Stephen King: A Good Marriage

George considers this. “I was really hoping to see a treatment today. Even rough copy.”

Silence. People study their nails. It’s as close to a public rebuke as George gets, and maybe I deserve it. This hasn’t been my best week, and laying it off on the kid doesn’t look so good. It doesn’t feel so good, either.

“Okay,” George says at last, and you can feel the relief in the room. It’s like a light cool breath of breeze, there and then gone. No one wants to witness a conference room caning on a sunny Friday morning, and I sure don’t want to get one. Not with all the other stuff on my mind.

George smells a rat, I think.

“How’s Ellen doing?” he asks.

“Better,” I tell him. “Thanks for asking.”

There are a few more presentations. Then it’s over. Thank God.

I’m almost dozing when Billy Ederle comes into my office twenty minutes later. Check that: I am dozing. I sit up fast, hoping the kid just thinks he caught me deep in thought. He’s probably too excited to have noticed either way. In one hand he’s holding a piece of poster board. I think he’d look right at home in Podunk High School, putting up a big notice about the Friday night dance.

“How was the meeting?” he asks.

“It was okay.”

“Did they bring us up?”

“You know they did. What have you got for me, Billy?”

He takes a deep breath and turns his poster board around so I can see it. On the left is a prescription bottle of Viagra, either actual size or close enough not to matter. On the right—the power side of the ad, as anyone in advertising will tell you—is a prescription bottle of our stuff, but much bigger. Beneath is the cutline: PO-10S, TEN TIMES MORE EFFECTIVE THAN VIAGRA!

As Billy looks at me looking at it, his hopeful smile starts to fade. “You don’t like it.”

“It’s not a question of like or don’t like. In this business it never is. It’s a question of what works and what doesn’t. This doesn’t.”

Now he’s looking sulky. If George Slattery saw that look, he’d take the kid to the woodshed. I won’t, although it might feel that way to him because it’s my job to teach him. In spite of everything else on my mind, I’ll try to do that. Because I love this business. It gets very little respect, but I love it anyway. Also, I can hear Ellen say, you don’t let go. Once you get your teeth in something, they stay there. Determination like that can be a little scary.

“Sit down, Billy.”

He sits.

“And wipe that pout off your puss, okay? You look like a kid who just dropped his binky in the toilet.”

He does his best. Which I like about him. Kid’s a trier, and if he’s going to work in the Andrews-Slattery shop, he’d better be.

“Good news is I’m not taking it away from you, mostly because it’s not your fault Vonnell Pharmaceutical saddled us with a name that sounds like a multivitamin. But we’re going to make a silk purse out of this sow’s ear. In advertising, that’s the main job seven times out of every ten. Maybe eight. So pay attention.”

He gets a little grin. “Should I take notes?”

“Don’t be a smart-ass. First, when you’re shouting a drug, you never show a prescription bottle. The logo, sure. The pill itself, sometimes. It depends. You know why Pfizer shows the Viagra pill? Because it’s blue. Consumers like blue. The shape helps, too. Consumers have a very positive response to the shape of the Viagra tab. But people never like to see the prescription bottle their stuff comes in . Prescription bottles make them think of sickness. Got that?”

“So maybe a little Viagra pill and a big Po-10s pill? Instead of the bottles?” He raises his hands, framing an invisible cutline. “‘Po-10s, ten times bigger, ten times better.’ Get it?”

“Yes, Billy, I get it. The FDA will get it, too, and they won’t like it. In fact, they could make us take ads with a cutline like that out of circulation, which would cost a bundle. Not to mention a very good client.”

“Why?” It’s almost a bleat.

“Because it isn’t ten times bigger, and it isn’t ten times better. Viagra, Cialis, Levitra, Po-10s, they all have about the same penis-elevation formula. Do your research, kiddo. And a little refresher course in advertising law wouldn’t hurt. Want to say Blowhard’s Bran Muffins are ten times tastier than Bigmouth’s Bran Muffins? Have at it, taste is a subjective judgment. What gets your prick hard, though, and for how long…”

“Okay,” he says in a small voice.

“Here’s the other half. ‘Ten times more’ anything is—speaking in erectile dysfunction terms—pretty limp. It went out of vogue around the same time as Two Cs in a K.”

He looks blank.

“Two cunts in a kitchen. It’s how advertising guys used to refer to their TV ads on the soaps back in the fifties.”

“You’re joking!”

“Afraid not. Now here’s something I’ve been playing with.” I jot on a pad, and for a moment I think of all those notes scattered around the coffeemaker back in good old 5-B—why are they still there?

“Can’t you just tell me?” the kid asks from a thousand miles away.

“No, because advertising isn’t an oral medium,” I say. “Never trust an ad that’s spoken out loud. Write it down and show it to someone. Show it to your best friend. Or your… you know, your wife.”

“Are you okay, Brad?”

“Fine. Why?”

“I don’t know, you just looked funny for a minute.”

“Just as long as I don’t look funny when I present on Monday. Now—what does this say to you?” I turn the pad around and show him what I’ve printed there: PO-10S… FOR MEN WHO WANT TO DO IT THE HARD WAY.

“It’s like a dirty joke!” he objects.

“You’ve got a point, but I’ve printed it in block caps. Imagine it in a soft italic type, almost a girly type. Maybe even in parentheses.” I add them, although they don’t work with the caps. But they will. It’s a thing I just know, because I can see it. “Now, playing off that, think of a photo showing a big, burly guy. In low-slung jeans that show the top of his underwear. And a sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, let’s say. See him with some grease and dirt on his guns.”

“Guns?”

“Biceps. And he’s standing beside a muscle car with the hood up. Now, is it still a dirty joke?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“Neither do I, not for sure, but my gut tells me it’ll pull the plow. But not quite as is. The cutline still doesn’t work, you’re right about that, and it’s got to, because it’ll be the basis of the TV and ’Net ads. So play with it. Make it work. Just remember the key word…”

Suddenly, just like that, I know where the rest of that damn dream came from.

“Brad?”

“The key word is hard, ” I say. “Because a man… when something’s not working—his prick, his plan, his life —he takes it hard. He doesn’t want to give up. He remembers how it was, and he wants it that way again.”

Yes, I think. Yes he does.

Billy smirks. “I wouldn’t know.”

I manage a smile. It feels god-awful heavy, as if there are weights hanging from the corners of my mouth. All at once it’s like being in the bad dream again. Because there’s something close to me I don’t want to look at. Only this isn’t a lucid dream I can back out of. This is lucid reality.

After Billy leaves, I go down to the can. It’s ten o’clock, and most of the guys in the shop have off-loaded their morning coffee and are taking on more in our little caff, so I have it to myself. I drop my pants so if someone wanders in and happens to look under the door he won’t think I’m weird, but the only business I’ve come in here to do is thinking. Or remembering.