Free Money To Burn by Katy Munger Page B

alike.
    The group was huddled around a narrow conference table that ran the length of the entire room. It stretched before me like an alley waiting for a bowling ball, its polished surface cluttered with cardboard-mounted sketches, computer-generated comps and other paraphernalia of creative corporate minds.
    I took advantage of the shocked silence that greeted my arrival to snoop. The assembled go-getters were working on a new advertising campaign. Various mascots were obviously being proposed, ranging from the photo of a studly young fellow who looked like a Cuban James Dean to a cartoon of a well-dressed panther lighting up a cigarette. Good grief. Ever since the success of Joe Camel, the entire tobacco advertising industry has been searching for an equally successful mascot, especially since cartoons tend not to demand residuals and raises. They all acted like it was some mysterious process to pinpoint exactly the right image and liked to blab about focus groups and cross-affinity. But Joe Camel’s phenomenal success was pretty obvious to me. Stick a giant phallic symbol in a velvet smoking jacket and surround it by adoring girls, and of course underage teenage boys will stampede to buy your cigarettes. A mere panther would never be able to compete.
    “You need something with a little more zip,” I told them, sliding the panther cartoon down the table toward its creators. James Dean Jr. followed. “What you need is something distinctive.” I pretended to think. “Wait, I know.” My face lit up with enthusiasm. “How about a giant dancing cigarette, only round the top a little bit and color it sort of pink and …” I stopped when I realized that some of the professionally wacky trend-setters gathered before me were taking me seriously, assumenaously, ing that I was a member of the creative team they’d yet to meet. It was too cruel to continue, so I stopped.
    Just in time, it seemed, since a tiny little guy at the far end of the table was turning several spectacular shades of blue. He’d lost all of the hair on the top of his head and had compensated by growing it long in back. It flowed to his shoulders in gray waves, making him look like a cross between Ben Franklin and a Smurf. His mouth was opening and closing like he’d just been gaffed.
    “You okay?” I asked with feigned sincerity. Sometimes you had to confuse them to conquer them.
    “Who the fuck are you?” he sputtered, waving his arms around as he searched for the properly corporate response.
    “I believe I sent my card in a few moments ago.” I paused. “With the young vampire-in-training.”
    Enraged, the short fellow—who I pegged as Donald Teasdale, Marketing Whiz—pointed a chubby finger at the door. “Get out!” he ordered me. “This is a confidential meeting. I’m calling Security.”
    “This isn’t confidential. This is crap.” I pushed the rest of the comps down the table at him. “Do yourself a favor. Send these people back to the drawing board, give me fifteen minutes of your time and then I’ll be out of your life forever.”
    Unless, of course, I thought to myself, you’re the one who torched Nash.
    I suspected him because he was shorter than a lawn jockey, which is a shallow theory but not entirely without merit. It was been my experience that short corporate guys are, hands-down, the meanest of all the suit species. They can’t help it. Years of being put down for their height has warped them.
    Teasdale stared at me in enraged silence, his blue-and-silver tie askew. His lackeys were gazing obediently out the large picture window with studied nonchalance. I waited him out and, gradually, his normal color returned. He found his voice—and his wits.
    “Give me half an hour,” he told the others. “And she’s right. These are crap. Come up with something better.” He flung the carefully executed ideas back toward his minions dismissively, taking out his frustration on those who depended on him for a paycheck. They