If the River Was Whiskey (6 page)

Then the Ayatollah looks at me, one blink of these lizard eyes he’s got, and he says something in this throat-cancer rasp—he’s tired or he needs an enema or something—and the interpreter stands, the fourteen guys against the wall with the Uzis stand, some character out the window starts yodeling the midday prayers, and I stand too. I can feel it, instinctively—I mean, I’m perceptive, you know that, Bob—that’s it for the first day. I mean, nothing. Zero. Zilch. And I go out of there shaking my head, all these clowns with the Uzis closing in on me like piranha, and I’m thinking how in christ does this guy expect to
upgrade his image when half the country’s in their bathrobe morning, noon, and night?

Okay. So I’m burned from jet lag anyway, and I figure I’ll write the day off, go back to the hotel, have a couple Tanqueray rocks, and catch some z’s. What a joke, huh? They don’t have Tanqueray, Bob. Or rocks either. They don’t have Beefeater’s or Gordon’s—they don’t have a bar, for christsake. Can you believe it—the whole damn country, the cradle of civilization, and it’s dry. All of a sudden I’m beginning to see the light—this guy really
is
a fanatic. So anyway I’m sitting at this table in the lobby drinking grape soda—yeah, grape soda, out of the can—and thinking I better get on the horn with Chuck back in Century City, I mean like I been here what—three hours?—and already the situation is going down the tubes, when I feel this like pressure on my shoulder.

I turn around and who is it but the interpreter, you know, the guy with the face. He’s leaning on me with his elbow. Like I’m a lamppost or something, and he’s wearing this big shit-eating grin. He’s like a little Ayatollah, this guy—beard, bathrobe, slippers, hat, the works—and he’s so close I can smell the roots of his hair.

“I don’t like the tone you took with the Imam,” he says in this accent right out of a Pepperidge Farm commercial, I mean like Martha’s Vineyard all the way, and then he slides into the chair across from me. “This is not John Travolta you’re addressing, my very sorry friend. This is the earthly representative of the Qā’im, who will one day come to us to reveal the secrets of the divinity, Allah be praised.” Then he lowers his voice, drops the smile, and gives me this killer look. “Show a little respect,” he says.

You know me, Bob—I don’t take shit from anybody, I don’t care who it is, Lee Iacocca, Steve Garvey, Joan Rivers (all clients of ours, by the way), and especially not from some nimrod that looks like he just walked off the set of
Lawrence of Arabia
, right?
So I take a long swallow of grape soda, Mr. Cool all the way, and then set the can down like it’s a loaded .44. “Don’t tell me,” I go, “—Harvard, right?”

And the jerk actually smiles. “Class of ‘68.”

“Listen, pal,” I start to say, but he interrupts me.

“The name is Hojatolislam.”

Hey, you know me, I’m good with names—have to be in this business. But Hojatolislam? You got to be kidding. I mean I don’t even attempt it. “Okay,” I say, “I can appreciate where you’re coming from, the guy’s a big deal over here, yeah, all right…but believe me, you take it anyplace else and your Ayatollah’s got about as positive a public image as the Son of Sam. That’s what you hired us for, right? Hey, I don’t care what people think of the man, to me, I’m an agnostic personally, and this is just another guy with a negative public perception that wants to go upscale. And I’m going to talk to him. Straight up. All the cards on the table.”

And then you know what he does, the chump? He says I’m crass. (Crass—and I’m wearing an Italian silk suit that’s worth more than this joker’ll make in six lifetimes and a pair of hand-stitched loafers that cost me…but I don’t even want to get into it.) Anway, I’m crass. I’m going to undermine the old fart’s credibility, as if he’s got any. It was so-and-so’s party that wanted me in—to make the Ayatollah look foolish—and he, Hojatolislam, is going to do everything in his power to see that it doesn’t happen.

“Whoa,” I go, “don’t let’s mix politics up in this. I was hired to do a job here and I’m going to do it, whether you and the rest of the little ayatollahs like it or not.”

Hoji kinda draws himself up and gives me this tight little kiss-my-ass smile. “Fine,” he says, “you can do what you want, but you know how much of what you said this morning came across? In
my
translation, that is?”

Then it dawns on me: no wonder the Ayatollah looks like
he’s in la-la land the whole time I’m talking to him—nothing’s getting through. “Let me guess,” I say.

But he beats me to it, the son of a bitch. He leans forward on his elbows and makes this little circle with his thumb and index finger and then holds it up to his eye and peeks through it—real cute, huh?

I don’t say a word. But I’m thinking okay, pal, you want to play hardball, we’ll play hardball.

So it sounds like I’m in pretty deep, right? You’re probably thinking it’s tough enough to market this turkey to begin with, let alone having to deal with all these little ayatollahs and their pet gripes. But the way I see it, it’s no big problem. You got to ask yourself, what’s this guy got going for him? All right, he’s a fanatic. We admit it. Up front. But hell, you can capitalize on anything. Now the big thing about a fanatic is he’s sexy—look at Hitler, Stalin, with that head of hair of his, look at Fidel—and let’s face it, he’s got these kids, these so-called martyrs of the revolution, dying for him by the thousands. The guy’s got charisma to burn, no doubt about it. Clean him up and put him in front of the TV cameras, that’s the way I see it—and no, I’m not talking Merv Griffin and that sort of thing; I mean I can’t feature him up there in a luau shirt with a couple of gold chains or anything like that—but he could show some chest hair, for christsake. I mean he’s old, but hell, he’s a pretty sexy guy in his way. A power trip like that, all those kids dying in the swamps, giving the Iraqis hell, that’s a very sexy thing. In a weird way, I mean. Like it’s a real turn-on. Classic. But my idea is maybe get him a gig with GTE or somebody. You know, coach up his English like with that French guy they had on selling perfume a couple years back, real charming, sweet-guy kinda thing, right? No, selling the man is the least of my worries. But if I can’t talk to him, I’m cooked.

