Fire in the Firefly (26 page)

Roebuck has no answer. “Camomile lotion: aphrodisiac.”

“Who knew?”

“What's got into you?”

“You, evidently.” Anne has slid over to her side of the bed and closed her eyes. “You can go to sleep now.”

But first he needs to check the kids. The bunkie is promisingly dark. Dressed in much less than is wise, Roebuck scurries through the undergrowth and cautiously puts his nose against the window. He doesn't want to breach the seal and let the bugs inside, but there is just enough moonlight to see his children through the glass, snugly and safely asleep. Eyes adjusted to the darkness, he now discerns the rhythmic flash of fireflies pulsing in the trees; he has read somewhere that lightning bugs are often active at the same time as mosquitoes. Roebuck stands beneath the moonlight, blinking. In the process he collects a whole new crop of punctures and wonders if he should initiate a second round of treatment, but his wife is snoring gently, too, when he returns.

Women are work. Period.

The Collected Sayings of Julius Roebuck

Now begins a busy phase in Roebuck's life. Professionally, things have heated up. The ethnographic research he's commissioned on Ripreeler's new pheromone bait has been unexpectedly insightful. Teams of anthropologists that fanned out to fishing camps and derbies all across the continent have now returned with their reports. Certain aspects of their findings have taken the marketers by storm.

By far the most frequently reported observation was the subjects' strong reaction to the product's smell. Roebuck had predicted this, of course; also that most respondents were clearly willing to associate the odour with enhanced attractiveness to fish. All to the good.

He picks up his marker and writes:

STINKS

Better still was respondents' willingness to state that they believed the bait was genuinely helpful in catching more fish. The Ripreelers were over the moon about this finding, though Roebuck himself remains cautious; he is forever warning clients not to get too carried away with ethnographics. Even so, a claim like PROVEN RESULTS! is every marketer's wet dream. Roebuck adds a second bullet:

WORKS

But what has really turned his crank is a little gem of startling perception—one the client was not nearly so happy about. And that, says Roebuck, is what separates the sharks from the flounders in this business, the muskies from the perch, the advertisers from the shoals of mere minnow marketers. In
one-on
-one interviews, several participants—a clear, directional cohort—admitted to a feeling that surprised them, too: a vague reaction variously described as something resembling
guilt
. The bait had worked so well, in fact—had in fact been such a magnet to its quarry—that some reported oddly moral qualms. “It's almost like cheating” was the way one angler phrased it.

Roebuck returns to his whiteboard:

CHEATS

“That's the part that makes the client nervous. But you and I know better.” Roebuck erases the board and changes up the order:

STINKS

CHEATS

WORKS

There's something beautiful in there just waiting to break out. He knows it. The problem is that he hasn't yet identified exactly what.

He is frustrated, too, with the lack of progress on his still-
too-hypothetical
footwear account. There's been a lot of effort sunk into that one by him and Greenwood both, and every bit of it on spec. Roebuck loathes pro bono. And he
will
cash in, eventually; it's just that, so far, something seems to be holding up the process, some kind of delay, according to his sources; some snag in procurement that still needs finalizing before anything can move ahead. Whatever the cause, there's no formal request for proposals and until that happens Roebuck's hands are tied. Greenwood, too, appears discouraged. And of course he's pissed off, still, that he hasn't been informed exactly who this client is supposed to be. What he needs is patience. Roebuck is fairly certain anyway that Daniel's been doing some digging on his own behalf.

But there is no denying Greenwood has been busy. One of the smarter things he's done, in retrospect, was assigning so much of the Artemis account to Daniel's sphere of influence. On the whole, that piece of business has turned out to be the cash cow he had hoped, though a
mean-spirited
and unconscionably
bad-tempered
beast inclined to use its horns. As ever in the natural order of things, it's the suits who take worst of it when some
sphincter-mouthed
product manager fresh out of Wharton decides she hates the colour of that border or the sizing of that font. But in the end, it's Daniel who's responsible for inputting all their endless changes. He's been writing a fair amount of copy, too, in recent weeks. Ah well, he's young.

