Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [54]
“You’re not my errand boy,” I say. But just as I stand, Josie swings into my office with a look that says “stick around,” so Gene heads off to retrieve it.
“Well, I know it’s your first day in your new position, but we’ve already run into a snag,” she says, then tosses a pile of headshots on my desk, which land on top of softened packaged pats of butter that I normally deny myself but made an exception for in light of the celebration. “Coke’s not happy with our choice of the kid model for the ‘zizz’ print ads.” She plops into the chair, still warm from Gene, and squeezes the bridge of her nose. “As if this is just what I need right now.”
“You okay?” I ask, because clearly, this doesn’t seem like the sort of monumental crisis that Josie seems to think that it might be.
“Fine.” She waves her hands. “Look, I’ve run through all of those headshots and none of them really stands out to me, so can you take a flip through and see if you can find the next big star?”
She said this with a foreign, unfamiliar sarcasm. Whether or not we were creating high art, Josie was the first to believe that what we did mattered. That the hours we spent holed up in our airless offices changed commerce and the marketplace, and that leaving our clients satisfied was as important as any job in any industry.
“No problem,” I answer, perplexed. “How hard can it be to find a cute kid?”
“Harder than you think,” she says. “I was here all weekend digging through piles of headshots and faxing them to Bart, but none of them worked for him.”
“To Bart?” I say.
“It’s nothing,” she reiterates with a finality that seems either true or depressing, and I don’t pursue it to find out. “The shoot is in two days, which means that we have to find someone they agree to, get the kid fitted, get test shots done, get him the script . . .” She sighs. “Anyway, can you just take a look and see if any of them jumps out at you?”
“Yeah, of course,” I say.
“Good,” she answers with no enthusiasm and turns to leave.
Shaking my head, I scoot my chair close to my desk and begin sifting through the pile of photos. Though the children are varied in skin color and hairstyle, in height and in weight, they all possess a similar look: that of frozen smiles and trying-too-hard eyes and plasticky expressions that do little to swoon me, and more important, would do little to swoon the consumer. I flip through the stack again, and it’s not hard to see why Bart was unimpressed.
Just as I’m doubling back to rethink an adorable, if cookie-cutter, Afroed six-year-old, Gene waddles through my door, weighed down by a ballooning vase of flowers, big enough that it might be fair to compare the bouquet to a tree. A minitree, perhaps.
“Move some crap on your desk,” he cries frantically. “Quickly, before I drop this load!”
I shove some old mail onto the floor, and he lurches forward, aiming for the now-empty spot and landing the vase with a thud. The stems shudder with reverb.
“Wow, someone adores you!” Gene says, stepping back to observe the floral jungle.
I grab the card that abuts an orange tiger lily and run my finger under the seal of the envelope.
Jill—
I am so proud of your promotion and am sorry that I’ve been so distracted of late.
Dinner tonight at “our place”?
I love you,
Jack
My face expands into an unweighted smile, and I shake my head in wonder.
I’d left two messages on Jack’s phone after I returned home from my interlude with Henry at Starbucks. In the first, I told him about my promotion, and in the second, alarmed by the fact that I couldn’t dislodge Henry from my head, I told him how much I missed him, how much I loved him, and how I wish that he’d come home that night, rather than taking the early train in the morning, even though the sun had long since tucked itself beneath the horizon and my eyelids drooped with fatigue and I knew that there was little chance of him doing so.
I fell into a listless sleep an hour later and woke at midnight to no messages. But now, there was this. And on a Monday, too! I knew that Monday mornings were Jack’s busiest,