This week’s prompt was: Write a story where a character goes back one year in time.

The Time Machine

I’d already showered and tore half of my scalp off brushing the knots out of my hair, and dug my skirt out from behind Sean’s dresser, but I lie back down anyway.  What the hell: the skirt and blouse were already wrinkled to shit and he wouldn’t finish brewing the coffee for another few minutes.  I could feel his scratchy sheets through a hole in my tights.  The fun of seeing him so excited, so desperate to get them off me that he ruins my clothes had faded for me months ago.  I was fooling myself—no, fooling him was more like it.  Something you do.  My phone danced the vibrating jig on his nightstand: Malinda.

“Deirdre, for christsake,” she growled at me, “Paul just called.  Couldn’t you send me a text or something?”

“I’m sorry,” I said.  I knew everything she was going to say before she said it; she knew everything she was going to say and what I’d say back and exactly how long the call would last.  Why did we go through with it?  I guess we were waiting for one of us to break and say the things we knew we weren’t saying.  “I should have texted you.  I didn’t expect to stay the night.”

“Of course not,” she said.  I could just about hear her pinching the bridge of her nose.  “Deirdre, I have to say this: I’m tired of covering for you.”

“Wow,” I said and sat up.

“I know, I know, I’m sorry,” she said.  In a whisper, she plowed on, “You covered for me when Roger and I were not doing so well and I’m a bad friend for bringing it up but really.  Come on, it’s been months and months, almost a year.  Is this going to be a permanent situation for you?”

It was far too long a conversation to have while Sean made coffee.  Too long and I’d had it too many times with myself in the backs of taxis or while staring at my ceiling, listening to Paul breathe in his sleep.  “I’m sorry,” I said again.  “I know it isn’t a picnic for you, either, lying to him all the time.  What did you tell him, by the way?”

“That you were on the phone with a client,” she said.

“I better text him something,” I said and began tapping out my usual dodge.

“Deirdre,” Malinda said.

“I gotta go,” I said.  “I love you, even though I’m treating you like shit.”

“You’re not,” she said.  “Something has to change, though.  Make a choice.”

“See ya,” I said and hung up.

Talking to client, I texted to Paul, sry I mssd you.  Call ya soon.

I’d only missed four calls from him last night and this morning; a bunch more from work.  I heard Sean’s bare feet thumping to the bedroom; the man walked solely on his heels.  Thump, thump, thump.

“Hey,” he said, suddenly in the doorway.  He still looked good; cut but not obsessive, hair messy and in his eyes a little, which only ever looks good after a night of hot sex.  I knew he looked good but didn’t care all that much.  I knew I’d care in a couple days; knew I’d want to see him a couple days after that and would do something about it then.  “Coffee’s ready.”

“Can’t stay,” I said and stepped into my shoes.  Fuck but my left heel barked like a dog walker going by a cat shelter.

He leaned his head to one side, grinning, and said, “Come on: one cup of coffee won’t make you late.”

That grin.  It did something to me the first twenty times I saw it.  I patted him on the chest as I walked by, into the living room.  The smell that came off him almost tempted me to stay: so different from Paul’s smell.  I don’t know what it is; not earthier.  Spicier?  Ha!  More metaphoric, clearly.

“I have a big client coming in today,” I said, hunting for my bag around his couch, dripping with his clothes.

“At 7:00 am?” he said.  He came up behind me and touched my shoulders, smelled my hair.  It was nice or would have been if my mind wasn’t already on the sidewalk, going up 37^th trying to find a cab.

I turned toward him and saw in his clenching jaw what he thought of my running out.  “I’m glad I came over last night,” I soothed.  “But all the work I should have done preparing last night I now have to do in a rush before the meeting.”

“Work before life?” he asked, trying to find my skirt’s zipper.  “What kind of a choice is that?”

“When you get a big-boy job, you’ll understand,” I told him and patted his cheek.

I always feel like a heel, like a using bitch when I walk out on him like that but there wasn’t anything more to do, or to say.  We’d had a real connection, once.  Hell, maybe we still do but with a thousand other things on my mind, and the PJ Moran account sliding out of the frying pan, it was hard to focus on what Sean meant to me.

Was it just sex?  I’d told myself no after we first hooked up, months and months ago.  A casual acquaintance I saw at Dickson’s after work some days, we upgraded to dinner one night and ended up on his couch; then his floor.  But no, it wasn’t just sex.  I’d looked forward to seeing him after work long before we slept together.  We laughed at the same things and I didn’t have to explain what I was thinking, saying all the time.  And I couldn’t quite see through him, not unless he wanted to be seen through.  I’d taken that for depth, for mystery.  I’m not so sure anymore.  But if there isn’t a connection, what do we have?

“Hey Paul,” I said when he answered.  I had to cup my hand over my cell to keep the street noise out.  “Sorry I missed you.  Hours away from the PJ Moran people and I still have no idea what I’m going to tell them.”

“Jesus,” he said.  “What did you do all night if you didn’t figure it out?”

Oh, fuck you, how can you ask me that?  I kept hearing interrogation in his voice, the last few months.  He had to have his doubts; who wouldn’t?  And he knew I’d covered for Malinda when she was stepping out on Roger.  But that question—even if it wasn’t a veiled “I know what you’re doing” statement—was a jab right at my job, my creativity, my mind.

