Barbara Zaleski.
Chapter 6
"Dad," Barbara said, "I'll be staying over in New York for a day or two.
I thought I'd let you know."
In the background, through the telephone, she could hear an overlay of factory noise. Barbara had had to wait several minutes while the operator located Matt Zaleski in the plant; now, presumably, he had taken the call somewhere close to the assembly line.
Her father asked, "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why, do you have to stay?"
She said lightly, "Oh, the usual kind of thing. Client problems at the agency. Some meetings about next year's advertising; they need me here for them." Barbara was being patient. She really shouldn't have to explain, as if she were still a child requiring permission to be out late. If she decided to stay a week, a month, or forever in New York, that was it.
"Couldn't you come home nights, then go back in the morning?"
"No, Dad, I couldn't."
Barbara hoped this wasn't going to develop into another argument in which it would be necessary to point out that she was twenty-nine, a legal adult who had voted in two presidential elections, and had a responsible job which she was good at. The job, incidentally, made her financially free so that she could set up a separate establishment any time she wanted, except that she lived with her father, knowing he was lonely after her mother's death, and not wanting to make things worse for him.
"When will you be home then?"
"By the weekend for sure. You can live without me till then. And take care of your ulcer. By the way, how is it?"
"I'd forgotten it. Too many other things to think about. We had some trouble in the plant this morning."
He sounded strained, she thought. The auto industry had that effect on everybody close to it, including herself. Whether you worked in a plant, in an advertising agency, or on design, like Brett, the anxieties and pressures got to you in the end. The same kind of compulsion told Barbara Zaleski at this moment that she had to get off the telephone and back into the client meeting. She had slipped out a few minutes ago, the men assuming, no doubt, that she had left to do whatever women did in washrooms, and instinctively Barbara put a hand to her hair - chestnut brown and luxuriant, like her Polish mother's; it also grew annoyingly fast so she had to spend more time than she liked in beauty salons. She patted her hair into place; it would have to do. Her fingers encountered the dark glasses which she had pushed upward above her forehead hours ago, reminding her that she had heard someone recently deride dark glasses in hair as the hallmark of the girl executive. Well, why not?
She left the glasses where they were.
"Dad," Barbara said, "I haven't much time. Would you do something for me?"
"What's that?"
"Call Brett. Tell him I'm sorry I can't make our date tonight, and if he wants to call me later I'll be at the Drake Hotel."
"I'm not sure I can . . ."
"Of course you can! Brett's at the Design Center, as you know perfectly well, so all you have to do is pick up an inside phone and dial. I'm not asking you to like him; I know you don't, and you've made that clear plenty of times to both of us. All I'm asking is that you pass a message. You may not even have to speak to him."
She had been unable to keep the impatience out of her voice, so now they were having an argument after all, one more added to many others.
"All right," Matt grumbled. "I'll do it. But keep your shirt on."
"You keep yours on, too. Goodbye, Dad. Take care, and I'll see you at the weekend."
Barbara thanked the secretary whose phone she had been using and slid her full, long-limbed body from the desk where she had perched.
Barbara's figure, which she was aware that men admired, was another legacy from her mother who had managed to convey a strong sexuality - characteristically Slavic, so some said - until the last few months before she died.
Barbara was on the twenty-first floor of the Third Avenue building which was New York headquarters of the Osborne J. Lewis Company - or more familiarly, OJL - one of the world's halfdozen largest advertising agencies, with a staff of two thousand, more or less, on three skyscraper floors. If she had wanted to, instead of phoning Detroit from where she had, Barbara could have used an office in the jam-packed, creative rabbit warren one floor down, where a few windowless, cupboard-size offices were kept available for out-of-town staffers like herself while working temporarily in New York. But it had seemed simpler to stay up here, where this morning's meeting was being held. This floor was client country. It was also where account executives and senior agency officers had their lavishly decorated and broadloomed office suites, with original Uzannes, Wyeths, or Picassos on the walls as well as built-in bars - the latter remaining hidden or activated according to a client's known and carefully remembered preferences. Even secretaries here enjoyed better working conditions than some of the best creative talent down below. In a way, Barbara sometimes thought, the agency resembled a Roman galley ship, though at least those below had their martini lunches, went home at nights, and - if senior enough - were sometimes allowed topside.
