Chapter 3

It was not unusual for Chad to stay at work late. It never hurt to have one of the senior editors walk by at 11:30 and see him dutifully pecking away at his computer, despite the fact that he was usually pecking away in a Cybersex chat room, or, more likely, playing computer Solitaire. It didn't matter though; the image was everything. Wear the right clothes, kiss the right asses, publicly humiliate your underlings just enough to intimidate your coworkers, and spend as much time as you could accomplishing as little as conceivably possible.

The building had cleared out unreasonably slowly tonight. The pandemonium surrounding the publication of Sooner than Never had kept everyone, from mail room clerks to high level executives, busy into the evening. Around 9:00, Chad couldn't take it any longer, and he fought his way out of the building and through the throngs of press people who still hovered about. He went to one of the touristy theme restaurants in the area, where they charged $11.95 for a cheeseburger, and drank his dinner amidst screaming children from New Jersey and bug-eyed tourists from Dubuque. The place's neo-Gothic kitsch decor, complete with streaming dry-ice vapor on the floor and restrooms hidden behind bookcases, had oddly and temporarily soothed his foul mood. After four cosmopolitans, he was feeling almost chipper. Vicious, but chipper.

He had returned to the office at about 11:00, pleased with the fact that most of the overly task-conscious staff had finally opted to leave, and set about his business.

Spread out on his desk were the contents, adornments, and effects of Laura Dial's desk. His stainless steel mesh wastepaper basket perched precariously on his open file drawer, its bottomed littered with the feathery ashes of the assorted photographs, cartoons, and postcards from friends which Laura had pinned to her deskside bulletin board. Belching unceremoniously to himself, he picked up a snapshot of her fairy roommate sitting on the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park, beaming broadly. He considered it for a moment. Then, he held his Zippo up to it and watched it crinkle and curl as yellow flames quietly licked across it. Just as the flames wavered to meet his fingers, he dropped it into the can.

He was glad Laura Dial was gone. The fresh-scrubbed bitch has irritated him to no end. He was sick to death of pseudo-intellectual prima donnas fleeing their ivory towers of academe with the dewy-eyed belief that they could navigate the treachery of corporate America. Well, he thought grimly, enjoy your goddamn degree when you're calling Ma and Pa in Shitsville, Kansas to ask for help with your October rent.

Plainly and simply, Laura Dial had frightened him. He didn't start at the very bottom of this business twelve years ago to be upstaged by some fresh out of school, quasi-feminist, enthusiastic and tireless latter-day Holly Hobbie. Everyone loved her. She did her job, she did it well, and her humor and grace made him pretty much sick. Take her "Lil Things" board, for instance.

Laura was a lightning rod for catchy and trendy turns of phrase. She was a goddamn brilliant copywriter. Last spring, she had picked up on the rather ubiquitous and frankly inane proliferation of "Lil," the cutesy-poo bastardization of "little," in American mass marketing. "Lil kids." "Lil Toys." "Lil Sandwiches." It was quite mind-numbing.

So, one morning, Laura had strolled in with a poster-sized piece of tagboard, and proudly announced that it was her "Lil Things" board. She sent out a company-wide email (after hours, of course, because she didn't want to appear to be slacking), urging her coworkers to bring her any clippings or pictures of "Lil" in action.

You would have thought that she was the Pied Piper of frickin' Hamelin.

From temps to editors, from marketing execs to advertising agents, "lil things" came out of the woodwork. A business card from "Lil Clothes for Lil Tikes," a children's clothing store in Park Slope; a menu from "Lil Bit of Heaven," a dessert bar in Chelsea; and a photograph of Alice Carruba, the senior VP of Waterbury Audiobooks, standing by a southwestern honkytonk called "A Lil Bitty Country Place."

Chad's contribution to the board, in early summer, had been a small scrap of letterhead, on which he had written, "How about a LIL professionalism?", and pasted a postage stamp of Nosferatu.

With a growl, Chad found the "Lil Things" board on his desk and tore it into several small, burnable pieces. He was considering what to do with Laura's sleek Ferragamo heels, which she kept under her desk for important meetings, when he heard the low, electronic ding of the elevator outside the door to his office.

Cursing softly, he swept the remainder of Laura's crapola into a drawer. A vague and muffled "damn" emanated from the elevator, followed by a series of jingles and thuds. Vesper Shillington appeared, struggling in her five-inch heels and yanking on the choke chain which was snugly secured around Thaddeus' neck.