“I’m sorry,” he said.  “That came out wrong.  I know how important this account is.”

“Important?” I said, hearing the spoiling-for-a-fight tone in my voice and feeling weary at the prospect of one.  “If I don’t land the account, I can say goodbye to partner.  I spent all last night beating my brains with a bottle of Bordeaux and all I have to show for it is a head that aches only slightly more than my stomach.  And after being called at 6:30 in the morning, what I really wanted was to have another argument with you.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.  “I know, I just—I just missed you last night, that’s all.  I feel like ever since our engagement you’ve spent more time at the office than at home.  I shouldn’t complain.”

He wasn’t wrong, except about the office part.  I had been working my ass off and I was so close to cashing in that I felt butterflies every time I got off the elevator at work.

“No, you’re right,” I said.  “I have been away too much but this opportunity is so big, I don’t want to pass it by—I don’t want it to pass me by.  I’ll be home tonight.  One way or another.”

“You’re going to do great,” he said.  I guess he didn’t hear the part about my having absolutely nothing to say to the PJ Moran people.  “You always do.  The magic will hit you and you’ll dazzle them.  You weren’t made Creative Director at twenty-eight because you’re beautiful, which you are.”

“Not this morning I’m not,” I said.  He gave a great pep talk, I had to give him that.  Paul had always been very supportive, which at times drove me up the wall.  But maybe I was looking for excuses now, excuses not to like him.

“I don’t believe it,” he laughed.

“You aren’t looking at the suitcases under my eyes,” I said, feeling myself smile.  “I’m sorry, babe, but I’ve got to go.  I’ll see you tonight.  I promise.”

We said goodbye as I finally managed to attract a cab.

The huge block letters on the side of the building give the impression of wealth and solidity that saying the name of my company out loud never conveys: Stern, Katz, Wilson, and Mitcham.  “Stern cats will soon admit sham.”  In the ad business, we’re mostly referred to as Stern Cats.  If the agency organized a softball team—or any sport, other than drinking—we could have one hell of a team logo.

Late as I usually stay, I love coming into the office early in the morning.  Everything is so quite, only the ticking of sleeping computers, like dreaming dogs kicking their nails against a hardwood floor.  The cubicles stretching from the elevators to the windows overlooking Madison Ave, unoccupied, colorful with their stacks of books and posters and file folders (why does anyone use paper anymore?), looking like the layout of a chessboard.  That’s it: it’s anticipation.  The game is set, the struggle will ensue, the contest is about to begin.  Doesn’t matter how tired I am, if I’ve got a cold, if I’m hung over, or cramping like a heavy-eater in a riptide: something is about to happen.

The office wasn’t completely empty, though; there are always a few early birds.  Mable Kaczynski, who was probably here watering other people’s plants before I was awake, puttering around mysteriously.  Susan Carmichael, who only comes in early so people won’t see her printing out her emails every morning (why on earth does she do that?).  That morning there was also a small team from John Croman’s group, hamming it up in a conference room, probably waiting for a call with one of his European clients.  That one copywriter was with them, the one who dresses far too well: what’s his deal?  Does he come from money and working here is just for fun?  Does he want people to think that?  Maybe it helps seduce interns.  He’s the perfect foil to Jay Humboldt, who only ever wears jeans in contradiction of company policy.  Who does he impress with his dirty hair?  All these little choices people make.  Set their lives by these little choices.  Or are they choices at all?  Do something and the sky doesn’t fall so keep doing it: change something trivial, something vital, it’s a change, you’re a different person, you’re on the go, this time it’ll work, this time you’ll be different from next person, you’ll be just like everyone else, you’ll be admired, you’ll be happy, you’ll be loved.  Nuts.  At least you’ll be on time to work.

Another little early bird is Beatrice Oleander, like the bush, who I’ve forbidden to be called Betty in the office.  My secretary for the last two years.  Surprised by everything, convinced she’ll do everything wrong, and that at any moment she’ll be fired, presumably by a dark figure looming up with a scythe.  She’s learning, though.  And I’m not giving up on her.  If only I could convince her not to give up on herself—I could sell advertising if I could do that.

“Good morning, Ms Vaillencourt,” she said in her usual, breathless way, standing up as I drew near.

“Morning Beatrice,” I said, taking off my sunglasses to smile.  It’s often the hardest thing I have to face each day, Beatrice’s need for approval, reassurance.  I was shoved very nearly in front of the 6 train once and as the filthy glass and dull steel of the cars shuddered past an inch from my face, I actually thought, ‘Who’s going to take care of Beatrice?’  This is not a healthy relationship.

“Should I get coffee?” she squeaked behind me as I went past her into my office.

“Please,” I said, hearing how bad I needed it in my voice.

“Right away,” she said, relief at having something to do evident in her voice.

