Now and Yesterday by Stephen Greco

Author:Stephen Greco [Greco, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.
Published: 2014-04-18T04:00:00+00:00

Back in the days when Jonathan’s “great machine” was functioning, Peter hadn’t understood its workings nor the system behind it. Friends of friends, usually men a little older than he and more successful, asked him to jacket-and-tie lunches and engaged him in genial conversation about this and that; and when they got around to talking about what Peter’s career goals might be, other than the poet thing, he never had much to say. He didn’t have a plan for his life—though that in itself might well have qualified him for special attention. He didn’t know it, but those men were examining him—sometimes in a gentlemanly manner; sometimes lasciviously, as per the loose sexual manners of the time; and sometimes in both ways at once. They wanted to see what he might be capable of, or worthy of, and what they might be able to provide. Yet just as Peter could have become a beneficiary of the machine, the thing broke down, with AIDS. Everyone in books and fashion and antiques and the arts who’d ever taken Peter to lunch died—and he’d often thought that that might be one reason why, having to fend for himself, he’d drifted into his current line.

I’d probably be running some foundation somewhere, myself, thought Peter, as he strode from Madison Avenue into the lobby of his building, a soaring nave of gleaming marble, glass, and steel. Giving away grants from some ducky little converted town house in the East Sixties. An office full of good antiques; happy enough—but not really in the game.

The voltage of advertising hit him right in the face that day, as he stepped off the elevator and into the atrium. The girls at the reception desk were smiling a little more magnetically than usual, their voices galvanized as they spoke into headsets, directing calls, while in back of them, on a thirty-foot expanse of video wall, large-scale animations representing the company’s biggest clients fluxed with provocative flash. The kids tripping up and down the atrium’s jungle-gym stairway and across the main floor seemed a little sparkier than usual. And outside the Gymnasium, a large meeting room off the main reception area, a young woman in dark leggings and a cropped jacket, clearly a member of the client team inside, was standing next to a refreshment table, emitting signals that were apparently terribly important into her cell phone.

It was a big day at the office: Important clients were everywhere. Peter nodded to a colleague, a creative director, who rushed past him with a delegation to greet an A-list television star waiting in the reception area with an entourage. A new series, Peter thought, or a voice-over for some high-profile campaign. Upstairs, in his own private warren of offices, where Peter was headed, key members of McCaw’s communications team were spending the day with Peter’s top people, led by Tyler, going through an inaugural series of conceptual explorations.

The great work begins.

Peter loved it when the office felt this electric. The sheer energy of being inside a major ad agency at the dawn of the Age of Truly Global Mass Culture was like a drug.

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