Syrup (3 page)

The receptionist sends me a truly insulting smile—only half her mouth even makes the effort—but I just put that down to her being gorgeous.

Gorgeous women really annoy me.

Not all gorgeous women. Some gorgeous women I like a lot. Gorgeous women who like me, for example, I can’t help but find attractive. Gorgeous smart women I like a lot. But the rest, I can’t stand.

The problem, as I see it, is that a sad percentage of gorgeous women just settle for being gorgeous. They get to sixteen, go, “Well, I’m gorgeous, people like me, that’s it,” and just
stop.
I mean, they’ve got nothing on the girls who struggle onward with zits and bad dates, the girls who fight life every step of the way so by the time they’re twenty they’re funny and smart and cynical and utterly, utterly desirable.

That’s
what I like.

Which makes what happens next really ironic.

The New Products Marketing Manager enters the room and I am stunned. I am flabbergasted. I want to grab her, fling her across the table and make love to her. For whole seconds I can do nothing but stare.

She’s about my age, but she walks like an experienced nut-cracker. Her hair is shoulder-length, jet-black and sheer enough to deflect bullets. Her legs pop out of her heels and proudly strut their stuff all the way up to her miniskirt. Her eyebrows could cut steel. Her face is exquisitely cruel, and I can immediately tell she has never smiled in her whole life.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Scat,” she says briskly, seating herself across from me. She is carrying a slim folder and she slips it onto the table. I am not watching the folder. “My name is 6.”

A response is called for here. I realize this far too late.

“Mr. Scat,” she says sternly, “for your information, I fuck girls. So take your eyes elsewhere.”

“Sorry.” To avoid embarrassing myself further by asking her to repeat her name, which sounded suspiciously like her dress size, I push a business card across to her. She returns the favor and I study her card. It confirms that her name is 6. I am impressed. I bet her real surname begins with Z and she got sick of always being last in line.

“Mr. Scat,” she says. I am already in love with her lips. “Are you aware of how many unsolicited approaches our company receives from people like yourself?”

I consider taking a punt, but decide against it. “No.”

“Actually, not that many,” she says. “But the point is they’re all crap. Without exception. We’ve never bought one.” She leans forward. “I tell you this now so you don’t become too disappointed at the rejection.”

(Part of the problem with selling ideas to marketers is jealousy. Marketers are supposed to come up with their own ideas.)

“Thank you for setting my expectations,” I say.

“You’re welcome.” She looks at her watch. It is expensive. “You have thirty seconds.”

At this, I lose my cool a little. “Thirty seconds? I have an idea that could make your company millions and you want to hear it in thirty seconds?”

6 blinks. She seems genuinely surprised. “Mr. Scat, we have thirty seconds to sell our ideas to our customers. It’s called advertising.” She even looks a little hurt, and her pouting lips make me want. to ravish her even more.

“You’re right,” I say, humbled. “Let me apologize.” My eyes narrow cunningly. “Over dinner.”

6 sighs deeply. “On my office wall, Mr. Scat, is a large, nude picture of Elle Macpherson. I have this picture to remind people such as yourself that my ideal lover is one without a penis.”

“Fine,” I say, as if this doesn’t faze me in the slightest. In truth I am completely fazed. I’m so fazed I’ve forgotten what I’m here for.

“You have seven seconds left,” 6 says.

“That’s not fair,” I protest.

“Four,” she says, and she’s actually looking at her watch.

I spill it. “New cola product. Black can. Called Fukk.”

6 looks at me for a long time, expressionless. I am beginning to wonder if she has granted me bonus time and I should be expanding my description, when she says, “Mr. Scat, I would be pleased to have dinner with you tonight. The Saville, seven o‘clock.”

In self-defense, I would like to say that I wasn’t taken in by her looks. I mean, sure, she was the type that would make shallow men in cars yell out things like, “Hey,
baby! Woo!”
but not me. I’m not like that.

What I’m trying to say is that, really, I was interested in her mind.

No, really.

See, you just have to respect someone who really markets themselves well.

Some of us change our names to something crazy, zany and/or wacky. Some favor crazy zany wacky fashion, like 1930s hats or purple baggy pants. Some use particular sayings over and over, creating their own bylines. Some just go off the edge and don’t do anything at all.

