VII - THE CHARIOT
The plane was taxing out to the runway in Orlando and I was looking forward a few hours of reading. I had been devouring the books that Misha had given me and the ideas were resonating- especially my astrological chart as patterns emerged and nagging doubts about my past were suddenly made clear. I was also making good progress with the cards and beginning to see the parallels between them, astrology and the Kabbalah. Just as the flight attendant announced that we should turn off our phones I got an SMS from Irina. “Something is going on in the office with Perlini and Winde.”
I had gone to talk to the folks at Ebony Magazine just before leaving for Orlando to see Just Trade. Winde had been there with Barry the week before but they had blown it; not only did they not close the deal but they had alienated the publisher in the process. Our account executive had a good relationship with the publisher at Ebony so he agreed to one more meeting with me and the account executive. We met him the morning before my flight to Orlando and were able to convince him to sign an insertion order, or contract, for 300K. From what I could gather, Winde had smoked a bomber before his meeting at Ebony and he and Barry’s Cheech and Chong routine didn’t go over too well, but at Bernstein Media no good deed went unpunished.
As we made our final approach into LaGuardia I analyzed the battle to come and I liked my odds- Winde had miscalculated not only my options but my determination to exact revenge. The agency I had interviewed with on the day of the explosion and my reconciliation with Irina had made me a very generous offer, and after the trip to Just Trade I was confident I could take the business away from Bernstein Media with one quick flight to Orlando. I knew I couldn’t get Winde fired but I could outmaneuver him and give myself some breathing room if I wanted to stay. I couldn’t lose- if they fired me I would take a lot of their business and if I stayed I would be in a much stronger position.
I didn’t get back into the city until quite late so I didn’t call Irina. The next morning when I got into the office Perlini came into see me first thing. “Let’s go into the conference room, I need to discuss some things with you.” Unfortunately for Perlini, I knew the score. We sat in the main the conference room and I looked on with delight. “When you were gone,” he began, “Winde and I made some changes to our team.”
“Where’s Winde?”
“He won’t be in today.”
“How convenient. Since when is it our team? As far as I know, it’s my team.” I had one arm on the table and leaned toward him, a bit closer than usual.
“Well, that’s what we wanted to talk to you about.”
“We? Who’s we?” I was going to give him no quarter.
“Winde and I.”
“Okay, go ahead, I’m all ears.”
He cleared his winy, nasal voice, “From now on, I will report directly to Winde and I’ll take over the education accounts, and Shelley will report directly to me.”
“Interesting, and you are the one to tell me this?” I raised an eyebrow but I kept the tone reasonably polite.
“Winde is sick.”
“Have you explained this to the team?” I tried to appear humble as if I were resigned to my new position.
“Yes, we spoke to them yesterday.”
“We meaning you and Winde?”
“Yes”
“Very nice. We’ll talk later.” I got up and left leaving him a bit too quickly for comfort.
Irina and I went down to have a coffee and discuss strategy. “Don’t lose your cool,” she said, “Play it cold. Remember, revenge is a dish best served cold, and keep it completely impersonal. I think you can’t lose, you’re much better than they are, and much smarter.”
“Look, I’ll be cool.” I said. “But I won’t put up with any more of this humiliation. I can’t believe they are trying something like this after I closed an account like Ebony for them. You know Winde and Barry are shareholders? I put a nice piece of change in their pockets.”
“Just don’t lose control. I can see how sometimes you can be very emotional. Remember, that’s why they did this, you’re a threat to Winde and he’s very close to Bernstein. Winde thinks they have Just Trade figured out. They were very nice to me yesterday and asked me a lot of questions, and then you got them the business for Ebony, so now they can get rid of you. I think that’s the plan; they’re sure you will get angry and quit. Stay calm and you’ll win- you’re smarter and stronger than they are. Just stay icy cold, like an assassin.” I kept that as my war cry.
“I’ll do my best.” She calmed me and gave me that edge that only a woman can by taking the water from boiling to slightly simmering.
The next morning I made a point of coming in about half an hour late. Five minutes after I got into my office and closed the door Winde, standing in the middle of the office, screamed at the top of his lungs, “All media buyers, into the conference. Edwards, lets go.” Usually there was a consultation before these types of meetings so he was really pushing it; my move now was to go directly to Bernstein.
Bernstein would never part with Winde or Barry but he also knew that Cheech and Chong were not ready for prime time, not in the digital era. They might have been good in the bygone direct mail days but no longer. I was waiting for Winde to come to me, then make my move to Bernstein. He arrived on cue.
“We’re waiting for you.”
“When you have a meeting with my team, you consult me beforehand. I’m busy now.” I stared at him enough to make him think I was ready to blow a gasket and I could see the cunning confidence in his fat face.
