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“Okay, what happened?” Marcus said sympathetically.
“What happened,” I repeated, “was that my teacher said I should put a jacket on in front of the whole class—and Vaughan laughed. I feel so humiliated.”
“He laughed?” Marcus said. “Maybe he was tittilated.”
“Time for the sombrero strategy,” Joel said.
I glared at him.
“Shut up, please,” Paulette said to both of them. Then she said to me, “I'm sorry that happened. We didn't want you to be humiliated—”
“Blin, anyone?” Joel asked.
“What?” Marcus asked.
“I made blini for all. My grandmother's secret recipe from Odessa. She was going to give it to a granddaughter, but I was the only one interested in her cooking. She also gave me the recipes for her famous fruit buns and an eggless mayonnaise she perfected during the war when eggs were in short supply—”
Paulette looked incredulously at Joel. “Can't you see Jordie is hurting?”
“That's why I offered her a blin.”
“You don't work with lead-based paint,” Marcus said very loudly. “So why are you so stupid?”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“I'm talking to Joel—why isn't the message here getting through? Shut up!”
Joel did.
I sighed. “If it suits you, I'll just learn about premiums, thank you. I don't think I'm going to be sharpening my creativity skills on the guy I have a crush on anymore.”
“Why do you have a crush on him if he's the kind of guy who would laugh at you?” Paulette said. Her question was a good one.
“Look, why do you want Marcus so much even when you hate him?” I then asked.
A shocked noise came out of Paulette's mouth.
“I'm sorry, I really didn't mean to say that.”
“Is this news true, Paulette?” Marcus said. “Are you secretly in love with me?”
“Not so secretly,” Joel said.
“I sometimes still find you cute, that's all I'll give you,” Paulette answered in a low voice.
“Cute!” Marcus squealed. “That's a lot. I'll take cute.” He winked at me just like Nurse Louise back in the emergency room.
I ignored the wink. I was really worried that I had offended Paulette. I hate when I talk without thinking. “Please don't have it out because of my big mouth.”
Instead of answering, Paulette said, “Marcus, if you are going to have any kind of chance with me, you are going to first have to take your coat off my chair. I don't like seal fur shedding on my chair.”
Marcus picked up his coat and looked at the back of the seat. There was no questioning whose chair it was: Paulette had written her name in sparkly blue nail polish on the molded yellow plastic. “It's not seal,” he said. “It's imitation seal.”
After that lunacy-as-usual comment I thought that maybe I hadn't actually ruined my internship by being so thoughtless, and that just maybe it was safe to smile again.
“As far as the guy goes, we've all been there, honey. I'll tell you why you like him, and I don't even have to see him. He's perfection, right?” Paulette said.
“Perfection?”
“You can't explain it, but you feel it, right? Some men have pheromones that drive me crazy—they have testosterone coming out of every pore. We don't know why we love them, but we do.”
Marcus smiled in my direction and moved his eyebrows up and down like Groucho Marx.
Paulette shook her head at the sight of that, clearly annoyed with herself for revealing so much.
“Let's not make this young girl any more uncomfortable than she is,” suggested Joel. “Let her learn about premiums.”
“I actually had an idea about one,” I said almost meekly. If I was ever going to risk relaying my mascot brainstorm, this was the moment. Things couldn't get much more Jordie Popkin-focused. Plus I had pity on my side.
They all snuck glances at each other—they were apparently highly entertained by my announcement.
Joel rolled up a chair in front of me. “So, who told you that Fred didn't like our idea?”
“No one,” I said. “Oh, I'm sorry, guys. After all of your hard work—”
“Not to worry. We have another week to come up with something.”
“A week?”
“That's a lot of time for us. So let's get to your idea, already.”
“The season is eighteen months away,” I started nervously.
“Yes, it is.” Marcus's response was clipped, and I wasn't sure if he was being sarcastic.
“So are the Winter Olympics,” I continued.
“And?” Paulette said.
“Do you know about the Turin mascot they unveiled this week?”
“No,” Joel said.
“I do,” Paulette said. “Watched all about it on Entertainment Daily when I raced home for that missing file—”
“So, what was it?” Marcus asked.
Paulette answered for me. “There are two of them. A boy and a girl. A block of ice and a ball of snow.”
I nervously paused, then continued like a saleswoman, “Imagine having them do Winter Olympic activities. Put them on skies. Burger Man is in every country. You could have the Olympic symbols on them. They are obviously going after the youth market by designing that sort of mascot. They're already building the youth base for their own brand.”
“I can't picture them.” Joel went to the Internet and did an image search on Google. He called Marcus and Paulette over to the screen.
“Cute characters,” Paulette said.
Marcus wasn't long in answering. “The Olympics would never stoop to that level. They are so protective of their trademark. They would never call themselves a brand, except for their own goods—”
“But they are,” I insisted.
“You,” Joel said, “are a lightning-fast learner.”
