THE OVERTON WINDOW (3 page)
Read THE OVERTON WINDOW Online
Authors: Glenn Beck
They say you should dress for the job you want, not the job you have. That’s especially true in the public relations business, considering that that’s where appearance
is
reality. Apparently the job this girl wanted was head greeter at the Grateful Dead Cultural Preservation Society. But that wasn’t quite right; she didn’t strike him as a wannabe hipster or a retro-sixties flower child. It was more than the clothes, it was the whole picture, the way she carried herself, like a genuine free spirit. An appealing vibe, to be sure, but there was really no place for that sort of thing—neither the outfit nor the attitude—in the buttoned-up world of top-shelf New York City PR.
At about five seconds into his first impression, something else about her struck him, and he completely lost track of time.
What struck him was a word, or, more precisely, the meaning of a word:
line.
More powerful than any other element of design, a
line
is the living soul of a piece of art. It’s the reason a simple logo can be worth tens of millions of dollars to a corporation. It’s the thing that makes you believe that a certain car, or a pair of sunglasses, or the cut of a jacket can make you into the person you want to be.
The definition he’d received from an artist friend was rendered not in words but in a picture. Just seven light strokes of a felt-tip marker on a blank white page and before his eyes had appeared the purest essence of a woman. There was nothing lewd about it, but it was the sexiest drawing Noah had ever seen in his life.
And that is what struck him. There it was at the bulletin board, that same exquisite line, from the toes of her sandals all the long, lovely way up to her fingertips. Unlikely as it must seem, he knew right then that he was in love.
Can I help you with that?”
Noah’s opener, not one of his smoothest, was punctuated by the
thunk
of his Tootsie Roll into the metal tray of the candy machine.
She paused and glanced across the otherwise deserted break room. It was a cool, dismissive gaze that took him in with a casual down-and-up. Without looking away she hooked a nearby footstool with her toe and dragged it close, stepped up onto it, and then went back to pinning her flier in place high up on the corkboard. The gesture made it clear that if all he could offer was a few extra inches off the floor, she would somehow find a way to live without him.
Fortunately, Noah was blessed with a blind spot for rejection; she’d winged him, sure, but he wasn’t nearly shot down. He smiled and, even at a distance, imagined he could see just a hint of dry amusement in her profile as well.
Something about this woman defied a traditional chick-at-a-glance inventory. Without a doubt all the goodies were in all the right places, but no mere scale of one to ten was going to do the job this time. It was an entirely new experience for him. Though he’d been in her presence
for less than a minute, her soul had locked itself onto his senses, far more than her substance had.
She hardly wore any makeup, it seemed, nothing needed concealment or embellishment. Simple silver jewelry, tight weathered jeans on the threadbare outer limits of the company’s casual-Friday dress code, everything obviously chosen and worn for no one’s approval but her own. A lush abundance of dark auburn hair pulled back in a loose French twist and held in place by two crisscrossed number-two pencils. The style was probably the work of only a few seconds but it couldn’t have been more becoming if she’d spent hours at a salon.
A number of unruly strands had escaped confinement in the course of the workday. These liberated chestnut curls framed a handsome face made twice as radiant by the mysteries surely waiting just behind those light green eyes.
He walked nearer, reading over her flier as she pressed a final pushpin into its upper corner. It was an amateurish layout job but someone had taken the time to hand-letter the text in a passable calligraphy. The heading was a pasted-on strip of tattered, scorched parchment that looked like it had been ripped from the original draft of the U.S. Constitution.
We the People
If you love your country but fear for its future,
join us for an evening of
truth
that will open your eyes!
Guest speakers include:
Earl Matthew Thomas
-1976 U.S. Presidential candidate (L) and bestselling author of
Divided We Fall
Joyce McDevitt
-New York regional community liaison,
Liberty Belles
Maj. Gen. Francis N. Klein
-former INSCOM commanding general (ret. 1984), cofounder of
GuardiansOfLiberty.com
Kurt Bilger
-Tri-state coordinator,
Sons of the American Revolution
Beverly Emerson
-Director emeritus,
Founders’ Keepers
Danny Bailey
-The man behind the YouTube phenomenon
Overthrow
,
with
35,000,000
views and counting!
Bring a friend, come lift a glass, and raise your voice for liberty!
The date, time, and location of the meeting were printed underneath.
“This event, it’s happening tonight?” Noah asked.
“Congratulations, you can read.” She was moving some other bulletins and notices, repinning them elsewhere to give her announcement a bit more prominence.
“Maybe you should have posted that last week. People make plans—”
“Actually,” she said, finishing her rearrangement, “this was just an afterthought. I don’t really expect anyone here to be all that interested.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
She turned, a little taller than eye level from the summit of her step-stool. Close-up now and face-on, she had a forthrightness that was every bit as intriguing as it was disquieting.
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes, I really want to know.”
“All you PR people do is lie for a living,” she said. “The truth is just another story to you.”
He felt an automatic impulse to mount a defense, but then swallowed it before he could speak. In a way she was absolutely right. In fact, what she’d just said was an almost perfect layman’s translation of the company’s mission statement, all weasel words aside.
Seemed like an excellent time to change the subject.
“I’m Noah,” he said.
“I know. I sort your mail.” The following details were blithely enumerated, thumb to fingertips, summing him up neatly on the digits of a single hand. “Noah Gardner. Twenty-first floor, northwest corner office. Vice president as of last Thursday. And a son of a … big shot.”
“Wow. For a second I wasn’t sure where you were going with that last one.”
“Your dad owns the place, doesn’t he?”
“He owns a lot of it, I guess. Hey, I have to confess something.”
“I’ll bet you do.”
“You haven’t told me your name yet,” Noah said, “and I’ve been trying to read it off your name tag, but I’m worried that you’ll get the wrong idea about where I’m looking.”
“Go for it. I’m not shy.”
On their way down, his eyes wandered only twice, and only briefly. He caught a glimpse of a small tattoo, finely drawn and not quite hidden by the neckline of her top. All that was visible was an edge of the outstretched wing of a bird, or maybe it was an angel. And a necklace lay against her smooth pale skin, a little silver cross threaded on a delicate wheat chain.
Her ID was clipped low along the V of her pullover sweater, which fit as though it had been lovingly crocheted in place that very morning. The badge itself was a temporary worker’s tag, only one notch above a guest pass. She was smiling in the photo, but a real smile, the kind that made you want to do something worthy just so you could see it again.
“Molly Ross,” he said.
She tipped his chin back up with a knuckle.
“This is fascinating and all, Mr. Gardner, but I need to go and service the postage meter.”
“Just wait a second. Will you be at this meeting tonight?”
“Yeah, I sure will.”
“Good. Because I’m going to try to make it there myself”.
She looked at him evenly. “Why?”
“Why do you think? I’m very patriotic.”
“Really.”
“Yes, I am.
Very
patriotic.”
“That reminds me of a joke,” Molly said. “Noah comes home—Noah from the Bible, you know?”
He nodded.
“So Noah comes home after he finally got all the animals into the ark, and his wife asks him what he’s been doing all week. Do you know what he said to her?”
“No, tell me.”
Molly patted him on the cheek, pulled his face a little closer.
“He said, ‘Honey, now I herd everything.’”
She stepped down to the floor, scooted the stool back to where it had been, and headed for the hallway.
“Don’t forget your candy bar,” she added, over a shoulder.
Despite his normally ready wit, the door to the break room had hissed closed and clicked behind her long before a single sparkling comeback came to mind.
