Truth in advertising, p.31
Truth in Advertising, page 31
“It’s thirty-nine degrees outside.”
“Wear a warm coat.”
She meets me at the entrance to the children’s zoo and we feed quarters into a gumball machine that dispenses pellet food for goats. If you lay your hand flat, the goats lick the pellet off your hand. There’s also a Purell dispenser.
We look at the pigs, the llama, the cow. The goats are the only ones that seem happy.
We leave and walk through the park, wander past frozen ball fields, bundled joggers. I tell her about the meeting, about blowing up. I tell her they’ll probably fire me later today, when I go back. Near the Great Lawn there’s a café and I buy two coffees. We keep walking.
“What are you going to do?” she asks.
“No idea.”
“Does Martin know? About your father?”
I say, “No.”
She nods.
“You seem okay,” she says.
“Could be sleep deprivation. I’ll probably wake up in a massive panic attack tonight. I’ve got enough money to live for about a year. If I move to Angola.”
“Why are you smiling?”
“I don’t know. I feel good.”
She nods.
I say, “I’m sorry.”
“You already apologized.”
“I know. But I’m sorry.”
“You scared me.”
“I know.”
Clouds have moved in and covered the sun. It’s getting colder.
Phoebe says, “Anyway. I think I’m going to head back now.”
I say, “Do you want to come on vacation with me?”
“Fin.”
“We could go someplace.”
She looks at me.
She says, “Give me a reason.”
I say, “Because I’ve got these two tickets. These two first-class tickets.”
“Not good enough.”
Two kids on skateboards go by. On the road, a hansom carriage pulled by a sad old horse clops along. I take a deep breath. It’s not that I don’t have the words. I do. I’ve had them for a long time. I just couldn’t quite bring myself to say them.
Finally I say, “Because there’s only you. Because I want to make you happy. Because I want to show you that I’m worthy of you.”
I’m looking at a tree and Phoebe is looking at me. I look at her now.
Phoebe, her voice different, says, “Why couldn’t you have just said that in the first place?”
I step closer and take my glove off and put my hand on her face, her cheek. I lean in farther, put my face against hers.
I say, “I thought you knew.”
• • •
Time to get fired.
I walk back into the office, going through the revolving doors as others are leaving. I need my bag. There is a FedEx package on my desk. I am instantly unnerved. I open it and inside there is a small box and a note.
Fin. Time is what you make of it. I hope what I mean is coming out with my words. Also, I bought one for myself so we both have the same one. Like brothers. Your tomodachi. Keita.
Inside the box is a Rolex Submariner watch.
• • •
The office is quiet. I grab my bag and leave. I step off the elevator and walk through the lobby. Martin is on his cell phone. He ends the call and looks at me for what feels like a long time.
He says, “There are four hours every lunar cycle when I am not an egotistical, heartless jackass. You happen to be catching me on the last hour. So I’m going to ask you this once, and only once, and, no matter what your answer, I’m then going to walk out of this building, get into a new Jaguar XJ, drive to Per Se, have dinner with a twenty-eight-year-old woman of mind-altering beauty, and, by my second sake, forget you exist. Do you want this job?”
Yes. No. I don’t know. I don’t know the answer. I do know I wish I’d studied harder in college. I wish I had a calling. I wish I was remarkably good at one thing. Just one thing that I could point to and say, “I am superb at this. I know this.” Badminton. The violin. Carpentry. Organic farming. Litigation. Geology. Animal husbandry. The Hula-Hoop. Something. But I am not good at anything. And the little voice reminds me of that every chance he gets. “Hey, Gary. Gary? You suck.” And always, for so long, I have believed him. It’s habit. It’s easier. There are times in my life when I look for experiences I can be proud of, things that might define me: the winning goal senior year, the acceptance letter from Harvard, the big account win, the wedding, the house, the first-born, the good father, the good husband, the good brother, volunteering at the hospice, jumping onto the tracks to rescue the fainting victim as the subway car pulls in. The stories of a life well lived. Little monuments we all need to sustain us during those long stretches where nothing quite so memorable occurs, when life simply passes by. I scan my memory for something to hold on to. I can find almost nothing. And then I think of the ashes. Hey, little voice. Fuck you. I did that.