“She is,” Paulette agreed, nodding her head toward Joel. “They do have the official this, the official that of everything. They're not so precious. They need to make money in consumerville.”
“You like this idea?” Marcus asked Paulette. He had a rather amused look on his face.
“I do, and not just because I'm trying to win our smart little friend back.”
Hearing that praise from her was a simple shot in the arm that did wonders for me.
I glanced over toward Paulette. “Really?”
She smiled very warmly. “I think you've struck gold.”
Marcus took a long hard look at Paulette and decided she was not kidding. “Then let's do some sketches right now.”
“How about her first idea, the snow creatures on skies?”
Joel did the sketch. “What other Winter Olympics games are there?” he asked.
“Bobsled,” I said happily.
“Ice-skating,” Marcus said.
Paulette rapped her marker against the whiteboard for our renewed attention. “Others?”
After that I only half remember who said what.
“Ice hockey.”
“Ski jumping.”
“Luge.”
“Isn't that the same as bobsled?”
“I think the sled is shorter, or something like that. There's another sliding sport, what's it called?”
“Skeleton. Those guys are insane. I watched that during Salt Lake City. No steering mechanism.”
“Don't forget dogsled,” Marcus said.
“Dogsledding is in the Olympics?” Joel said.
“I'm not sure about that,” Paulette said.
“I think it's a demonstration sport.” I surprised myself that I even knew that. “What about speed skating?”
“Ooh, that's the creepiest one. They wear those hoods, they look like condoms. Can we say that word in front of you?”
That one was definitely a Joel comment because I remember telling him I'd have to report him to the racy-word police.
I simply couldn't believe it. The creatives were taking my idea ultraseriously.
Instead of people's faces, the premiums would have the cute cartoony faces of Neve, the snowball, and GHz, the block of ice.
“Joel, let's get those ideas sketched out,” Marcus said when we had a consensus.
As everyone worked hard, a hot, bright sun filtered through that penthouse skylight over our department's desks.
This was a rare stretch of silence at Out of the Box. I finally understood the real reason for Joel's employment. I'd never questioned that Marcus was the team leader. And because when I first met Paulette she had been scratching that bird on her scratchboard, I'd thought she was the main artist of the trio. But maybe she was just doing that to relax. Now I knew she was all about words and wording—she was the only one with a word processing program always up on her screen. It was Joel who had now revealed himself to be the visual pro, and apparently he preferred to “sketch” with a paintbrush he took out of a paint box crusted over with countless cakes of color on top. “I'm still a bit old school,” he said when he caught me looking at him a little strangely.
He amazed me by how fast he re-created those mascots in the various sports poses.
But the way they interacted as a team was what was most interesting. Their give-and-take bordered on insane. They yelled at each other often, offering better ideas and making corrections, but they never were really saying anything too mean.
“Make his arms thicker, Joel,” Paulette demanded. “Olympians have really meaty hands.”
“He's a bobsledder, Paulie, not a weight lifter.”
Marcus occasionally neighed like a horse.
Joel speed-dried his little paintings with three long sprays from an aerosol can. After he opened up his Page-maker program, he scanned each one onto his computer.
He printed out his artwork from his computer and then cut and pasted them onto a white storyboard, and hand-lettered on top: OLYMPIC MASCOT PREMIUM.
The extra steps made it look impressive, really artistic.
“I think that really packs a visual wallop,” Paulette said out loud, confirming my untrained thoughts.
“Okay,” Joel said happily, “who is calling Daisy at Burger Man and saying we want to hit her humorless boss with another idea?”
“Who do you think?” said Marcus.
Was Paulette unnerved by his instant readiness to speak with Daisy? I was pretty sure that was the case.
“Don't we have to call the Olympics first and see about clearance?” I asked.
“Nah,” Marcus said. “A lot of this industry is smoke and mirrors. If I tell Burger Man in the right way why this is a great idea, they'll come on board. Then we turn to them, one of the most powerful companies in the world, to use their muscle to convince the Olympics committee. They probably already have an advertising relationship. Just nobody probably thought to exploit the premium potential before.”
“Not till you,” Paulette said to me with such warmth that I was finally confident that inside her eccentric and often gruff exterior was a really nice lady.
“Now,” Joel said, “we have a stack of filing for you.”
“Boy, do we have filing,” Paulette said.
“It's not easy suckering the interns in,” Marcus said.
My grin must have taken such a dramatic turn downward that Marcus added, “We really do love your idea, and we are going to submit it. But internships come with highs and lows.”
“Okay,” I said to the three of them.
With their new respect for me, I really thought that was the end of the Vaughan campaign.
I was practically being treated like a peer.
When I got home that night, I was determined not to tell my mother the good news about how my idea had gone over. Who knew if her second daughter's first “massive achievement” would ever come to pass?