I closed the door and felt my own dose of relief at peeling off my overcoat.  7:00 in the morning and it was already in the mid-70s with humidity in the 90% range.  Swathed in a trench coat is a great way to suffocate but it hid my walk of shame and that was the point.  A big part of a woman’s life is logistics: I’ve sold a lot of copy appreciating that fact.  I locked the door and unlocked the armoire I had brought in with the new furniture, a few years back.  I stripped out of my wrinkled clothes and not-pleasant smelling underwear and stuffed them all into my gym bag.  A quick second bath with handiwipes, a blast of my antiperspirant (I’d used Sean’s once and went through the day smelling him everywhere, thinking he was standing behind me), and selected the best outfit in my closet: a perfectly-cut silk skirt-suit, beyond crimson, beyond blood-red it was so dark in color, which I accented with jade accessories and a black blouse that—miraculously—wasn’t see-through.  I keep a full wardrobe at the office, all dry-clean only stuff.  When most of it is in my gym bag, I drop it off at the cleaners around the corner, paying in advance, and give Beatrice the tickets.  She brings the clothes back in a couple days and the cycle of life continues.  In the better lit mirror, better than Sean’s, on the inside door of the armoire, I could see just how bad my hair looked.  Meh, I couldn’t be bothered and this morning’s meeting was with the SWS Automotive people.  I should probably have put on coveralls and dabbed some motor oil under my arms.

After Beatrice came back with my coffee, I spent the rest of the morning going through email.  Even with Beatrice proxying in as me and sorting what needed to be read and what could be safely deleted, it took hours.  At five of ten, she buzzed in to me that Justin and Glenda had arrived for our pre-meeting for SWS; Warren Koch, the Account Manager handling SWS, would be five minutes late as usual.  Good, it saved me the trouble of having Beatrice hold him outside while I talked to my people.

Justin is from the Art Department; all-around creative type who draws print ads, lays out TV spots, even redesigns product art (decals, labels, that sort of thing) on occasion.  He was in his late forties and I think had begun to fantasize about retirement.  All the fresh faces the Art Director (Harold Carter) had hired lately looked far too hypsterish for Justin, even in their suits.

Glenda is the sort of copywriter you can give anything to; that’s her strong point.  As for originality and keying on the most marketable feature: she’s hit or miss.  All it means is a few more check-ins to keep her on target.  It’s worth it; takes the strain off Michele Bean, my ace (can’t put Michele on all my accounts or she’d burn out).  I almost always have Glenda work with Justin.  Their Jack-and-Jill-of-all-trades mentality works well together.  I think they’ve started to realize it, too.  Or they’re in love.

“Hey, Deidre,” Glenda said in her girlish voice, sweeping in with a rustle of long summer dress.

“Deirdre,” Justin said as he brought far too many posters in under his arm.  Something was wrong: he shouldn’t have been carrying that much and he didn’t make a sports metaphor about our upcoming meeting.  That’s just unnatural.

“Okay, what’s wrong?” I asked as they took seats on the couch, Glenda ram-rod straight, Justin slouching irritably.

“There’s nothing wrong, per se,” Glenda said diplomatically.  “We’ve just had a bit more work to do on the account than we had anticipated.”

Thanks, Glenda.  We’ve got lots of time to fuck around with the meeting thirty minutes away.  I looked at Justin’s sulking mug.  He looked away.  I crossed my arms and said, “Spill.”

“Warren ordered us to change the copy, the print art, and the TV ad layout, everything,” Justin said in the tone of someone reciting a hated limerick.  He hated ‘telling on’ someone slightly less than having his time wasted.  “I tried to call you but always got your voicemail.”

Shit.  Before I could apologize, or lie, Beatrice buzzed me a second before Warren walked in.  Tall, thin except for a potbelly, Warren perpetually kept a look on his face that challenged anyone to tell him he wasn’t exactly the man he thought he was.  Don’t know how he missed it but he had a single strand of hair sticking straight up from the middle of his head, waving in the air like an antenna.

He clapped his hands together, rubbed them, and said, “Okay, people: are we ready make money?”

I turned to Glenda and Justin and said, “Do you have the copy and art I asked for?”

Justin nodded, looking between me and Warren; Glenda said, “Yep, we sure do, we have everything.”

“Good,” I said and turned back to Warren before saying: “That will be all.”

Justin gathered his huge leather folders of posters and layouts and shot out the door before Glenda had smoothed down her dress.

“Wait a second,” Warren barked at Justin, who didn’t stop.  “In the five minutes it took me to get here you finished the meeting?  And what was that about the art you ordered?  Accounts gave the direction, new direction, yesterday.”

He came spoiling for a fight and wasn’t going to leave without one.  Ignoring a bully may be good advice in grade school, not so much in a professional environment.  It is far too often a case of crush or be crushed.  And it just so happened I had my worm squashing shoes on.

“Warren, I can’t believe I have to tell you this a second time,” I said.  “So I’ll tell you slowly and try to use small words: you don’t give direction to Creative—you don’t countermand any of my orders, especially to my people.”

“This is my account, Deirdre,” he shouted.  “Mine, I’m the one handling it and I’m the one who commissioned the research.  The research—”

“Was incompetently conducted,” I said, “inconclusive at best, and still managed to support my strategy better than yours.”

“Bullshit,” he said.

“What you want to do,” I said, “is try to target soccer moms; run your ads alongside commercials for laundry detergent and carpet cleaning services: those aren’t even the same market!”

“Did you even read the research?” he said.  “These service centers are all in upscale, suburban communities: they’re filled with soccer moms sitting at home watching these other commercials.  We should be using that.”

“Did you read the research?” I asked him.  “You’re arguing that the SWS guys should run the exact same campaign that A&J ran for them, before they fired A&J.  We’re not interested in making the same mistakes their old company made.”

“So instead you’re going to make new ones?” he said.

