“Ha.”
“Twenty-one minutes! Hurry! Once we have all the shops in the system we can do a quality-control check and go to this big meeting with an unblemished record. And then maybe they’ll give us the Fokused Shoprite account.” Amanda says this with a triumphant grin.
My jaw drops. “We have a shot at sniping one of their accounts?” Fokused, or Foked, as we call them, is our archenemy…er, competition. Consolidated and Fokused are the biggest consumer experience and marketing firms in the city, and the rivalry is strong.
If my little toilet-hand fiasco had cost us this account, I would have not only cried, Greg would have sold my office furniture out from under me and spent the $17 it was worth on coffee for the rest of the staff out of sheer anger.
My computer boots up and I log in to the website interface, a zing of thrill flooding my extremities as I see all complete shops from this morning, except that red ninth one.
Incomplete.
Incomplete this, sucker. Ten minutes later, I am stuck with one final question.
“Is the bathroom aesthetically pleasing?” I let my mind drift to Declan, remembering those smoldering eyes, the tightly muscled jaw, how his cheeks dimpled when he laughed. The snug cut of his tailored jacket across those broad shoulders and how strong and sure his hands had been on me, making certain I didn’t fall.
Into the toilet, that is.
Can a relationship develop from two people who meet like this? Am I hopelessly dreaming? Or am I doomed to live the rest of my life surrounded by men at fast food restaurants on $5 sandwich day, or guys opening new accounts at banks to get a free pair of tickets to a big amusement park, or—
I take a slow, deep breath and remember the heat of his fingers on my arm. The warm questions in those eyes. The willingness to laugh with—okay, at—me.
I click Yes and then submit, ready to perform the killer client pitch of my entire career.
Chapter Six
Amanda and Greg like to pretend that they’re the experts at client pitches, but while they’re good openers, I’ve become the closer.
And in business, the closer is everything.
I have this innate sense that tells me how to fine-tune my words and convince a wavering vice president of marketing, or director of consumer relations, or vice president of let’s invent a title for the owner’s son, that Consolidated Evalu-shop, Inc. will help their company usher in a new wave of business that positions them at the vanguard of a paradigm shift in the industry.
See? I’m good.
Marketing really isn’t anything more than word salad, and I don’t mean the schizophrenic kind. Learning to speak business jargon fluently is definitely an acquired skill.
Growing a penis is another one. Haven’t mastered that just yet, though if I could, I would.
You know how many female VPs I meet? Maybe one in fifty. Presidents? One. Ever. A smattering of directors, more assistant directors, and then the glut of “coordinators,” which can mean anything from an underpaid, overworked equivalent of a vice president but without the paycheck to a glorified secretary.
And when you walk into a meeting, you have no idea what you’re dealing with.
Guess what my title is?
Yep. Marketing coordinator.
“They emailed me this morning,” Greg says. I take a good look at him. One thing I have to give to Greg—he cleans up well. He’s a little younger than my dad, which makes him mid-forties or so. You know—old, but not ancient. Brown hair, thinning out, and cut super short the way guys who won’t quite admit they’re balding cut their hair. His wife made him ditch the old 1980s frames he used to wear for a sleek updated look, and his suit is tailored, which it has to be. The beach ball masquerading as a stomach needs to fit.
“Portly” is the genteel term for what Greg looks like. He’s a great Santa at Christmas over at the community center, and today he looks like a distinguished gentleman ready to play hardball at the boardroom table.
“What’d they say?” Amanda is wearing a long, gray pencil skirt with a slit up the back. Nothing too racy, but with her curvy h*ps it looks business sexy. Red silk shell and black blazer. With the black hair and red lips, she has the look down. I have to stop myself from calling her Mistress.
“They want to expand the account by sixty percent. Into their high-end properties.”
Amanda and I suppress twin squeals of excitement. Anterdec owns an enormous chunk of real estate, hospitality companies, and restaurants in the area. If they have fewer than two hundred properties, I’d be surprised.
An account this big, including their luxury hotels, fine dining, and elite transportation services, could turn Consolidated into a major player in marketing services for enterprise companies.
(See how I did that? I should be a highly paid copywriter. Instead, I spent the ten minutes after we got here using a lint roller to peel cat hair off Greg’s back.)
“You want first dibs on mystery shopping The Fort?” Greg’s words make my heart soar. Amanda’s eyes open so wide I think one will fall out. The Fort is the exclusive waterfront hotel in Boston. Rumor has it the mints on the pillows have mints on them. Sheiks and royalty from around the world stay there when they are in town.
A night in a standard suite costs what I make in a month.
“Dibs!” I hiss. Amanda snarls.
“Down, you two. If this goes through, there will be more than enough shops for both of you and Josh. The luxury shops will be handled in-house. I might need to add employees.”
“You might need to add heat and a toilet,” Amanda cracks just as the receptionist catches our eye and motions toward the board room.
We are in the financial district of Boston, where people like me notice the nearest Starbucks or Boloco, but folks like the vice president for marketing at Anterdec notice which building has a helipad for helicopter landings.
Three suited men are turned away from us as we enter, their heads huddled in discussion. One head is gray, two are brown.
No women. Of course.
“Advantage already. No women,” Greg whispers in my ear. He is the opposite of sexist. He pays all of us, male or female, the same crappy salary.
The office is gorgeous. I’d expected a sleek, black and gray glassed room overlooking the building across the narrow road; the financial district isn’t close enough to the water for everyone to get their sliver of a view of the ocean.
But this. We are on the twenty-second floor and the window looks out over a rooftop terrace next door, covered with topiary filled with…PacMan?