“Okay, we will go ahead without you.” I left immediately, getting uncomfortably close behind him as he walked the hall toward the conference room and just when he opened the door thinking I was going to enter, I went straight past him toward Bernstein’s office. He was on the phone and motioned for me to wait. When he got off I gave him the update on the Just Trade account and how they had doubled their media buy. Then I told him about the Ebony account and once I had him nice and lubricated I slipped him the pointy shoe.
“Unfortunately, we have a problem.” Of course he knew all about what Winde was doing and had approved it. “You know of the changes that went on in the team since I was gone, I don’t like them. I had a different strategy altogether and with the extra work from Ebony and the increased buy from Just Trade, this new plan isn’t going work. It would also be nice to be consulted, don’t you think? Or am I being demoted?”
“I wouldn’t say demoted, Winde’s the boss, I think he should organize it as he sees fit. Maybe handling them isn’t your forte, we can work around that.”
“Okay, I get your point. We have two options- I leave, or we get Winde and tell him the team is mine and I organize it how I see fit, it’s your call. Look, I can leave here and have a job in ten minutes. Just Trade made me a nice offer to do their media buys, more than you’re paying me while I would be saving them a bundle, at least a third of their spend and I can stay in New York. I could also get Ebony, I’m pretty sure, working at ten percent of the media buy and saving them about a hundred grand.” He twirled his tie and looked at me with a bizarre expression that gave me the feeling he got a weird thrill out of me bending him over the desk like that. “But I like it here, it’s interesting for me and I like working for you, you have a lot of experience and I think we understand each other. But I can’t continue leading a team after this little stunt. It would be silly, don’t you think?”
“I understand, look, Winde sometimes gets carried away. Bring him in here, let’s talk it over.” I walked into the conference room.
“Winde, Bernstein wants to talk to you.”
“When I finish.”
“He said now.” I stood and looked at him while he waited and then finally got up slowly.
“All right everyone, let’s end it here. You know what you need to do.” I thought about telling them to stay but I looked at Irina, remembered her advice, and le
t it go. They walked back to their cubicles and Winde followed me into Bernstein’s office.
Bernstein started. “Winde, I think there has been a bit of a misunderstanding here. We should’ve talked to Edwards.”
“Sure, Arthur, I understand. Next time, we’ll talk to you beforehand. Look, I apologize, my bad.”
Bernstein looked at me to see if I would fold. “Thank you Winde, I appreciate the gesture. These types of things aren’t good for the team though, we both lose credibility, first me, than you when I bring them in and tell them your plan is off. And now that we’re all here, let’s talk about Ebony.” I looked at Winde as I spoke. “Ebony is a very good account, not only for the money, but to have an account like that opens up other doors. I don’t know what went on in the meeting you had with them, but it was a disaster. Next time someone in sales has a high profile account, let’s make sure I go. You can’t waste opportunities like that, not if you want to keep growing the business.”
“Look, they weren’t interested, we brought them a plan, and we made a book for them, outlining what we were going to do.”
“It would have helped if you had remembered to cut and paste correctly; I don’t think he found it amusing to see Liberty Western University in three places.” Bernstein shook his head and kept silent. “Ebony’s not some ten grand account, we are talking about 300k in three months, and hopefully, if I handle it right, we can renew and turn this into a million dollar account. You don’t go into a meeting like that with a cut and paste job that looks like it was cooked up by the mailroom clerk.”
Winde went into is routine. “Look, okay, I made a mistake, congratulations on getting the account.”
I went in for the kill. “Thanks for that. Now, I will go in, undo your reorganization, and make my own changes. I just want to have your word.” I looked at Bernstein. “That next time you two want to change things up, that I’m consulted, so we don’t have to go through this routine every time I close a big account.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything. “Yes, we’re good?” I insisted.
He finally just said okay, I didn’t look at Winde. I left the building and took a victory lap around the neighborhood and smoked a few cigarettes to give them some time to unwind their deal with Perlini. I came back up and calmly told all my people to go back to the main conference room. Perlini had trained Shelley very well on the education accounts which were important but relatively easy to handle. The one dog account we had that gave me constant headaches was Bosley Hair Replacement. It was a horrible account and it was going to be my gift to Perlini.
Once they were all there, I went to Bernstein’s office to get Perlini. “Bernstein, are you done with Perlini?” Bernstein nodded and Perlini got up to follow me. Bernstein knew he couldn’t call my bluff. Just Trade had doubled the monthly buy on which Bernstein was making forty percent margins. He wasn’t going to call them and go into a tirade. It was check mate and he knew it.
