The Cosmopolitans (14 page)

“I know so.” Valerie grabbed Bette's gaze and seized it. “Do you have any children?”

“I have a young cousin, Hortense.”

“Imagine,” Valerie said. “When she is your age, she will be able to shuttle to the moon, the way you take the 6 train to work. Every single person in the world will speak the same language: ESPERANTO! And Hortense will travel to China . . . by jet pack!”

“Really?”

“THE FUTURE IS COMING!” Valerie laughingly threatened and promised. “That's a guarantee. And all of its ideas will have to be sold.”

The imminence of the future seemed reasonable to Hector and to Bette, something they could understand and get behind with ease.

“Here!” Valerie slurped, reeling them in like trout in a stocked pond. “I will teach you how to sell the future. I will let you in on all my techniques. On one condition.”

“What?” Hector and Bette gasped in unison, hypnotized by possibility once again.

“On the condition that . . . if you are persuaded . . . you will make me partner.”

It was silent in the ring.

“Partner?” Hector squeaked. He'd never counted on sharing with anyone, but somehow the seduction of pure curiosity kept him lapping at the bait.

Bette waited for Valerie's snappy comeback, but she said nothing. Why did she do that? It was so unusual. Bette waited and waited. What was Valerie's strategy?
What game was she playing now? Finally, Bette realized. Valerie's silence allowed Hector to wilt on his own. He didn't need any help losing.

“Okay,” he choked, and collapsed into his chair, exhausted.

Now that the overture had earned a standing ovation, Valerie swooped into the opening number.

“Let's say”—she was being coy, pouting her bright red lips like Clara Bow would have done, if she had been in color instead of black and white—“just for argument's sake, imagine that
I
am the product.” She indicated her own shapely form as though she were the Lancia Aurelia. “What are my selling points?”

“Well,” Bette said, jumping into the game, willing to learn. “You are fast. And that means modern.”

“And attractive,” Hector blurted out. Then he noticed he had just been impulsive and thought,
What the heck?
Truth was, it felt good. “And awfully complicated. So psychological.”

Valerie had them now because this was where Freud came into the picture, and that was her strongest suit. She had been psychoanalyzed and strongly recommended it for business.

Freud, as Valerie explained to a spellbound Bette and Hector,
of course
had discovered the conflict between the conscious and the unconscious. Bette had not realized that there was such a conflict and wondered how something so intangible could be recognized. She imagined him staring at himself in the mirror with a magnifying glass and Sherlock Holmes cap. The more she thought about it, the more this idea of psychology appealed to her. It had involved noticing
one's own feelings. Mr. Freud probably had observed himself doing one thing but feeling another, and realized the two were in contradiction. Everyone had the same experience, but he had been smart enough to call it something, a
conflict
. Once it had a name, others could refer to it as something more than a weird feeling creeping inside. And the word
conflict
allowed others to see what he was talking about and then they could think about that too. Finding the right word was a big part of it, Bette was sure. And Valerie agreed, describing that process as “branding.”

“Freud discovered,” Valerie enticed further, “that if a person is not aware of what they
truly
want, they will become . . . fragmented.”

Another great word
, Bette thought. She understood exactly what Freud was referring to. That experience of being torn apart by outside forces and one's own inner spirit.

“This applies to marketing,” Valerie assured. “Once the customers' secret desires have been revealed, they will act on them. After all, there are two kinds of people in this world. Some want to
be
Marilyn Monroe, and some want to
have
Marilyn Monroe.”

Bette was stunned. She had never had a single thought about Marilyn Monroe. Either way. Or was it a metaphor?

“If . . .,” Valerie neared conclusion, “if advertising could let these people act out their fantasies through the products they buy, people would be happier, not hurting those around them out of unexpressed anxieties. So, marketing is good. For America. And that's why brand names are so important.”

“Can you give an example?” Bette was still stuck on Marilyn Monroe.

“For example,” Valerie gleamed, “people, blindfolded, cannot recognize the taste of their own brand of cigarette.” She took her own silver case out of her purse and held it open under Hector's nose. “Cigarette?”

“Yes, thank you.”

