Perfect Lies (11 page)

The initial stock offering had gone up to thirty by the end of its first two weeks and Frieda, flush with her new paper wealth, had Meg run the most expensive nationwide Frieda Jarvis campaign in the company’s history. The orders poured in. The factory in Mexico worked overtime. The fall Jarvis line was featured at the front of every major department store and in the windows of all the best boutiques. But the average working woman, alarmed by the jarring color combinations and unfamiliar cuts, didn’t even try the clothes on. By the end of August the stock had fallen to four, and Meg was unable to get Frieda’s comptroller on the phone to discuss the invoices that had been overdue since June.

With the recent ominous article about the Jarvis stock in the same business section that had touted the offering just six months before, Abe began pressuring Meg to sue for the overdue funds. But Frieda had been one of Meg’s first accounts. And a friend, besides. So despite the debt that had slowed Hardwick and Associates’ cash flow to a trickle, Meg had opted for tersely worded letters and threatening phone calls. What she needed instead, Meg had decided, was a new, healthy client, with a pristine D&B, and ready cash. So when SportsTech put their account into review, Meg had jumped on the prospective-agency bandwagon.

SportsTech wasn’t really Meg’s type of client. The hugely successful New Jersey-based company produced midpriced sports- and action-wear for the whole family. Eminently practical and decently made, but with an uninspired logo and ho-hum packaging, SportsTech had the brand awareness of tap water: it wasn’t anyone’s first choice but it was everywhere and always within reach. Initially, when Meg had asked to be considered in the review, the SportsTech marketing director had expressed surprise … and concern. Meg was known for flashy, trendsetting creative.

“I’m not sure we’re really your kind of product line,” Vincent Goldman had told her.

“Of course you’re not sure,” Meg had replied. “That’s why you’re looking at new agencies. But at some point you decided you wanted to try something different. Let me just come out and show you what that might look like.”

“You mean pitch it? Right away?”

Usually, at the beginning of a review, competing advertising agencies presented their portfolios and credentials and only after the field was narrowed to the three or four top contenders did agencies prepare full-fledged creative pitches for the potential client.

“Yes. Because you’re right, Mr. Goldman—if I show my current portfolio to your management, they’ll have a collective coronary. But I’m interested in broadening my client base just as you’re looking for something a bit more innovative. I’d say we have enough in common to at least meet one another.”

It was a meeting that was now less than four hours away, including the forty-five-minute ride out to Paramus, so when Oliver buzzed Meg on the intercom, she told him:

“I can’t take any calls now. I’ll be with Eduardo going over the—”

“There’s someone here to see you,” Oliver interrupted her.

“I told you I can’t—”

“I think you’d better come out to reception right now.”

At eleven-fifteen in the morning, Lucinda, who stood leaning against the reception desk shakily smoking a cigarette, looked totally wasted. Her burgundy-dyed hair was matted and greasy. Her face appeared pale and blotchy without makeup. Her clothes—army jacket, blue jeans, oversized flannel work shirt—were rumpled and shiny and gave off an unpleasant aroma of overuse. Sometime over the past few days Lucinda had acquired a nose ring, and the skin around the left nostril where it had been pierced looked infected.

“Where the hell—?”

“Please don’t start with me.” Lucinda sniffled and Meg realized that she was trying to hold back her tears in front of Oliver.

“Okay, into my office,” Meg said, pointing down the hall. She said to Oliver as Lucinda began to follow her, “Tell Eduardo to go ahead and have the artwork mounted on foam core in the order we discussed. And you’d better reserve a car for two-fifteen.”

“It’s like a regular, I don’t know…” Lucinda had dropped her backpack on the floor in front of Meg’s desk and was looking around the small, cramped room. A filing cabinet, too full to close properly, stood sentinel to the right of the door. A long, faux-wood covered table sat next to it, stacked with fabric swatches and sample books in plastic binders. Behind that, taking up most of the wall, was a bulletin board pinned with active print ads and storyboards in various stages of production.

“Like a regular office?” Meg finished for her, closing the door behind them. “You were expecting something more glamorous?”

“Yeah. Guess so.” Lucinda slumped into the armchair opposite Meg’s desk. “Okay, so go ahead and scream at me. I’m ready now.”