“Warren, the soccer mom idea didn’t work,” I said.  “It didn’t work because they have nothing else to do all day but haggle over prices and look up everything a mechanic might suggest on the internet and object to half of it and then, even if their car is fixed, sue.  They’re a pain in the ass and the one thing they hate more than being cheated is being patronized.  You can’t try to bring them in: they’ll hate you for it and think you’re trying to take advantage of them.”

“So we should ignore them and just hope, is that it?” he said.  “They have a lot of money and you want to just give up on bringing it in.”

“No, I want for them to bring it to us, not for us to take it from them,” I said.

“That’s the same damn thing,” he said.

“No, it isn’t,” I said.  “They want to find the best deal, not have it shoved in their face.  We need to attract a client that they trust knows what’s what in regard to cars.  They buy designer labels they see their favorite celebrities wearing not because they want to look like Kim Kardashian but because they think she knows what she’s doing fashion-wise.  They buy French champagne, from Champagne, not because their guests will taste the difference between it and some California version but because they trust the French laws concerning wine will ensure a good product.  We have to provide the same thing.”

“This is ludicrous,” he said.  “You’re proposing we try to attract auto mechanics to our service station.  Brilliant.”

“No,” I said for what felt like the hundredth time.  “I’m going to bring in older men who have worked on cars since before they all had computers in them.  We’re going to run a campaign designed to attract the biggest growing demographic in the country: retirees.  By making SWS a place where men go to talk cars, a service station that will work with local salvage yards, that asks the customers what they want done, that’ll take the time to reminisce about the bygone days when cars had whatever they had in bygone days.  Carbonators or something, instead of fuel injection.  A service station that encourages its clients to shop around for parts and bring them in, instead of gouging them for new parts.  When older, successful men who have the money to buy new cars, who miss the days when they could dig in themselves for more than an oil change, go to SWS because they feel they are in charge, that they call the shots, and that the people at the service station are just doing the work like dutiful sons, they’ll talk about it.  And their soccer mom daughters will hear.  And the money from both those markets will come streaming in.  It’s the oldest trick in the book, Warren: you make the audience think that they aren’t responding to the advertisement but making a choice based on evidence—they create the perfect ad for themselves, in their own minds.”

“This is fucking ridiculous,” he said.  “Listen, it doesn’t matter if you agree with me or not, this is my account and I’m not signing off on your idea.  We will present my idea.”

“Wrong,” I said.  “You don’t seem to understand how this works so I’m going to make it very clear.  You do not make creative decisions: I do.  You do not command my people: I do.  You will either quit your bitching and moaning and get in line or you will no longer work here.  I love a good shouting match, Warren, so no hard feelings, but if you ever, ever, give an order to one of my people again I’ll fire you.”

He took a moment to respond and that moment must have cost him three years of his life; he hated himself for it.  “Fire me?” he said.  “You’re not a partner.”

I walked to the door and opened it.  “Irrelevant,” I told him, “just like everything else you’ve said this morning.  Now get out of my office.”

Power play: Warren would like to think of himself as one of the partners, as mere steps away from seeing his name added to the stone letters outside; Stern, Katz, Wilson, and Mitcham, Koch; Stern cats will soon admit sham cock; but the truth—the terrible, terrible truth, poor Warren—is that he had never pulled in more than a few hundred thousand on an account, nobody liked him, few respected him and most of those who did only played at it out of fear or to laugh at him behind his back.  He knows it, though.  Deep down, after a few highballs, he knows it.  With my door open and the office watching, with word of his defiance bound to reach someone who did have the legal authority to fire, he had a choice to make: either storm out and pretend he was my equal and that we were fighting or put his fantasy image of himself to the test.  He stormed out and nearly trampled Mable, puttering by with her watering can.

I whispered to Beatrice—who I am proud to say trembled very little as Warren stormed off—to call me fifteen minutes before the meeting with SWS, then closed the door.  I lie down on the couch and needed a drink.  It felt good to yell at someone and I was just glad that Warren actually deserved it.  I rubbed my hands below my waist and knew what was coming.

“Oh, you bitch,” I said.  “Period, you need to hold off for one more day.  One more day!  You owe me.  I’ve given you all the sex you’ve been craving this week so you owe it to me.  I have enough to do without your bullshit.”

I thought of resting my laptop on my tummy as a preemptive heating pad against cramping but worried it might spark one instead.  Eight hours, I thought: don’t mess with me for eight hours.  I thought thirty seconds had gone by but in a blink, Beatrice was tapping my elbow with less force than it would take to pop a soap bubble.  I needed a nap; I needed a drink; I needed some idea—any idea—about what to say to the PJ Moran people: what I had was a folder, a meeting, and a blister on my heel.  I gathered them up and went to meet the SWS Automotive people.

It was nearly 11:00.  I knew Warren had swallowed his bile and was no doubt laughing at nothing at all with Clive and Donald—the two from SWS—in the elevator up.  In the conference room, Justin gave me the “I only brought the good art” nod and Glenda smiled her “grandma isn’t drunk, she’s just sleepy” smile, sitting on the front 4mm of her chair.  The display easels stood at attention in a satisfying way, their draped ads and layouts holding their breaths, waiting, wanting to be stripped.  Maybe I was still dreaming a bit as I looked at them and then through the client binders.  There is something pornographic about the business, and not just because sex sells; that cliché is as tired as the models used to sell it.  But the client binders with their glossy paper and phony smiles, their convincing the audience to want, to believe, to buy into it all: it’s a kind of seduction, and no small part dirty, even if you’re not lying to the client.