Valerie struck the match, waited. Hector inhaled, took in its flavor, exhaled with an expressive sound of relief. “Ahhhh.”

“Yes,
ahhhh
. The universal testimonial of a good smoke.” Valerie smiled reassuringly but suddenly bared her saber. “Brand?”

Bette yelled out the answer, “Lucky!”

“Yes, you are.” Valerie had her now.

Bette had never won before. She'd never shouted anything out, and she'd never been the one who was right. And most importantly? It felt great. If this was the new world Valerie was offering, Bette was ready to sign on the dotted line.

“How did you know?” Hector was flabbergasted. Bette had leapt ahead of him. She'd never been the one who was so publicly knowing before. That was disconcertingly strange but also somehow comforting, because he would never have to make decisions all alone.

“She chose it by assessing
me
,” Valerie explained to Hector like he was very, very young. “Not the taste of the cigarette. She instinctively knew that I am a LUCKY girl, and therefore would choose a brand name that defined my best attribute. Right?”

Bette blushed.

“Now, Hector? Bette? You have both learned beautifully. And here is the reward for all of your hard work.” She put her fingers to her lips and tooted an invisible horn. “Our First Television Product!”

The shift in focus made the room spin. How could Valerie have planned this unveiling at such a perfect juncture all along? How could she know them
that
well?

As Bette and Hector contemplated these questions, Valerie had already advanced. She whipped out a veiled model on a small wooden tabletop pedestal that had been successfully hidden underneath her desk in anticipation of this inevitable conversation. Which explained why she was always lounging across that desk and never sitting at it.
Voilà
, she tore off its shroud.

“ROCOCO!”

What was revealed was a glistening jar of liquid as rich as Texas oil and as enticing as the heavenly nectar of the gods.

“Rococo?” Bette asked. “Isn't that some kind of pottery?”

“NO!” Valerie was at full blast. “RO-CO-CO. AMERICA'S FAVORITE CHOCOLATE DRINK.”

Hector and Bette were overwhelmed. Both believed, instantaneously, that all they'd ever wanted was a rich, cool, fulfilling chocolate drink. Thicker than an egg cream but even more refreshing. No need to create a mess by
adding
the Fox's U-Bet syrup. This drink was already custom made in its own individual serving. Fresh always. And always just enough.

The fact was, Valerie could have sold them Edsel and Doomsday and Estes Kefauver for President and cod liver oil. Valerie was so far ahead of them, relationally,
it was like being converted to a religion one never knew existed. Like growing up in Iowa, only to discover the Buddha's lair one blistery night from a traveling carnival acrobat. It was incongruous and yet undeniable. All this time, Valerie had pretended they were on the same page, but secretly she was the one writing the book. Before eight in the morning and after six at night, she was developing chocolate juice and designing the jar.

“How does it taste?” asked Bette, managing to integrate her former practicality with this newfound awareness of desire and its role in marketing.

“Oh, that doesn't matter.”

“It doesn't?”

“No.” Valerie seemed offended.

“Why not? Isn't chocolate supposed to be good?”

Valerie gazed at Bette through a gauze of disapproval, and it stung so hard, Bette resolved automatically to learn all of the new rules as quickly as possible.

“Bette.
Dear
,” Valerie lovingly condescended. “Let me explain. And you, too, Hector. Pay attention.”

“Okay.”

“How something tastes in
your
mouth can never be known by another person. Therefore it has no status.”

They both nodded. That made sense.

“The more important question is . . . WHO CAN WE GET?”

“Get?” Hector was lost.

“To endorse it, silly.”

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh
.

Hector and Bette relaxed. See, everything was all
right. It all linked together into one intense, dynamic apparatus of a logic system, one orderly new way.

“Soooo,” Valerie coooed. “Who do you suggest?”

Bette was still thinking about Marilyn Monroe and the question of being versus having. But Hector's hand was waving.

“Yes, Hector?”

“Konrad Adenaur,” he tried lamely, but knew it was wrong before the name of the new leader of Germany even escaped his lips. Germany was trying to live down its bad reputation and wouldn't be a good product enhancer.

“No.”

“Jayne Mansfield!” Bette was on a roll.

