“Did you hear what happened over at National Media? Some genius there wanted to call attention to the great year they had, so he printed their financial report in The New York Times in red ink!”
“Remember that airline promotion: Fly Your Wife Free? It was a smash until the airline sent letters of appreciation to the wives and got back a flood of mail demanding to know who their husbands had flown with. They—”
Alexandra walked in, and the conversation stopped dead.
“Can I get you some coffee, Miss Blackwell?”
“Thank you. I can get it.”
There was silence while Alexandra fed a quarter into the coffee machine. When she left, the conversation started again.
“Did you hear about the Pure Soap foul-up? The angelic-looking model they used turned out to be a porno star…”
At noon Alexandra said to Alice Koppel, “If you’re free for lunch, I thought we might—”
“Sorry. I have a date.”
Alexandra looked at Vince Barnes. “Me, too,” he said.
She looked at Marty Bergheimer. “I’m all booked up.”
Alexandra was too upset to eat lunch. They were making her feel as though she were a pariah, and she found herself getting angry. She did not intend to give up. She was going to find a way to reach them, to let them know that deep down under the Blackwell name she was one of them. She sat at meetings and listened to Aaron Berkley and Norman Mathews and Lucas Pinkerton tongue-lash the creators who were merely trying to do their jobs as well as they could. Alexandra sympathized, but they did not want her sympathy. Or her.
Alexandra waited three days before trying again. She said to Alice Koppel, “I heard of a wonderful little Italian restaurant near here—”
“I don’t eat Italian food.”
She turned to Vince Barnes. “I’m on a diet.”
Alexandra looked at Marty Bergheimer. “I’m going to eat Chinese.”
Alexandra’s face was flushed. They did not want to be seen with her. Well, to hell with them. To hell with all of them. She had had enough. She had gone out of her way to try to make friends, and each time she had been slapped down. Working there was a mistake. She would find another job somewhere with a company that her grandmother had nothing to do with. She would quit at the end of the week. But I’m going to make you all remember I was here, Alexandra thought grimly.
At 1:00 P.M. on Thursday, everyone except the receptionist at the switchboard was out to lunch. Alexandra stayed behind. She had observed that in the executive offices there were intercoms connecting the various departments, so that if an executive wanted to talk to an underling, all he had to do was press a button on the talk box where the employee’s name was written on a card. Alexandra slipped into the deserted offices of Aaron Berkley and Norman Mathews and Lucas Pinkerton and spent the next hour changing all the cards around. Thus it was that early that afternoon Lucas Pinkerton pressed down the key that connected him to his chief copywriter and said, “Get your ass in here. Now!”
There was a moment of stunned silence, then Norman Mathews’s voice bellowed, “What did you say?”
Pinkerton stared at the machine, transfixed. “Mr. Mathews, is that you?”
“You’re damned right it is. Get your fucking ass in here. Now!”
A minute later, a copywriter pressed down a button on the machine on his desk and said, “I’ve got some copy for you to run downstairs.”
Aaron Berkley’s voice roared back at him. “You what?”
It was the beginning of pandemonium. It took four hours to straighten out the mess that Alexandra had created, and it was the best four hours that the employees of Berkley and Mathews had ever known. Each time a fresh incident occurred, they whooped with joy. The executives were being buzzed to run errands, fetch cigarettes and repair a broken toilet. Aaron Berkley and Norman Mathews and Lucas Pinkerton turned the place upside down trying to find out who the culprit was, but no one knew anything.
The only one who had seen Alexandra go into the various offices was Fran, the woman on the switchboard, but she hated her bosses more than she hated Alexandra, so all she would say was, “I didn’t see a soul.”