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Peggy Olson leaned against the doorway to the Art Department, silent as death. Stan was bent intently over his board, yolk-yellow light from the desk lamp disappearing into the folds on his forehead, between his eyebrows. He took the pick out of his teeth, tapped it against his lips, then held up the board for scrutiny.
“Are you going to stand there all day, you little creep,” he said, not even looking at her.
“You’re the little creep,” Peggy said reflexively, startled and smiling too wide to knock him into ground with something witty. She walked around his desk to take a look at what he was holding up. “Oh, Stan – this is good.” It was their concept artwork for Hasbro: a small boy holding up his GI Joe, wonder breaking over his face. If they could just get the right model for the photograph – “This is very good.”
Stan shrugged away the compliment, then asked, hopeful: “More samples?”
“Yeah, yeah. The box is down to half,” Peggy said. “If I’m not mistaken, my copywriters think if they eat enough Cadbury they’ll excrete a fully-formed campaign. Here,” and Stan took the two squares from her offering palm, bit into them, and moaned unashamedly: “Fuck, that’s what I call a product.”
“I know!” Peggy cried. “And that should make my life easier, not harder! But no, Cadbury has to be 150 years old, it has to have regal purple wrapping, it has to taste,” she took an aggrieved bite of her bar, hoping that maybe diminishing returns had kicked in, but they hadn’t, “this goddamn good.” That threw the classic, underdog narrative pitch right out the window. You couldn’t do it for a product with this kind of unassailable dignity. It had to something serious, and sincere, and meaningful. Rats. “Stan. I’m aggrieved, and I need you to hold me.”
“Mhm,” Stan said, still chewing. Crinklingly, he slid out a duplicate of the artwork from underneath a few layers of tracing paper. Then, he did something complicated with his pen; a few quick, hard strokes to the corner of the small boy’s eyes, something else to his chin - and suddenly this boy wasn’t looking with wonder at his GI Joe at all – he was regarding him with intent and determination, soldier to soldier –
“The bandanna,” Peggy said. “You should give him a matching one,” and Stan let out another low hum, already sketching it out, nodding to himself. He turned then, and looked at her appreciatively; not without a bit of wonder, too. Peggy felt like a GI Joe. He then dropped the board onto the table without ceremony - like he hadn’t spent an entire day on the thing, terrorizing Ruth half to death when she told him the stock of India ink had run out - scooped Peggy into his arms, and deposited them both on the sofa. Peggy burrowed into his chest, feeling the ends of his beard lightly prickle against her temple. It was greying fast now, but Stan never looked like he was losing his colours: he only looked like he was coming into the real ones.
“Okay,” Stan said: the word rumbled directly into her ear canal from his chest. “I’m holding you. What’s wrong?” And Peggy drew a breath, a deep one, because Cadbury could be ten million dollars in yearly billings, but Cadbury wasn’t Hershey’s, and they weren’t American-made, and goddammit, hadn’t they paid attention to Reagan’s election campaign at all? Not American-made, in this political climate? These days you could barely convince people Vermont was in America.
She felt like this used to be easier. This used to be easier, except that was a lie – it was always a struggle, like trying to sprint along a tightrope, and she’d sometimes thought she’d slow down, put her head between her knees for one second, just after this next one. After Nintendo, after Hasbro, after Gillette, maybe – but she was always a sucker for that high, the high after a pitch when the executive rose from the table and swayed a little, eyes just the slightest unfocused, like they were having a vision. And that lasted a second, maybe two if she’d really been in the zone, but the rest of the time was just burping clients and changing their nappies, and trying to suck decent taglines out of dumb young copywriters like moisture out of a cicada husk.
Peggy felt sorry for herself for another minute or so, mostly because Stan’s arms were lovely and warm and his breath smelled like chocolatey beer. Then, she instructed herself: put on your big girl pants. It was crude and mean and she’d probably torch Stan’s terrarium if he ever said anything like that to her, but Nintendo wasn’t American-made, fuck it all. And she didn’t have the underdog narrative – so what? She still had motherfucking love, and Don could do somersaults in his grave, but that word had yet to be cheapened. Love was all the narrative she needed, she just needed to figure out the specifics. And okay, she had just under 18 hours of a 24 hour deadline: but so did McCann, and so did Ogilvy, and so did every other fucker in the business.
“Everything’s wrong,” Peggy said, finally answering Stan’s question. “But that's all right. Because I am in my element.” She stood up, dusted herself, and checked her watch: time to check on her underlings, and see if the marijuana they’d pretend not to have been smoking in her absence had done their brain any favors.
