Robert B. Parker (8 page)

“Mr. Adams?”

“Yes?”

“Mr. Locke will see you now.”

I walked behind the secretary’s wiggling buttocks across the big reception area and down the corridor with head-high cubicles on both sides and men in shirt sleeves working at typewriters and into a big private office with a big window that looked out over Madison Avenue and another big window into another big office across the street. There was probably a guy over there having an exit interview. Matter and anti-matter. The secretary smiled and closed the door behind me.

Mr. Locke was sitting with his feet on the window ledge facing out the window, his head tilted back, his eyes closed. He was tall and thin and blond and probably went to Cornell with John Merchent and his ushers. His gray flannel suit jacket hung on a hanger by the door. His blue oxford button-down was open at the neck and his blue and red rep tie was loosened. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and wing-tipped cordovan shoes. The Prince of Madison Avenue. Full uniform.

I stood by his desk. He still sat with his eyes closed.
Maybe I was supposed to launch into my spiel unprovoked.
No sir, I didn’t finish college. I felt my military … shit
. Locke kept staring at the insides of his eyelids. Then he sat up abruptly, swung his feet down, spun his chair around, and wrote for maybe a minute in longhand on a legal-size pad of blue-lined yellow paper. When he finished he read over what he’d written, made a spelling change, and sat back.

“Hi,” he said. “Whitney Locke. I was just writing some poetry.”

I nodded.

“You’re Boone Adams. Personnel sent you up.”

“Yes.”

He waved toward a chair. “Sit down, please.”

I did. My chair wasn’t as nice as his. But I wasn’t the copy chief. He sifted through some folders on his desk until he came up with my application and résumé.

“So you want to get into advertising?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“One of the things I’d suggest right off, and mind you, you want to work in advertising, I can get you in. But first I’d suggest you and the wife get together, maybe go down to the playroom, something like that, get a blackboard and very carefully chart your career plans. Be goal-oriented, think it through, and recognize that no one’s going to be giving you any breaks.”

“I’m not married, sir.”

“That’s too bad. It helps if you are. But whatever. Go to that blackboard and make a chart. Where do I want to be in five years? Ten? How long to be copy chief? Will I be satisfied as copy chief?”

I nodded.

He was still looking at my file. “Didn’t finish college,” he said.

“No, I felt my military responsibility …”

“Doesn’t matter, it’s the wrong college anyway. We only employ men from Princeton or Yale.”

“Oh.”

He smiled, stood up, and put out his hand. “Good to have talked with you, Boone. Let me know how you make out. Be sure to get that chart worked out and get yourself goal-oriented. Advertising is not a job, it’s a career.”

We shook hands. I went out.

At the Discretionary Mutual Insurance Company of America they gave me a writing test. In an interview cubicle in the personnel office they put me at a table, gave me a typewriter and a timer, and asked me to write a story based on the proposition that at noontime tomorrow everyone would lose the power of speech. It was my fifty-second job interview. I had twenty minutes. I wrote a thing called “Winterbaum for President” in which an out-of-work Jewish mime of that name found himself suddenly the great communicator in a speechless world, and became president of the U.S.A. Everyone told me it was a really creative piece and they hired me at three hundred and ninety dollars a month to be the editor of their house organ.

My boss was the Manager comma Advertising and Sales Promotion. The comma and the inversion mattered, I discovered. Advertising and Sales Promotion Manager was a lower rank. Only a Manager comma got a chair with arms and a plastic water carafe and a shoulder-high
glass-partitioned office. A Director comma got a partition more than head-high and a rug in addition to all the rest. As sales promotion editor I had a desk and a file cabinet and a chair without arms in the pit with all the other groundlings.

“Remember,” my boss told me on my first full day, “this magazine is a management tool. It is a sales promotion device, a means of communicating management’s point of view to the men in the field.”

I nodded. I was sitting in his office in his conference chair. The conference chair had no arms. Directors got conference chairs with arms.

“The field men, the agents are encouraged to view the magazine as theirs, and that’s good. It builds a sense of community. But it is not, I say again,
not
, their magazine. It is ours. All copy is approved upstairs by the general sales manager or his designee. Right?”

I said, “Right.”

“You’re in on the ground floor here, Boone,” he said. “You’re getting the chance to start a brand-new company pub. You’re not taking over something someone else devised. This is new.”

