Fire in the Firefly (10 page)

When he looks at his inbox, he finds a note from Zhanna Lamb.

DRAG AND CLOP

That's the sound a heel makes on pavement. A dragging sound, followed by a clop. Problem with your marketing concept: How to make drag and clop sexy? Know you'll think of something. Thx for the ride. Z

Roebuck
re-opens
the intranet, erases what he's written, and types DRAG AND CLOP?

Daniel Greenwood is a lucky man. He is fond of Daniel Greenwood.

Roebuck opens the door that night to a house full of balloons. All red; all wearing happy faces above the lettering in brazen pink: “THANKS!!!” Anne is limp in the centre of the room, wordless. There are dozens, no, hundreds, nudging at the ceiling, trailing ribbons like the tails of jostling sperm. Is the imagery deliberate or is this just his own interpretation? He is learning not to underestimate Yasmin's natural talents. Roebuck herds them together and pushes them in bunches out the door. Threads of carmine tadpoles stream toward the setting sun.

They had decided—he and Anne together—that their first, best hope was Yasmin's waking up with sober second thoughts. “I'm sure that once she understands how uncomfortable this is,” Anne said, “she'll just drop the whole idea.”

“
I
was the one uncomfortable. You were the one making it worse!”

“Please don't start that again.”

That was Saturday night, the acrid end of long deliberations in the wake of Yasmin's raptures. Sunday: silence. Monday: a houseful of balloons.

He has seldom seen Anne so utterly speechless, though she wasn't that night. But this is no time for pity. “It's all your doing,” he says, standing in the doorway.

“Oh, God! Please don't keep saying that. What are we going to do?”

“I don't see what else we
can
do. I don't see what other choice you've left us.”

He still can't quite believe it. He still can't believe how this has come together. “No,” he'd blurted in blind refusal. “Yasmin, get that idea right out of your head.” She had stared at him, trembling, then collapsed into another spasm of tears. And then Anne, his own wife, Anne, who even then—even in circumstances as unequivocal as these—could not resist her role as spousal opposition. “Julius, please!”

What he recalls is the cramp of betrayal, the feeling of connectedness spinning apart. Yasmin had recommenced her rhythmic moan, face down on the tablecloth. How could she? How could Anne fail to take his side, even in a thing like this? Dumbstruck, Roebuck retreated to the bathroom.

It was then as he remembers it, just then, seated numbly on the john, that he recollected his appointment at the No Fuss Vasectomy Clinic at four o'clock this Wednesday afternoon. The spinning stopped, turned, and began to rotate in the opposite direction. Roebuck sat on a little longer, weighing probability.

“All right,” he said, rejoining the women. “If that's what you both want, I'm prepared to do it.”

“Julius!” cried Yasmin, surging to her feet.

“
Julius
?” said Anne.

“Oh, Julius!” purred Yasmin, arms now clasped around his neck.

Later that night, much later, they had faced the situation objectively, he and Anne, and decided that for now there was nothing they could do. It was wait and see, at this stage. The rest of the weekend came and went: Morgan had a soccer match; Katie a friend's birthday party; Anne, as usual, arranged the buying and wrapping of an
age-appropriate
gift. Roebuck mowed the lawn and washed the car and drove out to the soccer pitch. On Sunday afternoon he put in two good hours at the gym; Anne managed a few sets of tennis.

Monday afternoon: clarity.

“This is all your doing,” says Roebuck, standing in the doorway, spilling red balloons into the willing sky.

A novel is a month with a woman you love.

A short story is a weekend with a woman you like.

A newspaper is an hour with a call girl.

A blog is four minutes with a heroin hooker.

Copywriting is the same again, except you're the one giving the blow job.

The Collected Sayings of Julius Roebuck

G
reenwood likes the idea from the start, or almost the start, a fortunate thing for them both because the meeting at Artemis has returned him to work flatter than spilt beer. Roebuck has occupied his art director's office bright and early Tuesday morning with a pot of coffee and two cups on a platter. It's obvious, glancing around, that Daniel's being kept too busy to have achieved much in the way of workspace decor. ADs, in Roebuck's experience, tend to cover every surface with gaudy prints and blocks of edgy, out-of-focus close-ups. All that Greenwood has got up so far is his picture of the condom and the screw—the same board he showed the client—and a framed poster Roebuck recognizes, but hasn't seen in decades. He stands with his coffee mug, studying it. It's a dappled photo of a spotted fawn, sleeping peacefully on a forest floor above the text: “If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it's yours. If it doesn't, it never was.” The image sends Roebuck straight back to his student days.

