Cleopatra and Frankenstein(22)

“Perhaps,” said Anders vaguely, turning back to the glow of the screen. “Ah, did you see that pass? Beautiful!”

“I’m only drinking beer tonight, by the way,” said Frank, taking another deep sip. “Sólo beer.”

Anders raised a white-blond eyebrow. “Did Cleo decide that for you?”

Frank had noticed that Anders was unusually tight-lipped on the subject of Cleo. He wondered if Anders was jealous of her. He and Anders had a decades-long friendship that was both deepened and threatened by an intense rivalry. When Anders split from his ex-girlfriend Christine, it was Frank whose couch he slept on for weeks while he looked for a new place. Neither of them had been in a serious relationship for years—they were each the other’s emergency contacts, for Christ’s sake—so it must have been disconcerting for Anders to watch Frank go from being single to married in only a few months.

Or perhaps, Frank thought, Anders was jealous of him. Who wouldn’t want to be with someone like Cleo, so thoughtful and special and beautiful, after the parade of dull models Anders had dated since Christine? Either way, the thought that he had something Anders wanted gave Frank an inner glow of satisfaction.

“So you want me to crop the shot?” asked the editor. “Even though that means we’ll lose the parakeet in the branch over there?”

Frank refocused his eyes on the screen, staring at the god-awful tagline hanging like a divine verdict in the sky. The whole thing was, of course, unadulterated shit. What had started out as an ad that was going to subvert the standards of alcohol advertising had become an ad that was playing off the standards of alcohol advertising, and had now devolved to an ad that was just trying to meet the standards of alcohol advertising.

“Yes,” said Frank, cracking open his third Diet Coke of the day. “That’s what I want you to do, Joe.”

“Dude, my name’s Myke,” said Joe. “With a y.”

“Not until you get that shirtless asshole out of my shot, it’s not,” said Frank.

Frank wasn’t surprised at how the ad had turned out, but at heart he was still a bit of an idealist. He’d skipped college and started as a copywriter at eighteen, coming of age at a time when it was still possible to make work that felt, somehow, important. He had a gift for storytelling and a strong visual eye; he’d had ambitions to write and direct movies, but the family money his mother had lived lavishly on for years had dried up, and advertising was the more dependable bet. He’d earned awards and bought his own apartment in his early thirties, but he had not forgotten what his former boss, an icon who’d been one of the creatives behind Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign, had slurred to him at his retirement party. If you want to make good art, don’t go into advertising. And if you want to make good advertising, don’t stay in America.

“Frank?” His assistant Jacky’s head appeared in the doorway. “I’ve got Zoe on hold in your office.”

Jacky was a Queens native with a cotton-candy puff of dyed blond hair and navy-blue eyeliner that Frank was sure was tattooed on. In the fifteen years she’d been his assistant she’d never forgotten an appointment, never given out information on Frank to prying parties, and only once called in sick, with appendicitis.

“Why didn’t she call my cell?”

“She says you never answer her.”

“There’s a reason for that.” Frank wheeled his chair toward Jacky and took her hand, propelling himself in a seated pirouette beneath her. Jacky gave him a knowing smile.

“Family’s family, hon. She says it’s important.”

“Everything’s important with Zoe,” said Frank. “She’s an actress.”

Zoe was the result of what his mother claimed was a surprise pregnancy in her early forties, but which Frank suspected was a last-ditch effort to create a shared interest with her second husband, Lionel. Lionel was a striking African-American midwesterner with a moderately successful real estate business and a talent for squash. He was also the first man to not let Frank’s mother walk all over him, a fact Frank acknowledged with grudging respect. Frank’s mother had divorced his father when Frank was two, prompting his father to move back to Italy and start a new family with a wife who, presumably, didn’t leave knives in his bed when he stayed out too late.

“What are you going to do by the time I get back?” Frank turned to the editor, who was looking dejectedly at the screen.

“Take the shirtless asshole out of the shot,” he said in a low monotone.

Frank laughed and slapped him on the back.

“That’s the spirit.” He gave him a little wink. “Myke with a y.”

Frank followed Jacky out into the white light of the hallway. Honestly, he was grateful to Zoe for the excuse to leave the soporific editing suite. He’d rather speak to her than any other member of his family.

“Just think, hon,” said Jacky, with her usual knack for reading his thoughts, “it could be your mother.”

Lionel and his mother had raised Zoe in Manhattan, then enrolled her in boarding school after they moved to Colorado to open a luxury ski clothing store. Frank’s mother loved skiing; he’d grown up accompanying her on ski trips to the Alps and Aspen. She came from money and had a regal disposition on and off the slopes. Her long nose and arched white forehead lent her the imperious look of Russian wolfhound. But she was young when she had Frank, and treated him more as a companion than a son.