Cross Dressing (27 page)

She needed just enough energy to get the razor blade, then she could open her wrists to let the pain and frustration out. No one else would do it for her. Maybe the questions would make sense if she were gone. It seemed like the only way out. It was the right thing to do.

G
od is good.
The thought repeated again and again in Oren Prescott’s mind.
Yes, God is fabulous.
Oren was admiring himself on the cover of
Advertising Age
magazine and reveling in the glory generated by the Fujioka campaign. “More Is More” had become the hottest catchphrase since “Where’s the Beef?” What had started as a mere advertising slogan had become an unprecedented marketing phenomenon. Sales of “More Is More” T-shirts, baseball caps, and other merchandise best described as crap had already passed the $20 million
mark. By every conceivable measure, the campaign was a huge success both domestically and overseas.

Sam Chan, the actor who played the Zen master in all the ads, had recently signed a huge sitcom deal.
Zen Daddy
was the story of a widowed Zen master who moves to Beverly Hills with his two kids. Hilarity ensues when the Zen Daddy buys his kids a wisecracking cat named Stan only to discover that the funny feline is the reincarnation of his dead wife! Focus-group tests indicated that the show had terrific across-the-board appeal.
Zen Daddy
was bound to be a hit.

Not wanting to miss the wagon, Burger Doodle, one of the nation’s largest fast-food chains, designed a merchandising tie-in with something they called their “More Is More Meal Deal,” which was as emblematic of America’s bloated sense of consumption as anything ever to come down the pike.

Sitting on Oren Prescott’s desk were the results of a recent advertising industry survey. The research showed that the mere fact that people were hungry was way down on the list of why they ate fast food. Thanks to the advertising industry, eating in America had become more about entertainment than about satisfying hunger. It was about fun meals and happy meals, not good meals. Chuck E. Cheese was to kids what Planet Hollywood and the Hard Rock Cafe were to adults—cholesterol-delivery systems disguised as live-action music videos. The promise of an entertainment experience with every hot sack of grease was the best way these restaurants could differentiate themselves from their competitors.

Another way was by selling products in increasingly larger sizes. Bigger is better! More Is More! Whereas the original serving size for Coca-Cola was a six-ounce bottle, the advertising industry was now marketing the one-liter size as a single serving. The same was true for the food: an effective ad campaign could make a plain hamburger and an order of fries seem inadequate—even embarrassing—when compared to a
satisfying charbroiled double bacon cheeseburger and the jumbo-whopper-super-size fries.

Of course, no one in the advertising industry gave a second thought to the negative impact their work had on the health of consumers. That wasn’t the ad industry’s job. Still, they were well aware that a typical fast-food hamburger contained 260 calories, while a double bacon cheeseburger had 475, most of which were fat. They also knew that the percentage of Americans deemed clinically obese had nearly doubled since the early 1960’s. These were the sorts of facts they would tout in their ads for weight-loss products.

Still, interesting as these facts were, the fine folks in the advertising business felt that the most important thing to know was that people preferred to have their bad habits encouraged rather than condemned, and that probably went a long way toward explaining the vast popularity of the “More Is More” campaign.

Some advertising campaigns lacked cross-cultural appeal. Something important tended to get lost or distorted in a bad translation of a tag line or a product name. For example, when Ford introduced the Pinto in Brazil, it flopped because on the streets of Rio de Janeiro
pinto
is slang for “tiny male genitals.” In Mexico the American Dairy Council’s “Got Milk?” campaign got translated as “Are You Lactating?” And in Saudi Arabia, the Jolly Green Giant became the Intimidating Green Ogre. But the “More Is More” slogan didn’t suffer overseas. In fact, in the South American markets, the tag line was understood to mean “Makes Your Dick Bigger!” Needless to say, sales soared.

In the final analysis, the most important measure of the success of the campaign was that sales of Fujioka electronic equipment had doubled and the value of Fujioka stock had jumped by 47 percent during the same period.

In a perfect world, all of this would have resulted in Scott Emmons’s grinning visage being pasted on the cover of
Advertising Age
magazine, but this was by no means a perfect world and thus everyone in the ad business was looking at Oren Prescott’s capped teeth on the cover instead.