"You filthy brute, SIT!" she commanded. Thaddeus slumped to the floor and let out a weary whine/yawn. Vesper spun and stood in Chad's doorway, withdrawing a ridiculously long and slender cigarette from the swelling bosom of her impeccable, cream-colored suit.

"I just adore my job," she smiled cruelly, lighting her cigarette. "Burning the midnight oil, Bismarck?"

Chad squirmed in his desk chair. It was not strange to see Vesper at this late hour. Her porcelain doll good looks and her indistinguishable semi-British accent just never failed to set him squirming.

"Oh, well, you know. Just trying to keep. . .on top of things. It's been a busy day."

"You don't have to tell me, darling. I had to take the puppy out the loading dock to avoid that sea of reporters down there. I mean, my God, darling, it's nearly three. Who's watching the news at three? But, you know, I had to take the hell hound on his poopy run." "I would think that--"

"And do you know who's still up there, sitting in his smoking robe and watching The Sound of Music for the umpteenth time today? Darling, it's perfectly fine to believe that "I Have Confidence" is your own personal anthem, but if I have to hear him sing along with it--"

"Aren't you free to go home?"

"Don't interrupt, me, Darling. Her usual cool smile had vanished. "Ever." The smile returned. "I could go home, but you know, my unflinching dedication makes me the--what do you call it? The big bucks." She flicked her ashes to the floor.

"Be careful. I wouldn't want you to set off the fire alarm."

"Oh, la!" Vesper sneered. "If you burning papers in the trash won't do it, neither will my ashes."

Chad blinked.

"Oh, yes, darling. I saw what you were up to. I came down earlier, between 'My Favorite Things' and 'The Lonely Goatherd.' But you were busy, so I left."

"I was just--"

"I don't care what you were doing, sweetie. I don't. I don't care if it was the secret location of Maria Von Trapp's strongbox. You do your job, I do mine."

Chad sputtered. "Why don't you dump the dog and we'll share a cab?" He suggestively squeezed the crotch of his pleated gabardine slacks.

"Oh," she squealed dryly. "Oooh. I think.. . hmm. . .I think. . .not, dearie. Much too tired. Too, too tired. Get your own cab. And give my love to Mary."

"Marcy," Chad answered, with a dim vision of his mousy wife dancing in his brain. "I--"

Vesper nudged Thaddeus with her pointed toe and they disappeared into the cavernous stillness of Waterbury Publishing.

With an uncomfortable ache in his loins, Chad's hand fell on to Laura Dial's black pump. He stared at it for a second, trying to recall whose it was and why it was on his desk.

Then, he picked it up and began to chew it.

********
Will polished off his sixth duck's butt of zinfandel, and nudged Laura, who still lay in a heap in the beanbag chair, where she had collapsed three hours before.

"I'm serious, you know."

Laura groaned. "Dear, I know you're serious. But we can't just pack up lock, stock and barrel and leave."

"Why?"

"Oh, my God. I've got to go to bed. One, we've got NO MONEY. Two, we have no car. Three, I have student loans to pay back. Four, my parents would kill me. And yours would kill you and me. Four, we have no money."

"You already said four."

"Shut up. Five, we have no money."

"We'll fundraise!"

"What are we going to do, Will? Hold a bake sale?"

"You said there are plenty of people who don't have the interest to solve the puzzle, but they'd like to see other people do it. Why not, you know, have them invest in us? If we find the prize, they get a return. If we don't, they lose."

"I've got to go to bed. The book's in my briefcase--"

"Plus, we're not completely destitute. I can sell my Star Wars action figures, and my brother has a whole shoebox of Wacky Packages at home. We could sell 'em. Fern told me there's a store in the East Village--"

"I'm going to bed."

"And you could hock your oboe."

That was met with a stony silence.

"And we can hit up all the rich people we know."

"Oh, goody, Will. That amounts to what, four people in our social circle?"

"Well, like Mike at Transylvania. And Calvin and Bryant have money to burn. And maybe Rachel East will build us a website."

"Oh, sure. I'm sure Rachel has nothing better to do than build a computerized billboard for your delusions. All of this will look very different in the morning, Will."

"And why don't we go straight to the top? You could hit up crazy Simon Waterbury for some cash. It'd be a great publicity stunt."

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