Truth in Advertising (22 page)

I say, “Okay. Well, that makes sense, I guess.”

“Yes. Well. I wanted to let you know.”

“Thank you. Honestly. That's very kind of you.”

I hang up and look at Keita.

“Keita,” I say. “Hello.”

I stand up and he walks over and we shake hands.

Keita says, “Fin. I like your presentation very much. Would you have time for one quick drink?”

Time to leave my nine to five up on a shelf.

•   •   •

Somehow it's late and I am drunk, in the back of a $350,000 Mercedes Maybach, with Keita and a man and a woman whose names I do not know and who do not speak unless Keita speaks to them first.

Keita says, “Tonight we have a party of epic proportions.” It's something he has said several times during the evening, a go-to line. (Mine's “Hmm, that's interesting.”)

Dinner was innocent enough. Gotham Bar and Grill. Then a series of bars on the West Side. The Standard, Pastis, Hotel Gansevoort, Soho House. The man and woman who are currently
seated in the front of the Maybach secured entrée into each place and somehow whisked us past waiting crowds, got us seated at corner tables. Drinks appeared and were paid for without my ever seeing a bill or a wallet.

Keita says, “Fin. You are super awesome. You are like Darrin Stephens.”

“I am like Darrin Stephens, Keita my friend.” A not particularly clever retort on my part, but the best I can do at the moment. Keita, however, finds this hilarious. All evening he seems to find everything I say either fascinating or hilarious.

Keita says, “Fin. There were two Darrin Stephens. Why?”

“Well, Keita, that's tough to say. Dick York, the actor who played the first Darrin Stephens, left the show. Then came Dick Sargent. Two guys named Dick.”

Keita's torso hurls forward he laughs so hard. Loves a dick joke, apparently.

I say, “Here's the best part.”

Keita's drink was three-quarters of the way to his mouth but is now suspended inches from his lips. His eyes go wide in anticipation.

I say, “Dick Sargent was a fake name. His Hollywood name. His real name was Richard Cox.”

Keita squints. “I don't understand.”

I say, “In America, we sometimes call someone named Richard ‘Dick.' Dick Cox.”

Keita's drink is airborne, brown liquid flying onto his pants, my pants, the floor of the car that costs more than the average American home.

I say, “Keita, your English is quite good.”

“It is good and it is not so good. The more I drink the better it gets. I attended a British boarding school for three years as a boy. One of the worst experiences of my life.” He laughs. “Do you speak another language, Fin?”

“No.”

“Of course not. You are American. But that is okay because you are super famous!”

“Yes, I am.”

“You have won many awards for your famous work.”

No, I haven't. “Yes, I have.”

“And someday you will run the agency.”

Not a snowball's chance in hell. “Absolutely.”

They'd lied to him. They told him I was the agency's best writer. They told him I'd been the lead on many new business wins. Frank was jiggling change in his pockets (or possibly playing with his balls), staring out the window of Martin's office. This was after this morning's meeting.

Frank had said, “He shows up unannounced in the lobby. Thank God I was in New York. A sneak attack. It's Pearl Harbor all over again.”

Martin said, “Don't be
daft
, Frank.”

Martin was in his chair, fingers tented, the jet lag surely kicking in.

“Fin,” Martin said. “Keita has asked to meet our finest writer.”

I said, “And he's on vacation.”

“The top
three
are on vacation,” Frank said to the window.

Martin said, “Frank. For Christ's sake.” To me: “He wants to see how a commercial is made.”

I say, “Tell him to watch an old episode of
thirtysomething
.”

Martin says, “He owns the company.”

Frank says, “His
father
owns the company. I
run
the company.”

Martin, to Frank: “We all know you run the company, Frank. Maybe go have lunch or buy some nice shirts.”

To me, “Show him around. Let him sit with you and Ian. Take him to an edit session. He'll get bored and go home.”

Frank says, “What exactly is a Rastafarian, anyway?”