“Better. But too trashy.”

Then the three of them paced the office like Groucho, Harpo, and Chico in
A Night at the Opera
, looking for the brilliant, crazy scheme that would make everything be okay.

“We need someone dark,” said Valerie, who was, herself, quite dark. “Regal.” That too could describe her. “Mysterious.”

“You?” Hector tried.

“No,” she dismissed him. “I know! The Queen of Rumania!”

“Great idea,” Hector guffawed.

“Yes. Then the buying public will think that our chocolate comes from the land of the Gypsies, instead of Central Pennsylvania.”

Her brow furrowed.

“But, Bette, is there still a Queen of Rumania? Or do they have a Stalinist look-alike?”

Bette made a note to go to the library on her lunch break.

“There must be a queen somewhere,” Valerie seemed to be in despair. “Maybe in exile in the Bronx. But the bigger point of all this is to give people what they secretly want. POWER! MONEY! GLAMOUR! Or at least the suggestion of all that, so that they will give us back PROFITS. To achieve this, we must convey our message subliminally, so that the consumer doesn't have to take . . .”

“Responsibility?” Bette guessed.

“Brava, diva,” Valerie applauded.

So much had happened. Tibbs Advertising had its own product, developed precisely in order to build an ad campaign. Bette noted this with gravitas. The object was not important in and of itself. Aside from world peace and food for the hungry, there were few new inventions that would ever really make a difference. Maybe a robot that would do all the work, raise the food, and fix the subway system, but beyond that, the only reason to invent a new product was to make money. What mattered most was how people were made to feel about themselves, after all. And Valerie had made Bette and Hector feel so much. She had excited them, made them participate and imagine new ways. She had made wildness acceptable, and in turn let Bette feel a bit wild. A bit able to, well, manipulate. Do what it takes to have things go her own way instead of staying out of the fray as she had done all her life. And there was a physical element, the beauty of the thing, the imagination of its taste, the design of the jar. There was more here than simple function. Not
too
much more, but enough that a regular person could afford from time to time to make things feel more special than they were. To enjoy, really. To love.

Other people have so much power. They can destroy and they can build. Other people can change Bette, at whim, they can make her life bearable or they can strip her bare. Other people are the world, aren't they? Their whims, their strengths, their callous impulses, their depth or lack of spirit. Bette felt that this new knowledge unleashed a kind of dangerous excitement. Almost atomic. What could she do to them? What could she do
for
them?

And then it occurred to her . . . Earl! Was there anything she could concoct that could help Earl get a role? One that he deserved?

The suddenness of this potential overwhelmed her, and she leaned back into the depth of possibility. What would have to happen for Earl to be treated fairly, and what could Bette do to accomplish this?

Bette knew she was in a realm over which she had little understanding. Earl's problem was that he was black. Nothing else stood in his way. Would a change in his fate have to be tied to the forward motion of the entire Negro race, or would it be possible for him to become an exception? Paul Robeson had accomplished an awful lot, but he had such special circumstances, so many simultaneous varieties of approach. He had great degrees from prestigious universities. Earl had not finished high school. Robeson was masculine, a football hero, of all things. Earl? Well. No. Earl had none of that. Could something else compensate?

Then there was Earl himself. He had high standards.
He wanted to play a king. Well, that had worked for Robeson. Earl was not a Communist so that was one check in his column. Would there be a way to
market
Earl to be more than fate would allow?

Bette resolved to think about this more. And knew better than to bring it up to him unless she could first develop a realistic plan. He did not need to be further disappointed.

Would Valerie help her?

That seemed to be unknown. Valerie loved a challenge, but content was her weak point. Marketing justice? Would she even know what that meant? Bette wasn't sure. Valerie knew everything about current events but held no opinions. She was somehow above investment in any outcome but sales, and yet enjoyed the fray. Would she use her skills to help Negroes? Bette weighed the odds.
If the price was right
, of course. But what if the project was just . . . interesting? Bette felt Valerie would agree to something if it were fun. And that would be Bette's task. She'd have to watch and wait. Wait and see. See how much she could learn and toward what end. Then she would decide when all the facts were in and try to come up with something grand.