Chapter Ten
Ten
“How do we feel about wigs?” Jade asks. She’s walking down Michigan Avenue on her way to work, Chicago shuddering in the background with the cadence of her footsteps. “We could each wear a different color. Like pink, blue, green.”
I was woken up by a request for this “emergency” video call, which appears to be a power-grab by Jade to wrest control of Ava’s bachelorette party decor.
I’d been dead asleep in the lightless crypt of my perfect hotel room when the text came through; there were blackout shades on the tall windows and a white noise machine in the bedside cabinet.
I’d cocooned myself in all five of the bed’s downy pillows like a butterfly snug in her chrysalis.
Now I’m sitting in the hotel’s A-frame lobby trying to wrap this up. I know Dexter and Iris are waiting for me in the breakfast room.
“I call pink,” Liz says.
Sloane, ever our voice of reason, holds up a hand. “I think Ava should get to choose her color first.”
“Ava,” I say. She’s been looking off-frame, silhouetted by the windows in our living room. I can only imagine she’s watching Lev feed his goldfish, and I try not to think about her whole life happening in our apartment without me.
I know that these group calls stress her out, that being the center of attention is her nightmare. She hasn’t made eye contact with a single person until now as, finally, her gaze slides to mine.
“Yes?”
“Do you want to wear a wig when we go out in Miami?”
Ava smiles her embarrassed smile. In front of me, a hotel employee pushing a cart full of pastries heads for the breakfast room. The cart itself looks like solid gold, though that would probably be impractical. Everything at Wicksteed just gleams.
“I mean,” Ava says, finally, “if you guys do!”
“Ava.” Everyone’s waiting for me to drag this out of her. Jade’s hair bounces as she jogs through a crosswalk. “What do you want?”
“Ah-hah,” she laughs nervously. “It’s just, I already have red hair, you know?”
I nod. “Of course. Jade, do you want to text me links to the other stuff you’ve been looking at? I can order everything to our apartment so it’s easy to consolidate in my suitcase.”
“Roger,” Jade says, saluting me. She’s Ava’s friend from our hometown temple. We’ve been tolerating each other since they were in the same bat mitzvah class. “Penis straws, Ava? Yay or nay?”
“Oh, nay,” Ava says quickly, just as I feel a harrowing presence behind my shoulder. I see Campbell’s face in my own video square before I have time to spin around and glare at him.
“Penis straws?” he asks with devastating volume.
“Don’t eavesdrop on me,” I hiss, then turn back to my phone. “I have to go. Love you, Ava, bye.”
She squints. “Is that Cam—”
I hang up before she can finish the question, and Campbell spreads his arms. “You’re in a very public venue, French.”
“Well, I was alone,” I say, standing from the couch so he isn’t towering over me. The lobby is mostly empty, save for a couple employees at reception and one unsupervised preteen reading manga near the roaring fireplace. “Intentionally.”
“Sorry to interrupt,” Campbell says.
“Are you?”
He shrugs, smiling. He’s wearing slacks and a pin-striped sport coat that makes him look like a circus conductor.
“Where do you even get this clothing?” I ask, flicking his lapel.
“Why, are you feeling influenced to buy?”
“Opposite.” I skirt past him toward the breakfast room. “I wish I could unsee you.”
“Well, I don’t think I’d pull off the signature Mattie French asphalt cosplay.”
“Asphalt cosplay?”
We enter the breakfast room side by side, where our teams are waiting for us at adjacent tables. Everything is set like it’s Christmas dinner: crisp white tablecloths, linen napkins, polished silverware. The plates have gold aspen-leaf patterns at their edges.
“All black,” Campbell says, waving one hand lazily up and down my body as he cuts toward Soraya and Nolan. “Like a pungent, freshly laid highway.”
I grind my back teeth to a firm line and drop into the chair next to Dexter. He ducks close and says, “Did he just call you pungent?”
