Wildwood Road (7 page)

“I'll handle it,” Jillian assured him.

His expression softened and at last he seemed himself. “I know you will. That's why you're the manager, and not someone like Vanessa Castille.”

Brad swiped his key in front of the scan pad and there was a soft beeping noise. He tugged the door open and Jillian followed him inside. Without another word they went their separate ways. She hurried down to her office, her purse heavy over her shoulder. A grim weight had settled onto her, and she felt a perverse pleasure in it.

This was good, really. This was exactly what she needed today. If she had office politics to address, mistakes to be corrected, and subordinates to warn of imminent job loss, she wouldn't have to think about how she had spent her own weekend. Wouldn't have to think about the disjointed story Michael had told her the night before, over dinner.

“This girl . . . there was this girl . . .”

Jesus, he almost killed a little girl.
And then he had just left her off at a house in the middle of nowhere. A house he did not even remember how to find. It was obvious from his story that he had been hallucinating, flying on something. No question now, as far as she was concerned, that someone had mickeyed his beer. When she thought about what could have happened, not just behind the wheel, but what might have gone down if the owners of that house—the girl's parents or not—had caught him wandering around inside.

Drunk driving. Breaking and entering. Never mind any thought she might be giving to running for city council.

She did not blame Michael at all. None of it was his fault. But it still terrified her. And she worried about that little girl. Even if it was her house, no one could have been home. If they had been, certainly they would have discovered Michael staggering around the kitchen. They must have been out looking for their daughter. That was the only explanation that made any sense.

God,
she thought.

Then,
no. You're not going to do this today. There's work to do. Focus, or you'll make mistakes. And guys like Brad Klein don't look too kindly on mistakes, no matter what your distractions are.

As she reached her office, the phone was ringing. The view out her window drew her eyes as she dropped her purse on the desk, slipped on her headset, and tapped the blinking button to answer the call.

“Jillian Dansky.”

“Hey, Jilly! Happy Halloween!”

In spite of her stress, she smiled. “Hello, Hannah. You're one day early.”

“You're no fun. Those of us with a weakness for chocolate celebrate Halloween as long as the world will let us. I think I've got mine up to a week this year.”

The familiar warmth of her sister's voice, and her laugh, allowed Jillian to relax, at least a little. But she had work to do, bad news to deliver, and the truth of the matter was that she knew if she stayed on the phone with Hannah she would end up talking about what had happened Saturday night, about her embarrassment Sunday morning and her fight with Michael. This was neither the time nor the place for such a conversation.

And, in her heart, she really did not want to tell Hannah—or anyone else, for that matter—about fighting with her husband. It wasn't anyone else's business. Michael was the one to whom she bared her heart and soul. Hannah usually only got the silly stuff.

“So, what's going on with you, sis? I haven't talked to you in, like, weeks,” Hannah said.

“I'm sorry, Nah-ni. I just got in and I've already got some fires to put out. Can I call you later? Or tomorrow morning even?”

“Sure,” her sister replied, but not without some obvious disappointment. “But don't call me Nah-ni, or I will run you down in my new, incredibly un-PC, gas-guzzling SUV.”

“Whatever you say,
Nah-ni
. I'll scold you sometime this afternoon.”

They said their good-byes and hung up. The message light was blinking and Jillian stared at it a moment. She knew she ought to pick up her voice mail and e-mail before doing anything else, just in case there was anything truly urgent. But she wanted to speak to Vanessa as soon as possible. She thought of herself as a good manager, but Jillian felt that the first step in managing other people was managing herself. The longer she waited to have an awkward conversation with someone, the more she built it up in her mind into something awful. It was best for her to get it out of the way, to save herself the trepidation.

The blinking voice-mail light beckoned, however, and so she made a compromise with herself. Voice mail now, e-mail as soon as she got back to her desk. Voice mail was likely to be more urgent anyway. She picked up the phone and keyed in her security code.

“You have . . . thirteen . . . new messages.”