Stan raised an eyebrow, settling more comfortably into the sofa and linking fingers behind his head. “Don’t forget to shower before the meeting.”
“Stan,” Peggy said. “British executives love the smell of earthy women. Stop handicapping me,” and Stan laughed, shooing her away after eliciting promises that she’d stop at 10:30 for a quick dinner and get at least 4 hours of sleep.
She was so intent and riled up, marching down the hallway in beat with the Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony playing in her head, that she almost missed it: Peggy doubled back and, for the second time that evening, leaned against the doorway to creepily observe someone.
Bethany Cohen, one of her copywriters – solid, consistent, dependable, three words that Peggy would make love to any day of the week over ‘genius’ or ‘mercurial’ – was standing in the archival section, poring over old artwork.
Peggy came up behind her, curiosity winning out, and Bethany startled. “Sorry, I was just,” and she tried slotting the boards back into the cabinet. Peggy plucked them from her grasp, and nearly staggered back from the force of nostalgia.
Take it. Break it. Share it. Love it. A mother, breaking off a bright orange Popsicle from the middle, handing both halves to her children.
There was an awkward silence, until Bethany broke it: “My mother’s Catholic, my father’s Jewish – yeah, it made for an interesting childhood,” she confirmed, when Peggy glanced at her, a little confused, “no, but what I meant was, I was raised Catholic, even if shabbily. And this is the advertisement that made me want to be a copywriter. Because I got it-” and she sidled closer to Peggy, tracing the halo of the Popsicle’s ‘O’ that hung, heavenly, behind Ms. Mom’s beatific face. “It’s very clever.”
“Thank you,” Peggy said. She felt she might blush.
“It’s the angle we should use for Cadbury.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be on the Spanx over-50s strategy?” Peggy asked, then waved a hand: “I don’t actually care, just make sure Ramirez doesn’t kick you to the curb for treachery or subordination, he’s prone to that-“
“Yes,” Bethany agreed.
“So. Sharing and togetherness. That’s certainly tried and tested.”
“Right - it was because I thought of this silly tagline: share along the dotted line. All those neat, deliberate little chocolate squares – they’re inviting you to break one off, offer it to someone else, someone you love – “
“But so are all the other chocolate bars,” Peggy said, automatically, but her mind was racing: this was good, this was something.
“Doesn’t matter,” Bethany said, speaking fast now: she was going to get nowhere without some inflection in her voice, Peggy made a mental note to start coaching her, “All the other chocolate bars are made that way because that’s how the chocolate molds in the chocolate factories have always been. They do it unthinkingly. Cadbury does it with intent. Hershey’s doesn’t care, Mars doesn’t even have squares – but Cadbury -”
“Means it,” Peggy finished, and Bethany nodded.
***
“Mr. Lyman?”
Bert Lyman looked up at Sally Draper from his monster, 24-pound Osborne word processor - he was old, with a face that looked like it had recently lost a lot of weight. There were deep grooves on either side of his nose bridge, from the pince-nez that hung around his neck. All around were soft murmurs of volunteers on the phone. Sally felt like legging it out the door, immediately, almost sick to the stomach from nerves. Mr. Lyman took a bite of his sandwich - ham and cheese, from Harriet’s, two blocks over, Sally went there all the time – and left the plate next to a thick pile of identical books, what looked to be several copies of How to Have Sex in an Epidemic. “Yes?” he said, waspishly, and Sally’s nerves calmed: she knew how to deal with men who thought she was wasting their time.
So she dove into it: she told him about Laurence Barrett, and the tell-all on the first two years of the Reagan administration, and how Barrett had reams of proof for his tall tales; controversial internal communique of all sorts, that didn’t show certain White House officials or federal agencies in the best light, but the problem was, “- he has too much proof. There’s material of great and urgent public interest that will not make the editorial cut, and maybe never see the light of day, including-” her hand was trembling slightly, but she handed him the photocopies. “Reagan knows about the AIDs threat. He’s known for some time. He shot down three requests by the CDC for more research funding, and refused to endorse a national helpline.”
“Son of a bitch,” Lyman said: he moved from one page to the next, slowly. “How did you get these?”
Sally steeled herself. “I - acquired them. From the offices of the New York Herald-Tribune.”
Lyman considered her. “Uh huh. They weren’t going to run it either, I take it?”
“No, no they weren’t.”