Despite this fabulous turn of events, Oren suddenly stopped praising the Lord and slammed his hand down on his desk. “Goddammit!” It occurred to him that Fujioka, far and away his largest client, would soon want to know how Prescott planned to evolve the “More Is More” campaign. They would demand that Dan Steele be in charge of the campaign and it wouldn’t matter one whit to them that the man was dead as an irregular Latin verb. It was either Dan Steele or Mr. Prescott himself, and Oren Prescott hadn’t generated an original idea in ten years.

He sat at his desk and dropped his head into his hands, fully aware that the only way he could maintain his reputation was to come up with something more successful than the most successful campaign in modern advertising history. It was a fool’s errand, and he knew it. After a few minutes his hands slipped to the sides of his head and Oren began to apply pressure to his skull. He squeezed harder and harder, as if an idea might drip out like so much juice.

Wait a second. Didn’t Dan have a twin brother? Yes!
Oren looked up, hope flashing across his face like a falling star. He wondered … Maybe he could talk Dan’s twin brother into pretending he was … Nah, that was a crazy idea. He’d have to think of something else.

I
t was midnight. Dan finished wiping down the kitchen countertops as Sister Peg cleaned the last of the dirty pans. Dan tossed his dish towel into the laundry pile, stretched his back, then headed for the door. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.

Sister Peg stifled a yawn. “You want a cup of coffee?”

The invitation caught him off guard. “How old is it?”

Sister Peg held the pot under her nose. “Plenty, but I think milk and sugar can save it.”

Dan walked over and sniffed. “I think whiskey’d save it better, but if milk and sugar’s all we got …”

Sister Peg grinned. “A man after my own heart.” She dragged a chair over and stood on it to reach the top shelf of a cabinet. “Cheap bourbon do?”

Dan beamed. “You bet.” He thought about his last drink, Chivas Regal twelve-year-old. Still, cheap bourbon sounded surprisingly good. As Sister Peg climbed down with the bottle, it occurred to Dan that the two of them had never just sat down and had an ordinary conversation. Their discussions always revolved around Care Center problems. Peg’s difficulties getting funds or Dan trying to deal with his mother’s depression, or Alissa’s future. Dan held his cup out to Peg as she opened the bottle. “I’ll have mine without the coffee.”

Sister Peg was wearing a pair of tired gray sweatpants, a long-sleeve black pullover shirt, and a Dodgers cap. Dan was in his clericals. They sat at the long table in the kitchen, propped up on their elbows, and agreed not to talk about the Care Center. Sister Peg took off her shoes and rolled her ankles in soothing circles. “Let’s just talk about stuff,” she said.

Dan studied her face for a moment and wondered what would happen if he leaned across the table and kissed her.
Probably get my face slapped halfway across the Valley, and rightly so.
Still, he couldn’t help but wonder if the celibacy rule included kissing, or excluded it, depending on your point of view. Regardless, Dan wasn’t about to test the question. “Here’s lookin’ at ya.” Dan held his mug out for a toast. Sister Peg tapped her mug against his and held his gaze for a moment. Then, smiling, they drank. It had been a while since Dan initiated small talk with anyone, let alone a nun,
so he struggled with where to start. “So, where’d you learn sign language?”

Sister Peg put down her cup and signed as she spoke. “Ruben taught me. He had some books that taught the basics and he showed me the rest. I’ve been doing it for about a year.”

Dan mimicked the motions as he spoke. “Did you ever see
Children of a Lesser God
?”

Peg smiled. “Yeah, I liked it.”

“What’s your favorite movie? And you can’t say
Citizen Kane
or
Sister Act.”

Sister Peg scrunched her face up in thought. “Let’s see.” She poked her lower lip out and made some other searching-the-database expressions. She sipped her bourbon, then suddenly looked very pleased with herself.
“Pretty Woman,”
she said. “Best thing Julia Roberts ever did.”

Dan nodded. “Yeah, but c’mon. In the real world, hookers aren’t that good-looking, right?” He whirled his whiskey around inside his mug. “She just seemed too, I don’t know, too clean and bubbly for a hooker.”

Sister Peg sat up, all but bristling. “What, you think they’re all skanky drug addicts?”