Jillian sighed, but it turned out not to be as bad as she anticipated. Two of the messages were from friends in the city—paralegals with whom she had worked at her first job at Savage & Young—trying to set up a lunch for the three of them. Three were from attorneys who had new closings that needed paralegals assigned. One was from Human Resources, hoping to schedule some interviews for an open position in her department. An even half dozen were from Brad Klein or from Vanessa, all of them over the weekend when the shit was hitting the fan. She was about to deal with all of that.

Message thirteen had come in only minutes before she had arrived.
While I was on the elevator,
she thought. It was from Councillor Ryan.

“Hello, Jillian, Bob Ryan calling. Just thought I'd give you a ring and let you know how much we all enjoyed speaking with you on Saturday night. If you're really interested in running for city council, let me know. I can tell you that you'd have some significant backing from incumbents.”

He rattled off his phone number and Jillian was left just staring at the phone. She had to replay the message in order to write the number down, and as she did a tiny shudder of relief went through her.
Apparently, nobody saw you make an ass of yourself.
And, apparently, nobody had recognized her and Michael on the side of the road Sunday morning.

It occurred to her that what Bob Ryan had liked—the person he wanted to run for city council—was a slightly intoxicated Jillian Dansky. But the main difference between Jillian sober and Jillian shit-faced was the propensity to speak her mind a bit more readily. If she was going to run for city council, that would not be an issue. Jilly had no problem giving her opinion, but she hesitated to do so without an invitation. Running for office was an invitation all its own.

The last of her anxiety over her weekend antics was gone. As she rose from her desk and left her office, heading toward Vanessa's cubicle, she had to fight the smile off of her face. The last thing she wanted was for Vanessa to think she was amused by the conversation they were about to have.

O
N HIS DESK,
M
ICHAEL HAD
a Macintosh with the biggest damn personal computer screen he had been able to find. For someone in his line of work, it was a thing of beauty. Graphic design was the perfect job for an artist whose greatest skill was in visualization, and in combining research and invention to create just the right image for whatever project he was working on. Of course, he wasn’t just a graphic designer now. He handled client accounts, so the title was art director. He’d worked hard for that. Michael loved all aspects of the job. His office was wall-to-wall with books whose pages were filled with art and stock photos. And not merely the traditional sort. There were histories of pop culture, comic books and graphic novels, advertising portfolios, and old, dusty books with the most stunning illustrations he had ever seen. His favorite was Dante’s
Divine Comedy
, with the Gustave Doré plates.

Whatever he couldn't find reference for in his books was easily available on the Internet. Half the time he found it first on-line, and then searched through his office for a hard copy. When trying out images it was simple to snatch up bits and pieces of things off the Net. When he was assigned a new advertising campaign, Michael worked it both ways. Sometimes he sketched first, doing up as many as a dozen separate designs before choosing a path to follow, then searching for reference for the elements he wanted to include. Other times, when he had no immediate ideas, he would surf on-line in a sort of weird free association. A tour company specializing in Ireland might prompt him to look at everything from Celtic myth to castles to biographies of famous Irish Americans.

Today he was just sketching. His drawing table was set up on the opposite side of the office from his desk. Krakow & Bester had just picked up Newburyport Premium Ice Cream. It was a small company, but they had put together a cadre of investors with enough capital so that they could roll out a national campaign. If Michael and Teddy Polito did their jobs effectively and the thing was a success, the client would reap enormous benefits, and the agency would have a new major client on their hands.

Up until now, Newburyport Premium had taken what Michael thought of as the
Saturday Evening Post
approach, using Americana images of grandfathers and kids. That was a solid choice for advertising ice cream in New England. But going national meant appealing to every possible consumer . . . which was impossible. Michael would have preferred to spend the time dreaming up something fantastically clever, but even he had to admit that clever was a risk. It could alienate the audience by being too smart or too quirky—what he and Teddy called the Dennis Miller effect. Both the agency and the client had decided the way to appeal to the broadest spectrum of customers and alienate the fewest was to go with the lowest common denominator.