When you go to all that effort, and you see other people making a lot of effort for pretty pathetic results, you have to admire someone who really pulls it off.

So you see, when you strip it down, what I really felt for 6 was professional respect for a colleague.

Plus, okay, a deep desire to get naked with her.

The Saville at seven is very much a Porsche occasion. It’s disappointing, therefore, that I don’t have a Porsche.

But this is no obstacle. The first thing I do when I get home is call a Porsche dealership. I tell them I’ve just arrived from Australia and am leaving tomorrow for England, but while I’m here I’d like to purchase a car for my father’s birthday. Would it be at all possible for them to extend their hours for me? The man tells me, with the tone of someone who has just stumbled across a surprise commission on fifty thousand, that the dealership never closes for its valued clients. I commend them for their customer-friendly policy and tell them to expect me around six.

Then I find a nearby Mercedes-Benz dealership and deliver the same spiel. Then a SAAB dealer. Then finally a Ford dealer.

The thing is, you can’t just rock up on foot and ask to take an expensive car like a Porsche for a spin. But you can test drive a Porsche if you turn up in a Mercedes, and you can test drive a Mercedes if you turn up in a SAAB, and you can test drive a SAAB if you turn up in a late-model Ford. I’m pretty sure I can sucker the Ford guys on foot.

My calls complete, I ask Sneaky Pete for wardrobe assistance. “Occasion?” he asks quietly.

“Seduction. Beautiful girl hiding her desire for me beneath a charade of lesbianism.”

Sneaky Pete absorbs this silently. He stares into my closet, then rips out a jacket, a tie, pants and a shirt. I’m impressed, but he’s just getting started. He wanders over to my desk and studies my accessories. Sadly, nothing there appears to take his fancy, and he disappears into his own room. When he returns, he is carrying a Rolex, sunglasses and a thin chain I’m not sure if I’m supposed to put on my wrist, my waist or around my neck.

“Thanks,” I say gratefully. Sneaky Pete nods and silently withdraws.

When I’m showered, shaved and dressed, I catch a bus to the Ford dealership. It’s no problem to talk my way into a Ford, and from here the process goes smoothly all the way up, so when I slide my current-year Mercedes into the Porsche dealership, there is a small man with bright eyes helping me out of the car. The Porsche people are a little more strict about letting people take test drives on their own, but this doesn’t slow me down for long, either. I drive around with the dealer in tow, admiring the car, and when we get back I pretend to call my father on my cellphone.

“Hey, Dad,” I say loudly. I am trying very hard to let everyone hear me while appearing to be concerned that no one hears me. “Where are you, at the studio? ... How’s Geena? ... And Uma? ... Fantastic.” I act so badly I make myself sick.

“So, Dad.” The dealer is pretending to arrange a potted plant. He turns it left, surveys it critically, turns it back. His acting is far . worse than mine. “I’ve got a surprise. No, just be out the front of One in twenty minutes. Okay? ... Great. Love to you. Okay. Okay.”

I turn to the dealer. “It’s a done deal. Gimme the car.”

He breaks out in smiles. I give him a big greasy helping of my own. We are both happy, smiling people. “You take American Express, right?”

“Of course,” he says, mortally offended.

Inside, of course, I am astounded to discover that my American Express Gold Card is missing. I rifle through my wallet, spilling three hundred dollars in cash (my entire savings), my bogus American Film Institute card and my driver’s license across the desk. “I can’t believe this.” The dealer proffers great sympathy. “Hey,” I say, “you know who I am, right? You don’t mind me fixing you up tomorrow?”

The dealer, who of course has never heard of me in his life, picks up my driver’s license. I can see him considering whether he should know me or not.

“Look, tell you what,” I say. “I’ll leave that with you. As securiry. ”

He’s doubtful, but it’s amazing how flexible people can be when they think there’s a commission in it. He calls someone to check that I exist, and apparently I do. So I get the car.

Porsche’s success is largely due to excellent marketing, but it’s still a fuck of a good car. I put the foot down and eat up most of Los Angeles in twenty minutes.

NEVER, NEVER DISCUSS TASTE. TASTE IS 90 PERCENT PSYCHOLOGICAL AND IT DOESN’T SELL COLA; IT’S ROUGHLY A TENTH AS IMPORTANT AS IMAGE. THERE HAVE BEEN STUDIES.