Warren brought in Clive and Donald and we all shook hands, took our seats; they, like two pashas about to view perspective additions to their harem; we, like cardsharps in a town without law.  The first few minutes I let Justin and Glenda recount our previous meeting and the several strategy phone calls and emails we’d exchanged, set the tone and rewrite history a little bit so our presentation seemed to flow naturally from what they’d provided us.  I had my folder out but hardly needed it: as Mr. and Mrs. All-Trades summarized the problem, the solution played itself before my eyes, as if I was coming up with it for the first time all over again.  When my turn came, I rolled out the strategy as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, calling on the pashas to fill in the blanks here and there, as if we were creating the strategy together.  By the end, they felt as invested in the idea as I did, as part owners or proud parents.

The last thing I said before I sent them to lunch with Warren was, “It’s a simple choice between alienating the clients you have—by patronizing them—and attracting the clients of the future, who will grow only more numerous as the years pass.  That’s growth.  That’s the best choice.”

As I walked back to my office—after leaving a shaky-looking Warren trying to chortle his way through a personal crisis with two wealthy clients staring expectantly at him in the elevator—I noticed what I wasn’t feeling.  I wasn’t feeling the usual euphoria, the burst of satisfaction after nailing a pitch.  And I knew why, too.  All through the presentation to SWS, as I gave my matinee performance to two men who couldn’t spell Tony, I kept thinking about the PJ Moran account.  What the hell was I going to tell them?  I’d be in the same conference room six hours later: would I have to apologize?  Would Mr. Stern call me into his office?  I knew if he did it wouldn’t be nearly as bad as looking into the eyes of the PJ Moran people, seeing the embarrassed realization creep over their faces when my total lack of strategy, concept—hell, lack of a jingle—became apparent.  What was so special about their account?  Why wouldn’t the ideas appear the way they always had before?

I mouthed “No one” to Beatrice as I passed; I locked my door and all but put a hand over my eyes not to look at the beautiful bottles on my liquor cabinet, sparkling at me like smiles.  I swiveled my chair around to face the door so I wouldn't see them.

What was the feature, what was the feature?  That's what I kept asking myself, trying to force my imagination to work.  Funny how it doesn't take orders.  PJ Moran, International Investment bank turned full-service Savings and Loan by gobbling up the little banks and unprofitable divisions that hadn't survived the great housing pop.  Though their corporate headquarters was in the Cayman Islands (like every other big company that doesn't want to pay taxes to anyone), their real headquarters was on Wall Street.  Their Senior VP back in 2003, however, was from Toronto and, inexplicably—perhaps for reasons of Canadian pride—honored Canadian laws rather than American, or just skirting all of them the way most in the business do.  When the Bush Administration relaxed banking regulations (although it was really on Clinton's watch that Glass-Steagall was repealed, by a Republican-dominated congress), allowing for sub-prime mortgages and the tragic repackaging of them as securities, Canada banned the practice within its borders and would not allow its own banks to participate in the fool's-gold rush.  That strangely patriotic Canadian VP thought they had the right idea and stuck to his guns for four long years, while still making money.  And when the music stopped and the little guy was left without a seat, PJ Moran had lost nothing.

Now, five years on, PJ Moran has been seen as a safe haven.  Their stockholders didn't lose a thing (not as far as PJ Moran stock was concerned); wealthy individuals who got out of the market in '07—or later but still had some capital to protect—went running to them.  As a result, like the wealthy of the world, PJ Moran had lots of capital and nothing to do with it except invest in China.  That idea did not appeal to a certain hockey enthusiast.

So, PJ Moran has come up with a few startlingly old-fashioned ideas about what a bank is supposed to do.  Even more startling is that they want to make money at it and expect us to convince cautious investors and a weary, penniless public to do the buying.  What do they have?  A scheme to lure in first-time home buyers with low rates and low down payments, provided they met a metric that relied heavily on their occupations (nurses were all but guaranteed a loan; investment bankers, guaranteed to not get a loan); they had a college savings account for new parents, which also called on their famous metric (a county by county rating performed the magic this time, which was not at all racist); they had a program to forgive previously defaulted mortgages if the they were the lender and the borrower happened to have a  certain sort of job in a particular fifteen month period starting in 3Q07; and—my favorite—a new identity theft protection program that was basically a second account with limited funds, like buying a gift card every time you wanted to buy something online.  With these magic beans, Stern Cats was asked to grow a bean stalk to magical heights of financial bliss.  And they expected me to lay the golden egg.  And I couldn't even think up a metaphor that made sense.

So naturally, Henry Wilson walks into my office.  Though a partner mostly because his father had been and he inherited the stock to demand it, I liked Hank.  He was in his late fifties and had just married the twenty-two-year old woman of his rather puerile dreams.  But I liked him.  I can't exactly say why.  We got along it a weird way.  Sort of like a professor/student relationship where the professor is drunk all the time and relies on the one student in class who shows up having read the material to have a conversation with.  It had nothing to do with teaching; Hank never knew a thing about advertising, only business.  He had fun, though.  Maybe that was it.

