Original Cyn (6 page)

It was only after Graham had gone that Cyn noticed that Chelsea was looking strained and rather pale. “You OK?” she said, thinking that maybe this tooth abscess was for real after all.

“It’s OK, I’ll be fine when the antibiotics kick in.” But something about the expression on Chelsea’s face left Cyn thinking that it wasn’t just the tooth that was troubling her. Cyn was certain she was seeing something in Chelsea that she had never seen before. It was hovering about her eyes and looked remarkably like panic.

“So,” Cyn said, “I bet you’ve got loads of ideas to take into this show-and-tell session.”

“Oh, a few, maybe,” Chelsea said, minus her usual smug smile. It occurred to Cyn that for once in her life, Chelsea was scared that her ideas would be found wanting. God alone knew why. They had never been found wanting in the past. Chelsea was clearly taking this promotion thing so seriously that it was starting to get to her. All that stood between her and it was winning the Droolin’ Dream doughnut account. Of course there was always the possibility, Cyn thought, that she, Cyn, might win the account and then the promotion could be hers. Remote as the possibility was, Cyn still had some faith in herself.

She had never quite understood the way Chelsea’s creative mind worked. At initial briefings when it was announced that a client was looking for a new advertising campaign and that PCW had been invited to pitch for it, Chelsea remained uncharacteristically quiet. While everybody else threw initial thoughts and ideas into the pot, she would simply listen. It was only days later—at the show-and-tell meetings—that Chelsea came into her own and stunned people with her brilliance. Like everybody else at PCW, Cyn assumed that Chelsea simply had one of those brains that worked best when she was alone and not under pressure.

“Anyway,” Chelsea said, “I should get going. I’ve got some calls to make.” With that she walked off, still looking distracted.

Cyn sat down at her desk and checked her e-mail. The first was from Keith Geary saying he was going to be in South Korea for at least a couple more weeks and he was sure she wouldn’t mind hanging on to Morris. “Hmm, all the same if I do,” she muttered, thinking about carting Morris all the way home and having him in her kitchen for another fortnight, yakking away at full volume about his lack of a sex life. She wrote a reply to Keith:

No prob. Me and Morris great pals. Have you managed to get a shag yet? Morris says it’s been three months. XXX Cyn.

She giggled and pressed
send.

Then she phoned Anusol. When she finally located the person she needed to speak to—a woman named Lisa Patterson—all she got was her voice mail. The message included her e-mail address. Cyn decided to bash out a quick e-mail. But try as she might, she just couldn’t get the tone right. It was vital not to appear demanding or ungrateful because it could threaten PCW’s relationship with the company. It took nearly an hour before she felt she’d hit the right note. Finally she let it go.

“
Pile
of mail for you.” Luke, the office runner, was standing next to her holding a stack of letters, which he dumped on her desk.

“Cheers, Luke,” she said with a smile, refusing to rise to his teasing. Realizing he wasn’t going to get the reaction he wanted, he replaced his headphones, turned his Walkman back on and loped off. When she looked up a few moments later, he was moshing next to the water cooler.

As she started to open her mail, she noticed Chelsea was on the phone. She seemed quite frantic. Cyn thought maybe a client was giving her a hard time and decided to go over and offer to get her a cup of coffee.

“Charlie, please,” Chelsea was saying, pressing her eyelids with her fingers. “I know I said it wasn’t for another two days, but things have changed. I really need for you to do this. No, it can’t wait. I’m desperate. Yes, I know it’s the middle of the night in L.A. I’m sorry, but this is the last time. I promise . . . Please, Charlie—for me . . . What do you mean, you can’t? Can’t or won’t? . . . Oh, all right then, screw you.”

“You look as if you could do with a cuppa.” Chelsea was red in the face. She jumped when she saw Cyn.

“No, I’m fine,” she snapped. “Totally fine.”

“You sure?”

“Perfectly. Why shouldn’t I be?” Cyn was completely mystified. She couldn’t begin to work out what was going on. Chelsea was always so composed and in control. Cyn had never seen her so agitated. “If you say so.” Cyn turned to go.

