Bonnie: “Is the bird supposed to be a woman?”
Max: “The bird has no particular gender.”
Bonnie: “Well, do mynahs actually eat plums?”
Max: “You’re adorable, you know that?”
He was falling for her, and she was falling (though a \ bit less precipitously) for him. As it turned out, Max’s \ bosses at Rodale & Burns liked his slogan but hated the concept of Dinah the Mynah. The executives of Crespo Mills concurred. When the new cereal finally debuted, the box featured a likeness of basketball legend Patrick Ewing, slam-dunking a giddy cartoon plum. Surveys later revealed that many customers thought it was either an oversized grape or a prune. Plum Crunchies failed to capture a significant share of the fruited-branflake breakfast market and quietly disappeared forever from the shelves.
Bonnie and Max’s long-distance romance endured. She found herself carried along by his energy, determination and self-confidence, misplaced as it often was. While Bonnie was bothered by Max’s tendency to judge humankind strictly according to age, race, sex and median income, she attributed his cold eye to indoctrination by the advertising business. She herself had become cynical about the brain activity of the average consumer, given Crespo’s worldwide success with such dubious food products as salted doughballs, whipped olive spread and shrimp-flavored popcorn.
In the early months of courtship, Max invented a game intended to impress Bonnie Brooks. He bet that he could guess precisely what model of automobile a person owned, based on his or her demeanor, wardrobe and physical appearance. The skill was intuitive, Max told Bonnie; a gift. He said it’s what made him such a canny advertising pro. On dates, he’d sometimes follow strangers out of restaurants or movie theaters to see what they were driving. “Ha! A Lumina-what’d I tell ya? The guy had midsize written all over him!” Max would chirp when his guess was correct (which was, by Bonnie’s generous reckoning, about five percent of the time). Before long, the car game grew tiresome and Bonnie Brooks asked Max Lamb to stop. He didn’t take it personally; he was a hard man to insult. This, too, Bonnie attributed to the severe environment of Madison Avenue.
While Bonnie’s father was amiably indifferent to Max, her mother was openly unfond of him. She felt he
tried too hard, came on too strong; that he was trying to sell himself to Bonnie the same way he sold breakfast cereal and cigarets. It wasn’t that Bonnie’s mother thought Max Lamb was a phony; just the opposite. She believed he was exactly what he seemed to be-completely goal-driven, every waking moment. He was no different at home than he was at the office, no less consumed with attaining success. There was, said Bonnie’s mother, a sneaky arrogance in Max Lamb’s winning attitude. Bonnie thought it was an odd criticism, coming from a woman who had regarded Bonnie’s previous boyfriends as timid, unmotivated losers. Still, her mother had never used the term “asshole” to describe Bonnie’s other suitors. That she pinned it so quickly on Max Lamb nagged painfully at Bonnie until her wedding day.
Now, with Max apparently abducted by a raving madman, Bonnie fretted about something else her mother had often mentioned, a trait of Max’s so obvious that even Bonnie had acknowledged it. Augustine knew what she was talking about.
“Your husband thinks he can outsmart anybody.”
“Unfortunately,” Bonnie said.
“I can tell from the phone tapes.”
“Well,” she said, fishing for encouragement, “he’s managed to make it so far.”
“Maybe he’s learned when to keep his mouth shut.” Augustine stood up and stretched his arms. “I’m tired. Can we do the scar thing some other time?”
Bonnie Lamb laughed and said sure. She waited until she heard the bedroom door shut before she phoned Pete Archibald at his home in Connecticut.
“Did I wake you?” she asked.
“Heck, no. Max said you might be calling.”
Bonnie’s words stuck in her throat. “You-Pete, you talked to him?”
“For about an hour.”
“When?”
“Tonight. He’s all frantic that Bill Knapp’s gonna snake the Bronco cigaret account. I told him not to worry, Billy’s tied up with the smokeless division on some stupid rodeo tour-”
“Pete, never mind all that. Where did Max call from?”