“Yes.”

“It’s a real creative opportunity, and the fact that you proved, with that splendid short story, that you’re one hell of a creative guy, you got hired.” He laughed. “Winterbaum for President, goddamn. What was that stain he had on his tie?”

“Beet soup,” I said.

“Yes. Good job.” My boss’s name was Walt Waters. He was a tall, crisp, horsey-looking product of Amherst
College and the Discretionary Mutual Executive Training Program.

“Thanks, Mr. Waters,” I said.

“Walt, remember, call me Walt. Everyone’s first-name here, even Lee.”

Lee was the president. When Walt said Lee his voice hushed a bit.

“Okay, Walt.”

“Now, let me give you a couple of tips. Being creative isn’t enough. You’ve got to be savvy as well. About the job. About people. About your appearance. Get a sunlamp, first thing, and keep yourself tanned. Don’t overdo it, but a nice understated tan makes a difference.”

I nodded.

“And,” he said with a swell friendly smile, “get some clothes. Look around. See how some of us are dressed, get the sense of the look, and then go out and open a charge at Brooks Brothers. It’s part of the game. Maybe it seems conformist to you. But it makes sense. A good product sells better in a good package. Right?”

“Right.”

I was sitting with the general sales manager in Lee’s office. Lee, being president, had an office with walls and a ceiling. He had a secretary with a good-looking ass, and he had a mahogany desk as big as a manager comma’s office. He looked kind of small sitting behind it, sort of like a white-haired cherub with bright pink cheeks. Probably too long under the sunlamp. Lee was looking at the current issue of
Discretionary Pulse
, the twelve-page four-color sales promotion toilet paper that I wrote and edited once a month. He was not pleased.

“Pat,” he said. “You sign off on this magazine every month. Am I right or wrong?”

There was a faint gloss of sweat on the upper lip of the general sales manager. He looked like he needed to urinate. If Lee turned up the volume a little, I thought he might, right through the fabric. Did the Brooks Brothers guarantee cover urine stains?
Now, for Busy Executives, Our New Fearproof Suit. Wet Your Pants in Our Three-Button
Model Elegantly Tailored in Our Own Workrooms
.

“Yes, I do, Lee,” the general sales manager said, “but I never saw this.”

“It’s your business to see it, Pat.” Lee looked at me. He had bright blue eyes under white eyebrows and he looked a little like a mean Santa Claus.

“Boone,” he said to me, “what’s the company policy on selling to Negroes?”

“We discourage it,” I said.

“Then why do you have a picture of one of our agents delivering one of our policies to a Negro couple in this month’s
Pulse?
”

“I was reading that copy you had me write for your speech to the Life Underwriters Council. That part about it being not only the right of every American to have life insurance protection, but the obligation of every life insurance professional to provide that protection. I thought you were including jigaboos.”

Lee bent forward toward me over his desk. “There will be no racial slurs in this office, or, by God, in this company. We do not encourage the sale of life insurance to Negro men and women because they are a poor business risk. Was that explained to you?”

I nodded.

Lee looked at the general sales manager. “Was it, Pat?”

Pat sat very straight in his chair. “Absolutely, Lee. I checked on that personally with Bill Reardon and he told me that Walt Waters had absolutely touched base with Boone on that score. No question about it.”

“It has nothing to do with race or with racial prejudice,”
Lee said. “It is a simple matter of dollars and cents, Boone.”

I nodded. The general sales manager said, “Absolutely.”

Lee eased back in his chair. “Boone,” he said. “I was your age once. I know how you feel. You’re full of piss and vinegar about equality, and I admire that. But when you’re older you’ll come to see that you can’t run a business on theory. When the Negroes become acceptable actuarial risks, I’ll be the first one to say, ‘Sell ’em, and keep selling ’em.’ ” Lee smiled at me. He was probably an excellent actuarial risk. Unless they rated you for being a blow. “Okay?” he said.

I nodded.

“So, let’s not have any more foul-ups, Pat,” Lee said.

“Roger,” Pat said.

“Wasn’t his fault, anyway,” I said. “I slipped it by him on purpose.”

Lee smiled some more. “That’s behind us,” Lee said. “Water under the dam.” He leaned briskly forward. “Let’s get back to work,” he said. The general sales manager and I got up and went out.