“OK, here’s the thing,” Chelsea came back sounding a bit calmer, clearly deciding Cyn deserved an explanation. “I’m running a bit short of cash—you know, too much month left at the end of the money. I asked my brother to loan me a couple of hundred dollars, but he said no.”

It made no sense. Surely all Chelsea had to do if she was short of money was to ring her dad. Unless, of course, Chelsea’s Harvey Nicks habit meant she had run up huge credit card debts. Maybe her father was doing the tough-love thing and refusing to bankroll her. Or maybe Sargent Roggenfelder paid her rent and her car expenses and that was it. Perhaps Chelsea was having to fend for herself more than anybody realized.

“Chelsea, look, if it’s money you need I can always let you have a bit.”

Chelsea’s face softened. “God, no. I wouldn’t dream of taking money from you. I’ll be fine.”

“OK, if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure,” Chelsea said, offering Cyn a grateful smile.

Cyn went back to her desk to find an e-mail from Graham Chandler to say he was now catching an earlier flight to New York, the show-and-tell meeting was canceled and could everybody please write down their ideas for the Droolin’ Dream doughnut TV spot. “No e-mails, please. I’d like hard copies on my desk in fifteen minutes.”

Cyn got up the notes she’d made on the low-fat doughnuts. She’d had a few thoughts, but there was one idea in particular that she reckoned wasn’t at all bad. In fact, although she said so herself, she thought it was rather brilliant. Nevertheless, she was sure it wouldn’t compete with anything Chelsea had come up with. The idea had come to her in bed a couple of nights ago, just as she was dropping off.

She saw a commercial shot in black and white. Six plump sixties housewives are sitting around a Formica kitchen table drinking coffee, complaining about their weight and how boring diets are. Enter gorgeous Audrey Hepburn look-alike in a tiny suit and pillbox hat maybe. She is carrying a large box of Droolin’ Dream doughnuts. She offers round the doughnuts, but of course the women all refuse them and are mad with envy that she can eat doughnuts and stay so slim. Audrey sits down, picks up a doughnut and lets them into her “little secret”: “Girls, this is no ordinary doughnut. This is the new Low Nut from Droolin’ Dream. Same delicious Droolin’ Dream taste. Ninety percent less fat.” The ad ends with a sixties-style harmonized jingle: “Do not doughnut, why not Low Nut?”

It took Cyn ten minutes to turn the notes into a proper proposal. She was just about to print it out when her phone rang. It was one of the girls on reception to say that the people from Pickersgill Double Glazing had arrived. Cyn felt panic rise inside her. “Oh, God, I completely lost track of time. Look, could you sit them down at the big conference table and offer them some coffee? I’ll be two minutes.”

Pickersgill Double Glazing was one of the agency’s smaller, bread-and-butter clients that had first used PCW early on, when the company was just setting out and its fees were laughably low. Cyn was due to talk the Pickersgill people through her idea for a poster campaign. It was based on the twister scene in
The Wizard of Oz
. She envisaged a photograph of Dorothy, Aunty Em and Uncle Henry snuggled up in their cozy little shack in Kansas, unaware of the raging twister outside. The caption underneath would read: “There’s no place like home—with Pickersgill Double Glazing.”

She still needed to print the handout she’d written to accompany the presentation. Plus she needed to print out her proposal for Graham. She decided to do the proposal first. She clicked on
print,
but nothing happened. “Come on, come on,” she muttered, giving the printer an encouraging tap. “Work.” Then she saw that it was calling for paper. “Anybody seen any printer paper lying about?” she called out to nobody in particular. Nobody had. She ran over to the stationery cupboard. Everything but. By the time she found a packet of paper—lying on the counter in the kitchen area—a full ten minutes had passed. She tore back to her desk.

As she ripped her Droolin’ Dream proposal from the printer she saw Chelsea heading toward the stairs that led to Graham’s office. “Hey, Chelsea,” she called out, “I’m running late for a meeting, you couldn’t hand in my proposal as well, too, could you?”