Dan was surprised by both the vehemence and the vocabulary of her response. “Skanky?”

“Hey, I’ve worked with some of those girls,” Sister Peg said. “A lot of them are attractive and smart and …” She let go of the thought abruptly. “And I just think Julia Roberts was terrific, that’s all.” She finished her bourbon and poured another.

Dan wondered what that was all about. He’d never seen her spark like that before, not even about the Care Center. He thought it odd that she would get inflamed about a Richard Gere movie. Sister Peg cupped her hands around her drink, funneling the evaporating alcohol toward her nose. She knew
she’d overreacted and decided to change the subject. After a moment she looked at Dan. He was rubbing his face with both hands. “Why did you become a priest?”

Dan opened his eyes behind his hands and peeked out between his fingers. “Uh, well, at the time I didn’t feel like I had much of a choice,” he said, reaching for the bottle. “It was something I thought I had to do.” Dan refreshed his drink.

Sister Peg nodded as if that described her decision to become a nun. “Was it like a ‘big moment’ sort of thing?”

“You could say that.” The alcohol caused Dan to embellish his story. He mainly stuck to the facts, though he rearranged the order in which they happened. “I was raised Catholic and got a B.A., lots of humanities, plus a few marketing courses. At one point I actually considered going to work at an ad agency.”

“And that led to being a priest?”

“I wrote a paper for an advertising class. It was a critical study on Neil Postman’s notion that the best television commercials are essentially religious parables.” Sister Peg’s look of bemused interest encouraged him to continue. “The style’s a little dated,” Dan said. “It was mostly used for personal hygiene and household cleaning products.” He began to recall the finer points of his paper. “Postman argued that an effective spot conveyed four important points. The first was that the failure to know about any given product, for example, dandruff shampoo, was the cause of discord in life. In other words, ‘Technological Innocence,’ as he called it, was the sin in these commercials. This particular sin resulted in the shame and stigma of having dandruff, which in turn resulted in, say, a lack of companionship or the loss of a business deal, a sort of hell, right? Secondly, the theory goes, the way to salvation is in learning about, and using, the product. The third point of one of these spots is that using the product results in some version of heaven, for example, a honeymoon in a beautiful
place or the riches of consummating a big business deal. The final point is that the obligation of the righteous is to spread the gospel about the product.”

Sister Peg reached across the table and poked at the band around Dan’s neck. “Sort of like the ‘Ring Around the Collar’ ads, right?”

“Exactly.” Dan smiled, pleased that she’d chosen the perfect example. “I got an A on the paper, but in the process I realized I could do more good spreading the real Gospel instead of the Madison Avenue version.” Dan sat back in his chair. “What about you? You grow up wanting to be a nun? Or did you just wake up one day and decide to give it a try?”

It hadn’t occurred to Sister Peg that this was the inevitable flip side of the question she had asked Dan. She didn’t want to lie about it, but she also didn’t think telling the truth was the best thing she could do. She stood up and stretched, her hands raised high in the air as she arched her back. “Let’s just say I took a roundabout way to get where I am.” She walked to the sink and rinsed out her cup. “I’m sorry, Father, I just hit a wall,” she said, faking a yawn. “I’m going to call it a night. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She made a quick exit.

“Good night,” Dan said. He sat there for a minute wondering what stops had been on Peg’s circuitous route to nunhood. She certainly wasn’t like any nun Dan had ever met, but then he figured he probably wasn’t like any priest she’d met either. He gulped down his bourbon and headed home.

T
HE BOURBON MADE DAN MORE CONTEMPLATIVE THAN HE’D
been in quite a while. Back at his apartment Dan found himself amused as he reflected on his financial situation. The funniest thing, he thought, was not being able to figure out which part of his poverty he enjoyed the most. Since assuming the role of Father Michael, he had lost weight, gained perspective, and found something he assumed was inner peace. He had to laugh. He was in a tiny apartment, sitting in a five-dollar, garage-sale armchair thinking it was the best piece of furniture he’d ever owned. After another eighteen-hour day at the Care Center, Dan felt more satisfied than he had ever felt after orchestrating a twenty-million-dollar ad campaign. Dan had to laugh because six months earlier, this might have been his definition of hell.