Just last Monday Tom called the second I sat down at nine, and I never put him through to Corrine because he never asked to speak to her. She wasn’t in the office, of course, but I might have whispered to him for a while anyway.
“Hi, Shari,” he said.
“Hi, Tom. Where are you today?”
“Tokyo. It is an amazing city, Shari, especially when it’s all lit up like it is now. It’s a little too crowded for my tastes, but I bet you’d love it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’d love it because I’d be almost as tall as everyone else for a change. What account are you working on?”
“Panasonic. They have some fancy new digital zoom cameras. Very cutting edge stuff.”
“Expensive?”
He laughed. “Yeah. I’d wait a few years for the price to drop if I were you. I could recommend a few cheaper brands that do much the same thing if you like. How’s your weather?”
“Cloudy, crappy, and raw with a one hundred percent chance of gray,” I said. “What time is it over there now?”
“Seven p.m. Just settling in for the night.”
“So early?” Tom rarely stays out later than ten no matter where he is.
“I’m bushed. They work thirty-hour days over here.”
“You work too hard, Tom.” He does. He’s rarely in New York.
“Hey, it’s a living. Did you read any good books over the weekend?”
I laughed. “Is that all you think I do on my weekends, Tom?” It kind of, um, is.
“You read more than anyone I know, Shari. And your recommendations have always been accurate. You have another recommendation for me? I just finished
The Girl Who Played with Fire,
and I need another good read.”
I recommended Alice Munro’s
Too Much Happiness
, a wonderful collection of short stories.
“You can never have too much happiness,” he said.
“As long as they don’t start taxing it,” I said. “When are you coming home?”
“Shari, I wish I could just stay home for a change,” he said.
“But you love to travel.”
“Yeah, but my next stop is Detroit, and that won’t be any fun ...”
I have
no
idea what Tom sees in Corrine, but like the rest of us, he has to see a lot of her whenever he does see her. She’s just out there, as in busting out there. She never leaves her Upper West Side penthouse without a plunging neckline that shows off all her stretch marks, I mean, cleavage. She sometimes wears so-called custom-made skirts that I think belong to a woman swiveling down a pole. Corrine definitely has the legs for it. She wears so-called designer spiked heels that I think also belong to women swiveling down poles. She has long relaxed hair that, well, glistens so much I wish I could wear sunglasses. Think Black Beauty (the horse) at noon on a cloudless day a few feet from the
sun
. I didn’t know black hair could blind someone, but it does. I sometimes have little spots floating in front of my eyes after one of our “storm sessions,” as she calls them. “Tom just
loves
my hair this way,” she says.
Tom must squint a lot. I’ll bet Tom, who’s thirty-four, looks older than he really is. Corrine can age a person a lot in just one day, and all she has to do is, well, do her hair.
Now here’s the ultimate question: Why am I still here at MultiCorp if I loathe this job and my boss so much? It pays the bills. Period. I know, I don’t have a whole lot of fulfillment here, but it does keep me under a roof, in clothes, and fairly well fed. If I get to the end of my month with enough money to splurge on a dozen glazed at Dunkin’ Donuts, I
am
fulfilled.
I also stick around because I’m good at what I do. Yeah, it’s infuriating to see someone else getting credit for my intelligent ideas, but at least my words are out there. I also have power, and I sometimes even let Corrine think that she has it. I get to walk eight miles a day in all sorts of weather, I get to take initiative daily and even hourly, and I get to keep trade secrets. I get to be creative. Remember “Buy this, by George”? That was me. Yeah, I let that one slip, too. Corrine sold the idea to Kmart. It’s still cool to see that phrase out there harassing Kmart shoppers this holiday season.
Corrine is the most fickle boss I’ve ever had. She says she likes my “strong work ethic” (at least one of us works) and my “positive and productive attitude” (at least one of us is productive), but she usually finds something petty to put in my “Yipe,” my YPE or Yearly Performance Evaluation. “Shari needs to brush up on her Spanish,” she wrote four years ago. Corrine has never had a Spanish client and pronounces the
J
in frijoles. “Shari might advance with proper, intensive training,” she wrote three years ago. The woman has barely trained me.
I take classes to help me with advertising and business lingo and practices, but I still use a commonsense approach to any product thrown our, I mean,
her
way. I simply ask myself, “Why would I
ever
buy this?” My mama used to say that to me whenever we’d shop. It works. The more you think that question, the less likely you’re going to buy anything. In other words, I
think
for a while about any product we’re trying to sell, and then I come up with possibilities. Corrine? She just spews the first thing that comes into her pointy, horse’s hair head and expects this single thought to be the junk.