“Sure,” Chelsea said easily, coming over. “No problem.”

Cyn handed her the proposal and turned back to the printer, but it had clearly picked up her tension and now was refusing point-blank to print the handout she needed for the Pickersgill meeting. Her heart thumping because she was now fifteen minutes late, she decided she had no choice but to forget the handout. She would take her laptop to the meeting and refer to the notes on her screen.

She virtually ran over to the long meeting table. “Now, then,” Cyril Pickersgill said gruffly as she stood in front of him, breathless, her hand extended, “what time do you call this, young lady?” He ignored her outstretched hand and began shoving tobacco into his pipe. “You trendy young advertising folk with your sun-dried tomatoes, stress balls and caged birds sitting on the table may not think it’s important, but in Yorkshire where I come from punctuality is still the hallmark of a good businessman.”

“I am so sorry, Mr. Pickersgill, but I’ve been having trouble with my printer. And the bird wouldn’t normally be here. It’s just temporary.” She found herself praying that Morris would keep his beak shut for the next half hour or so.

“And what’s wrong with old-fashioned pen and paper, if I might ask?”

“Dad, I’m sure Miss Fishbein’s doing her best.” Wayne, Mr. Pickersgill junior, was about thirty-five. He was wearing a black Hugo Boss suit, two chunky gold signet rings and brown shoes with rubber soles.

“Ay, I’ve no doubt she is.” Cyril lit his pipe and began puffing. “And that’s what makes the whole thing so pitiful.”

“I’m really sorry, Mr. Pickersgill,” Cyn said, “but this is a no-smoking office.”

“Bloody ’ell, whole world’s gone mad. I thought I were still in London—me own capital city, not flamin’ California.”

“Dad, please.” Wayne Pickersgill shot Cyn an apologetic look.

Cyn suggested they sit down. She put her laptop down on the table. “Right, I think I should get to it. I’ve got all my notes on my laptop here.”

“Don’t patronize me, young lady. I do know what a laptop is. I may come from a different generation, but I still know how many beans make five.”

“Dad!”

Cyn cleared her throat. “Right, am I’m correct in thinking you’ve both seen
The Wizard of Oz
?”

“Ay. And what, if I might ask, does that have to do wi’ t’ price of fish?”

“OK, let me explain . . .” She had been going no more than ten, maybe fifteen seconds when it happened.

“Fuck, I need a shag. I need a shag. It’s been three months. Three sodding months since I got my leg over.”

Cyril Pickersgill was practically choking on his pipe. “What the bloody ’ell . . . ?” Cyn could do nothing except smile a sheepish, inadequate smile. “It’s a mynah bird. It belongs to one of my colleagues. It repeats everything it hears. I think I’ll just move it so that we can have some quiet.” She stood up and took hold of the cage handle. But it was too late: “God, that Cyril Pickersgill’s a miserable, boring old duffer,” Morris went on, doing a perfect imitation of Cyn. “Put him out to grass. Put him out to grass.”

Chapter 5

Three days later Cyn got an e-mail from Graham Chandler, who was still in New York, informing her that her idea for the Droolin’ Dream TV commercial had come across as “rushed, ill-considered and lacking in wow factor.” He went on to say that in his opinion, “there is no way this is going to fly with the client. Am concerned that lately you’ve not been performing to your usual standard. Let’s talk when I get back.”

Cyn could hardly believe what she was reading. Her “Do not doughnut, why not Low Nut?” slogan may not have been in quite the same league as “Go to work on an egg” or “They’re grrreat,” but she had been rather proud of it. She’d bounced it off Hugh, who could be exceedingly snotty about TV advertising, which he described as “brutalized low art,” and even he had said it was brill.

Her confidence having taken a severe bashing, Cyn was finding it hard to be her usual upbeat self. The Pickersgills’ furious walkout hadn’t helped. Nobody apart from Cyn and the girls at reception had seen them leave, but when Graham came back and read the inevitable letter of outrage from Cyril Pickersgill in which he would declare that he was taking his business elsewhere, she would be toast.

