Victoria Cooke - A Summer to Remember

Knock the ball out of the water? Does he mean ballpark? Or like a fish out of water? I don’t get it . I glance around the room for other signs of confusion but instead just see several disgruntled faces looking my way. The back of my neck starts to burn and the heat creeps around and up to my cheeks. With nothing left to offer, I nod.

‘Why don’t you go get us some coffees to see us through the morning, and when you’re back we can look at putting you to work with Tony and Dave?’

When I catch Tony’s eye, he gives me a sympathetic smile whilst Dave rolls his eyes when he thinks I’m not looking. Great.

When I leave the office that evening, Tony catches me up. ‘Fancy going for a drink tonight?’

‘Who with?’ I ask suspiciously. I can’t cope with seeing Patrick or Dave, or anyone else from the office for that matter.

‘Just me,’ Tony says with a smile.

‘In that case, yes. I could really do with a drink.’

We find a little bar a few blocks down from the office. It’s dingy inside but quiet aside from a few lone drinkers who look like they’ve been here a while.

‘What are you drinking?’ Tony asks as we take a seat at the bar.

‘Just a beer for me.’

While the bartender gets our drinks, I ask Tony about his wife. ‘Pregnant with number three, grumpy as hell. It’s one of the reasons I came away when I got the chance.’

‘What a catch you are,’ I say dryly. ‘Husband of the year right here, folks.’ I point at him and look animatedly around the bar. The other drinkers look to have fallen asleep.

‘She’s only in her first trimester so I won’t miss anything bar the first scan, and her mother is helping with the boys. I wanted to keep my hand in with the Boston office even though the timing isn’t great.’

‘Well, if she’s okay with it …’ I shrug.

Tony turns on his stool to face me. ‘You were brave standing up to Patrick today.’

‘Well, I don’t feel very brave. I feel very stupid.’

The bartender places two beers down and slides a paper receipt over to Tony. I snatch it before he has time to respond. ‘I’ll get these.’

‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘I don’t think you were stupid today. I think you were sticking up for your vision for the project, and that isn’t an easy thing to do.’

‘Especially when nobody shares that vision.’ I lean on the bar to look him properly in the eye. ‘Do you really think Rocks are going to go for the campaign as it stands?’

Tony shrugs. ‘Maybe, maybe not. Just because Rocks is owned by two rappers, doesn’t mean their target audience for these shoes have to reflect that. The Barbie doll was designed by a former missile engineer, but his target market wasn’t crazed despots.’

‘I thought it was invented by an American businesswoman?’

‘Ruth Handler invented Barbie using a doll that already existed. The one the engineer designed. Anyway, with regards to our current campaign, it’s what the majority believe will work and I’m happy to go along with it.’

‘So, you’re a yes man?’ Oh god. If I’d have just kept my mouth shut a bit longer, perhaps I wouldn’t be the office equivalent of a trolley dolly.

‘No, well, sort of. I’m talking about choosing your battles. I don’t know if the team got this campaign right, but I do know that the others believe they have. So, if Rocks love it, I share in that glory, and if Rocks hate it, we’re all in it together.’

‘How the hell did you make the team?’ I blurt the words out before I have time to smother them with tact.

Fortunately, he laughs. ‘Because I’m bloody good at design.’

‘But you agree with me?’ I press him.

‘I’m saying I don’t know, but you didn’t exactly have solid counter-ideas. Perhaps if you weren’t so vague, Patrick would listen.’

‘Or perhaps if I was a man? Maybe you could be my voice in future.’ I bat my eyelids acrimoniously before rolling my eyes at the ridiculousness of this truth.

‘I’m not saying that. C’mon, you pooh-poohed his idea without anything real to offer in return. I mean, look at the shoes.’ He sticks out his right foot and twists it from left to right. ‘They aren’t your usual teen-buy despite what two rappers think.’

I don’t believe for a second that Tony thinks this campaign will work. He’s always been so sharp and in tune with clients in the past and Pink Apple are renowned for thinking outside of the box – the current proposal is too easy. We don’t change our clients’ minds, we change their customers’ minds. ‘What ideas do you think would work?’

He shrugs. ‘I don’t know. All my ideas have gone into the current proposal—’

‘That you hate?’ I interject.

‘Well come on, have you seen the state of the shoes?’ We both look down at our feet again, as if to clarify they haven’t miraculously morphed into something fabulous in the space of a few seconds.

‘True.’

‘But just because I hate it, doesn’t mean it won’t work.’

I drain the last of my beer and Tony orders two more.

‘Fair enough.’

‘I’ll get these,’ Tony says when the second round arrives.

‘Damn right you will. It’s your turn.’

When Tony pulls his wallet out, he glances at his phone and groans.

‘What is it?’

‘Carl, Dave and Steve have decided to join us.’

I can only stomach Tony. The conversation will spiral into a pit of misogynistic crap in no time. ‘Great. How long have I got to drink my beer before I need to leave?’

‘I missed their call so about—’

‘Alright, fella,’ Dave says, patting Tony on the back.

‘Here she is, black-sheep-Beckham,’ Steve says, winking at me like he’s made a hilarious in-joke.

‘You grab a great coffee, Sam, love,’ Carl says. I’m sure it’s all just banter and everything, but they’re already pissing me off, and it’s because I know I’m right about the campaign.

‘Yours was the one with the extra-special present?’ I wink back and Carl’s face pales. ‘Oh, come on, I’m joking.’ I wink again. ‘Or am I?’

The three men take the remaining stools along the bar, engulfing Tony and me. We talk about the campaign, and the main theme of the conversation seems to be that Patrick knows what he’s doing, and if we all nod along, we get out of the boardroom earlier. I don’t even protest. If Tony couldn’t see where I was coming from, they never will. We have a few more beers, and talk soon revolves around sport, ‘her indoors’ and some baseball game they’re going to.

‘I’m going to crash,’ I say.

‘Want me to walk you back?’ Tony asks.

I need some space and being around these guys is giving me a headache. ‘No, I’m fine. It isn’t far.’

My second week in Boston is no better. By Wednesday I’m ready to book a flight home. When I get back to the apartment after a day of being practically invisible, I slump on the sofa to ponder my defeat. If nobody is going to pay attention to anything I say, what is the point of me being here? I may as well go back to London and be ignored to a slightly lesser extent there. At least I’d see my friends at the weekend.

Needing to vent, I dial Bridget.

‘Sam!’ she screams, so loud my ears ring.

‘Oh, Bridget.’ My voice is filled with desperation.

‘That’s not the tone of a happy camper. What’s up?’ Her voice vibrates.

‘Are you on the cross trainer?’

‘Yes,’ she puffs. ‘In the words of the great and mighty Elphaba, I want to have my arse defying gravity before I go on holiday.’

‘Can you get off? I can’t talk to you when you’re all breathy. It sounds like you’re having sex. And I don’t think those are quite the right words to the song.’