The dig she gave me last year on my YPE—“Shari must learn to dress more professionally”—is kind of true. I schlep around in my clothes. I’ve learned a lot of Brooklyn-ese in the last five years, and I certainly schlep around fashionably unfashionable every day. I have a decent body, somewhat ample cleavage for my size, and a definitely toned booty, but I like to hide it. I wear boots. Waterproof. Warm. Sensible. Rugged. Able to leap long puddles and potholes—or walk right into and out of them if I have to. I live in jeans, preferably faded and frayed, no designs, a little baggy, held up by braided rope or twisted leather belts. Flannel shirts and earth tone, oversized fisherman’s sweaters hide me in warmth in the fall and winter, garishly bright and loose tank tops keep me cool in the spring and summer. I wear my waterproof North Face Windbreaker and long johns under my jeans on really cold days. I like wearing multicolored knit or wool caps and hats that match nothing I’m wearing. I even have multicolored mittens with little finger holes. I call my fashion style “Y’all Don’t Pay Me Enough to Dress Professionally” chic.
And my whole ensemble doesn’t cost as much as
one
pair of Corrine’s shoes.
My phone lights up, and my caller ID tells me it’s Ted from accounting, and he’s one minute late. Ted is slipping. “Corrine Ross’s office,” I say. It is just so stupid to say “office” when there is no office! “This is Shari Nance. Hi, Ted.”
“Shari, uh, is Corrine in yet?” Ted asks.
I look at Corrine’s creepy space. She uses this huge, clear piece of Plexiglas to cover her mahogany desk while my standard-issue wood-grain and metal desk overflows with files. Most sane people put pictures or mementos under their Plexiglas. Corrine places nothing. The Plexiglas magnifies the wood nicely, though. Other than a port for her laptop, there’s only a green banker’s lamp and a phone on her desk—and not a single fingerprint.
It’s nauseating.
“No, Ted, Corrine isn’t here yet.” I wave at Ted, who sits in his “office” forty feet away and with a direct view of Corrine’s desk. “What’s up, Ted?”
“Have you seen Miss Ross’s expense account from last month?” he asks.
I wrote the stupid thing, Ted. “Yes.”
“What does ‘various and sundry client incentives’ mean again?”
I made up that frivolous phrase five years ago, and now all the administrative assistants are using it. “Alcohol, Ted. Booze. Cigars. Gifts. Anything that makes it easier to sell the client.”
“Oh right, right.”
But Ted already knows that. Ted just likes to flirt with me. He could just take a few seconds to walk to my desk and say, “Hi,” but Ted’s super shy, and I know he doesn’t like to talk to or even spend time with anyone face-to-face. Five years ago he asked me out to see
City Lights,
an old Charlie Chaplin silent film. What a date that would have been. Silent Ted, silent movie, silent me. I turned him down gently, but he still calls me every morning. It’s not as creepy as it sounds. It kind of jump-starts my day, you know? I even rented
City Lights
once
,
and I cried at the end—not because I didn’t go out on a date with Ted. That was
such
a romantic movie! The little blind flower girl regained her sight, and a grown man didn’t speak for almost two hours!
It was beautiful.
“Um, Shari, are you doing anything interesting this weekend?” Ted asks.
Ted is white and divorced, chain-smokes seventeen floors down on William Street every three hours, and roots for the Mets. The Mets bobblehead doll on his desk is cuter than he is, though it has far fewer freckles than Ted does. He asks me the same thing just about every Friday. If he would just drop the word
interesting,
I might think he’s trying to ask me out again. I’d turn him down gently again, I’d probably rent another silent movie again, and I’d probably cry again.
“Everything I do is interesting, Ted,” I say. Not really. What exciting thing will I do (but not
really
do) this weekend to impress Ted? Last weekend I “attended” an all-day novel writing contest, and Ted was fascinated. Who would ever go to one of those? “I’m in a Skee Ball championship tournament this weekend,” I tell him. I love that game. The Brooklyner actually has a Skee Ball machine in the Lounge, and while the other cool, hip, and generally drunk singles and couples play pool and snuggle up to an imminent hangover in the Lounge, I shake my booty and rack up the points.
To the excitement of no one, apparently, but me.
“Yeah?” Ted says. “A championship Skee Ball tournament? I didn’t know they had those.”