Once Perlini sat down, I started. “First things first. Everything is back to the way it was before I left. There was a misunderstanding that’s now been straightened out, right Perlini?” He nodded. “Now there will be one change, I was thinking about this on the trip. Shelley, you are doing a great job on the education accounts, I want you to handle all the education accounts, that’s your baby now. Perlini, hand everything off to her and let the schools know she is taking over. You are going to handle Bosley exclusively. I want that back to where it was before I got here. Everyone else, we are done, you stay.” I pointed to Perlini.
Once we were alone, I started. “Do you have any questions?” I looked at him.
“Look, Arthur, it wasn’t my idea. They told me, they didn’t ask me. What did you expect me to do?”
“Exactly what you did. I meant did you have any questions on Bosley?”
“No.”
“Good, come to my office today at five, and beforehand email me an excel with fifty publishers you will contact on Bosley. We will discuss it and every day I want an email with and updated excel showing who you contacted and what the results were. As for your bonus, it now all depends on what you can do with this account.”
“But we agreed that my bonus was dependent on the education accounts.”
“That has changed. You understand by now how a profitable business must be agile, able to change strategy on the fly. We’re a team, and sometimes, when you are in team, you have to take one for the team, as they say.” He sat in silence for a moment and I just looked at him.
“Okay.” He finally responded.
“We’re done.” Bernstein would be annoyed about this move but he would also understand it made the most sense. Perlini was very hardworking and diligent and he would find a way to make the account work, which was in Bernstein’s best interest. I knew there was the possibility they would fire me in the next few days but it didn’t really worry me. The score was settled.
After that meeting I took a long walk alone and tried organize my thoughts. It seemed that I was destined to have these types of confrontations but at least I had Irina. Without her, I would have over played my hand; she tempered the fire and it felt good to know she was with me.
I was seeing things in my natal chart that were giving me clues about my personality, things I had never considered before. For instance, the Mars/Saturn opposition in my chart helped me understand why I had such constant problems with authority, and my sun in the 12th house helped me realized why I seemed to have such strange karma and also an almost desperate need to spend time alone.
I found myself near the Hermes store and it occurred to me that a nice scarf would be the perfect victory gift for Irina. I strolled in as if it were fruit stand and immediately started flirting with the attractive sales girl. After glancing at a the scarves that she was laying out on the counter, I bought one with a vibrant, blue/red design and slipped the box under my sport coat and I walked back into the office.
Winde immediately called me into his office and began to pander in way that is too distasteful to recall. We finally got down to business and he wanted to know what sources we would use for Ebony, and I threw out a few, including our “inside” source.
“Why are you using them?” He mentioned the affiliate that I owned with Rudy and Ryan, “This is Ebony Magazine, that guy gets traders.” I was worried he smelled a rat as the source that I owned with Rudy and Ryan was supposedly a specialist in finding leads for traders and Ebony Magazine was not at all involved in market analysis. It would have been a mistake to get defensive, so I got technical with him.
“Sure, but he has other lists, and their demographic skews older, just as Ebony’s does. The kind of folks on trading sites who might be interested in Ebony will probably have very high conversions. We may not get good volume, but we will get good quality leads, leads that produce sales. We aren’t selling smoke and mirrors, we are selling conversions. Anyway, he has other lists, it’s worth a shot. Remember, what doesn’t convert, we get rid of.”
“Okay Arthur, you are the boss on this one.” Barry came in and they resorted to tag team pandering which I accepted gracefully, remembering Irina’s advice not to make it personal. I even through out some small talk to calm the waters and make believe we had made up even though I found the entire atmosphere extremely repugnant.
I decided not to take the offer with the competing agency downtown. I knew they would wind up being the same, just younger and hipper, so I opted to stay at Bernstein. It would have been better to not be so close to Irina but I was enjoying too much having her near me.
Ryan, Rudy and I went out to have a cigarette together and I updated them on Ebony, as our humble endeavor was burgeoning into a nice cash flow for all of us. I told them we needed to branch out and Rudy worked out a way to siphon off a hundred Whitney leads and sell them to Harry Scott in order to pocket another ten grand a month between us. I insisted they send him the best sourc
es, which I knew from my trip to Just Trade, because Just Trade showed me their reports, which I in turn would use to improve the performance of their direct competitor, Harry Scot. Shockingly, all the sordid business I was doing didn’t seem in the least unethical to me as I had spent too many years in advertising to feel any semblance of remorse for making an easy buck.
Advertisers are professional liars and manipulators; the campaigns are lies and the creation of the campaigns is full of dishonest dealings. The point was to make a quick score and look as glamorous as possible doing it. If Bernstein and his pals were making millions, I was sure I deserved at least a few hundred thousand. As I delved farther into esoterica I realized that my world had some strange connection to the dark half of the occult world- I was a kind of black magician. I thought of Harry Scott’s incredible hypocrisy invoking Jesus to fleece people and chuckled remembering the email I sent him proposing a new source for his leads, redirected Just Trade leads, which he quickly accepted because he was thrilled about the money I was already making him.
