Siegel, James - Derailed

We have some serious issues, too. We don’t like you telling us what to do all the time. We don’t like being repudiated, belittled, ignored, screamed at. We actually don’t like sour expressions. This is what Charles wanted to say.

What he actually said was: “I understand.” And he said it with a hangdog expression he was perfecting to the point of artistry.

“It seems like we talk and talk but no one listens,” Ellen said.

“Well, we — ”

“This is just what I mean. Listen to me. Then speak.”

It occurred to Charles that Ellen had transcended angry and gone straight to rude. That if she were an acquaintance, he would have already walked out of the room. That if she were a client worth significantly less than $130 million, he would’ve told her to take a hike.

“Of course,” Charles said.

“We all agree on a strategy. We all sign off on it. And then you consistently go off in other directions.”

Those directions being wit, humor, entertainment value, and anything else that actually might make a consumer sit up and watch.

“This last commercial is a case in point.”

Yes, it is.

“We agreed on a board. We said it was going to be done in a certain way. Then you send us a cut that’s nothing like what we agreed to. With all this New York humor in it.”

If she’d uttered a profanity, c — t, say, she couldn’t have looked more distasteful.

“Well, as you know, we’re always trying to make it — ”

“I said listen. ”

She’d definitely entered rude and might actually be edging into humiliating. Charles wondered if this was something one was capable of recovering from.

“We have to send cut after cut back to you just in order to get it to the board we originally bought in the first place.” She paused and looked down at the table.

Charles didn’t like that pause.

It wasn’t a pause that was finally inviting a response. It wasn’t even a pause meant to let her catch her breath. It was a pause that portended something worse than what preceded it. The kind of pause he’d seen from girlfriends before they dropped the ax and dashed all hope. From unscrupulous salesmen about to get to the fine print. From emergency room interns about to tell you exactly what’s wrong with your daughter.

“I think maybe we need a change of direction,” she looked up and said.

Now what did that mean? Other than something bad. Was it possible she was firing the agency?

Charles looked over at Eliot, who, strangely enough, was looking down at the table now, too.

Then he understood.

Ellen wasn’t firing the agency.

Ellen was firing him.

Off the account. Ten years, forty-five commercials, not an insignificant number of industry awards — it didn’t matter.

The answer was no. You couldn’t recover from this. Eliot could, but he couldn’t. And it seemed to him that Eliot must’ve known, too. You don’t take a step like this without informing someone in advance.

Et tu, Brute?

No one was speaking. The pause wasn’t merely pregnant, it was pregnant with triplets — angry, bawling ones; something Charles was scared he himself was about to start doing — just lay his head on the table and begin crying. He didn’t need a mirror to know he was turning bloodred. He didn’t need a psychiatrist to know his self-esteem had taken a mortal hit.

Ellen cleared her throat. That’s it. After repeatedly admonishing him for speaking out of turn, she was waiting for him to say something after all. She was waiting for his resignation speech.

“You don’t want me on the business anymore.”

He’d meant it to sound emotionless and maybe even slightly defiant. But he’d failed. It sounded whiny and defensive, maybe even pathetic.

“We certainly appreciate all the great things you’ve done,” she began. Then he kind of tuned out. He was thinking that a ballsy company, a ballsy president, might’ve stood up to them — said we pick who works on your business here, and Charles is the guy. Maybe. If the account were less significant, if business were better, if they all weren’t spending so much time on their knees.

But Eliot was still staring down at the table, doodling now as a way to give him something to do while Charles was being publicly eviscerated. Or perhaps he was just doing the math — $130 million versus Charles Schine — and coming up with the same answer every time.

Charles didn’t let her finish.

“It’s been fun,” he said, finally striking the right note, he thought. World-weary cynicism with a touch of noblesse oblige.

He exited the conference room engulfed in a kind of hot haze; it felt like walking out of a steamroom.

And into an entirely different climate. Word had spread. He could see it on their faces, and they could see it on his. He barely acknowledged his secretary, walked into his office, shut the door.

Later, after everything fell apart for him, it would be hard to remember that it all began this morning.

In this way.

As for now, he sat behind closed doors and wondered whether Lucinda would be on the train tomorrow.

FIVE

She wasn’t.

He took the same train, stood on the very same spot on the platform.

He walked the train from car to car — first back, then forward — scanning each face the way people do in airports when they’re expecting relatives from overseas. Faces they know but don’t know, but long to know now.

“Remember the woman who bailed me out yesterday?” he asked the conductor. “Have you seen her?”

“What are you talking about?” The conductor didn’t remember him, didn’t remember her, didn’t remember the incident. Maybe he was used to berating commuters on a regular basis; yesterday’s drama wasn’t worthy of recall.

“Never mind,” Charles said.

She wasn’t there.

He was a little amazed that it mattered to him. That it mattered to the point where he’d walked the cars like a rousted homeless man seeking warmth. Who was she, anyway, but a married woman he’d harmlessly flirted with on the way to work? And that’s what made it harmless — that they hadn’t done it again. So why exactly was he looking for her?

Well, because he wanted to talk, maybe. About this and that and the other thing. About what happened to him at the office yesterday, for instance.

He hadn’t been able to tell Deanna.

He was all ready to. Honest.

“How was work today?” she’d asked him at dinner.

A perfectly legitimate question, the question, in fact, he’d been waiting for. Only Deanna had looked tired and worried — she’d been peering into Anna’s blood sugar journal when he walked into the kitchen.

So Charles had said: “Work’s fine.”

And that was it for talk about the office.

When Anna first got sick, they’d talked of nothing else. Until it became apparent what the future held for her, and then they’d stopped talking about it. Because to talk about it was to acknowledge it.

Then they created a whole canon of things they were not to talk to each other about. Anna’s future career plans, for example. Any article in Diabetes Today involving loss of limbs. Any bad news in general. Because complaining about something other than Anna diminished Anna.

“I was monitored by Mrs. Jeffries today,” Deanna said. Mrs. Jeffries was her school principal.

“How did it go?”

“Fine. Pretty much. You know she always throws a fit if I deviate from accepted lesson plans.”

“So did you?”

“Yes. But the composition I gave out was ‘Why we like our principal.’ So she couldn’t really complain, could she?”