“Five minutes after you left,” says Greenwood, tossing his jacket on a chair and accepting a mug from Roebuck's tray, “they sat me down with the VP, Brand Engagement.” Greenwood drops into the seat behind his desk. “She just couldn't wait to tell me how much she loved the campaign.
Loved it!
Loved
our ideas. Loved, loved,
loved
all the original thinking, and all that bold imagination! Thought it was just so awesome …”

Roebuck is still gazing at the poster. He sets down the empty tray. “But now,” he says, “they were very pleased to take this opportunity to provide you with some insight on how your boards could be improved.”

“You got it.” Greenwood is rubbing his face, eyes squeezed shut. “Starting with the teasers.
Such a terrific idea!
So cool. So totally
out-of
-
the-box
.
Wow!
They just loved the concept. She went on and on about how everyone thought it was
so creative
…”

“
But they think it might be just a tad offensive.”

Greenwood is speaking from behind his fingers. He opens his eyes, one at a time and retrieves his cup. “She said they worry how something that aggressive can ever earn consumers' trust.”

“Valid point.”

“But that
was
the point, leveraging mistrust! Losing that will gut the whole campaign.”

“It's okay, Dan. We'll push back. This always happens, you know that. Clients need to see that you can think outside the box so that when they stuff you back inside it, you'll still come up with something worth their money. That's how it works.”

“Yeah but …”

“
Don't worry about that right now. There's something else I want to talk about. Have you checked your calendar?”

“I j
ust walked in.”

Roebuck looks at his watch.

“They kept me out there last night till way past dinner time!”

“When you do get around to starting your day …”

“I'd have started by now if you …”

“You'll note that you are booked for a two o'clock meeting.”

Greenwood has booted up and is peering at his screen. “Drag and Clop. What the hell?” 

“
You can thank your friend Zhanna for that.”

“Zhanna?”

“I gave her a lift from Artemis. It was only yesterday.”

“Right. So much went on after you guys left. What does Zhanna have to do with …” He stares at the screen “Drag and Clop?”

“That's the sound of high heels.”

“Can I ask what is it with you and women's shoes?”

“No names mentioned, strictly between you and me for the time being, but a certain producer of
high-end
women's footwear may be unhappy with its present image in the marketplace.”

“You're looking to pitch a shoe account?”

“I congratulate myself daily for the wisdom of your hire.”

“I repeat, what is it with you and women's shoes?”

“Listen, nobody has ever marketed shoes by
sound
. I'm thinking it's a whole new model of branding.”

“Drag and clop?”
Are you kidding me?”

“Think of it like a mating call.”

“And there you go again with the mating calls …”

“Zhanna pointed out the problem. How do you make drag and clop sexy?”

“What
is
drag and clop?”

“You're not listening. It's the sound of high heel shoes. A
drag
sound, followed by a
clop
sound. That's the first order of business, to run some acoustics. But I think she's pretty much nailed it. You haven't talked to her since yesterday?”

“No.”

“Clever girl. Incredibly insightful. She should run for office.”

“Zhanna? In politics? There's a thought.” Greenwood squints again. “But I think I'm beginning to hear what you're saying. The sound of high heel shoes, in action …”

“Picture a woman walking in heels,” says Roebuck. “Got it? What we're looking for is the sound she's creating. Now imagine her walking toward you down a sidewalk, say, or the terrazzo floor of a shopping mall.”

“All right.” Greenwood's eyes snap open. “Interesting. Automatically,
automatically
, I'm seeing her as attractive.”

“Is it the heels or the way she's walking?”

“For the purpose of this exercise I would say there's no distinction.”

Roebuck nods and scribbles a note. Greenwood has settled back into his chair. “Okay. I do hear a kind of a dragging sound—as the hard part of the heel scrapes along the ground. Then the rest of the foot comes down. That would be your
clop
, I guess.” His face has softened and the corners of his lips turn up.

“Look at you” Roebuck says. “You're smiling!”

“It
is
pleasurable, that sound.”

“I bet if we put a monitor on you, it'd show your heart rate spiking. Your frontal cortex is getting a major hit of oxytocin.”

“Worth running some tests.  Client pay?”

“There is no client, Daniel. Not at present. But I admire your instinct. For the sake of argument, let's say there is a client, and the client has money for a television campaign.”

“Drag and clop … Not the most lyrical of phrases.”

“But maybe we don't have to use it as a phrase. Maybe we rely on the sound itself? Do we need to say it in words? Make a
high-fidelity
recording of a model walking down a runway, enhance the acoustics, and play with that?”

“Like the background beat in the soundtrack? I get it. Sure, it's definitely percussive. Sort of like the drum track in a piece of music. There's a rhythm.”

