Chapter 8
Annalise
Something was off.
Not one insult or smart-ass comment since I walked into his office twenty minutes ago. I’d typed up our list of the accounts we’d each agreed to keep and which we were pushing off to staff. But I realized a few we were reassigning had upcoming meetings already scheduled, and we should probably attend those to smooth out the transition. I rattled off the clients and dates while Bennett sat behind his desk, continuously tossing a tennis ball in the air and catching it.
“Yeah. That’s fine,” he said.
“What about the Morgan Food campaign? We didn’t talk about that one because the request for proposal hadn’t come in yet. It arrived this morning.”
“You can take it.”
My brows drew down. Hmmm. Not going to question that one aloud.
I crossed that off my list and kept going. “I think we should have a staff meeting—a joint one. Show both our teams that we can act as one, even if it’s just an act for their benefit. It’ll boost morale.”
“Okay.”
I crossed another item off, then set my pad and pen down and watched him more closely. “And the Arlo Dairy campaign. I thought maybe you could do some of those exaggerated-body-part superhero sketches to include with our presentation.”
Bennett tossed that damn ball up into the air then caught it. Again. “That’s fine.”
I knew he hadn’t been paying attention. “Maybe you could sketch the VP of Operations. I bet she’d look great with a bigger rack.”
Bennett tossed the ball up and his head swung in my direction. His glazed-over eyes seemed to come back into focus, like he just woke up from a nap and for the first time saw me sitting there.
The ball fell to the ground. “What did you just say?”
“Where are you? I’ve been sitting here for twenty minutes, and you’ve been so agreeable I thought you might have the flu or something.”
He shook his head and blinked a few times. “Sorry. I just have a lot on my mind.” Turning his chair to face me, he picked up a tall coffee from his desk. “What were you saying?”
“Just now or the whole time?”
He stared at me blankly.
I huffed, but started over. The second time around, when he actually paid attention, my adversary wasn’t as agreeable. Yet he still seemed off. When we were done going through my list, I thought he might need some cheering up.
“My parents really liked you…”
“Especially your mom.” He winked.
Now that comment seemed more like the Bennett I’d come to know over the last week.
“Must be early-onset senility. Anyway, they showed me your proposal for their ad campaign. It was really good.”
“Of course it was.”
For a second, I reconsidered what I’d spent days mulling over. His blazing ego didn’t need any more fanning. But my parents deserved the best advertising campaign possible. And that wasn’t mine, unfortunately.
“As much as it pains me to say it, your ideas were better. We’d like to go forward on the radio copy and magazine sketches you proposed. I have a few tweaks, and I’d obviously like to stay on the campaign as the point person, but we can manage this campaign together. And I’ll let Jonas know it’s my family and give you credit for bringing in the better pitch.”
Bennett stared at me for a long moment, saying nothing. Then he leaned back into his chair, steepled his fingers, and squinted at me like I was a suspect. “Why would you do that? What’s the catch?”
“Do what? Tell Jonas?”
He shook his head. “All of it. We’re in the middle of fighting for our jobs, and you’re going to hand me a W that’s an easy point for you.”
“Because it’s the right thing to do. Your advertising is better for the client.”
“Because it’s your family?”
I wasn’t quite sure about the answer to that. The fact that it was my parents’ winery was a no-brainer. But what would I do if this were a regular client we had both pitched? I honestly didn’t know if I’d be handing him anything. I’d like to think my morals would have me putting the client first, no matter what. Yet this was my job on the line…
“Well, yes. The fact that it’s my parents made it an easy decision to put the client first.”
Bennett scratched his chin. “Alright. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” I opened my to-do-list notebook again. “Now, next order of business. Jonas sent us an email this morning on the Venus Vodka campaign. He wants ideas by this Friday, and he doesn’t want us to tell him who came up with which pitch. I think he wants to make sure we have direction early because he doesn’t trust we’ll be able to work together well enough.”
“Would you do that for any client?”
“Be ready early when the boss asks? Of course.”
He shook his head. “No. Use my campaign if you thought it was better than yours.”
Apparently I was the only one who’d changed subjects. I closed my book and leaned back in my seat. “I’m honestly not sure. I like to think I would put any client first, that I’d act ethically in their best interest, but I love my job, and I’ve invested seven years working my way up with Wren. So, I’m ashamed to say, I can’t really answer that with certainty.”
Bennett’s face had been stoic, but a slow grin spread across it now. “We might get along after all.”
“What would you do in that situation? Do what’s best for the client or for yourself?”
“Easy. I’d bury your ass, and the client would get second best. Although, on the off chance my work was actually second best, it would be by a hair, so the client wouldn’t be suffering much.”
I laughed. Such a damn cocky bastard, but at least he was honest. “Good to know what I’m up against.”