“It's okay, Beatrice, you're doing great,” he said, patting Beatrice's shoulder as if calming an old but beloved dog that shouldn't bark anymore because of throat cancer.  “You're supposed to tell me no and try to stop me but not actually get in my way—you're doing great, dear, really.  And that little lace thing around your neck is the most adorable thing ever.  Really.  Sit down; it's okay.”  He shut the door and put his back to it.  “You're sure she's not Amish?”

“Stop it,” I said but couldn't help snickering.  It was entirely due to the way he says Amish: you can almost taste the apple-butter.

“And that lace thing?” he said, walking across the room to my liquor cabinet.  “You're right, she's not
Amish.  With that lace thing, she's a frontier schoolmarm.  What in the Star Spangled Banner was a 'marm' anyway?”

He poured himself some of the cheapest gin I had—a gift from a client, naturally—and posed with it.  You know what?  I can see him now, standing there with the dark, overcast glow through the window being very kind to his five decades of wrinkles, and I can see why I liked him.  I could imagine what he was like as a young man.  I could see his type, the flirty, maybe a little dangerous—but only if you were up for it—sort of guy.  The kind that was a lot of fun but bound to be a serious liability until he learned how much he could drink.  His eyes hadn't changed, I know that.  Pale, pale blue; baby blue with emphasis on the baby.

“Do I need to explain how Google works to you again?” I asked.

“You see, that's what I like about you,” he said, wagging a finger.  “That's why I come in here all the time: Jenny makes me feel young—I come in here and remember my real age.”

“Not that you act it,” I told him.

“You haven't been drinking, have you?” he said.  “Should I be worried?”

That was the annoying part about Hank: we'd spent so much time together he was beginning to know me.  Not good in a professional environment: don't want to your habits known because if you don't keep them up, people think you're slipping, and if you do then they think you're predictable.

“The PJ Moron people?” he asked, grinning better than Sean.

“You set a fine example,” I said.

“I'm neither stern nor a cat,” he said.  “What am I exampling?  Willing or sooning?  Come on, I haven't heard a thing about this account except from Sebastian and his Grand Cattiness is too in love with you to tell me the truth.  What's going on?”

“You're going to be in the meeting,” I said.  “Why should I ruin the surprise?  What's in that for me?”

“I have this dream,” he said, walking slowly to my desk after refreshing his drink from the bottle of good Finnish vodka, “this dream where you are made partner and afterward you tell me what's going on in my own company.”

“Am I dressed in this dream?” I asked.

“Usually,” he said, sitting down.  “I'm often nude and tied to something but you know how it is.”

“I sure do,” I said.  “I remember all the gory details Jenny related at her highly-flammable wedding shower.”

“Listen, Deirdre,” he said, leaning forward and setting his glass down.  “I love hamming it up with you, you know that, but I went by the Art Department and Harold said that only a few rather generic posters have been made up for this meeting with no copy on them.  You normally only torture me for a few weeks and then let me know everything is okay.”

“No I don't,” I said.  “I never let you know things are okay.  Hank, calm down.  This isn't the definitive meeting,” I lied.  “I don't want my hands tied by copy on the posters or a fully laid-out commercial.  I want to present slowly, feel the PJ Moran people out and make them feel a part of the process.  One of the reasons they left Excelsior Ltd was because they felt they weren't being listened to.”

“Don't fool yourself, beautiful,” he said, sitting back and polishing off his drink.  “They left Excellent-Losers because even they couldn't sell the boring-ass financial products that canuck wants to peddle.”

I would have said something about the “beautiful” if Stern or Mitcham or Katz had said anything like that.  Oh, Hank: it doesn't feel quite like you're my father but maybe like you're an ex that I fondly remember.  Not the sex, per se; maybe the banter beforehand and it's nice to remember.  Or maybe it’s because I know just how tightly Jenny has you wrapped around her finger.

“You're not here about the PJ Moran meeting,” I said.  “What's wrong now?  I thought the Ferrari and the twenty-two-year old wife solved your midlife crisis.”

“You are a cruel woman, Deirdre,” he said.  “That’s probably why you're the only person I trust to tell me the truth.  Jenny, despite everything she hinted at during our courting days, has started talking—rather loudly—about how cute she thinks all the babies we pass on the street are.  One was screaming bloody-fucking murder at Daniel's the other night and she was nearly in tears.  It's not fair!”

“This is life we're talking about,” I said.

“I know,” he said irritably, hating to have his own words thrown back at him.  He was the adorable one; Beatrice had nothing on him.  “It's just that I've had my kids.  They're both in college, they're both—”

“About Jenny's age,” I offered and then laughed.  He's right: I was crueler with him than anyone else.  “I'm sorry, Hank, I really am.”

“No you're not,” he sulked.  “Everyone makes a joke out of our age difference.”

“I know that you've been happier since you started seeing her,” I said.  “And happier than you've ever been since you married her.”

“It's true,” he said and his smile came back.  “But now this baby thing.  It'll ruin what we have.”

“But it's what she wants,” I said, knowing what the hormones tasted like when someone brought a newborn into the office but never wanting more than a whiff of them myself.

“It isn't,” he insisted.  “It isn't, it isn't.  I've had them.  They're terrible and they only get worse, the older you get.  I thought she'd be cozy with the thought of inheriting all my money when the booze finally kills me in a few years.”

“Stop it,” I said.  “That's not funny.”

“But it's true,” he said.