They don’t, Ted. Only I have them. I am always the champ because I’m the only one who plays.
“So you’re pretty good, huh?” he asks.
“Good” is such a relative term. I’m good at managing my boss. I’m good at flossing. I’m good at singing and praising at Brooklyn Tabernacle, my church. I’m good at walking. I’m good at cleaning my glasses with my sleeve. I’m good about paying my bills. I’m good at eating. I’m good at giving massages.
“I’m the reigning champ, Ted. No one has ever beaten my high score.” Mainly because no one else ever plays. “Anything else you need to ask me, Ted?”
“Um, no. Bye, Shari.”
“Bye, Ted.”
I loosen my boots under my desk and attack Corrine’s e-mails, most of them memos from the upty-ups. None are particularly interesting or well written. They all want to know how it “went” out in LA. I’m sure it didn’t “go,” since Corrine decided to “go it alone” this time without one of our usually productive “storm sessions” because the client had an upscale and ridiculously unaffordable designer clothing label. “What could be more perfect for me?” she had asked.
I so much wanted to answer her. In my mind, I saw a blade from a guillotine dropping onto and through her neck. That would have been “more perfect” for her.
And yet ... and yet ... we work together.
I know, I know. It makes
no
sense.
We’re kind of like Fluff and Mutt. She’s
Ebony
, and I’m
Jet
. She’s Toni Morrison (although I
do
love Toni’s writing), and I’m graffiti on the wall. She’s
Stormy Weather,
and I’m
Uptown Saturday Night.
She’s haute couture, and I’m greasy spoon, pass the ketchup and the salt. She’s Whitney Houston when she wasn’t strung out, and I’m Tracy Chapman, only without the deep voice or the dreads. Corrine is steak tartare, and I’m “Burn me one!” She’s—
Here
.
Well, isn’t this a fine how-do-you-do.
Chapter 5
A
nd she’s not happy.
She must have sucked up in LA.
And how do I feel about this? Do I feel happy? Do I feel angry that she didn’t consult me before going on this little jaunt all by herself? Do I want to say, “I told you so”? Yeah, I do. Will I?
No. It is payday, and I want to eat for the next two weeks.
I usually have something to hand her, some slips of paper or some Post-its that really mean nothing at all to her since she only flips through them once and throws most of them away. Memos. Phone numbers from clients who need a callback. Reminders for meetings and events. Today, I have nothing to hand her but the Neiman Marcus catalog and a compliment.
“You look no worse for wear, Miss Ross,” I say. Okay, so it’s not much of a compliment.
You
work tirelessly for the wench for five years with absolutely no recognition and see if you can come up with something better.
“We need to talk privately,” Corrine whispers. She wears something neutral for a change, a crème pantsuit that still accents her cleavage, two evil prongs springing out at me from behind the silky fabric. Is it that cold in here? Back off, evil prongs!
“It didn’t go so well, Miss Ross?” I whisper back, rolling my chair around to the right side of her desk. This is our “private space” where we’re not supposed to be heard. She used to call me from all of six feet away to have these talks, but then she worried that our conversations were being monitored and her (my) ideas were being stolen by other account executives.
Corrine drapes her Fugli (or whatever) “throw scarf” over the back of her Corinthian leather chair and sits, her dark brown eyes drifting over to Brooklyn. “It didn’t even begin, Shari dear,” she says in her clipped Connecticut Yankee accent. “And I wore my Jason Wu.”
I blink. I know no one by this name. He is not in my (our) files.
“The
green
dress, Shari. The one you said you liked.”
Ah, the green one. Too high up on the thigh for Corrine. That dress makes her look like a Christmas tree with a brown face on top instead of a star.
“I walk in to talk to ... what’s his name.”
“Carlo Pietro.” I memorize all client names so Corrine doesn’t have to. One day I will memorize the names of her dresses, too. Not.
“Yes, him,” she says. “He was a dreadful, frightful man. He was also bald as an eagle.”
I want to tell her that eagles aren’t really bald, but why spoil her inaccurate metaphor? She went to Harvard, not me.
“That dreadful, frightful man smoked like a chimney the entire time I was there. I had to take my Fendi jumpsuit immediately for dry-cleaning. The silk was actually bruised.”
The horror. The shame. The pain of it all.
“I pitched my ideas ...” She sighs. “And he shrugged. The dreadful, frightful man actually had the nerve to shrug at me.”