So I go straight to my room and get Chuck on the horn.
“Chuck,” I tell him, “they’re killing me over here. Send me an interpreter on the next plane, will you? Somebody that’s on our side.”

Next morning, there’s a knock on my door. It’s this guy about five feet tall and five feet wide, with this little goatee and kinky hair all plastered down on his head. His name’s Parviz. Yesterday he’s selling rugs on La Brea, today he’s in Tehran. Fine. No problem. Only thing is he’s got this accent like Akim Tamiroff, I mean I can barely understand him myself, he’s nodding off to sleep on me, and I’ve got an appointment with the big guy at one. There’s no time for formalities, and plus the guy doesn’t know from shit about PR anyway, so I sit him down and wire him up with about sixty cups of crank and then we’re out the door.

“Okay, Parviz,” I say, “let’s run with it.”

Of course, we don’t even get in the door at the Ayatollah’s place and these creeps with the Uzis have Parviz up against the wall, feeling him up and jabbering away at him in this totally weird language of theirs—sounds like a tape loop of somebody clearing their throat. I mean, they feel me up too, but poor Parviz, they strip him down to his underwear—this skinny-strap T-shirt with his big pregnant gut hanging out and these boxer shorts with little blue parrots on them—and. the guy’s awake now, believe me. Awake, and sweating like a pig. So anyway, they usher us into this room—different room, different house than yesterday, by the way—and there he is, the Ayatollah, propped up on about a hundred pillows and giving us his lizard-on-a-rock look. Hoji’s there too, of course, along with all the other Ayatollah clones with their raggedy beards and pillbox hats.

Soon as Hoji gets a load of Parviz though, he can see what’s coming and he throws some kind of fit, teeth flashing in his beard, his face bruised up like a bag of bad plums, pissing and moaning and pointing at me and Parviz like we just got done raping his mother or something. But hey, I’ve taken some
meetings in my time and if I can’t handle it, Bob, I mean who can? So I just kinda brush right by Hoji, a big closer’s smile on my face, and shake the old bird’s hand, and I mean nobody shakes his hand—nobody’s laid skin on him in maybe ten years, at least since the revolution, anyway. But I figure the guy used to live in Paris, right? He’s gotta have a nose for a good bottle of wine, a plate of crayfish, Havana cigars, the track, he’s probably dying for somebody to press some skin and shoot the bull about life in the civilized world. So I shake his hand and the room tenses up, but at least it shuts up Hoji for a minute and I see my opening. “Parviz,” I yell over my shoulder, “tell him that I said we both got the same goal, which is positive name/face recognition worldwide. I mean billboards on Sunset, the works, and if he listens to me and cleans up his act a little, I’m ninety-nine percent sure we’re going home.”

Well, Parviz starts in and right away Hoji cuts him off with this high-octane rap, but the Ayatollah flicks his eyes and it’s like the guy just had the tongue ripped out of his head, I mean incredible, bang, that’s it. Hoji ducks his head and he’s gone. And me, I’m smiling like Mr. Cool. Parviz goes ahead and finishes and the old bird clears his throat and croaks something back.

I’m not even looking at Parviz, just holding the Ayatollah’s eyes—by the way, I swear he dyes his eyebrows—and I go, “What’d he say?”

And Parviz tells me. Twice. Thing is, I can’t understand a word he says, but the hell with it, I figure, be positive, right? “Okay,” I say, seeing as how we’re finally getting down to brass tacks, “about the beard. Tell him beards went out with Jim Morrison—and the bathrobe business is kinda kinky, and we can play to that if he wants, but wouldn’t he feel more comfortable in a nice Italian knit?”

The big guy says nothing, but I can see this kinda glimmer in his eyes and I know he’s digging it, I mean I can feel it, and I figure we’ll worry about the grooming later and I cut right to
the heart of it and lay my big idea on him, the idea that’s going to launch the whole campaign.

This is genius, Bob, you’re going to love it.

I ask myself, how do we soften this guy a little, you know, break down the barriers between him and the public, turn all that negative shit around? And what audience are we targeting here? Think about it. He can have all the camel drivers and Kalashnikov toters in the world, but let’s face it, the bottom line is how does he go down over here and that’s like no-wheresville. So my idea is this: baseball. Yeah, baseball. Where would Castro be without it? What can the American public relate to—and I’m talking the widest sector now, from the guys in the boardroom to the shlump with the jackhammer out the window there—better than baseball? Can you dig it: the Ayatollah’s a closet baseball fan, but his people need him so much—love him, a country embattled, he’s like a Winston Churchill to them—they won’t let him come to New York for a Yankee game. Can you picture it?

No? Well, dig the photo. Yeah. From yesterday’s
New York Times.
See the button there, on his bathrobe? Well, maybe it is a little fuzzy, AP is the pits, but that’s a “Go Yankees!” button I gave him myself.

No, listen, he liked it, Bob, he liked it. I could tell. I mean I lay the concept on him and he goes off into this fucking soliloquy, croaking up a storm, and then Parviz tells me it’s okay but it’s all over for today, he’s gotta have his hat surgically removed or something, and the guys with the Uzis are closing in again…but I’m seeing green, Bob, I’m seeing him maybe throwing out the first ball this spring, Yankees versus the Reds or Pirates—okay, okay, wrong league—the Birds, then—I’m telling you, the sun on his face, Brooks Brothers draping his shoulders, the cameras whirring, and the arc of that ball just going on and on, out over the grass, across the airwaves and into the lap of every regular Joe in America.

Believe me, Bob, it’s in the bag.