A Winter Dream

“I think she’s sick,” Leonard said.

  “No,” Bryce said. “She called in this morning and said she’d be in late. Something about a meeting.”

  “I bet she’s job-hunting,” Leonard said.

  “Could you blame her?” Bryce said. “She’s got too much light to be kept under a bushel.”

  The thought of her leaving the tank made me sad. “That’s too bad,” I said. “Not for her but for us.”

  Even Leonard nodded in agreement. “I was thinking of asking her out.”

  Bryce and I glanced at each other but said nothing.

  An hour after lunch my phone rang. “Joseph, it’s Charlene.”

  “Charbaby,” I said. “What’s going on? We missed you at lunch. We had to listen to Leonard tell us about his date last week.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  “I don’t think he had a date. I’m pretty sure he’s just recycling old ones. Or someone else’s.”

  “Did the date pull out a hair and floss her teeth with it?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Disney Channel,” she said. “Listen, I have some news.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I just got my job back as Mr. Ferrell’s personal assistant.”

  “That’s fantastic.”

  “Just like you saw in your dream. On my way in to work this morning, Mr. Ferrell called and asked me to come see him. He said his new assistant is driving him crazy and he wants me back.”

  “Congratulations. I’m so happy for you. Not so much for us, but definitely for you.”

  “Thanks. I’ll miss you too.”

  Bryce walked up, leaning over my desk. “What’s up with Char?”

  “What’s going on?” Leonard asked.

  “Bryce and Leonard want to know. Can I tell them?”

  “Tell us what?” Bryce asked.

  “Go ahead,” Charlene said.

  I put the phone on speaker. “You tell them. You’re on speaker, go ahead.”

  “I got my job back,” Charlene said.

  “Yes!” Bryce shouted. “I knew you would. Just like J.J.’s dream. Now I’m next.”

  “The dream is bogus,” Leonard said.

  “We’re really happy for you,” I said again.

  “Make that a double,” Bryce said.

  “Thank you. But I’m going to miss working with you all. I hate breaking up the Outasts.”

  “We can still get together for Hearts,” I said. “Besides, you never belonged here.”

  “None of us belong there,” she said. “Except Leonard.”

  “How you mock me,” Leonard said.

  “Joseph, would it be too much trouble to have you bring my things from my desk over to my new office? There’s not that much and the last assistant left things such a mess that I won’t be able to get out of here for at least a week.”

  “Sure. No problem. What floor?”

  “I’m on the eighteenth floor. If I’m not there, just leave the box at my desk.”

  “You’ll have it before the day’s out.”

  “I owe you,” she said. “When things let up, let’s all get together for lunch.”

  “And Hearts,” Bryce added.

  “Of course. I better go. Mr. Ferrell just finished his call.”

  “Congratulations again,” I said.

  “Oh, Joseph,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t stop dreaming.”

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-five

  We speak hopefully of the Phoenix rising from ashes, but forget that the fire was of the Phoenix’s own making.

  Joseph Jacobson’s Diary

  It was a lot quieter around the office without Charlene. Based on seniority, Leonard was promoted to office manager, which was a little frightening. Never in the recorded history of humanity had so little power gone to someone’s head. Still, Bryce and I pretty much ignored most of what he said.

  Days crawled and the months flew. Summer passed. Then fall. I saw a news story about a polygamist leader in southern Utah being arrested, and I wondered about April. I missed her. I had missed Ashley, but now, in retrospect, I felt as if I’d dodged a bullet. With April, I felt nothing but regret. I was lonely. My money was dwindling. And there was nothing to look for on the horizon. It seemed to me that everyone’s ships had sailed but mine.

  Two months later Bryce came running into my office.

  “It happened! J.J., it happened!”

  I looked up from my computer. “What happened?”

  “They’re bringing me back. Benefits, salary, the whole package. And, bonus, Scott is getting the boot. There is a God in Heaven and He is smiling on me.”

  Leonard walked up behind him, holding a half-eaten bagel. “You got your job back?”

  “Just like J.J. dreamed,” Bryce said. He turned back to me. “You, my friend, have a gift.”

  I was happy for him, but sad for me. At least I was better at hiding it than Leonard, who looked like he’d just been diagnosed with cancer.

  “Congratulations,” I said. “When do you leave?”

  “The train is at the station,” he said. “After lunch.”

  “Just don’t forget your friends out here in Siberia.”

  “Never.” He turned to Leonard. “Still think J.J.’s dreams are bogus?”

  Leonard didn’t answer. I thought he might throw up.

  We shared a celebratory lunch, then sent Bryce and his things off to Park Avenue South in a taxi. Leonard moped around the rest of the afternoon. Just before quitting time he came into my office and collapsed into a chair, his legs spread, his head down. “When does the ax fall?”

  I looked up from the coupon I was writing. “What ax?”

  “The one over my neck.”

  “It was just a dream. You said so yourself.”

  “You don’t really believe that,” he said.

  “What does it matter what I believe? It’s your life. Besides, all I saw was broken pots. I have no idea what it means. Neither do you.”

  “I know what it means,” he said. “Dead man walking.”