We spent the next half hour going through open issues and then decided we would get started on the Venus campaign later in the day because we both had afternoons jam-packed with meetings.
“I have an appointment with a client at two. I can probably be back at the office by about five,” I said.
“I’ll order us in some dinner. What are you? A vegetarian, vegan, pescatarian, beegan?
I stood. “Why do I have to be any of those?”
Bennett shrugged. “You just seem like the type.”
Too bad eye rolls weren’t a form of exercise. God knows, I’d be in tip-top shape after being around this man. “I eat anything. I’m not picky.”
I’d made it to the door when Bennett stopped me. “Hey, Texas?”
“What?” I needed to stop answering to that name.
“Have you ever let anyone copy your homework?”
My nose wrinkled. “Homework?”
“Yeah. At school. Back in the day. Could have been in grammar school, high school, or even college.”
Madison might not have done a single math assignment on her own for most of algebra. “Of course I did. Why do you ask?”
“No reason.”
***
My appointment went longer than I’d anticipated, and the office was almost emptied out by the time I got back. Marina, Bennett’s assistant—or rather our assistant—was just packing up her desk.
“Hey, sorry I’m late. Did you let Bennett know I got delayed?”
She nodded as she pulled her purse from the drawer. “Are you ordering dinner? Because my Lean Cuisines are clearly marked with my name in the freezer in the employee kitchen.”
“Umm. Yeah. Bennett said he was going to order dinner for us.”
She frowned. “I also have two cans of ginger ale, four Sargento cheddar cheese sticks, and a half-used squeezable Smucker’s grape jelly in there.”
“Okay. Well, I wasn’t planning on helping myself to someone’s food in the refrigerator. But that’s good to know.”
“There’re menus in the top, right-hand drawer.”
“Okay. Thank you. Is Bennett in his office?”
“He went for a run. Normally he runs in the morning, but he went out about forty-five minutes ago since I told him you were going to be late.” Marina glanced around the room, then leaned in closer and lowered her voice. “Between us girls, you might want to watch your supplies around him.”
“Supplies?”
“Paper clips, notepads, staplers—some people around here have sticky fingers, if you know what I mean.”
“I’ll…remember that. Thanks for the heads up, Marina.”
Twenty minutes later, Bennett popped his head into my office. His hair was wet and slicked back, and he’d changed into a T-shirt and jeans. He held a pizza box in one hand. “You ready?”
“Did you pay for that pizza or swipe it from Marina?”
He dropped his head. “She got to you already.”
I grinned. “She did. But I’m curious to hear the backstory from you.”
“Well, unless you like cold pizza, that’ll have to wait. Because explaining how nuts that woman is might take a while.”
I laughed. “Okay. Where do you want to work?” I nodded to the box sitting on the guest chair on the other side of my desk. “I packed some stuff to prepare just in case you wanted to go elsewhere.”
He walked toward my desk. “Of course you did. Wanna know what I did to prepare?”
“What?”
“I picked up two shot glasses at the little touristy shop down the block, just in case we feel the need to test drive the product.” Bennett plopped the pizza box on top of my box and lifted from the bottom. He tilted his head toward the door. “Come on. Let’s spread out in the bullpen. I think everyone else is gone for the day.”
***
The Foster Burnett marketing bullpen was very different than the one we’d had at Wren. Aside from it being twice the size—which made sense since Foster Burnett had twice the employees of Wren—it was set up like a dream college dorm lounge. Both bullpens had two couches and a coffee table, but that’s where the similarities ended. Wren had framed inspirational quotes, easels holding white boards, a large drafting table for sketching ideas, and a small fridge with soft drinks. Foster Burnett had one long wall painted black that doubled as an enormous chalkboard, a foosball table, a full-sized Ms. Pac-Man arcade game, colorful beanbag chairs, dozens of origami animals hanging from the ceiling, and two well-stocked 1950’s vending machines for soda and snacks in which everything cost only twenty-five cents.
“This room is nothing like the one we had at the old office.”
Bennett leaned forward and tore a second slice of pizza from the pie, sliding it onto his paper plate. He held the box open. “You ready for another one?”
“No, thanks. Not yet.”
He nodded and folded his pizza in half. “What was Wren’s bullpen like?”
“Less dorm room décor and more corporate team building.”
“Framed picture of a pack of wolves with some bullshit teamwork slogan?”
We didn’t have that particular one, but I knew the print he was referring to.
“Exactly.”
“I set up this room when we moved up to this floor. Tried to get them to put a few showers in, but HR wouldn’t go for it.”
“Showers?”
“I do my best thinking in the shower.”
“Huh. I feel like my best epiphanies come in the shower, too. I’ve always wondered why that is.”