“Good! I like that.” Roebuck swirls the coffee in his mug like wine. “Though there's something about drag and clop I also like. It's so clunky, so ugly. The client would hate it. Guaranteed to get attention.”

“That's your technique, isn't it? Piss them off then talk them around.”

“Seems to work.”

But Greenwood isn't listening. “I'm thinking about your mating calls.” He sits up straighter, hands on his knees, fingers tapping. “What if we use animals?”

“Animals? What, wearing stilettos?”

“It's
your
idea! Antlers on the moose, mane on the lion; all that crap you're always on about. They're all some form of mating call. You said so yourself!”

Greenwood is on his feet. “Here's what I'm seeing.” He comes to a stop in the centre of the room, hands poised
mid-air
like a conductor stretching the hold between notes. “Opening frame is your classic
nature-shot
: A moose, say, standing in a pool of lily pads, water streaming off his head as he lifts it up out of the water.
Natural Geographic
stuff. We hear the sound of a moose call. Moose make mating calls, don't they?”

Roebuck has to think. “Yes. Hunters use moose calls, so moose must too. Yes, definitely. Moose make mating calls.”

“Then they're likely to be loud. Perfect. When he hears the call, our moose turns his massive head, immediately searching for the source of the sound. Then the image changes. To what? To a lion! Do lions call?”

“I don't know
…
”

“What animals call?”

“Well, birds. Lots of birds … Wolves. Wolves howl.”

“Wolves! Wolves are good! Yeah. Wolves are perfect. So now we see a wolf, gliding through his forest. Suddenly we hear a howl, off screen—everybody recognizes a wolf howl—and instantly our wolf stops dead and turns to look. What other animals? We need a few. What other animals make good mating howls?”

“What am I, Marlin Perkins?”

“Who's Marlin Perkins?”

“Never mind. How about loons? Loons make excellent calls.”

“Not sure. Loons have a bit of an image, but maybe that's good. Whatever. Let's go with loons for now. Same style of shot, then, but this time it's a loon, paddling around on some glittering lake. He hears that famous call and frantically points his bill, searching … searching … Maybe he fluffs his feathers, looking eager. Or maybe there's a group of loons, suddenly all getting worked up. With me? It's a sequence of shorts, all animals—four or five different kinds, if we can squeeze them in—all responding to mating calls, all of them
hard-wired
by instinct to follow that sound.”

“I see what you're saying. But where is it taking me?”

“So here comes the finale. Underneath it all we lay down your drag and clop soundtrack; running right through the whole segment. Very faint at the beginning; so soft you can hardly hear it in the moose sequence. But getting louder as the spot goes on. By the last vignette—the loon or the wolf or whatever—it's definitely audible, but it's still a mystery to the audience because it doesn't fit, this weird sound threading through the background of all these Nature Channel images. The last one's the reveal. Suddenly there's a woman
on-screen
. Or maybe we never even see the woman herself, just her feet—that might be effective—she's wearing the brand of shoe we're marketing, walking, walking … Drag and clop, drag and clop goes the soundtrack, and now we've identified the source of that incongruous sound. With me so far?”

Roebuck spins a finger.

“Okay, so the very last sequence—the scene that everything else that's happened so far has been
teeing-up
—is a man … or possibly a group of men … sitting in a café, let's say. They're minding their own business, intent on whatever they're doing, talking, laughing—until they hear that sound: that mesmerizing sound of a woman walking by in heels. The instant they hear it, the very second, they stop, they freeze, all of them stare in the same direction—just like all the other animals we've been watching—because nothing else matters now, but locating the source of that sound. Then we run the tag. Call of the Wild or something like that, alongside the logo. What do you think?”

“Call of the Wild … That's good! You could build a whole campaign around a theme like that. I definitely like Call of the Wild. Wonder if the copyright's expired? Jack London's been dead at least a century. Funny, Zach and I read it just last week.”

Greenwood isn't listening. “The premise is that the sound our product makes appeals straight to men's animal instincts. The reptilian brain, and all. There's a lot you can play with. And you're right; it would be fun to pitch. It'd be one for the history books, for sure, if we could get away with it. It could do well on the Net.”

“Agreed!” Roebuck is up on his feet now, too. “But I'm a little worried about all that nature footage. Not exactly up our alley. Where'd we get the video? It would cost a fortune to commission.”

“You'd be surprised how much of that stuff is out there in stock. Some of these wildlife guys spend weeks in the woods, filming, hiding in the bushes, and what not. For them that's the money shot. That's how they make their living.”

“How do you know all this?”