Martin and I both look at him.

Frank says, “My daughter says she's become one. She's at Dartmouth. Spoiled brat. Fifty grand a year. Every other week, it seems, she's home on school break. What the hell am I paying for? She used to be so sweet. Now she smokes marijuana in front of her mother.”

Martin says, “A day or two. Tops. You don't mind being the best writer in the agency for a day or two, right? Nice work today, by the way. There's a possibility Monday might not be a complete disaster.”

That was eight hours ago.

•   •   •

There is a bar in the back of the car and Keita is making drinks.

I say, “Do you have any club soda or ginger ale?”

Keita says something in Japanese and the car pulls over and the woman in the front gets out and runs into a deli, returning in record time with a bottle of each. One could get used to this. I gulp down the club soda and check my voice mail messages on my home phone.

Keita says, “We should go for a ride in a helicopter. See Manhattan at night.”

There's a message from Dr. Wink. “There's been a change in your father's condition. You should come here now.”

I say, “I'm not the best copywriter at the agency, Keita.”

“Fin! You are too modest.”

“No. I'm not. Martin and Frank lied to you. They didn't want to disappoint you. I'm just a guy who writes diaper commercials. I'm not even a creative director. And I'll never run the agency.”

He looks out the window, sips his drink.

“Fin. Maybe do you know what my title is?” He's still looking out the window.

“President?”

He turns. “Special Assistant to the Chief Operating Officer of Lauderbeck, Kline & Vanderhosen's parent company, Tomo, Japan's largest shipping company and third largest in the world.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing. It means I do nothing, am in charge of nothing. I am the only son, only child, and disappointment to my father. And I will never run my father's company because he thinks I am stupid. He buys the advertising firm to keep me busy. And then they don't let me do anything.”

I turn to look at him and he turns from the window.

“Fuck them,” I say.

“Who?”

“I don't know. Whoever told you that you couldn't do something. Fuck 'em. Course, I myself don't normally have the balls to say that, but I'm drunk and I'm riding in a Maybach.”

“Fin. I like you, even though you are not best writer.”

“I like you, too, even though your title means nothing. But I have to go home now. My father is dying.”

He turns to me, suddenly serious. “Fin. This is a tragedy. He is a very great man, your father?”

“No. He's just a regular man.”

“You admire your father? You learn much from him?”

“I once whined to a therapist that my father never taught me anything. The therapist said, ‘You're wrong. Your father taught you everything.'”

Keita considers this a moment. Or not. He could be drifting. Although he seems to have a remarkable ability to remain reasonably sober.

“Fin,” Keita says in a stage whisper, “my father is a very great man. Very great. He say to me, he say, ‘You are weak and you must be strong. You are ordinary and you must be great.' He is a very great man, my father.”

He sounds like a dick.

Keita says, “Fin. Do you love your father?”

“No. I hate him, actually.”

He smiles. “Me, too.”

I
walk down the hall in the ICU toward the nurses station, where four of them are huddled together. I hear one nurse say, “And the patient says, ‘What's the
bad
news?' And the doctor says, ‘I've been trying to
reach
you for twenty-four hours.' ” They all laugh loudly.

One finally turns to me. Her expression suggests she's annoyed to find me standing there.

“What's the hardest part about rollerblading?” I say.

“Excuse me?”

The other three nurses have turned, the same mildly annoyed expressions.

“What's the hardest part about rollerblading?” Expressions that suggest confusion now.

I say, “Telling your father you're gay.”

They think on it for a moment and one laughs.

“I'm here to see Edward Dolan,” I say.

The one who laughs shows me to his room. I ask if Margaret is on duty, but the nurse—Beverly—tells me that Margaret doesn't work the ICU. We look at my father, who has more machines around him that go beep and hiss. More tubes. There is a strip of white tape on either side of his mouth holding a tube in. There has to be a more dignified way to die.

“How bad is it?” I ask, thinking immediately that I sound like someone in a TV show.