I say, “Is it enough? What we do?”
Martin stares for a time. “No. It’s not enough. Relative to a trauma surgeon or special ed teacher or UN AIDS worker in Uganda, no. It’s not nearly enough. But I’m not any of those things. And I’m okay with that. I like what I do. I think what we do has value. Good companies matter to people. Their products matter to people. Do they make a difference in their lives? Probably not. But it does matter. By the way, in the time I’ve been here, this agency has worked on campaigns to get teenagers to stop smoking, bring inner-city children to camp for the summer, a battered women’s shelter in Queens, and the New York chapter of the American Red Cross. For free. And we’ve changed people’s lives as a result. I think that’s a pretty good way to make a living.”
I’m waiting for him to fire me, waiting to be humiliated because I do not understand basic things sometimes.
“Do you know how many portfolios we receive each day? Copywriters, art directors, people who want to make their living here? And yet here I stand with you, a person who wants to throw a good job away. I mean, if I could show you a photo of the woman I’m dining with . . . and yet here I stand. Why? It’s rhetorical, so don’t try to answer. I stand here because although I have thought about firing you many times with great relish, I don’t. I don’t because I think you could be good. But you have to want it. People like you, Fin. That’s not a small thing in this business. You want to hug me now, I know. I have that effect on people.”
Then he says, “I’m sorry about your father. And although it’s none of my business, I was very sorry to hear what happened to your mother. I know it was a long time ago but . . .”
I feel myself color, feel instantly uncomfortable.
Martin says, “I had an older brother. A god to me. He died twenty-four years ago, November seventh. Drunk driver. Not a day goes by that . . . well . . . you know.”
He looks beyond me, out the windows onto the street. I assume he’s seen someone or something, but he doesn’t react for several seconds.
He looks back at me. “So, I’m sorry. The job gets in the way sometimes. But that’s life, isn’t it? Come by the office sometime and I’ll show you the rejection letters I received from London’s finest publishing houses in regard to my book of poetry sixteen years ago. I keep them in a drawer. A reminder of who I am. We can be many people, you see. Good to keep in mind in this business.”
“Thank you.”
“Take a vacation. Think about what you want. The job’s still yours if you want it. Maybe you’ve been in diapers too long. Time for a change.”
“You can’t have just said that.”
“I’m not proud of it.”
I say, “What about Frank?”
“I’ll handle Frank. ‘Clueless, soulless douchebag.’ One of your better lines, actually. Maybe there’s hope for you as a writer.”
He walks away. Then stops and turns back.
“Your friend Phoebe stopped by my office yesterday afternoon. Lucky man to have a friend like that.”
He looks at me and does something he’s never done in the eighteen months I’ve known him. He smiles. An honest-to-God smile. And I find that I’m smiling, too.
I shout to him, “I feel like we should make out.”
Over his shoulder, “Dodge says that to me all the time.”
• • •
We held a funeral mass for my father in Boston and we all cried and hugged and told wonderful stories about the past, stories we’d all forgotten but that were now rendered clear in our collective memories. It was cathartic and I was deeply changed because of it. We promised to rent a house together next summer on Nantucket.
That is a lie, of course. Life doesn’t work that way, except in commercials and adorable Jennifer Aniston movies. It’s just that I can see that ending so clearly. The wide shot at the cemetery. Pan down from the gray sky to the leafless trees. Cut to a shot of the man (me, I guess) looking at the wind in the trees and the shapes that the fast-moving clouds make on the lawn and the gravestones. Cut to hands grabbing fistfuls of the chocolate-brown dirt that the gravediggers have placed in a pile atop a large square of Astroturf. Cut to the diggers leaning on their shovels. Inevitably one of them must wipe his nose with the back of his gloved hand. Note: Have a wind machine ready if it’s not a windy day. Shoot in New York to make it look like Boston. Less travel. If you want blue sky we can color correct it in post, no problem. We can do it in twenty-seven seconds with three seconds left for a VO and a logo. Just tell me what the product is.