“Yep.” My voice rises to an octave I’d prefer never to reach again. I clear my throat. “What did I miss?”
“Nothing,” Iris says, cutting through a slice of French toast. Her plate is loaded with glistening berries and maple syrup.
She points toward the room’s longest wall, all windows overlooking the mountain, where chafing dishes are set out on banquet tables.
“Just food. Go ahead and get yourself some.”
Dexter follows me to the buffet, handing me a plate from the warmer before taking one for himself. “Are you sore from yesterday? My thighs are killing me.”
I put a hard-boiled egg on my plate. “I don’t think Nantucket and I took enough consecutive steps together to strain either of our muscles.”
“Poor Mattie,” Dexter says, patting my forearm. “We all have our talents.”
I hold open the chafing dish full of breakfast potatoes so Dexter can take a scoop. Each dish is presented with its own little sign: it looks like someone hand-calligraphed skillet potatoes on this one.
“That horse had a vendetta against me,” I tell Dexter.
“Maybe he just prefers men,” he says.
I make a noise in my throat. “Who prefers men?”
Dexter gives me a deadpan look before picking up a tiny dish of raspberry jam. The Wicksteed logo is printed in gold on the side of it. “Iris wants us to meet this afternoon for brainstorming after the kickoff. She told me before you got here.”
“Good,” I say. We’re meeting with Lucia Perez in thirty minutes for the official briefing. “I’m ready to start working.”
“Oh, are you just starting today?”
Dexter and I both turn to Campbell, who’s caught up with us in the buffet line and is filling a bowl with oatmeal. It slops off the spoon as he smiles. “Soraya and I were up late last night, throwing some ideas around.”
My nose twitches.
“We haven’t even been briefed yet,” Dexter splutters.
Campbell shrugs. “We already know the assignment, don’t we?”
“Yeah, but—”
I wrap my hand around Dexter’s elbow, squeezing hard so he shuts up. Everything that happened yesterday—the horses in an autumn-dappled field, Campbell buttering Dexter up over the breaststroke, every little pleasantry and kind word—it ends here.
“Sounds like you’re behind,” Campbell says, and Dexter sucks in a gasp.
“We,” I say, “are not discussing our strategy with you.” The hard-boiled egg rolls wildly across my plate, but I manage to catch it with my thumb before glaring up at Campbell. “Got it?”
Campbell smiles easily, his eyes never leaving mine.
“Sure, French,” he says. “I got it.”
The conference room in Wicksteed’s business center has a name—Bellissimo—and a view of the mountain’s central gondola.
I watch a couple climb aboard with hiking poles as I fold into the seat between Dexter and Iris.
Lucia’s already at the head of the table fiddling with her laptop, flanked on either side by the other Wicksteed clients we met in Chicago: Suni Ma and Alan Wending.
All three of them are dressed more casually than we are.
Certainly more casually than Campbell, who unbuttons his sport coat as he sits down across from me.
“All right,” Lucia says, drawing out the L as she taps her laptop keys. A presentation blinks up onto the wall and she smiles at us. “Ready?”
“Ready,” Iris says.
Nolan, her counterpart, extends an imploring hand toward the presentation and says, “Please.”
Lucia’s slide reads: Wicksteed Resorts North America Agency of Record | Brand Immersion + Pitch
“How’d everyone sleep last night?” Lucia asks, looking at each of us in turn.
“Excellent,” Soraya says, and Lucia nods.
“Hand-tufted mattresses,” she continues. “Nontoxic memory foam pillows finished with Egyptian cotton and mulberry silk.”
In my notebook, I write: Mulberry silk. Can’t even begin to imagine what that is, but it sounds elegant.
And if I’m going to come up with a bunch of words to sell people on Wicksteed Resorts, where the cheapest room runs nearly a thousand dollars per night, I’m going to need all the elegant ones I can get.
“Luxury is in the details,” Lucia tells us. I think of the white noise machine I’d found in my nightstand last night, the full toiletry kit hiding in the bathroom’s linen cabinet. Anything a person could want, it seemed, would appear to them at a Wicksteed resort.