Whereas Cyn—along with two or three of the other copywriters who also thought they had come up with pretty good ideas—was feeling pretty miserable, Chelsea was ecstatic. It seemed that her Droolin’ Dream idea had “flown with the client.” Nobody was in any doubt that when he came back, Graham would tell Chelsea that the senior copywriter’s job was hers.

Chelsea spent the rest of the week on the phone and e-mailing with the Droolin’ Dream people in preparation for a big meeting with their marketing department in Slough.

Harmony had told Cyn not to worry if she got the sack. “You can always come and work at reception at the salon. You never know, one of my rich clients might ask you out. Nick Bruciano asked me out last week.”

“God, I’ve seen him in the papers. He’s gorgeous. Isn’t he one of the richest men in the country?”

“Yeah, he’s also married with three tiny kids.”

“So, what did you say?”

“I told him I wanted to spend more time with my blender.”

Unlike Cyn, Harmony was a veritable virtuoso of the put-down.

By the following Tuesday lunchtime Cyn was thinking seriously about handing in her resignation before she was asked to go. Suddenly, the idea of a low-stress life in the country held enormous appeal. Perhaps she would open a cutesy little teashop in the Yorkshire Dales. She could call it The Cake District.

Feeling like she really needed to escape from the office for an hour or so, she decided to go to the gym. It was only round the corner and everybody at PCW had cut-price membership. Cyn had been three times since Christmas. It was now early March. Most people at the office were as bad and only a handful went regularly. This small group included Chelsea, who was there at half past seven every morning.

Today the place was almost empty apart from a few regulars Cyn recognized.

Sylvia and Pam waved to her from their treadmills. The pair worked for the modeling agency up the road. They were in their fifties, a size eight (between them), with wind-tunnel faces covered in so much makeup that if it had fallen off it would have killed the cat. There were a couple of muscle-bound gay guys—whose names she didn’t know—in skin-tight tank tops. They were taking turns on one of the weight machines and, judging by the loud grunts, seemed to be giving themselves hernias.

Cyn was heading over to the StairMaster when she noticed Chelsea. She remembered her saying something about having a breakfast meeting that morning. She’d clearly missed her gym session and was catching up now. Cyn thought she ought to say hi, but since Chelsea was standing in front of the huge wall mirror doing yoga stretches with an otherworldly, transcendental look on her face, Cyn thought it best not to interrupt her. Instead she stood watching her for a while, taking in Chelsea’s tiny Lycra shorts and crop top. Cyn suddenly felt self-conscious in her sweatpants and baggy “Firemen do it with a big hose” T-shirt.

Chelsea was lying on her front, now in the cobra position. Cyn couldn’t believe a person could arch her back and neck to the extent Chelsea was arching hers. “God,” Cyn thought, “some people just get all the ligaments.” She watched her change into the lotus position. More ostentatious back stretching and neck lengthening. She watched as Chelsea closed her eyes and breathed in and out very slowly. Finally she opened her eyes and noticed Cyn. “Pranayama,” she announced.

“Sorry?” Cyn said, blinking.

“These movements. They’re known as Pranayama. It means stretching one’s life force. You should try it.” Chelsea stood up, stretched her arms above her head. Then she bent down from the waist and gripped her calves with her hands. As she did this her tight little butt was on full view. A couple of the young lads who worked at the gym stopped wiping floor mats and began staring. Cyn could practically see the drool.

“Think I’ll just hit the StairMaster,” Cyn said to Chelsea. “Oh, by the way, I haven’t had a chance to say well done on getting the Droolin’ Dream account.”

“Oh, it was just a lucky break, really,” Chelsea cooed, sitting down on the mat and starting to hook her foot around her head. “Don’t worry, Cyn. I’m sure your moment in the sun will come. You just have to be patient, that’s all.”