“He's not good.”

For some reason this annoys me. Give me facts. Give me data that I don't fully understand. Give me something.

“I understand that, but is there a time or . . .”

“We couldn't know that. I'm sorry. The doctor will be around later.”

The room is darker than the other room. Is it mood lighting, to suggest the severity of the situation? Is it to save money on the nearly dead? He looks helpless. He looks like a very old man. He looks like a baby. And just that fast, just that vividly, I remember the reject baseball glove.

My mother collected S&H Green Stamps, spending evenings after dinner and the dishes, a cup of tea, a Pall Mall, my father reading the
Record American
with the radio on—the Bruins game, the Red Sox—pasting in page after page of Green Stamps. Those rare times when it was good. I was starting Little League. She used the stamps to get me a glove. The model was called a Regent. Other kids had a Spalding or Wilson or Rawlings. Who'd ever heard of a Regent? I was only mildly disappointed, until Eddie Wyzbiki saw it and made fun of it. “Look at Dolan's glove! It's a
Reeeee
-ject!” He pulled it out of my hand, ran around. “Reject!” He was much bigger and I defended myself nicely by bursting into tears, red-faced, ears burning. I told my mother, who told my father. I was sitting in a chair at the kitchen table. I was terrified he'd scream, blame me for crying, being a little weasel. I was waiting for the explosion. In the evening he would shower and afterwards he smelled of Bay Rum.

He sat down opposite me.

“Look at me,” he said. My mother off to one side, biting a corner of her mouth.

I was trying hard not to cry. My ears ached.

He said, “People say foolish things.” He shook his head. “It means they don't like themselves. It's means they are afraid. That boy. He's just afraid. Feel sorry for people who say mean things.”

Later, we drove for an ice cream, just me and him, my father humming to the radio.

•   •   •

I call Eddie from the cafeteria, hoping it will go directly to voice mail. He answers.

I say, “Hey. It's Fin.”

“Yeah. Hey. What's up?”

What's up? Gee, not much. What's up with you, asshole?

I say, “They've transferred him to the ICU.”

I can hear children's voices in the background.

Eddie says, “Has he said anything?”

Yes, Eddie. He said he's sorry. He said he loves you. He said you're a good person and he's proud of you. No, Eddie. He hasn't. He never said he's sorry and he never said he loves us and he's never going to.

You are always a certain age in your family. I am twelve forever. It's annoying.

I say, “No. Not that I know of. I was here Christmas Eve, part of Christmas Day.”

“I have the kids. Tonight and tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

I'm running my thumbnail back and forth across a packet of sugar.

“Do you know if Maura has any intention of coming down?” The words are polite but the sound of my voice suggests a mild annoyance.

Eddie says, “You'd have to ask her that, Fin.” The subtitle would read “Fuck you, Fin.”

I say, “But she knows he's in here, right?” The subtitle would read “Why am I the only one here, you selfish, sad prick?”

“Yeah.”

I say, “She knows he's . . .”

But I stop. What more is there to say? Why fight it? Why let it get to me? But it does.

Eddie says, “Of course she
knows
, Fin. We all
know
. We've all made our choices. Just like he made his.” He turns from the phone and shouts. “Kara! Turn that
down
!”

I'm tempted to tell Eddie that he sounds exactly like our father. But I don't.

•   •   •

Phoebe calls.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi.”

I'm still at the hotel. No Knockwurst Night tonight. Not much of anything. I had a beer and two bites of a disgusting cheeseburger. I ordered another beer and took it back to my room. I'm watching
The Shawshank Redemption
. I've seen it maybe five times.

“Where are you?” I ask.

“Friends of the family. They have a party on New Year's every year.”

“Sounds fun.”

“Lots of cute boys. Ski instructors. Snowboarders. Why are boys who ski so hot?”

“I've been asking myself this question for years. You've had some wine, I think.”

“Maybe I have. Your date wasn't good, huh?”