Lucia taps to her next slide, which is a calendar of our monthlong immersion.
“You’re here so you can experience those details for yourself, and come to intimately understand the Wicksteed difference.
It’s not just a resort; it’s a lifestyle.
” She looks between us. “Wicksteed Resorts was named for the street our founder grew up on: Wicksteed Avenue. And everything we do here seeks to re-create the comfort and complete relaxation of home.”
I think of my home: Ava just this morning, framed by our living room in Lincoln Park. How it doesn’t share a shred of DNA with a place like this, but still I take Lucia’s point: they’re curating something here that makes you feel like you can be fully yourself. Maybe even a better version.
“For the next week and change,” Lucia continues, “you’ll experience Wicksteed on land here in Aspen. You’ve already met our beautiful horses, and before you go, you’ll come to know our trail system, our spa, and the other amenities that set us apart.”
My heart, which went heavy at the words trail system, perks up at spa.
“Then we’ll fly to Northern California, where you’ll experience Wicksteed at sea in our exemplary Bodega Bay resort.” Lucia leans closer to us over the table. “They say not to play favorites, but Bodega is mine. Right on the coast, fresh sea air, a remote property hemmed in by moody clouds.”
Maybe Lucia should be doing the copywriting on this account. Hemmed in by moody clouds? I glance at Campbell, who’s also taking notes on a pad of paper. He’s used the same pens since we were interns: a sleek, black fountain style. Like he’s a banker, or William Shakespeare.
“There, our expert skippers will take you out on the water and show you how the world opens up when you’re seeing it through a Wicksteed lens.”
With my own plebeian blue pen, I write down: The world through a Wicksteed lens.
“And all the while,” Lucia continues, clicking to her next slide, “we’ll engage you in capabilities checkpoints.”
Dexter glances at me. He doesn’t have to speak for me to hear his question: What the shit is a capabilities checkpoint?
“Activities and challenges designed to show us how you work, how you problem-solve, how you think on the spot. Some of these will take place within your agency teams, some will be all together, and some will be by department.”
I press the tip of my pen to the page, trying to hold myself still. By department? I don’t like the implication that I’ll be alone with Campbell ever, at any point, over the next month.
“All of this, of course, will culminate in your final pitch presentations the second Friday of October.” Lucia changes the slide.
“These will take place in the business center at Bodega Bay. We’re looking for something exceptional this holiday season—not a holiday-focused campaign, but one that inspires people to book a getaway during a hectic and often emotional time of year.
Though we of course reserve our ultimate decision for the pitch, it’s our hope that in a month of working together we’ll have an understanding of fit, and that we’ll be primed to award the business in short order.
As you’re aware, it’s already September.
Our intention is to take the campaign you’ve crafted during your month at Wicksteed and roll it out as quickly as possible. ”
Short order, I think. I could have a promotion by November, before we even go to Miami for Ava’s bachelorette.
“I’d like to use our time this morning to run through the brief, clarify what we’re looking for, and answer any questions.” Lucia looks between us. “Does that sound good?”
At our chorus of nods, she continues. “We’re looking for remarkable creative work and robust, ownable, differentiated messaging.”
I resist the aggressive eye roll building behind my brow bone. Every client wants robust, ownable, differentiated. I haven’t been to a single briefing in all five years of my career where those three adjectives haven’t come up. The word robust haunts my dreams.
When my eyes dart across the table, fighting their roll, they land on Campbell. He’s already smirking at me.
It’s not his usual smirk, the one that says: I’m going to best the hell out of you. It’s a different one. Conspiratorial. One that’s maybe saying, instead: God, doesn’t the word “robust” haunt your dreams?
Campbell’s the only other writer in this room. In the privacy of my own mind, I can admit that Campbell’s the best writer I know.
His smirk says: We’re in this together.
I look away. I don’t like that one bit.