“You don't want to be replaced as the one thing in this world that she loves,” I said.  “I get that.  But you have a choice to make.  Her happiness or yours.  Can she be happy without a child?  Can you still be happy with a new one?  Are you willing to give up a little of yours for a lot of hers?  It's not easy, I know.  But this is life we're talking about.  So it is anything but easy.  It's a choice.”

He looked right into my eyes and he was twenty-five again.  Just out of the Navy, married into more money than his dad had earned and scared stiff and trying to face it without anybody knowing.  There was a grace to his facing it, a grace you don't see anymore.  Fear was just a soup he didn't particularly care for but wouldn't insult the hostess.  They don't make them like him anymore.

“I don't know why I come in here,” he said, heaving to his feet.  “You just talk sense at me and who wants to hear that.  I'm going to ask your Amish sister what's up.  She'll know.”

“If you scare Beatrice anymore today,” I warned him, “I'll tell Jenny how much you drink.”

He raised his hands and walked halfway back to his office, between cubicles, with his arms up as if he expected a bullet between his shoulder blades.  I'd had enough fun and needed to think.  Needed to make a Hank Wilson out of PJ Moron and couldn't have office emergencies interrupting me so I grabbed my gym bag and went somewhere to sweat for an hour.

I hate going to the gym but love coming back.  While I'm there, it depends entirely upon whether the person before me on the stair-climber wiped it off sufficiently or if the instructor of the class is a sadist but when I'm coming back, the endorphins, the sense that I'm not a cow, and knowing it will reduce my cramps, clear my mind, and give me the perfect—and entirely unjustifiable—excuse to finish off the jar of Nutella as my dinner that makes me happy.  While there, I looked around at all the people plugged into their mp3 players, everyone in their own little worlds (mostly; there were creepers skeeving around here and there); some trying to block out every person that was thinner or more jacked; some trying to ignore their watches, the wall clock; some obviously trying to burn off their relationship problems.  How could I entice any of you to refinance your mortgage?  Or start a college savings fund for a child you haven't yet conceived, provided you don't live in a proscribed neighborhood?  Have I been here long enough to eat Nutella?

It did the trick, though.  Twenty minutes on the stair-climber, twenty minutes of calisthenics, and a combined twenty minutes of stretching, and I felt clean, in a sense.  Clean on the inside.  I smelled like boiled ass but I was clean.  Taking care of the ass-boiled thing is always fun.  I should think up a product to exempt women from their own locker rooms.  I just want to shower, dress, put on my face (as my grandma used to say), and get the hell out of there.  But every time it's like trying to crap in a ladies room where someone else just won't leave the stall next to you.  Women lined up at the floor-to-ceiling mirrors, completely naked, totally oblivious or disregarding of the other women around them, women with better bodies than mine standing in front of the mirrors hating themselves.  You walk past them and think, “Should I be hating myself more?”  It's impossible not to.  Unless you have a meeting with PJ Moran that afternoon and nothing to tell them.  Then you say screw it, I had way too much sex last night and I'm far too close to my period to ponder the socialization of my gender.  Regardless, I went back to the office clean and calm and still without one fucking idea.

Just inside the glass doors to my floor, nestled amongst this huge potted plant, there's a space just wide enough to lean against the wall and watch.  I keep planning to wear a leopard-print dress one day and hide there until that well-dress flirt in Croman's team—what is his name?—says the wrong thing and I can send him down to HR.  I stood there with my gym bag at my feet and watched for almost an hour.  Just thinking.  Hoping, really.  Hoping whatever it was in my mind that came up with the ideas would finally kick in.  It's like the grieving process sometimes: you deny, you get angry, you try to bargain, nothing works until you finally accept that you can't force it and maybe it won't come.  Every time before now, though, it had.

What would it be like?  What if Stern and Katz said it didn't matter what Hank thought, they had to respond to PJ Moran's dissatisfaction with me (which they were sure to word more strongly if I brought nothing to the meeting accept stuttering and apologies)?  Ask Beatrice to box up my things and UPS them to my apartment?  Sit in Dickson's and wait for Sean to arrive?  Go home and tell Paul?  Thinking of both of them was exactly what I needed.  I deliberately didn't check my phone because I knew that both of them would have called.  I may be a mess when it comes to men but I have good taste in them.  They both deserve better than me and I haven't even been working as hard as I should to keep them from knowing it.

Self-pity is not my strong suit.  I don't think there's a person alive who really has her shit together.  Not really.  Certainly most people don't.  If they did, there wouldn't be a market for people like me to convince them of what they ought to buy, where they should go on vacation, that their life insurance isn't sufficient if they really care about their children.  All those people busy with their jobs or lives, making plans, falling behind, trying to get ahead, wondering if what they were doing was the right thing or if they were reading the wrong magazines, newspapers, blogs.  What was the formula?  Every other day, I had the answer and plastered it on billboards.   Now, I didn't know.  I couldn't tell them which choice to make.

I couldn't because, standing there, I was suddenly unsure of the decisions I had made and should make.  I thought maybe I shouldn't have agreed to marry Paul, last year; half the reason he'd proposed was to keep us together.  Maybe I should break it off with Sean; the sex is hot but mostly because he has so little personality that I can imbue him with whatever I need at the moment; that gets old after a year.  I thought, “Maybe I should build a time machine and go back and steal Hank away from Linda before she drained all the color out of his hair.”