“Well, I’m not,” Meg replied, sliding into the one luxury piece of office furniture she’d allowed herself: a black leather armchair with more adjustable positions than the bucket seat of a Jaguar. “I’m not one of your parents who, by the way, are totally out their minds with worry. I just got off the phone with Lark.”

“Lark’s not my mom, okay?”

“Oh, give it a rest, Luce. She cares about you. She and Ethan are sick with worry. You’ve gotten their absolute attention, all right?”

“That’s not what I wanted,” Lucinda mumbled, chewing on a thumbnail. “I don’t give a fuck about them or their fucking concern.”

“Fine. Point registered,” Meg said, picking up a pen and tapping it on the desktop. “Where have you been?”

“Like … around,” Lucinda said, looking down at the badly chipped polish on her nails with sudden interest. “With some friends.”

“Okay,” Meg said, trying to keep her patience. In the past, she’d found that pushing Lucinda for a clear explanation of her moods or motives only made her shut down even further. “So, just what exactly are you doing here? As you can see, I’m in a middle of a busy, if not particularly glamorous, workday.”

“I need a place to stay. I ran out of money,” Lucinda’s words came out in a rush. “And you told me once that I could come stay with you, remember, like, over Christmas? But so, okay, I’m a little early—”

“That was if you stayed sober. If you pulled yourself together. I’d hardly say—”

“Fine.” Lucinda lunged for her backpack. “Thought I’d give it a try. But I can see you’re just like the rest of them.”

“Oh, sit down,” Meg said. “It’s not as if you have a million options. Lord, just look at you, sweetheart. Where the hell are you going to go? Without any money. A shelter? Yes, I suppose, you can spend the night.”

“Just the night? I was hoping …” Lucinda’s voice trailed off along with the sentence.

“But we have to call Lark right now,” Meg, added. “Let her and Ethan know you’re here.”

“Oh, fuck that!” Lucinda said, bolting up again. “I’m not talking to him—that asshole.”

“I’ll call Lark,” Meg said, picking up the phone. “You sit there and see if you can’t manage to scrounge up a little gratitude for me.”

* * *

The meeting had gone well. Very well. Vincent Goldman turned out to be middle-aged and balding, with a basketball-sized paunch. After some initial posturing as a total company man, he began to vent his true feelings about the new corporate VP who had put the account in review against Vincent’s better judgment.

Vincent and Meg talked for over an hour about the problems of upper management. About the squeeze so many middle-aged managers were feeling from all these whiz kids with their computers and their MBAs and hot-shot marketing buzzwords. Anyone could sit around yakking about “vertical marketing” and “brand awareness” but it was the Vince Goldmans of this world who actually got the work done. At around four-thirty, Meg was finally able to slide some of the comps across Vincent’s desk, showing the three that most closely resembled the company’s current approach but with a cleaner, more contemporary graphic look. And Vince had responded with obvious enthusiasm and even further confidences: the SportsTech annual advertising budget would edge six million the following year, not including collateral.

It was past five by the time Vince had wound down enough for Meg to gracefully depart. She settled into the backseat of the livery cab feeling hopeful for the first time all week. An account the size of SportsTech would more than offset Meg’s concerns about Frieda Jarvis. Lucinda had resurfaced, seemingly not too much worse for the wear, and Lark had been relieved to the point of tears by the good news. Now there was just the Ethan problem and, with these other positive events behind her, Meg felt newly confident that she could solve that as well. An hour later, between rush-hour traffic and a tractor-trailer accident on the Triborough Bridge, Meg’s car was still a mile from the entrance ramp to the George Washington Bridge.

She called Oliver on her cell phone.

“It doesn’t look like we’re getting back into Manhattan this century. Any fires there that need putting out?”

“No, just a few messages. Nothing business-wise that can’t wait until Monday. Lucinda called from your place, as you’d asked, said she’s gotten in okay.”

“Good. I shudder to think what my kitchen looks like about now.”

“Well, I’d certainly count your silverware before she leaves again,” Oliver suggested with a smile in his voice. Then he added, “Oh yes, and Ethan phoned right after you left. That’s about it.”

“So close up shop. And thank everyone for me. I have the feeling we’re going to bag this one.”

“I knew that kid was trouble the minute I saw her.” Salvatore Arigato had been the super at Meg’s apartment for the last fifteen years. Short, burly, and opinionated, Sal had a confrontational macho manner that grated on Meg’s nerves. She’d long sensed that Sal didn’t think any woman should be allowed to live on her own, let alone in one of the best co-op apartments in his building. He accosted Meg by the mailboxes as she came in that evening.