As I waited for the elevator the general sales manager said, “It was pretty decent of you to take the blame.” His voice was full of wonder.

I shrugged. “It was my fault,” I said.

“Lee can come down pretty hard,” the general sales manager said.

I nodded. The elevator came. I got in. The general sales manager said, “Well, let’s get to it. Let’s get this thing oiled up.” He walked down the hall toward his office with walls and a ceiling (only a little smaller than
Lee’s) with a spring in his step. I went down in the elevator.

Dear Jennifer
,

There is very little room in the corporate world for dignity. I saw the second- or third-ranking guy in a major corporation sweating with fear over a minor mistake because the president was scolding him. I suppose because he’s making a lot of money he then has a lot to lose by getting fired and so has more reason to be scared than I do. But it seemed more like he was simply scared that the boss was mad, the way a timid little kid is in elementary school, afraid of the teacher getting mad, not of what the teacher will do. I have a lot of trouble caring about the corporate goals … which are, after all, to make money for the stockholders. Probably a fine ambition, but I don’t really give a shit about the stockholders, and in fact, in my heart, I kind of want the corporation to lose
.

I love you

I was working on a promotional page in
Pulse
. The headline on my promotional page read, “1955 Is a $ales $ellabration = $ell Like $ixty in ’55.” The artwork was an oversized insurance agent with a briefcase under his arm, driving a tiny car at a high speed along a winding road made of dollar bills. At the end of the road was a Miami Beach moorish-castle hotel labeled
1955 SALES CONFERENCE: MIAMI
. While I was admiring this, Walt Waters came to my desk, putting on his suit jacket as he walked, and asked me to go into Bill Reardon’s office. Reardon was the Director comma Advertising, Public Relations, and Sales Promotion. His office was twice as large as Walt’s (exactly—I had measured them both one night when I worked late and no one was around), and the partition walls were twelve inches higher. In the safety of his office Bill had his coat off and his shirt cuffs turned up. But his tie was still snugged up to his collar and his coat was close. At the first sign of a superior he could whip down the cuffs and slip on the coat.

Walt and I sat down. Walt’s chair, I noticed, was nearer to Bill’s side of the desk than mine.

“Boone, we’ve got some problems,” Bill said. He looked at Walt.

Walt said, “You are a hell of a creative guy, Boone. I mean that, a hell of a creative guy.”

“But,” Bill said, “you’re not fitting in.”

I nodded.

Bill had a page of lined yellow paper on the desk in front of him. He glanced at it. “Last October you went out to Secaucus to do a picture story on the district office out there and showed up wearing neither suit coat nor tie.” He looked at me and raised his eyebrows.

I nodded.

He looked at his paper again. “And you ran the picture of the Negroes without clearing it with Walt, or me, or Pat Jones.”

I nodded. I had a sense where this was going.

“You refused to work on the United Fund campaign.”

Nod.

“And now”—Bill looked up from his list and looked full at me. Mr. District Attorney—“we have the year-end listing of conference qualifiers and there’s a dozen mistakes in middle initials, spelling of last names, district office codes …” He shook his head.

Walt said, “It’s just not enough to be creative, Boone.”

“Boone,” Bill Reardon said, “we’re going to have to let you go.”

I shrugged and stood up.

“You want to say anything, Boone, in your—ah—defense?” Walt said.

I shook my head. “Nope,” I said.

“You’re just going to leave like that?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve got two weeks pay coming, Boone.”

I pointed my index finger toward the sky and made a circular motion. “Whoopee,” I said.

Dear Jennifer
,

Getting fired is more depressing than I thought it would be. I hated the place and had no respect for it, or the people in it, but when they decide they don’t want you there, somehow it makes you feel undesirable, or wanting, valueless, maybe. But, anyway, it’s done. Too bad I didn’t protest about the Negro business, or something dignified, matter of principle, you know? But I got fired for being careless and sloppy in proofreading a list. It’s hard to be proud of that. On the other hand, how can I care about anything, let alone the middle initial of some meatball in Newburgh, New York, who sold a million dollars worth of life insurance? The scary thing is that I don’t see how I’ll be able to care about anything, ever, except you, and you’re gone. What will I do? I don’t want to get ahead. I want to go back
.