I went back to my office and—I still can't believe I was losing it this much—I wrote out, by hand, my resignation letter.  I looked around at my things and wondered what would be stolen before Beatrice could box it up.  I didn't fall asleep but I might as well have: It was five o’clock thirty seconds after I sat down.

Beatrice knocked more softly than a kitten scratching to be let in and then poked little more than the tip of her nose in to whisper it was time.  I almost asked her for a blindfold.  I hadn't craved a cigarette that badly since—ever.  I took the folder she gave me, not seeing her or the folder, and walked across the floor to the conference room.

The PJ Moran people were already inside; a major mistake on my part.  Hank was joking with them, still standing, so they must not have been in there long, but still.  I stood in the doorway until he motioned toward me and they turned.  We shook hands, pretending I was worth the big entrance.  Keller, the Senior VP Procurement, was a serious version of Hank in his pinstriped suit and scowl that looked unnatural when he turned it upside down for a split second.  Their head of Marketing, Cynthia Murdoch, had been against hiring Stern Cats, thinking we were too small for a bank of their size: she looked prepared to prove it, no matter what.  The final judge—or juror or executioner—was Oscar Morales, a Puerto Rican Jew with the nose of a prize fighter.  I couldn't ever look at him without imagining a submarine Capitan, I have no idea why.

They didn't bat an eye at the refreshments and even less at the easels shrouded against one wall.  Michele, who I hadn't let write a thing because I had no guidance to give her, stood embarrassed at the far end of the table, wondering why she was there.  Probably she wondered if the charmed career of Deirdre Vaillencourt was about to descend to a fiery finish and would she be caught in the blaze.  I wondered, too.  After the introductions and general hubbub of cautious genuflecting was completed, Hank turned to me with a sweeping gesture and in a tone far too close to a spoken prayer, turned the meeting over to me.

I looked each of them in the eye in turn, smiling as I always had when approaching new and important clients.  Would a grand, sincere apology earn us a little more time?

“We've all made mistakes,” I said in a voice that didn't sound like mine.  “I don't think there's a successful person alive, or ever was, who couldn't look back on his or her life and cringe at least at something.  It might have been as silly as believing mud pies really were pies, in preschool.  Some of us chose the wrong person for our first kiss: oh my god.”  Cynthia the ice-queen actually smiled.  “Maybe you know someone who thought advertising was a reasonable way to make a living.  We all make mistakes.  And I think all of us have felt, at one time or another, that fate was taking a dim view of our plans,” I said and down in my pumps my little toe on my right foot began to tap all on its own.  As if by magic.  “We think our jobs our safe, that the industry is healthy, and we can finally afford that dream home.  But life doesn't ask our permission to change.  Not everyone looked into the future in 2003 with the prophetic wisdom of your President.  Some thought they had the means to move to the community of their dreams, with good schools and picturesque tree-lined streets and an area code that would let their parents say, 'My child made it.'  And then the bottom fell out,” I said and stepped back a pace, looking down at my jumping little toe and feeling the shake quivering up my leg.  “The job was suddenly not so certain; the mortgage payment tripled inside of two years; and insurance was not going to pay as much of the maternity costs as they had once promised.  Payments had to be made; decisions had to be made.  And for a lot of people during those hard times, all the decisions were bad ones.  And, whether right or wrong, they made a poor choice.  There are millions upon millions of Americans who found themselves on the wrong side of a bad decision.”

I tugged at the corner of the drapery that concealed the first of our campaign posters, unadorned by copy.

“Where can someone go, when they've made a poor choice?” I asked them.  “We're not talking habitual offenders, malingerers, scam artists intent on fraud.  We're talking people who meet the criteria of your research; people who, by the numbers, may have made one mistake but are highly unlikely to make another.  People encumbered only by the penalties associated with that mistake but who are otherwise sound investments.”

I turned to the other side and swept off the cover of the next poster.  On it the Manhattan office of PJ Moran soared into the sky, gleaming in brilliant steel, solid under heavenly blue.

“Many have made such mistakes and if they could, they would travel back in time and undo the damage, un-make those mistakes.

“Introducing The Time Machine by PJ Moran.  Qualified applicants will enjoy a reduction in their mortgage rates to pre-default levels.  It will be as if the mistake of a lifetime were never made.  Simply go back one year in time and make the right choice, today.

“By your own metrics, lady and gentleman, homeowners with a single default, with low credit card debt aside from what is associated with the mortgage, who hold jobs with qualifying salaries, remain good investments.  A 30-year mortgage refinanced at 5% will beat the pants off of the near nonexistent inflation the stalled economy is generating.  That's straight from your research.  With this one financial product you can do more than compete for what few markets there are today: you can create the market of tomorrow.

“The Time Machine: a chance to make the best decision of your life out of the worst mistake you ever made.  What choice will you make?”

I hope you enjoyed reading this short story.  I also have a few novels published through Amazon’s Kindle Store, the newest being The Parnell Affair.  Thematically, not very similar to the above but hopefully a good read, too; it’s a political thriller about a betrayed spy, a relentless journalist, and the hidden truth behind a President’s demand for war.  Don’t have a Kindle?  No problem: Amazon provides free apps to view all of the great—and inexpensive—Kindle content on your phone, PC, or Mac, here.  Thanks and happy reading!