“Are you referring to my niece?” Meg asked, pulling out the mail and then letting the metal door slam shut. She started back down the hall to the elevators, Sal trailing after her.

“Kid with the nose ring. Yeah.”

“Need I tell you she’s my guest here?” Meg said, straightening to her full height, which made her easily a foot taller than Sal. “I invited her to stay.”

“Well, she’s gone now. Made a hell of a lot of noise doing it, too. Don’t like that kind of craziness around here, Miz Hardwick.”

Meg tried not to show her concern as she stepped onto the elevator and pushed the button for her floor. She couldn’t imagine what kind of trouble—let alone commotion—Lucinda could make in her apartment. It didn’t occur to her until she was hurrying down the hallway from the elevator that, if Lucinda had indeed taken off with Meg’s keys, she wouldn’t be able to get into her own apartment without having to enlist her insufferable super’s aid. She rang her buzzer anyway, mostly out of irritation, and was relieved to hear movement inside. Sal had to be wrong—Lucinda was still there. The door opened, and Meg found herself confronting Ethan.

“I needed to see you,” Ethan said. “I tried to call.”

“But I phoned Lark. Weren’t you still there? Didn’t she tell you?”

Ethan leaned against the wall and shook his head, his eyes clouded with worry. It was like some bizarre mirror image of the night of his opening—the two of them facing each other in her front hallway. Only this time when she closed the door, she moved quickly past him and he followed her into the living room.

“Tell me what happened,” she said, looking around the room. The doors to her audio unit were open, a dozen CDs stacked in front of it on the carpet. Something had left a slimy path of brown liquid across Meg’s good Pakistani carpet. It took a moment for her to see that the trail ended with an open can of Diet Coke lying on its side under the coffee table.

“I had to talk to you. I needed to see you. Lucinda running away like that really threw me. I began to think that maybe it was her the other day in the studio when we heard that noise—maybe she was watching us, hearing me bleating on like some sick ram. I began to see myself through her eyes—objectively, coldly. I hated what I saw, Meg, and I—”

“What happened
today,
Ethan,” Meg cut him off, furious that once again Ethan seemed incapable of seeing beyond his own pain and problems.
“Here,
with Lucinda?”

“Well…” Ethan began to pace. “I drove down here, figuring you’d still be at work, that I’d wait in the hall until you got home. But I heard music playing in your apartment. I rang the bell.”

“And Lucinda answered.”

“Yes. And when she saw me she just went ballistic,” Ethan paused, looking down the hall to Meg’s front door. “She told me to keep my dirty hands off of you. To just leave you—and her—alone. She was seriously nuts. I tried to calm her down.” Ethan tapped nervously on the back of Meg’s couch.

“So she
had
been spying on us in the studio?”

“Yeah, she told me she saw the whole thing. Accused me of trying to rape you. That wasn’t true, I told her. I was just trying to reason with you. To get you to see—”

“Where did she go?” Meg demanded, the anger ringing so clearly in her voice that Ethan stopped and stared across the room at her.

“I don’t know. She slammed out of here, that’s all I can tell you. What a mess,” he said, running his hands nervously through his hair. “What a fucking—”

“Ethan.” Meg stopped him. “We’ve got to tell Lark what happened.”

Meg made the call.

“But I don’t understand….” Lark finally replied after she’d heard Meg’s explanation. “Ethan left me a note saying that he had to go down early to the gallery. What was he doing at your place?”

“He was … there was … there was something he needed to talk to me about.” The hesitancy in Meg’s tone explained far more than she actually said. The silence was a palpable thing, a negative presence, like the dark of night.

“Oh, Meggie,” Lark said, as she hung up the phone. “Not you, too.”

O
CTOBER 26, 1:15 P.M.

M
eg had debated with herself through a long, restless night after that conversation with Lark. She kept waiting for the phone to ring—for Lark or Ethan to call back and say they’d talked it all through. That the truth was finally out. Instead, she’d heard nothing. She’d woken up feeling nervous and ill and decided that the only thing that could set her right would be a good long run in the park. But the run hadn’t helped, and soon any hope Meg had of averting the crisis was ended for good. The disaster struck.