I almost shrug. It’s a Brooklyn thing. “Fuggedaboutit,” I want to say, but I don’t. It’s payday.
“What, um, what were your ideas, Miss Ross?” I ask, pinching my thigh out of her sight. I hate being so polite to her, and my thigh pays the price.
“I only had one excellent idea, Shari dear.”
This should be good.
“A glamorous black woman sweeps into a room wearing a whatever-his-name-is original. A handsome white man in a tux, tails, and white gloves takes her hand.”
So far so stupid.
“He says, ‘You look absolutely ravishing in that dress, my dear.’ And she says, ‘This old thing? I only put it on when I don’t care how I look.’”
No.
This
is about as far as stupid goes. Only Mae West herself could have pulled that off, and while Corrine has the cleavage, she sure doesn’t have the chutzpah.
“You understand my concept, don’t you, Shari dear?”
No. I don’t get stupid, and I am not and never will be your dear. “Um, you were going for a little ...” If I say “humor” and I’m wrong, I’ll regret it. “It’s, um, it’s edgy, Miss Ross.” I like that word. “Edgy” is just vague enough to sound like a compliment, especially when it isn’t.
“It was edgy, wasn’t it? He just didn’t comprehend it. I took him to the precipice, to the very edge, and he just shrugged and lit up another cigarette.”
I respect Carlo Pietro. He didn’t like stupid either. “Did you, um, did you have a backup plan, Miss Ross?”
She stares at me. “You agree that my concept was sound.”
I agree that your concept was butt. “It has possibilities.” I know how to suck up like the rest of the people here. “Possibilities” is another compliment that’s not really a compliment at MultiCorp.
“I didn’t think that I needed a backup plan, Shari dear. Brilliance is not always perfection. You know that. I’ve been telling you that for years.”
And you’ve been
wrong
for years. “The principal mark of genius,” so the saying goes, “is not perfection, but
originality.
” I doubt Corrine has ever had an original thought that
I
didn’t give to her.
“So there I was, stunned, staggered, and bewildered, as you might imagine,” she says. “
Me,
and with how many active, thriving accounts?”
Us
... with fifteen accounts. “Fifteen so far, Miss Ross.” But no more if I don’t help you anymore, wench.
“I was aghast, I was flabbergasted, and I was appalled.”
And wearing Jason Wu, too. How
wounded
you must have felt.
She leans in. “Have any of the upty-ups called?”
I shake my head. Not yet. “No, Miss Ross.”
“Mr. Dunn hasn’t called today?”
Yesterday, yes. Today, no. “No, Miss Ross.” I’ll spring Mr. Dunn’s earlier call on her in a minute. I just want to prove to her that I listen to everything she says.
She leans in closer, and I smell her perfume. It’s something almost musky. “Well, if Mr. Dunn calls, I’m not here.”
She talks to her boss less than the president talks to Congress. “Yes, Miss Ross. And if anyone else calls, I’ll handle them.”
She sits back, throwing one part of her mane to the side.
I see spots, lots of little white spots.
“He was a beastly, horrid, revolting, hairy man,” she says. “And you know what?”
I know nothing. I just do most of the work here, and right now I can’t see. Wave your hair somewhere else.
“He was wearing an Armani sports jacket with Lee jeans and one of those ... those ...” She points to her shoulders.
I see a blur of motion through the spots. “Wife-beaters?”
“Yes. A common T-shirt. And he was barefoot. He had these little wooly worms squirming out from under his frayed jeans.”
I have to meet this guy. He’s just the kind of fashion misfit the world needs.
She hands me an envelope. “Here are my receipts. Do your magic as you always do.”
It’s too thick for only three days of normal travel. I’ll have to do a lot of magic.
“Did Tom Terrific call while I was away?” she asks.
This means that Tom, her alleged boyfriend, didn’t call her for three whole days. But why would Tom call here this morning if he knew Corrine was in LA? “No, Miss Ross.”
She shakes her mane, I mean, her head, little streaks shooting off her like lights beaming off a disco ball. I’m sure Ted and Tia are blind by now, too.
“We’ve, um, we’ve been missing each other lately, Tom and I,” Corrine says. “He’s such a workaholic that it’s often so hard for us to keep in touch.”
In touch? You’re out of touch, wench. It’s most likely Tom is sending you a message by
not
sending you
any
messages. The man obviously doesn’t want to talk to you. He’d rather talk to me.
“I think he’s supposed to be in Detroit this week or next,” she says. “Can you imagine? Detroit, and this time of year. It must be awful for him.”