She walked quickly down a corridor. In the austere Detroit offices of OJL, where Barbara worked mostly, her heels would have "tip-tapped," but here, deep carpeting deadened their sound. Passing a door partially open, she could hear a piano and a girl singer's voice:
"One more happy user
Has joined the millions who Say Brisk!
Please bring it briskly,
It satisfies me too."
Almost certainly a client was in there listening, and would make a decision about the jingle - aye or nay, involving vast expenditures - based on hunch, prejudice, or even whether he felt good or breakfast had given him dyspepsia. Of course, the lyric was awful, probably because the client preferred it to be banal, being afraid - as most were - of anything more imaginative. But the music had an ear-catching lilt; recorded with full orchestra and chorus, a large part of the nation might be humming the little tune a month or two from now. Barbara wondered what Brisk was. A drink? A new detergent? It could be either, or something more outlandish.
The OJL agency had hundreds of clients in diverse businesses, though the auto company account which Barbara worked on was among its most important and lucrative. As auto company men were fond of reminding agency people, the car advertising budget alone exceeded a hundred million dollars annually.
Outside Conference Room I a red MEETING IN PROGRESS sign was still flashing. Clients loved the flashing signs for the aura of importance they created.
Barbara went in quietly and slipped into her chair halfway down the long table. There were seven others in the dignified, rosewood-paneled room with Georgian furnishings. At the table's head was Keith Yates-Brown, graying and urbanely genial, the agency management supervisor whose mission was to keep relations between the auto company and the Osborne J. Lewis agency friction free. To the right of Yates-Brown was the auto company advertising manager from Detroit, J. P. Underwood ("Call me J.P., please"), youngish, recently promoted and not entirely at ease yet with the top-rank agency crowd. Facing Underwood was bald and brilliant Teddy Osch, OJL creative director and a man who spewed ideas the way a fountain disgorges water. Osch, unflappable, schoolmasterish, had outlasted many of his colleagues and was a veteran of past, successful car campaigns.
The others comprised J. P. Underwood's assistant, also from Detroit, two other agency men - one creative, one executive - and Barbara, who was the only woman present, except for a secretary who at the moment was refilling coffee cups.
Their subject of discussion was the Orion. Since yesterday afternoon they had been reviewing advertising ideas which the agency had developed so far. The OJL group at the meeting had taken turns in presentations to the client - represented by Underwood and his assistant.
"We've saved one sequence until last, J.P." Yates-Brown was speaking directly though informally to the auto company advertising manager.
"We thought you'd find them original, even interesting perhaps." As always, Yates-Brown managed an appropriate mix of authority and deference, even though everyone present knew that an advertising manager had little real decision power and was off the mainstream of auto company high command.
J. P. Underwood said, more brusquely than necessary, "Let's see it."
One of the other agency men placed a series of cards on an easel. On each card a tissue sheet was fixed, the tissue having a sketched layout, in preliminary stage. Each layout, as Barbara knew, represented hours, and sometimes long nights of thought and labor.
Today's and yesterday's procedure was normal in the early stages of any new car campaign and the tissue sheets were called a "rustle pile."
"Barbara," Yates-Brown said, "will you skipper this trip?"
She nodded.
"What we have in mind, J.P.," Barbara told Underwood with a glance to his assistant, "is to show the Orion as it will be in everyday use. The first layout, as you see, is an Orion leaving a car wash."
All eyes were on the sketch. It was imaginative and well executed. It showed the forward portion of the car emerging from a wash tunnel like a butterfly from a chrysalis. A young woman was waiting to drive the car away. Photographed in color, whether still or on film, the scene would be arresting.