From the New York point of view, making money meant screwing people. Wall Street and Madison Ave had no interest in the consequences of their actions on the people who actually did something constructive with their lives. Those people were suckers who needed to be chained with debt, convinced to buy things they had no need for and sent to fight proxy wars that meant nothing to them. They should shut up, and tear up when they hear the national anthem and use their credit cards to enjoy the Chinese made gadgets that we told them they needed in order to be happy.
I had no delusions about how low I was in the pecking order, but I was following the lead and doing my best to at least get my share. But my esoteric interests were starting to cause a split as I saw the dissonance between what I did and what I was beginning to feel on a higher level. As my success grew it made it all the more difficult to imagine a life not intricately part of the great matrix, so I drank the doubts away and lost myself in the vitality I’d found with Irina.
That afternoon after work Irina and I planned to meet downtown to celebrate our victory. It was the first week of July, right before the long July 4th weekend and I walked through the streets of the very western part of Soho almost floating when I saw her sitting on a bench in the seven o’clock sun. Something in her gaze left my wondering what secret she was hiding- this was not your typical twenty-nine year old.
“You’re ten minutes late.” She said.
“I’ll try and make it up to you, I promise.” We walked through Soho and for the first time in many years I felt that strange vibration of love. I could feel it in the way people looked at us and in her giggle, the bounce in her step and her glance; this was not the girl who had tortured me in Miami. People smiled at us and asked for directions, a bum called us love birds and a nervous and confused elderly woman asked us to walk her home and we gladly obliged. Irina took her by the arm and we accompanied her to her door in the West Village where she gave us effusive thanks. Later we sat down at an outside table of a small Spanish tapas place in the East Village.
The Ribeiro went down wonderfully and we ate and talked in the warm night. “Ah, yes, here is a little something I picked up for you.” I handed her the Hermes box and she seemed quite pleased, giving that super smile that was so rare but utterly convincing. We then took a taxi uptown to a Russian place in the theatre district where we ordered a plate of salted fish and a carafe of their own cranberry flavored vodka. It was a dark, mysterious, very Russian atmosphere with one guy playing the piano and Soviet memorabilia hanging from the walls. We laughed and drank and when we finally got to Broadway we found a rickshaw and she ran toward the man who was pulling the empty carriage.
“Can we?” She asked me, a bit drunk.
“Of course” We hopped in. “To 39th and 3rd.” I asked and he pulled us in his chariot right through Times Square while she looked up childlike at the lights.
“Not so bad.” She commented and I smiled at her talent for understatement.
“Do you have a passport? I mean, can you leave the country?”
“Sure, now I can come and go now, no problem.”
“Any plans for the Fourth of July weekend?” Her boyfriend was back and I wasn’t sure if she was ready to spend the weekend with me as we had avoided talking about him.
“Not really. Nothing happening.”
“No promises, we’ll see.”
It was Thursday and first thing in the morning I checked out a last minute ticket site and picked up two round trip tickets to Madrid, Business Class. We were to leave the next day at 8.30PM and would be back Monday, the 4th of July, in the afternoon- two nights and three days in Madrid. I booked the Plaza Hotel in Cibeles, the same Plaza that the Majarshi had stayed at. I immediately called Irina.
“How are you feeling?”
“Horrible.”
“Sorry, we need to go the conference room to discuss Just Trade.” I could have just closed the door to my office, but I was feeling dramatic.
“Okay.”
We sat in the same places we had when we interviewed. “Irina Petrovna, I want to say I think you have been doing a good job. You are working hard, and most importantly, you know how to make your boss happy.” She seemed in no mood for my comedy routine.
“Seeing that you are bit under the weather, I shall cut to the chase. Being a very professional and career oriented advertising professional, I believe it’s important to expand our horizons and develop the team concept. Hence, please, get good night’s sleep and come to work tomorrow prepared for a weekend trip.” She smiled a bit but I hoped she would smile a more when she heard the details.
“You and your very progressive boss will fly tomorrow from New York’s JFK to Madrid Barajas, on the 8.30PM Iberia flight, back Monday afternoon for a weekend of intense team building. I’ll leave the rest of the details for later, but, rest assured, it will be an opportunity to grow professionally and personally.” Now I got the big smile. “The car service will pick up us at my place tomorrow at five.” She walked up and kissed me.
“You’re not so bad a boss.”
She put her hand on mine as the A-360 began to roll down the runway. Her fingers seemed so small, so delicate that it was hard to remember how easily she had driven me into the ground. As the big plane struggled to reach into the air I leaned back and felt a sense of completeness, an enemy vanquished.