“It takes away all outside stimuli and allows our mind to switch into daydreaming mode by relaxing the prefrontal cortex of the brain. It’s known as DMN, default mode network. When the brain is in DMN, we use different regions of it—literally opening up our minds.”
He shoved a quarter of his slice into his mouth, seeming not to notice the surprise on my face.
“Wow. I didn’t know that. I mean, I knew why we sometimes need to get out of the office or play a video game to free up our headspace. But I’d never heard the scientific explanation behind it.”
I flipped open the pizza box and took out another slice. Lifting it into my mouth, I looked up and found Bennett watching me intently.
“What?” I wiped at my cheek with the napkin in my other hand. “Do I have sauce on my face or something?”
“Just surprised you eat more than one slice of pizza.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Are you saying I shouldn’t eat more than one?”
He held up his hands. “Not at all. That wasn’t a weight comment.”
“Then what did it mean?”
Bennett shook his head. “Nothing. Just something a friend of mine said about girls who actually eat.”
“I grew up eating a bowl of pasta as a side dish. I can eat.”
I caught Bennett’s eyes doing a quick sweep over my body, as if a comment was about to come, but then he shoved more pizza into his mouth.
“So what’s the deal with Marina?” I asked. “She rattled off a detailed inventory of the food she has in the fridge to let me know she’ll be very aware if anything goes missing.”
Bennett slumped into the couch. “I accidentally ate her lunch two years ago.”
“You thought her lunch was yours and ate it by mistake?”
“No. I knew it wasn’t mine. I don’t bring lunch. But I was working really late one night and thought it was Fred’s in accounting, so I ate it. It was one goddamned peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and now I’m accused of stealing her stapler or something every other week.”
“Well, I hear the rate of recidivism for first-time lunch thieves is pretty high.”
“I made the mistake of telling Jim Falcon. Now every once in a while, he swipes something off her desk and plants it on mine. He thinks it’s funny, but I’m pretty sure she’s about three paperclips away from poisoning my coffee.”
“Something tells me she isn’t the only woman to feel that way about you.”
***
Once we put the pizza away, the two of us couldn’t agree on anything.
First we took turns sharing our loose ideas for the Venus Vodka campaign. The company had solicited a full branding pitch for their latest flavored-vodka product. We needed to come up with a cohesive package: proposed product names, logo ideas, taglines, and an overall marketing strategy. Not surprisingly, my ideas and Bennett’s were a mile apart. All of my suggestions had a feminine ring. All of Bennett’s were masculine.
“Men ages eighteen to forty drink the most alcohol,” he said.
“Yes. But this is flavored vodka. Honey flavored. The primary drinkers of flavored alcohol are women.”
“That doesn’t mean we have to paint the bottle pink and sell it with a straw inside.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that. But Buzz isn’t a girly name.”
“It is when you add a bumble bee on the label. If the branding is too feminine, men aren’t going to pick the bottle up to carry to the register.”
“Are you serious? You’re really suggesting that if something is too feminine, men aren’t going to pick it up?”
“I’m not suggesting it. It’s a fact.”
We’d been arguing for the last half hour. If we were going to get anywhere working together, we needed to spend less time trying to sell the other one and more time coming up with ideas. I sighed. What a shame. I really loved Buzz vodka with a bee on the label. “I think we need a system.”
“Of course you do,” Bennett mumbled.
I scowled. “We each get three vetoes. If one of us invokes veto power, that means we think the concept is wholly unworkable, and there is no point in trying to shape it into a campaign. If one of us vetoes, we have to immediately move on and not try to debate why it’s a good idea.” I looked at my watch. “It’s a quarter to eight already. We could spend all night arguing.”
“Fine. If it gets you to give up on your bee campaign, let’s do it.” Bennett looked down at his watch. “And it’s seven fifty-one, not quarter to eight.”
Yep. Another eye roll.
Bennett decided to play some Ms. Pac-Man to try to clear his head. I needed to relax a little to get into brainstorming mode, too. So I slipped off my heels and stood. Pacing helped me think. I shook out my hands as I walked.
“Honey vodka…honey flavor. Sweet. Sugar. Candy.” I began to run through word associations aloud. “Syrup. Hive. Bzz. Bzz. Fuzzy. Yellow.”
“What the hell are you doing?” The sound of his Pac-Man being gobbled punctuated his sentence.
I stopped. “Trying to clear my mind and start thinking fresh.”
Bennett shook his head. “Your yapping is doing the opposite of clearing mine. I’ve got a better idea for you.”
“What? Run home and shower?”
He reached into the box he’d carried in for me and took out the sealed, unlabeled bottle that Venus had sent over with the RFP. Then he dug two little shot glasses out of his pocket.
I’d thought he was kidding earlier when he said he bought them in preparation for our brainstorming session.
“We need to sample the product. Nothing like a little alcohol to clear your mind.”