Tom’s a survivor. He’ll be fine. I mean, Detroit is kind of like Brooklyn only farther west and hopefully with smarter tourists.
“Any other calls?” she asks.
I nod.
She looks around her spotless desk. “Where is the memo then?”
“I didn’t write it down, Miss Ross.” Mainly because of who the caller is. “Um, Mr. Dunn called
yesterday
and said to send you to his office as soon as you returned.”
Corrine blinks her false eyelashes. They have to be false. She looks like one of the Marvelettes. “Shari, I distinctly asked you if Mr. Dunn called.”
“Today. You asked if Mr. Dunn called
today,
and I said no, Miss Ross.” I love messing with her like that.
She breathes heavily. “Well, when did Dunn call yesterday?”
“About two o’clock, which would have been eleven a.m. out in LA.”
Corrine fans her face with both hands, a nervous habit that never fails to amuse me. One day I’m hoping that she’ll actually achieve liftoff. “I had my meeting with ... What’s his name?”
“Carlo Pietro,” I say.
“Yes, him, at ten. Do you think ...”
“Carlo Pietro,” I say again.
“Yes, him, do you think he called Mr. Dunn immediately after I left?”
After hearing your stupid idea, I would have called Mr. Dunn the
second
you left. “I don’t know, Miss Ross.” Of course he did. Duh. “Um, we’re getting near the end of the year, you know. Bonuses. The year-end party. Parties are your forte, Miss Ross.” I hate bucking up a crumbling diva, but whatyagonnado? It’s payday.
Corrine smiles, her lips tight, her dimples visible, even her eyebrows blinding me. “You’re probably right. I’ll bet that’s it.”
Yeah, and there’s this bridge I’d like to sell you in Brooklyn. It’s on the other side of that window you keep staring through over there.
“But, Shari dear, what if it isn’t?” she asks. “What if, heaven forbid, what if it’s about LA?”
Then I might be working for someone else very soon. I’d even return any IKEA gift card they might give me this year. I wouldn’t need
another
bonus if Corrine is gone. I do a happy dance in my mind. “But what if it
is
about the party, Miss Ross ... or your bonus?” Always buck up snobs with bucks.
“The timing, Shari dear, is obvious.”
Against my better judgment, I decide to do damage control. This is what she’s been waiting for me to do anyway, and I do it well. “Well, if Mr. Dunn says something about your not getting this account, simply say something like ...” Start up some Mamadou Diop music. “We Are the World” might also suffice. “The Carlo Pietro clothing line does not represent the aims or thrusts of MultiCorp’s vision statement.”
Corrine’s eyes widen slightly. “Yes. Go on.”
I know she’ll make me type this up for her to memorize in a few moments, so I begin jotting down notes as I talk. “We are a multicultural ad agency specializing in Latina, African, and Asian demographics. As lucrative as this account might have been, it flies in the face of everything MultiCorp stands for.” It ought to work. We, I mean, Corrine has brought in many millions to MultiCorp. Mr. Dunn wouldn’t fire her because of her Mae West fiasco.
“Yes,” she says. “Go on.”
Shoot. I was done. “Um, do Latina, African, and Asian people really need to wear Carlo Pietro?” Or Jason Wu. Shoot, Carlo Pietro wears Lee. I wear Levi’s. I guess we all wear
somebody
daily.
“But weren’t, um, doesn’t ...” Corrine’s eyes glaze over.
“Carlo Pietro,” I say. I will hear this name in my dreams tonight.
“Yes, but doesn’t he produce his clothing primarily in African and Latin American countries?”
Oh yeah. There’s that. “But Carlo Pietro’s very workers cannot afford the clothes they make.” It’s time to wrap it up. “If we had gotten this account, we’d be sending the wrong message to the multicultural world.” End music. Hit the lights. I’m done. Applause all around.
“Yes. Go on.” Corrine’s voice gets all dreamy sometimes, and it makes me want to earl all over her nice clean Plexiglas.
Cue music. Something with a marching band to speed this up. “What would it look like to, say, the typical Kmart shopper—”
“Buy George, by George,” she interrupts.
She has to rub it in. “What would it look like if we simultaneously represented Kmart’s George line
and
Carlo Pietro? We are not hypocrites here at MultiCorp, are we?” That ought to do it. Tell the band to go home.
Corrine smiles, her jagged tooth spiking her lower lip. “Type that up for me.”