“Well,” he said, gruff, but his face was a lot more open and friendlier now. “Thank you for doing something flatly illegal. I’ll make sure this gets to the right folks.” He put the papers in a drawer, which he then reassuringly locked by key, and returned to cranking something out of his Osborne.
Sally shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and stayed in his periphery for long enough that he turned around: “Are you abandoned? Or do you just want coffee?”
“I was fired from my last job,” Sally said.
“Where was that?”
“The New York Herald-Tribune,” and that got a laugh out of him. Lyman mused a little, then said, “I suppose you can have the desk by the potted ficus tree,” at the exact same time that Sally burst out: “I’m a damn good journalist, and I’m hard working, but most importantly, I care about this very much – oh. Oh, all right, thank you,” went back outside to carry the cardboard box of her items from the curb to the inside, on the desk by the potted ficus tree. She crammed three tabs of Nicorette into her mouth, and by the time Lyman came over with sheets of congressmen’s numbers, and a telephone in his arms, advising her to start from the letter G, Sally thought she’d settle quite okay.
***
“Dawn.” Lillian said, laughing: “You are the first person I know to ever argue against a promotion. Just please, let me open the champagne. Will you let me open the champagne?”
“I’m not arguing against a promotion, Lillian,” Dawn said, steadily. “I’m arguing against this one-”
“Okay, so not any old promotion, just the best one, the one with equity partnership and the corner office and – oh, no,” Lillian said, reaching across the desk with a ridiculous silk handkerchief, as Dawn abruptly broke down in tears.
After a few minutes of sniffling, Dawn straightened. “I didn’t expect this.”
“Didn’t you? I saw it coming a mile away – you were running this company two weeks after setting foot through that door,” and she talked over Dawn’s noise of skepticism, “Look, fine, let me tell you some depressing things to make you feel better. There’s little glory in being COO of a consultancy with no offices on the East Coast. Plus, all partners do blood rituals to secure the company’s financial health, cost management doesn't cut it anymore -”
“I was going to quit,” Dawn said, and that shut Lillian up. ‘Not – not now. When Mercer was in charge.” Lillian understood: her face became grim. Dawn hesitated, then continued: “I would call my mother crying, every day. I hated that, I hated feeling so weak, but I hated being worked like a dog more. I couldn’t. I mean, I could have – five years ago, ten years ago. But I’d grown to respect myself, quite by accident - and I couldn’t do it anymore. I was going to quit.”
“And then he fucked off to McKinsey, and you didn’t have to.”
“No,” Dawn said. “Then you were in charge, and I didn’t have to,” and she felt emotional again – even Lillian looked away, clearing her throat several times before reaching for the bottle. She poured it out, and handed Dawn a glass.
“I don’t even have a college degree,” Dawn said, taking a bigger sip than she’d meant to: the champagne wasted no time in going for the back of her throat, her nasal cavity. She hiccuped.
“Neither do I,” Lillian said, knocking hers back. “It’s weird: women fought for the right to attend college, but not for the right to be taken seriously without attending college.”
Dawn thought on that; then: “We did, though. You and I. We fought,” and Lillian poured some more champagne into their glasses, nodding fiercely, “You’re damn right we did.”
***
Paul Schmalz, that slick goblin, actually leered at Joan as the secretary called for Holloway Harris Goldberg. She nearly stopped, but allowed herself to be swept into the meeting room by Natalie. Joan could hear the soft rise of male laughter, just before the large swinging doors close shut, and suddenly she was frozen cold with rage. It didn’t take much imagination to guess at what they might be laughing at: the men’s restroom and the smoking area shared a vent. Schmalz had been talking about the author, Brandt McCarthy – how he was a verified fag, and how Ms. Holloway’s majestically preserved rack could only get her so far in the industry.
Some days, Joan really felt like it was the new decade, everything tentative and brimming with promise; but most days, she just felt old, and the dull sense of a circle turning to the same spots, over and over.
Natalie touched her wrist, and Joan smiled on autopilot, quickly assessing the dynamic in the room: it didn’t please her. McCarthy was sitting, sullen and hunched, and his agent, Everett Thiel, a meticulous, greasy fellow, was licking his index finger far too much for the task for flipping through their five page contract. He was calling the shots, she realized – not McCarthy. And if the agent was calling the shots, that meant their pitch – Natalie was already taking Thiel through their three trump cards, Warren Beatty, Fox Studios, and Blockbuster Video Rentals, and he was nodding, indulgently – was useless, unless they could match the signing amount. Which they couldn’t.