  I sighed. “Sorry, man. I didn’t want to tell you.”

  “You shouldn’t have,” he said. “You should keep things like that to yourself.”

  “Yeah, I tried that.”

  He looked down at the floor for a minute, then said, “There’s a news station in Reno that needs a copywriter. I put in an application.” He got up and walked out of my office.

  Winter settled in, chilling the city to its concrete bones. I felt as dismal as the gray skies that hovered over the island. I supposed I was losing hope. Charlene and Bryce had got out, returning to where they started—something that wasn’t going to happen to Leonard or me. Chicago was barred and a promotion in New York seemed impossible. Career advancement is unlikely when you’re invisible, and that’s what I was. Invisible. I felt as if the world had forgotten I existed.

  I considered looking for a new job, but in a market as competitive as New York, that would require superhuman energy, confidence and references. I had none of the above.

  Part of me still fantasized about returning to Colorado, back to the days of blissful ignorance—secure in the false belief that my family loved me and that Ashley and I were meant for each other. It was a pleasant fiction but still a lie. And you can’t squeeze happiness from an exposed lie any more than you can drink real water from a mirage.

  Most of all, I missed April. Sometimes so much that my chest ached. I missed her and hated myself for not loving her the way she had loved me. In my banishment from Colorado, I had chosen to pay for someone else’s sin. But in my banishment from April, the sin was mine. And that made the pain much, much worse. I had no idea how I could ever get her back.

  There was nothing left to do but resign myself to Fate, hoping that she might have some mercy left for me—and that my heart didn’t give out before it came.

  When you work with just one person, you either like them, learn t
o tolerate them, or kill them. Odd as it may sound, the better I got to know Leonard, the more I liked him. He kind of grew on me. Like mold.

  In spite of his DayGlo insecurity and complete lack of social skills, he had a good heart. He wasn’t really a bad writer either, though he was inconsistent. Every now and then, Leonard would come up with something surprisingly brilliant, reminding me why he had been hired in the first place. He probably struck out more times than he knocked it out of the park, but so did Babe Ruth.

  On Thursday, November 17, I was working on a direct-mail piece for HoneyBaked Hams when the phone rang. It was still just Leonard and me, and Leonard had assigned me the task of answering the phone.

  “Leo Burnett,” I said.

  “Joseph, it’s Charlene.”

  “Charbaby,” I said.

  “That’s so un-PC,” she said. “Never stop.”

  “Promise. It’s so good to hear your voice. So how’s life at the top?”

  “Why don’t you come find out for yourself?”

  “I’d be happy to,” I said flippantly. “Just show me the way.”

  “I can do more than that. I can open the door for you. Mr. Ferrell would like to meet with you.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Mr. Ferrell would like to meet you. He asked me to call you to make an appointment.”

  I couldn’t think of any reason why the president and CEO of Leo Burnett New York would want to talk to me. “Why?”

  “Remember those ads of yours I took?”

  “Yes.”

  “I gave them to Mr. Ferrell to look at. He was seriously impressed. I told you they were good. So catch a cab and get right over here.”

  “I’ll be right there,” I said.

  “I can’t wait to see you again,” Charlene said. “You dream boy.”

  Ten minutes later I stepped out of the elevator on the eighteenth floor into the executive suite. Charlene smiled when she saw me. She pushed a button on her phone. “He’s here, sir.”

  A deep male voice boomed, “Send him in.”

  She stood up from her desk and we embraced. “Are you ready?”

  “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be ready for.”

  “To dream.” She opened the door to Mr. Ferrell’s office, putting her hand on the small of my back as I walked in.

  Mr. George Ferrell was a tall, well-groomed man, dressed in an ash gray Valentino suit, with French cuffs and gold cufflinks peeking out beneath the coat sleeves. He had a full head of hair, which was impeccably coiffed and lightly peppered with gray. He was fit, tan and confident-looking. Everything about him, including his office, seemed to exude energy.

  “Joseph,” he said, eyeing me as I entered. “Come in, come in.”

  I walked up to his desk.

  “Sit down,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.” I sat.

  He looked me over until I began to feel self-conscious. “I’ve had the chance to look over more than twenty campaigns you’ve written. Are they all yours?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He nodded. “You’re very talented,” he said. “Charlene tells me that we’ve had you rotting over in the satellite office. How did that come about?”

  “You want the whole story?”

  “Condense it,” he said. “Isn’t that what we admen do best—package long stories into bite-sized nuggets.”

  “Fair enough. I was hired at Leo Burnett Chicago from a small Colorado agency. My first week there I came up with a campaign for BankOne which landed me a promotion as creative head of the BankOne team.”

  “That wouldn’t be the Bank On It, campaign?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He nodded. “I used it as an example of excellence in one of our board meetings. Continue.”

  “Things were going well until I ran afoul of our creative director, Peter Potts.”

  “What happened?”

  “His fiancée wanted to get to know me better.”

  “Not good.”

  “No, sir. Because it was a personal matter, Potts couldn’t fire me, so he demoted me and sent me as far away as he could—the New York satellite office. That’s pretty much it.”