Sex.

While Michael would've preferred risking the Dennis Miller effect and doing something clever, he had no fundamental disagreement with doing something sexy. It was sort of a game, trying to figure out exactly how suggestive they could be and still get away with it in a national advertising campaign.

He smiled as he bent over the drawing table. He and Teddy had brainstormed the basics on Friday and now they were getting down to business. Teddy was working on a variety of slogan suggestions, and copy for this ad. Now Michael's pencil flew as he began the basic sketch. The image was almost fully formed in his mind. A sexy blonde standing on the beach, one hip cocked insouciantly, come-hither look in her eyes. She holds an ice-cream cone in one hand—vanilla, of course, to complete the innuendo—and it is dripping down over her fingers, maybe a few drops on her chest or belly. The tag line would be something like “It's a Sticky Situation” or “Come and Get It Before It Melts.”

But that part was Teddy's job.

There would be other options. He was already formulating an idea of a similarly sexy woman in sexy lingerie, sprawled in a big plush chair in front of the television eating a pint of chocolate ice cream. That one Michael already had a tag line for, and he was going to insist. Teddy could write the rest of the copy, but the tag could only be one thing: “All Dressed Up and No Place to Go.”

Sometimes the lowest common denominator could be fun.

The pencil scritch-scratched on the heavy paper, images forming. When the phone rang, Michael did not even stop sketching. He reached out with his left hand and picked it up, propping it between his ear and shoulder.

“Michael Dansky.”

“Hey, sweetie.”

He smiled. “Jilly. Don't tell me you're having a quiet Monday morning.”

“Not even close. I just had to tell you that Bob Ryan called.”

Michael stopped paying attention to what he was drawing. The pencil still flew over the page, the scritch-scratch continued, but he was on autopilot. It was common for him, once he had the image in his mind, to talk on the phone while he worked. He could easily focus on the conversation and still have a small portion of his brain left over to make sure the drawing came out the way he wanted it.

“And are you the local scandal queen now?” he asked.

“Nope. He just wanted to let me know how serious he is about wanting me to run.”

He let out a small breath he'd been holding. “Excellent. So, are you going to go for it?”

“I think I might.”

Michael laughed. “Okay, Ms. Noncommittal. You should run for president with answers that concrete.”

They chatted briefly about what kind of time commitment was involved in campaigning for city council. Michael offered his services to come up with a poster. He suggested “Vote Jillian Dansky, Sex Kitten” as a slogan, then pretended to be mystified when she chided him about it.

“I'm
your
sex kitten. Not Bob Ryan's.”

He could almost hear the smile on her face. Jillian knew how much he respected her for her intelligence and her wisdom. But she also sort of liked it when he let her know how sexy he thought she was.

“Aren't you going to get in trouble, talking like that at work?” he asked.

“No. Everyone here knows I'm a sex kitten,” Jillian said, lowering her voice to a sultry rasp. Then she laughed. “Besides, I have my door closed.”

“Really? Well, maybe you should be my phone sex kitten.”

“I have to
go
now,” she replied, adding just the right amount of disdain to her voice.

Michael laughed and reminded her how much he loved her before he hung up the phone. By any standard, the weekend had started nicely and spiraled into a shit-storm. For the most part, that was all over now. There was the lingering question of who had decided to drop Ecstasy or whatever into his beer. And if he was going to be honest to himself he was still somewhat concerned about that little girl, hoping that she had stayed in until her parents had come home.

But he was doing his damnedest not to think about such things.
The important thing is Jilly's happy. Forget the rest. Life goes on.

There was a rap at the door and Teddy Polito poked his head in. “How's it going,
artiste
?”

“It's going, scribbler. I think I have a handle on the second one that you're going to love.”

Michael started to explain his idea about the lingerie-clad woman pigging out on Newburyport Premium in front of the TV. Teddy came into the office and glanced over his shoulder at what he had been working on, and Michael saw a look of confusion pass over his face.