The Saville is amazingly classy. I doubt I’d even be let inside a place like this unless I drove a Porsche, sunglasses or not.

By some beautiful stroke of fate, 6 is already inside and seated just behind the glass, so she sees me drive up. This is great luck, because it frees me from having to slip the Porsche into conversation somewhere. I grin to her as I toss the keys to the valet and she raises one killer eyebrow in return. She is so sexy I am in pain.

When I arrive at the table, I see that she’s wearing a white dress, which is clinging to her so tightly I doubt she can breathe. Against her midnight hair, the effect is a little dizzying. “6,” I say. “You look ravishing.”

“Mr. Scat.” She hesitates.

“Please,” I say, sitting. “Just Scat.”

“Scat.” She presses long, elegant fingers together. Pianist fingers. Brain surgeon fingers. Except for the nails, which are half an inch long and painted black. “Let me jump right in.”

“Please do,” I say with real feeling.

“This Fukk Cola ... it’s intriguing. I think it may have potential.”

“Thank you,” I say, beginning to fiddle with my napkin. On some level I realize this is a giveaway of my nervousness at having a power dinner at the Saville, but I can’t help myself. I try to twirl the napkin every so often to appear kind of bored and cool rather than manic-obsessive.

6 ignores my napkin performance to pick up a short stick of celery and slip it between her lips. “You were thinking, of course,” she says, gently masticating the celery, “of the gwwfnnnfss hggnnyupp dmmnngffn.”

6 is looking at me and I abruptly realize that I should quit concentrating so much on the way she slips food between her lips and start concentrating on what she is saying. “Pardon me?”

She frowns. “I asked if you were thinking of the gen-X, high-end yup demographic.”

“Oh, of course,” I say, recovering. “It’ll be the drink of cynics.”

6 is nodding her head wisely.

“Forgive my asking,” I say, feeling abruptly bold. Perhaps it’s the soft reassurance of the napkin. “But you seem pretty young to be a marketing manager in such a big company.”

“I’m twenty-one,” 6 says.

“No you’re not,” I say.

“Ah, no,” she says. “I am.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, “but you can’t be twenty-one.”

“Mr. Scat,” 6 says firmly. In the candlelight her eyes are very deep. “I’m twenty-one. Deal with it.”

I can pretend to swallow the lesbian routine, but this is too much for me. “Hey, I’m sure it impresses them in your alumni, this young-marketing-genius-with-attitude deal. But I don’t buy it.”

“You seem to think I should care,” 6 says.

“Look, 6,” I say, trying to soothe, “I know where you’re coming from. It’s hard to get credibility without some sort of angle. But it is just an angle, right? You’re not twenty-one and you’re as homosexual as I am.”

“It’s interesting, what you’re doing,” 6 tells me. She leans forward and rests her chin on one immaculately manicured hand as if she is genuinely intrigued. “You obviously have an esteem problem with your sexuality, and can’t accept that a beautiful woman isn’t attracted to you.” She sniffs. “I did some psych units.”

“When?” I say scathingly. “Elementary school?”

“I went to Stanford,” 6 says steadily. I curse silently, because I usually lie about having gone to Stanford and she’s beaten me to it. “I graduated from high school at fifteen, courtesy of an advanced learning program. I did four years at UCLA, an M.B.A. at Stanford, and now, after six weeks at Coca-Cola, I am twenty-one years of age.”

I want to argue, but she gets to me. I know what she’s doing: that everything she tells me is to build this marketing image, but I can’t resist it. I know Coke is one part faintly repulsive black syrup, seven parts water and forty-two parts marketing, but I still drink it. Perception is reality.

“Scat,” she says, “you’re a little screwed up, but I want to work with you.”

I blink. A witty comment is called for here, but I don’t have one. “Boy,” I say.

6 pulls a large black folder out from I have no idea where. I cannot conceive of 6 carrying anything large enough to contain this folder. 6 is saying, “We’re going to draw up a concept sketch here,” but I am transfixed by this folder. I try to think how she can possibly lug this thing around and still appear cool, and I fail completely. I miss Sneaky Pete, who is at his best with puzzles like this.