Natalie kept talking, and Thiel kept nodding, and Joan felt reckless. So she said, “Mr. McCarthy,” and the man started, like he wasn’t used to being directly addressed. He wasn’t calling the shots – she just had to make him want to. “You’ve met many of my competitors today, and you’ll meet many more after I leave. Many of them will contractually promise you a very large sum for the rights to your book, maybe larger than what HHG can promise. What they won’t contractually promise you is creative veto power.”
There was silence, and the Natalie laughed nervously, “Joan,” but Joan continued: “What production house is going to let you keep the scene where Ingrid gives birth in the urinals? Or the scene in the whorehouse?” Thiel was starting to splutter, but Joan kept talking, “Mr. McCarthy, my competitors will offer you a dazzling amount of money and whisper sweet things in your ear, and then sanitize your words with a blowtorch once you’ve signed your name. So don’t do it.”
McCarthy blinked. “And I should just trust you won’t do the very terrible and lucrative things that you just listed.”
“Yes. Because no one has fights the censor board like I do. And also – well.” McCarthy waited. “I liked your book.”
“Who was your favourite character?” he said, curious, but like it was a test, too. Thiel slumped back in his chair, looking furious; Natalie looked ill.
Joan thought about it. “The mother, I think. She’s awful, but she doesn’t compromise, not even in the end. It’s a very clean and principled way to live: I wish I could live that way,” Then: “What about you?”
“Oh, I – I might concur. Or maybe Ingrid. She’s good with a gun.”
“That she is,” Joan agreed.
Schmalz rose smoothly when she and Natalie stepped out of the meeting room, unbuttoning his suit jacket and puffing his chest. “I wished you luck,” he said, smiling with his even, ceramic-capped teeth. “But I don’t think you heard me.”
Joan smiled in return. “I think you’re going to need your luck back.” She turned, Natalie following, the signed contract tucked safely in her coat pocket, and didn’t wait to hear the secretary step out one last time to sincerely apologize to everyone in the waiting room for the inconvenience: all meetings for the day were cancelled.
***
Ramirez started with the pitch-within-the-pitch, shooting the commercial in black-and-white (“There’s only two reasons people stop from changing the channel when shows cut to commercial these days. They either need to use the toilet, or they’re confronted with something they’ve never seen before. No one’s seen black-and-white in a decade. Effectively, in the midst of a cacophony of color and loud noises, Cadbury will be reinventing quiet, black-and-white television.”); when that had the Cadbury executives sufficiently intrigued, he passed the ball to Peggy. She narrated the story of the young couple on the sofa; him reading, her doing the crossword, feet in his lap (“And finally, when he breaks off that square of Cadbury, we close in on his face – and we know he’s sharing more than chocolate; he’s giving her something of himself”), and by the time she’d gone for the kill (“The voice over – knowing, and light – British, of course: ‘The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but it’s not always as lovely. Cadbury’”), she’d decided to go for overkill, too (“And when it leaves you feeling grace and love, you won’t even need a tagline. A tagline says, unless I tell you, you won’t remember it – Mr. Fry, if we do this right, people will be fast-forwarding their show to get to your commercial”).
The conference room was silent after the execs left: Peggy kicked off her heels and planted her feet on the mahogany table; Ramirez exhaled. “Ten million dollars in yearly billings.”
Peggy leaned forward, rapped on the wood: “Don’t jinx it.”
“Really? Now you’re going to play coy?” as Stan walked in, grinning.
“I see you showered,” he said.
“Yeah, well. I like winning with a handicap,” Peggy said, and then turned to her copywriters, or what was left of them: several were yawning wide enough to dislocate something, and Brad was already slumped over the aperitifs. “Let’s get some alcohol in here.” Everyone cheered – she made eye contact with Bethany, and nodded, and the Bethany nodded back, looking dazed and happy.
Just then, Ruth burst into the room, slightly out of breath: “Ms. Olson – there’s a gentleman on the line 4 for you - he says he’s the Head of Marketing for PepsiCo North American Beverages.”
The hub-bub died down: there was a stunned silence. Ramirez had half risen from his chair, and Brad groggily reared his head.
“I know Matheson & Morris got a call too,” Ruth said, when no one else would say anything. “My sister-in-law caters for them.”
“Oh, God. Okay,” Peggy said, straightening up. She looked around, a little lost, then looked to Stan. The room erupted all over again, and he mouthed: holy shit. “Hold the alcohol! No one get inebriated,” she commanded, as Stan said, “Peggy,” and she ran for the telephone in her bare feet: “I mean it, no one get inebriated!"