  He thought over my story for a moment, then said, “Okay, now let’s leave that all behind. You’re very good at what you do, Joseph. Your ideas are fresh and memorable. On our rating scale these are seven plus. Some of them border on genius.”

  He stood, walking to the side of his desk. “Leo Burnett said, ‘I have learned that any fool can write a bad ad, but that it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one.’

  “Unfortunately, we have a shortage of geniuses. In today’s advertising environment, no one can keep their hands to themselves.

  “The quality of today’s advertising is in decline. There was a time when admen were as revered as poets and statesmen. In the fifties, more people watched the television commercials than the programs. Can you imagine that? In the sixties, the David Ogilvy days, Alka-Seltzer ads became America’s catchphrases.

  “I believe that we’ve lost our way, not because admen are getting less creative, but because they’re becoming more cautious—and that’s because our clients are becoming more cautious. On the surface this might sound like a good thing, but it’s not. Caution never breeds greatness. Caution is the birthplace of mediocrity.

  “Look at the movie industry. Indies aside, all Hollywood produces these days are prequels, sequels and comic books. Will we ever have another Casablanca or Citizen Kane? I doubt it.

  “The reality is that the more people there are who have to sign off on a campaign, the more diluted and weaker the campaign becomes. All great ideas, every revolution, started as a spark, not in a boardroom, but in one man or woman’s mind.

  “This worldwide agency was built by one man with big ideas. Leo Burnett created icons the world embraced for generations. And as a reward for their trust, his clients made billions. Could you imagine trying to pass the Jolly Green Giant through one of today’s marketing committees? It would never happen.

  “Today, creative ideas are being run through bureaucratic grinders until everything is pablum.”

  “Pablum?”

  “Mush,” he said. “Flavorless, bland and pasty. I want to see if we can counter that trend. I’ve been looking for the right talent to wrestle Creative back from the committee mentality. I think that someone is you.”

  I looked at him in disbelief. “Me?”

  “I didn’t just see those campaigns of yours today. I’ve been studying them for weeks. I’ve shared them with the people I trust most. There’s a raw brilliance to them, maybe more than you know.”

  “I’m flattered, really, but I don’t have much experience with the business side of advertising.”

  “Exactly,” he said, pointing at me. “I want someone unblemished by the internal systems we’ve created that have fostered this decline.

  “I have a dream of a creative renaissance starting right here at Leo Burnett. I want you to champion our creative teams as the direct liaison with our clients. I want to weaken the committee syndrome and bring about a new golden age for advertising. I want you to encourage our creative teams to do what they do best—create. I want you to find where and how we are punishing our innovators and remedy that. This will be a new, unique position, answering only to me.” He sat back against the edge of the desk. “So, what do you think?”

  “About the concept or your offer?”

  He smiled at my question. “Both.”

  “I believe you’re right about the committee effect. I started my career in a small agency with mid-range regional clients. That gave us a lot more control and flexibility, which is why we were able to outperform our larger competition, both in awards and results.”

  Ferrell nodded. “My point exactly.”

  “As far as your offer, I hope your faith in me is not misplaced, but I’d be a fool to turn it down. When do we start?”

  Ferrell smiled. “Right now,” he said,
walking to the front of his office. “Come over to the table, let me show you how we’re going to realize my dream.”

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-six

  I have wondered why it is that our greatest triumphs spring from our greatest extremity and adversity. Perhaps it is because we are so resistant to change, we only move when our seat becomes too hot to occupy.

  Joseph Jacobson’s Diary

  Mr. Ferrell named his program The Florence Initiative (TFI), in homage to Florence, Italy, the birthplace of the Renaissance. The tranquil nine-to-five days of the satellite office were long gone. Everything happened so fast that I didn’t even get the chance to see Leonard to say goodbye, though I did call him. To my surprise he sounded genuinely happy with my promotion. I was glad I had gotten to know him.

  I was given an office next to Mr. Ferrell’s, with a beautiful view of Seventh Avenue. I hired my own personal assistant—Krysten—a young marketing graduate from Nebraska. My salary more than quadrupled. I was given a starting bonus, an extravagant wardrobe allowance, an expense account and a gym membership at the New York Athletic Club. I’m not saying my personal life was great, but suffering in luxury is still better than suffering in poverty.

  Backed by Mr. Ferrell’s passion, our TFI program hit the agency like a flash flood. I spent the next six months meeting with each of the Leo Burnett New York creative teams and reviewing all of the campaigns the agency was working on—which meant hundreds of hours of reading, critiquing and follow-up. I didn’t mind the long hours. For centuries, men and women have thrown themselves into their work to avoid confronting the pain of their own grief.

  Mr. Ferrell was spot-on about the committee syndrome and its crippling effect on our creative work. Viewing the campaigns before and after committee approval was like seeing a boxer’s face before and after the title fight. It was my job to champion the “before” and restore our Creative’s original intent.

  I didn’t expect it to be easy and it wasn’t. At first the creative directors were suspicious of my motives and threatened by my involvement with their work. But, as I showed them that my goal was to put them back in charge of their own ideas, they changed their tune. In fact, I was soon seen as their greatest ally. One of them even coined a title for me, which was quickly adopted agency-wide: Creative Czar.