“Yeah. I’m sure you’re right.” Cyn managed a small smile. She walked over to the StairMaster. Chelsea’s foot was now fully behind her head, her Lycra covered crotch fully exposed. If the two young boys had been staring before, now they were positively ogling. The two gay guys were watching, too. “My God,” Cyn heard one of them say, “what a contortionist. This woman could die in her own arms.”

Cyn stepped onto the StairMaster. A few feet away a balding middle-aged chap in short shorts was doing sit-ups, his knees bent in front of him. Cyn tried diverting her eyes, but she was too late. She had seen up one of his short legs and gotten a magnificent close-up of his scrotum.

Feeling slightly queasy, she turned her attention to choosing an exercise program. She decided that since she hadn’t done any exercise for ages, she would ease herself in gently. She punched in level three on the touch pad. She was just wondering if she could manage fifteen minutes when somebody let out a shriek that actually sounded like it could curdle blood. Cyn’s eyes shot to the mat. It was Chelsea. She was rolling around, clearly in the most appalling agony, her foot still behind her head.

“Omigod. Omigod. Please help me. Please.” Chelsea’s face was contorted in pain. “It’s locked. I can’t move.”

Cyn and the two young gym hands went tearing over and knelt beside her. “OK, take it easy,” one of the lads said. “I’m going to try and ease your leg down.” He put his hands round her calf and tried to dislodge the leg. Chelsea cried out. “It’s not just my leg. It’s my back as well. I think I may have done something to my spine.” One of the boys stood up and said he would call an ambulance. “It’s all right, Chelsea,” Cyn said. “Hang on in there. Can you get yourself vaguely comfortable?” In the end Cyn and the remaining lad managed to ease her onto her back.

It took fifteen minutes for the ambulance to arrive and all the time Chelsea just lay there with tears streaming down her cheeks. When the paramedics arrived they were too scared to move her leg in case they did any more damage. In the end it took four of them—the paramedics and the two lads, plus substantial amounts of oxygen mixed with painkiller—to ease her onto a stretcher.

“Don’t worry, I’ll come to the hospital with you,” Cyn said, walking beside the stretcher.

“No, I’ll be fine,” Chelsea stuttered, lifting the gas- and air-mask off her face. “My mom’s in town. I’ll get the hospital to call her. I’d rather you went back to the office and phoned the Droolin’ Dream people and explained I’m not going to be able to make our meeting this afternoon. Tell them I’ll call as soon as I can.” She insisted on giving Cyn the Droolin’ Dream phone number there and then. “Don’t worry,” Cyn said, “it won’t take a minute to get it from Directory or from your computer files.”

“No! Don’t touch my files.” She sounded almost hysterical.

“OK,” Cyn soothed. “Don’t worry. It’s not a problem.”

“It’s just that there’s personal stuff on my computer,” Chelsea said, her voice softening. “My diary, stuff I wouldn’t want anybody to see. Please, just take down the number.” One of the paramedics passed Cyn a Bic and she wrote the number down on her hand. “Listen, Chelsea, are you sure you want me to go? At least let me stay with you until your mum arrives.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be OK.” She screwed up her face against the pain, brought the mask back to her face and inhaled deeply.

Cyn watched Chelsea being loaded into the ambulance and gave her a tiny wave good-bye. Chelsea just about managed to lift her hand in response.

She collected her clothes and dashed back to the office without bothering to get changed. When she explained that Chelsea had hurt her back getting her foot behind her ear, most people grimaced in horror, but several blokes saw it as a cue to get down on the floor to see if they could get their legs behind their heads. The teasing, joshing and bet-taking must have gone on for a full twenty minutes and ended up with Luke the office runner managing to get both legs behind his head at the same time and winning twenty quid. Eventually somebody asked what would happen about Chelsea’s Droolin’ Dream meeting. Cyn explained that she was about to phone them.

She made her way over to her desk, sat down and picked up the receiver. It was only when she opened her hand that she saw the number had disappeared. Stupidly she had written it down on her palm rather than on the back of her hand and she had sweated it off. A few faint bluish squiggles remained—nothing she could make out. She rang Directory. “Sorry, all of our operators are busy at present. Your call is being held in a queue and will be dealt with as soon as possible.”