The annoying thing about life is that it screws up the production. It’s rarely neat and tidy. And yet sometimes it can surprise you.
Maura called me awhile ago, one night at home, out of the blue. She wanted to know the story of the ashes. She told me she wished she’d been there. We talked for forty-five minutes. She told me about her children, how one of them reminds her of me at times. He makes up stories and makes his parents laugh. I promised to visit. They have a summer place in Maine. She said maybe we could all get together there sometime.
Kevin called and we spoke. I’m going to San Francisco in the spring. I’ve never met his partner.
F. Scott Fitzgerald said that there are no second acts in American lives. I have no idea what that means but I believe that in quoting him I appear far more intelligent than I am. I don’t know about second acts, but I do think we get second chances, fifth chances, eighteenth chances. Every day we get a fresh chance to live the way we want. We get a chance to do one amazing thing, one scary thing, one difficult thing, one beautiful thing. We get a chance to make a difference.
I tell Phoebe that I’m going to be at the American Airlines international departures terminal at JFK. I tell her I’ll have a passport and a suitcase. I tell her I have these two first-class tickets anywhere in the world.
• • •
Thirty yards away, a bobbing mass of lovely energy walking down the wide corridor. I watch her and realize I’m smiling. She pulls a wheelie suitcase behind her. Her long dark coat is open and she wears blue jeans and her tall brown boots and cashmere sweater her mother gave her for Christmas. Her cheeks are flushed and her hair is down and she is wearing her glasses. How strange to see her differently. The eye doctor does the test and says, “Better or worse?” A slight alteration in the curve of the glass can change the acuity, change your vision. And in the flick of his wrist things come into view.
“You certainly do a good first date,” she says, smiling. I can smell her shampoo and it smells like grapefruit.
I take her by the shoulders and move her so that her back is to the large board with the long list of departure destinations.
I say, “Pick a number.”
Phoebe says, “One million nine.”
I say, “There are twenty lines on the departure board behind you. The number you pick is the place we’re flying to tonight.”
People say, if you could do anything, if money were no object, what would you do? I’ve never known the answer to that question. I’ve never had a passion, a hobby, a calling. Except now. Money no object. I want to be with her. I want to tell her everything. To tell her the truth.
Phoebe says, “Can I look?”
“No.”
“I think I saw Cape Town. I think I saw Rome. I think I saw Mumbai.”
“Pick a number.”
“Oh, God.” She’s grinning. “Nine. No. Wait. Yes. Nine.”
I look up at the board, count nine lines down. Marrakech.
Phoebe says, “Where is it?”
I have been waiting for my life to begin.
It takes me a while to find the words. I say, “I don’t know how to do this.”
She moves my hand from my face, from my scar.
She says, “You want to know how to do this?”
“Yes.”
“There are two steps. Give me your hands.”
I extend my arms and she takes hold of my hands.
She says, “You just learned the first step.”
“What’s the second?” I ask.
“Don’t let go.”
• • •
I remember the day I bought the tickets. I was going to get married and go on a honeymoon in Italy with my wife. People did this all the time. I used miles. First class. But they still cost more than I’d ever thought I’d spend on airplane tickets. Or a used car for that matter. The big trip. They were my fear-of-flying tickets. My fear-of-life tickets.
Phoebe and I walked to the ticketing window at JFK. Just after 2 P.M. I figured we’d get our tickets, have lunch, book a hotel online, sit in the Admirals Club until our flight.
The agent typed in the reservation number. You can sense a thing before you know it, in the details: a slight squint, a small tilt of the head, eyes blinking faster.
“Mr. Dolan,” she said. “I think there’s been a mistake. These tickets have expired, sir.”
