
real name's Mabel, by the way.'

This raised a laugh, Rory garnering as much eye-contact as he could in a quick sweep of the gathering.

'Jacinta, she's the one who made her name doing the muesli commercial?'

asked Joanna, providing an out. Rory could have kissed her. Well, hugged her, maybe.

'Yeah, that's the one,' he confirmed. 'Sex to sell cereal, I'm afraid. And a springboard to the lads-mag circuit for the lucky lady.'

'I don't see why,' Joanna said with a shrug. 'It was hardly a memorable ad, and she was barely distinct from any number of other models cavorting around in swimming costumes. Why did she particularly catch anyone's eye?'

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'And why do women in the ads always eat breakfast cereal in their swimming cozzies?' Kathy asked. Rory was faced with a choice of paths, neither of which appeared to be leading directly away from uncomfortable and hazardous ground.

'You're asking the wrong guy,' he replied, repaying Joanna's unwitting assistance with utter disingenuousness. Nothing personal, he just needed a route out of the woods and reckoned this might be it. 'I might use certain models because they're recognisable, but the arbiters of which ones
get
recognised are the lads-mag editors, presumably anticipating the tastes of their readers. Maybe if you could find a fourteen-year-old male, he could shed more light on it.'

'Bollocks,' Liz said, stepping from the metaphorical trees to block his exit.

'Jacinta made her name from the muesli ad because you could have hung the proverbial wet duffle coat on her nipples. Never mind catching the eye - she was practically poking it out.'

At this, Kathy glanced down then lifted her champagne glass so that her forearm was covering her chest. Nightmare. He hated it when women became self-conscious like that. Made him feel like they were about to start with that

'all men are potential rapists' stuff. Unfair, too: it was Liz's fault for blowing a cold wind through the conversation, but at least she seemed to have forgotten how they got on to the topic.

'So what's the Helen Lindstrom story?' asked Max.

Bastard.

'Helen Lindstrom? Do tell,' said another voice. It was Emily recently arrived at the bar or recently departed from another conversation. In fact, it appeared that most of the room was looking this way, first-hand celeb gossip naturally winning out over 'so what does your company do' blethers now that the paintballing post-mortem was complete. He thought he'd made a passable impression on Emily so far, taking her side against Parlabane on the bus, and she'd seemed pretty sporting about it when he gunned her down towards the end of the game. She seemed a little serious and stressed earlier, but now she looked far more comfortable with a drink in her hand and a roomful of fellow guests, it being more the natural territory of the PR creature. She was wearing a fine black dress with a drawn collar and a split down the front. Her hands were clasped in almost prayer position around her champagne flute, so it was not yet apparent how much the split might reveal and whether she was standing up for herself, so to speak. Also obscured at this stage was what she thought of Rory, but he couldn't envisage his stock doing anything but plummet in the next few moments.

'Why don't you tell it, Rory?' Liz said, finding a way to make it worse. It felt like she was handing him a revolver. He couldn't refuse because it would 82

further flag up his embarrassment, and he couldn't soft-soap it either. Liz was getting her revenge for some of the, ahem, creative decisions about which she had objected but been over-ruled, and there was to be no wriggling out. Best to take it like a man.

'Okay,' he began, trying to strike an impossible balance between wittily shameless and humorously apologetic. 'Just remember, I didn't make advertising such a sleazy place - but I do have to work there. We used Helen Lindstrom for a poster and print-media campaign we did for Kreem Soda. I personally thought we showed admirable constraint in eschewing all the sperm gags we could have worked with.'

That got a few laughs, but mainly from the guys.

'Anyway, don't know if you saw it, but we went for a spoof aphrodisiac theme, kind of trying to out-Lynx "the Lynx Effect". Sort of "beware what you're unleashing when you open this stuff - can you handle what all these women are going to do to you once you've become irresistible".'

'By drinking Kreem Soda,' Kathy said sardonically.

'Exactly. We were playing the so-naff-it's-cool card, which is actually a tricky one to pull off. Look at those Pot Noodle abominations if you want to see the carnage when it goes wrong.'

'So that was Helen Lindstrom? I thought it was Mira Neeson,' Emily asked. Put the house on it: outside of fourteen-year-old males and middle-aged ladsmag editors, the one constituency guaranteed to know their sorta-celeb models was female PR consultants.

'Yeah, we were just saying they're all interchangeable,' Joanna told her.

'It
was
Mira Neeson,' Rory continued. 'Because Helen Lindstrom walked off the set during the shoot and we had to get a replacement.'

'Why?' asked, well, just about everyone other than Liz. They didn't all vocalise it, but they didn't all need to.

'I was trying to get a certain look from her that she wasn't comfortable with,' he ventured, eyeing Liz to see if the empress's thumb would go up or down. Her look said up, but in the correct sense of the gesture: down actually meant sheath your sword and spare the fallen. Her own feelings were by this point barely material, though: the empress knew the crowd's desires, and their desire was to know what that look was.

'Okay, bear in mind we were going for exaggerated sexuality, intimidating aggression. Well, she was managing "come over here, big boy", but it wasn't quite lascivious enough.' Rory took a gulp of champagne. The crowd thought he was teasing out the moment, but he really needed the alcohol. 'So I told her, em, basically, that she should look like, well, no way of cushioning this one. . . '

'Get on with it, Rory,' Liz commanded.

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'Okay, I told her to look at the camera like she wanted it up the arse.'

There was a divisive mixture of embarrassed chuckles, amused guffaws (amused at the tale or Rory's discomfort, it was impossible to know) and, mainly, bemused sighs. Rory felt about three inches tall, all of it dick. He tried to avoid eye-contact without making it obvious he was avoiding eye-contact, but couldn't help catch a glimpse of Emily turning her head, as though shrinking from his loathsome presence. Then Liz steamed in with the punchline, but one that was unlikely to redeem the real butt of this joke.

'What Rory didn't know at this point was that Helen's ex-boyfriend had just done a kiss and tell with a Sunday tabloid in which he revealed, well, do I have to say?'

Evidently not. There was more laughter this time, partly in relief that the point of the tale wasn't merely to illustrate what a cynical, sexist twat Rory was. No, instead it was a sheer belter because it illustrated that as well as being a cynical, sexist twat, Rory could also be a blundering numpty. The petite waitress appeared in the doorway. She looked a little flushed and flustered, though the heat in the kitchen wasn't dampening that Robert Aldrich effect.

'Ladies and gentlemen, dinner is served,' she announced, at least five minutes too late. Rory no longer had an appetite. 84