“Soddit,” she muttered, irritably. She replaced the receiver. She knew she wouldn’t have been made to hang on for more than half a minute or so, but she couldn’t wait. After all the adrenaline that had been pumping through her veins today, her blood sugar had plummeted and she was ravenous. All she wanted to do was to make this call to the Droolin’ Dream people and get some food inside her. She got up and walked briskly across the office toward Chelsea’s desk. “Chelsea knows I don’t gossip. Why would she think for one minute that I would be interested in reading her diary?”

She sat in front of Chelsea’s open PowerBook and pressed the space bar. The screen saver—a picture of herself with Hillary Clinton—disappeared and was replaced by dozens of icons. She clicked on My Documents. The Droolin’ Dream file was about halfway down the first column. She went into it. The phone number, e-mail address and contact names appeared at the top of the screen. She was just about to come out of the file when she noticed the heading: Droolin’ Dream Proposal. Cyn simply couldn’t resist finding out what it was that Graham and the doughnut company had gotten so excited about. She started reading. “Scene: early 1960s—a group of housewives are sitting in a kitchen at one of those old-fashioned blue Formica kitchen tables. They’re all a bit plump and discussing how boring diets are . . .”

If Cyn’s jaw had dropped any farther it would have made contact with the desk. “What the . . . ?” “In comes this Audrey Hepburn look-alike in a tiny suit . . .” “Bitch. I don’t believe it. You total, utter and complete bitch.” She read on. “I suggest the end line:
Do not doughnut. Why not Low Nut?
”

Cyn put her head in her hands. Instead of taking her proposal to Graham Chandler the other day, Chelsea had copied it out, changed a few words around and put her own name to it. Presumably Cyn’s name had gone on Chelsea’s original proposal. But why? Why had she done it? Deep-seated insecurity, Cyn guessed. But Chelsea was so talented. Was it possible she could be so full of self-doubt? So insecure that she needed to steal an idea from a colleague? Apparently so. By now, any doubts that Chelsea hadn’t done the dirty on her over the Smart Car had vanished. Tears of hurt and rage poured down Cyn’s cheeks. Her hands formed fists so tight that her nails dug into her flesh. “She will pay for this. God, she will pay for this.” Distressed as she was, Cyn couldn’t help thinking how much like the end of a Scooby-Doo cartoon she sounded. Nor did it escape her how pleased Veronica, her therapist, would be to discover that she was not only getting in touch with her anger but contemplating vengeance.

Cyn came out of Chelsea’s document file and walked back to her own desk. As she slumped into her chair she noticed a stress ball lying next to the phone. She picked it up and started to pummel it. Chelsea must have been completely round the bend to even think she would get away with it, Cyn thought. At the first meeting to discuss how the project was going, Cyn would have found out she’d pinched her idea. Then she remembered that Graham was in New York. It was possible that meeting would never have taken place and that Chelsea and Graham would simply have communicated by e-mail. But even that would only have delayed Cyn finding out. The truth would have come out eventually—after which Cyn would have told Graham what Chelsea had done and she would have been dismissed immediately.

Or would she? It suddenly struck her that if Chelsea was so scheming and manipulative, and apparently without any conscience, she might well deny stealing Cyn’s idea. What if Graham believed her? Anything was possible. After all, Cyn’s career had taken a bit of a downturn these last few weeks—culminating in the Pickersgill fiasco, which Graham still knew nothing about. Maybe when he got back, Chelsea would convince him that the stress of the job was getting to Cyn and that she was cracking up. Much as she wanted to punch Chelsea’s lights out and promise to tell Graham precisely what had gone on, she decided against it.

Just then the phone rang. It was Lisa Patterson from Anusol. She said she had been off sick and apologized for taking so long to get back to Cyn. “I have to confess to being a bit perplexed about all this,” she said, kindly. “I made a point of asking if the ad was going to cause problems. The woman I spoke to assured me it wouldn’t.”