“That’s not possible,” I said.
“I’m sorry, sir. Here, look.”
I looked, half listened. I’d waited a year for this. We have luggage. We have passports. Phoebe started laughing. “So what’s our second date?”
Which is how it came to be that instead of boarding the first-class cabin on an American Airlines Boeing 777-400 to Marrakech, we boarded the AirTrain from JFK to the A train at Howard Beach, transferring at Atlantic Avenue for the N train, making all local stops to Coney Island. And there, at Nathan’s, in a gray, misty, half-light of dusk, is where we dined on wrinkled frankfurters, soggy fries, and watery beer. It’s where, sitting on a stool looking out the window at the old wooden rollercoaster, with a homeless man asleep two tables away, I told Phoebe I loved her.
It wasn’t the big trip. But it was a trip. I took ten days off, slept in. We drank coffee, wandered the city like tourists. Skating at Bryant Park, an afternoon at the Frick, rode the Staten Island Ferry. I had never walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. The weather was terrible. Cold and windy, freezing rain. It was perfect.
• • •
And then one day I went back.
Martin had told Frank and Dodge about my father, the ashes. I have to say they were very kind, considering how easy it would have been to fire me.
There is a part of me that would like to say that I did quit. It seems so much more heroic. But I do not think that’s how it works. Not today. Not in a good job, with high unemployment and real pain out there. I do not think we up and leave our lives. We don’t make huge changes for the most part. Subtle shifts, small adjustments in perspective.
If you are one of the lucky ones who know what they want to do for a living—who’ve always known and who love it—God bless you. If you are a doctor, a priest, a boat builder, a teacher, a firefighter—a person with a calling—consider yourself fortunate. And if you are like me, someone who simply found themselves doing a job they never imagined doing, I’m not sure what to say.
Except this. I will live and I will die and when I do there might be a few lines in the newspaper about the job I did and the children I made, about the wife I left behind and how long we were married. Perhaps some will cry and there will be a get-together at my home after my dead body is placed in the cold ground. Sandwiches will be eaten and coffee drunk and conversation will be had about me and hopefully what a decent guy I was but also about lawn care and insurance and movies and children and the weather and sports teams and politics and whether or not there’s more chicken salad. Later, people will go home with a renewed intensity and appreciation of their world, of how precious and fleeting it all is. They’ll hold their children a little longer, the kids not sure what’s going on with mom or dad as they try to squirm away to watch TV. A husband and wife will make love in the night as a result of the closeness of death. And then, in the morning, there will be lunches to make and dentist appointments to keep, meetings to attend, ideas to share with clients, leaves to rake, dry cleaning to drop off. The car needs a tune-up.
So there is life. The quiet routine of every day. I read the newspaper, take the subway, go to a meeting. I get a haircut, have dinner with friends, help a woman with a baby carriage up the subway stairs. I get frustrated at a coworker, annoyed by humidity, depressed at the sight of people eating alone. I try to be human. It rains. I go to bed wondering how another day, another week, another year has passed so quickly. It scares me. It makes me want to do better.
We make dinner during these long, cold, dead-of-winter nights. We listen to music and talk and Phoebe teaches me how to cook. We watch movies on my computer. We read in bed. Spring is coming.
Long after Phoebe is asleep I watch the snow fall outside the window, listen to the wind, the rattle of the old glass panes, her hip a touch away. In that moment I think, This is my life. This, here and now. This is as close as I am ever going to get to that elusive thing called happiness. How could I ask for more?
• • •
Life is best viewed from a distance. The long lens. This has been my guiding principle. If you step back and watch, well, it’s just easier. Because if you don’t, if instead you pull others close—if you need them—you will never want to let go.
Eddie called to say he was in New York for work. He was taking a flight back that evening, but did I have time for a coffee? We met at a Starbucks in midtown, sat for a time, made small talk. I told him about the shoot, about Keita. He listened but didn’t say much.
