Laura Caldwell: The Night I got Lucky

“This isn’t going to work, people,” she said, pointing to a board behind her. On it was a list of suggested headlines we might obtain for our client, Grenier’s Stud Finder, whose product used NASA-like technology to find wall studs. The headlines read: “Ladies Can Find Studs at Chicago Hardware Show,” “Studs Aren’t Hard To Come By Anymore,” and “Find the Stud That’s Right For You.”

“‘Ladies can find studs’?” Roslyn said mockingly.

I shot a glance at Alexa Villa seated next to me. Alexa, an annoyingly beautiful woman with dark hair and fair skin, had come up with that first headline.

“And ‘find the stud that’s right for you’?” Roslyn said. “Are we selling sex or hardware?” She crossed her arms and stared pointedly at me.

Apparently, she didn’t like my work so much either. I had to admit I’d written the other headlines.

“I believe that was Billy’s,” said Alexa Villa seated next to me.

“Elegant, people! I want elegant. Understand?” Roslyn always preached elegance, which killed me. We crafted publicity campaigns for everything from power tools to pharmaceutical drugs to local news shows, but none of those products or clients was particularly elegant. It wasn’t as if we were pushing the symphony orchestra.

Even though I rarely saw them, I thought of my sisters then because I was sure Dustin and Hadley not only owned stud finders with laser technology but knew how to use them. Yet Dustin and Hadley were both the epitome of elegance, the kind of women whose angular frames looked stylish in jeans and a man’s T-shirt while they wielded a power saw.

I, on the other hand, would take off a limb if I tried to use a power saw. I wouldn’t know a putter from a hockey stick, and the mere whiff of scotch makes me flinch.

“Elegant,” said Evan across the table. “Very interesting.” As if he hadn’t heard this thirty-three thousand times before. “You’re absolutely right, Roz.”

Since Evan had made vice president, he’d been calling Roslyn “Roz,” something no one else had ever attempted, and, Evan being Evan, he got away with it. I couldn’t help but grin when he turned his head and winked at me. Although I’d been married for two years, I had a little crush on Evan. Okay, more than a little. My friend Tess liked to call it the Everlasting Crush.

“Billy,” Roslyn said, “you do know that most of our target demographic is male, right?”

I glared at Alexa, then cleared my throat, and sat taller. “Of course, but the point is to grab attention. And these headlines, if we could talk the press into them, would grab anyone’s attention, male or female.”

“Well, let’s not alienate our male audience, okay?”

I hated Roslyn’s habit of speaking in questions. It made me want to do the same thing. It made me want to ask, Wouldn’t it help all of us if you got laid?

“No problem,” I said instead. I batted away the thought that it would probably help if I got laid once in a while.

“And Billy,” Roslyn said, “you realize this campaign is important for a number of reasons, right?”

If it were possible, I would have crawled under the table. Lately, Roslyn had been making ominous threats (always posed as queries, of course) that not only might I miss the VP promotion I’d been waiting for since the Mesozoic Era, but I might be demoted (or worse) if my productivity didn’t improve. And now this loosely veiled threat in front of the team let everyone know my ass was on the line. I saw Alexa suppressing a grin. Evan, God love him, looked miserable for me. The rest of the group shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. Should I quit now? I wanted to. I desperately wanted to. But the truth was I’d been putting out my feelers for months and the industry was in a lockdown. No one was hiring.

“I understand completely,” I said. With the last shred of dignity I had in my body, I looked right at her. There was a painful silence during which Roslyn and I stared at each other. No one muttered a word. William, the guy to my right, shuffled some papers. Alexa cleared her throat.

In my mind, a montage of photos from my career at Harper Frankwell flashed before me-first as an eager intern rising quickly to assistant and then account exec and so on. It seemed I was a natural at the job, and I adored it. I loved writing press releases, creatively shading words and drawing out sentences to make our clients appear more worldly or accomplished or cutting edge. I loved pitching those clients to the press, subtly hounding producers and editors until the victorious moment when they caved and agreed to cover us. It seemed right to everyone, including myself, that I was heading straight for a vice presidency. I’d been told by Jack Varner, my old boss, that it was a formality, merely a matter of months. But then Jack found God, or something approximating God, and followed that deity to California where he was now training to become an instructor of Bikram yoga. In came Roslyn and out went my thoughts of professional glory.

In the boardroom now, Roslyn and I still stared at each other. I could feel a bead of sweat collect under the waistband of my pants. I could feel the glances that the team members shot from one of us to the other.

Finally, Roslyn dropped her eyes to the pad of paper in front of her. She crossed something out, probably my future, and called the meeting to an end.

Evan waited for me outside the doorway.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said as we walked down the hall. He gave me a thump on the arm worthy of a linebacker.

In the PR world, which is populated by so many women and gay men, Evan was the token straight guy. The token straight guy who happened to have thick yellow-blond hair, mint-green eyes and dimples that creased his cheeks when he smiled. The linebacker pats were for the best, I knew. I couldn’t be tempted by someone who thought of me only as buddy material.

“Seriously, don’t listen to her bullshit,” Evan said. “Just do your normal stellar job, and maybe this will be the campaign that gets you the VP.”

“Right,” I said. I prayed he was correct. I prayed that Roslyn’s threats were really just tough love maneuvers designed to motivate me.

We reached Evan’s office, the one he got when he was named VP. The wall behind his desk was covered with an eclectic combination of Renee Magritte prints, Notre Dame football posters and framed handbills from the band, Hello Dave.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen those guys.” I pointed to a Hello Dave poster announcing a show at the Aragon.

Before Chris and I got married, Evan and I used to see Hello Dave together. We would drink way too much and dance until way too late. The music made my heart thump with happiness; it made my body feel light and free. The music seemed to separate me from myself in the most wonderful way. It made me bold enough to bat my eyes and drop some not so subtle hints, hoping Evan would make a pass. He never did. The next morning, we’d huddle around the pretzel tin in the company kitchen, deconstructing the set list, the people we’d run into, the women who’d given Evan their numbers. But then, I met Chris and my crush on Evan disappeared. Eventually, I stopped attending Hello Dave shows.

“They’ve got a gig this Saturday,” Evan said, sounding excited. “Yeah, it’s at Park West. You’ve got to come.”

“Maybe.” But I knew I wouldn’t go. My crush had returned sometime in the past year-residing back in my subconscious-and thinking about Hello Dave reminded me how hot and bothered Evan could make me. No need to torture myself, and besides, Chris and I were supposed to have dinner with my mother in Barrington.

“Oh, c’mon. For old time’s sake.” He smiled, and those dimples pleated his smooth golden skin.