As it was, she wasn't coming home for a while. Martin, her mean boss, was now insisting she work late, even though she'd been coming in a half hour early for over two years without extra compensation.
But I had to tell my father.
“Something happened?” he said intuitively as I sat down.
“Remember the mascot newsbreak?”
“Yes,” he said with a small grin emerging.
“I had an idea to manufacture Olympic mascot premiums.”
“How would that work?”
“The mascots would be in their various sports outfits, equipped with their suitable equipment like ice skates or skis.”
Dad nodded. “That's clever. Are you going to tell your supervisors?”
“That's the big news. I already did. They loved the idea and sat down with me and drew up sketches.”
“And your mom thought you would learn nothing—” He stopped at what he heard his voice saying. “She really didn't say that, you know,” he patently lied.
“C'mon—you know she did.”
“Well…”
“Well, don't tell her a thing, please.”
“Why not? Don't you want her to eat crow?”
“Wait and see if the Burger Man reps go for it. I really doubt it because my team has three different pitches for 152 them.”
Dad clicked off the television and bit into one of those doughnut-shaped peaches they've started selling in New York City supermarkets. “It's so cute how you just used the word 'team.' My little girl is all grown up.”
“Dad, you overuse that expression.”
“What expression?”
“ 'My little girl is all grown up.' “
“When? When did I ever say that to you before?”
“That's what you said to me after I donated my Barbies to charity, and when I cooked that crown roast for your birthday.”
“Even your mother never put those little paper crowns on my meat.”
“You're just poking fun at me. I think I did something really really big today. I was taken seriously by agency professionals.”
“Listen, I'm not mocking you. I'm proud of you. And okay, if you want, I won't tell your mother about your remarkable achievement, but believe it or not, she is rooting for you to do well.”
Just about then I heard the elevator open up and then my mother turning the bottom key in our door.
For the past few days, ever since I'd overheard her admit her growing tension with her boss, Martin, she had been wearing new clothing to work that looked straight out of a fashion magazine.
It occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, my mother was fighting for her job.
Further evidence: her high-heeled shoes made a lot of noise as she walked across our living room flooring. My mother has about twenty pairs of “sensible” flats, and before these shoes I'd never even seen her in heels.
She glanced at Dad and me so obviously engrossed in conversation on the couch. “You two have been rather tight lately.” Her voice was a bit shaky.
As she slipped off her shoes and sat next to us, I took a long hard look at her.
She seemed almost strange in her new style of dress.
The subway was running late, and wouldn't you know it, I was the last one to arrive in precalculus.
Etchingham managed to give me a really nasty look even though I was sure I had not heard the new-period bell ring yet.
I saw Jeremy looking at me strangely first, but then I was aware of many other anxious eyes in the room.
Something big was up. I knew I wasn't the focus of attention this time. In my dad's old sweatshirt, I was about as sexy as a bag of potatoes.
“As I just announced to the class, Miss Popkin, with a few exceptions I was unimpressed with the class's slope homework. To think that this is a math school.” He looked around the room. At Edward Carney's face, he said, “Such a look! I'm not talking about you, Mr. Carney. Relax.”
The admonition for the rest of us kept going and going. The bell rang to start the new period.
“Folks,
as I was saying, I am saddened by your flippant disregard for your duties. So much for the creme de la creme. What was handed in was downright pathetic. I'm talking homework, folks. You can look up the answers!” He looked back to me and said, “So, Miss Popkin, you see, I have no choice but to administer a pop quiz. As you can see before you, the mood here is rather solemn.”
A quiz? I was still a bit fuzzy about the formulas we'd learned, but that never seems to change as far as math goes. I was as ready as I'd ever be. I quietly took my seat.
“So, how do you think you are going to fare?” he said to me as he handed back my slope homework. I didn't look at my mark in front of him. No way was I going to give him that pleasure.
“Fine,” I heard myself say.
“We'll see, won't we?”
What was this, open season on Jordie? He was just cranking out those insults now for sport.
There was an awful silence in the room. “You may start,” Etchingham said.
I turned over the exam that was already laid out on the wobbly desk. It was more of a test than a quiz—thirty questions! I got the first two easily again—that seemed to be my current standard—but the rest of the questions were killers.
Once, just to annoy Etchingham, I weighed the risks and purposely rocked my desk back a few times. He looked up from his Daily News, irritated.
But I got a paper cut on my thumb right after that, so my self-satisfaction was short-lived.
About thirty minutes into our collective misery, there was a knock on the door.
“Who is that?” Etchingham scowled. Our room had 100 percent attendance that day. He got up to answer the door, where there was a pizza deliveryman waiting with the most incredibly fake-looking red beard I'd ever seen. His mustache also looked like it came from a cheap costume shop. My suspicions were even further raised when he said, in a pathetic Italian accent, “Precalculus class?”
“Okay, whose joke is this?” Etchingham's voice boomed.
“Signore, per favore, who's paying for the order?”