Roebuck has been fighting back a growing feeling that he himself is not so young. It's painful to admit—physically, some mornings—but sleeping with three women is wearing him down. The question (and Roebuck is honest enough to recognize he will never give himself an honest answer) is whether he would have launched his campaign for Yasmin if he'd still been having sex with Anne. Some days it's yes; others definitely no. Today would be a yes. But that's only because it's beforehand and Roebuck is still riding that
tight-chested
,
hollow-groined
ache of expectation rather than the bruised and jaded aftermath he has learned also to anticipate.

“Going somewhere?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.” Roebuck is checking his watch. “Sorry, Daniel. Time to wrap this up.”

They turn, side by side, and study the whiteboard. Greenwood shrugs. Roebuck, shrugging too, picks up the marker and adds some pronouns and a set of exclamation points.

IT STINKS!

IT CHEATS!

IT WORKS!

“Let me know when you've decided.” Greenwood pauses at the door. “Any word on drag and clop? Just asking.”

Roebuck is shaking out his jacket. Katie is due at taekwondo in forty minutes. “You'll be in the loop, Daniel, just as soon as there's a loop to be in. Honestly.”

“Dad, what's a labia … plasty?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“
La-bi
-
a-plasty
.” Zach spells out the syllables, enunciating. “What's a
labia-plasty
?”

“Um …”

“I get breast
aug-men
-tation. That's a boob job. But what's a labiaplasty …?”

Roebuck has taught his children—from the moment they moved up from picture books—that whenever they're stuck on a word they should look at the surrounding sentence. “Read the words around it,” he tells them. “That's where you'll find your clues.”

“Um …” He says again.

“
Augmentation
means the same as
enhancement
. Right? That means making something bigger. And buttocks is
bum
. So
buttock enhancement
must mean making a bum bigger. But why would anybody want a bigger bum?”

“Jennifer Lopez,” chimes Katie from the back seat.

Zach ignores his sister. “I see why you'd want bigger boobs. But a bigger bum?”

“Booty!” Katie says a little louder.

“Shut up.” Zach repeats this phrase so often that no one even listens anymore.

Roebuck has by now figured out that Zach is reading words off a sign on the back of a bus. He steps on the gas and moves the car a little closer. It's a transit ad for an uptown plastic surgeon.

Exceptional Service for Exceptional Clients:

The Dr. Aspara
Body-Sculpting
Clinic offers the latest in breast augmentation,
tummy-tucks
, and buttock enhancement technology …

Then, below, in bullets: “Labiaplasty … Perineoplasty …Hymeno­­plasty
…
” followed by several terms Roebuck himself can't define. The text is superimposed across a very female torso in a purple thong.

So-so
in terms of presentation, he decides, though the ratio of waist to hips is definitely arresting.

“Labiaplasty is a plastic surgery procedure for altering the labia minora and the labia majora,” Kate intones.

“
Where
did …?”

“I Googled it.” His daughter reads on. “
A study in the
Journal of Sexual Medicine
reports that 32 percent of patients undergo the surgery for corrective and functional impairment while 37 percent for aesthetic reasons alone.”

“Can I have my phone back, please?

“You're driving.”

This is true.

The three of them are on the way to
taekwondo. Kate has possession of his smartphone.
It drives Roebuck crazy seeing people talking on their cellphones while operating motor vehicles—he's been known to yell—so Kate gets his for the duration of the trip.
Zach dislikes being forced to come along, but there's nowhere else to leave him at this time of day so in compensation for being here he gets to ride up front. In exchange for accepting the back seat, Kate has full access to Roebuck's BlackBerry, though she's forever telling him he should have got an iPhone. “Piece of crap,” she says, navigating back to Brick Breaker.

“What's
labia
?”

“Shut up, Zach!” It's like performance art, the two of them.

“
Labia
,” says Roebuck, pedantic from habit where his kids are concerned, “is the Latin word for lips …”

“
Dad!
Ewww. You're dis
gust
ing!”

“I was just …” But Roebuck has spotted salvation, straight ahead. “Hey!” he says, a Dairy Queen standard has loomed into view. “Anybody up for a milkshake?”