All Is Bright (5 page)

“I want five creative teams on this,” Mason had said. “Have the campaigns ready for me three weeks from today. The best two will present to Gloss.”

As everyone stood up to leave, Mason had walked over to me while Cheryl took her time gathering her things and pretended not to eavesdrop.

“I need this account,” he’d said, his pale blue eyes latching onto mine.

“Is the budget that big?” I’d asked.

“No, they’re cheap fucks,” he’d said cheerfully. “Name the last three clients we signed.”

“Home health care plans, orthopedic mattresses, and adult protection pads,” I’d rattled off.

“Diapers,” he’d corrected. “Ugly trend. We’re becoming the incontinent old farts’ agency. We need the eighteen to thirty-five demographic. Get me this account, Lindsey.” His voice had dropped, and Cheryl had stopped shuffling papers. She and I had both leaned in closer to Mason.

“I don’t have to tell you what it would do for you,” Mason had said. “Think about the timing. We’re presenting to Gloss right around the time of the vote. You bring in this one on top of everything else you’ve done . . .” His voice had trailed off.

I knew what Mason was implying. It wasn’t a secret that our agency was about to decide on a new VP creative director. The VP title meant a salary hike and all the sweet side dishes that went along with it: a six-figure bonus, a fat 401(k) plan, and car service to the airport. It meant I’d be able to buy my sunny little one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side, which was about to go co-op. It meant first-class flights and obscene expense accounts.

It meant success, the only thing that had really ever mattered to me.

“I’m on it,” I’d said, scurrying out of the office and diving into the world of Gloss Cosmetics.

Now I was surfacing for the first time in three weeks.

I gulped more coffee and finished scanning my ad. Something as simple as a typo could mean professional death for me, but our ad was clean. This ad was my 3:00
A.M.
baby, born from the unholy alliance of too much caffeine, an entire bag of potato chips (but eaten in small handfuls, with the bag primly sealed up and put back in my pantry between handfuls), and my old reliable bedmate insomnia. Gloss wanted to steal a chunk of Cover Girl’s market, but they didn’t want to pay for celebrity models like Halle Berry and Keri Russell. I was giving them the best of both worlds.

Mason loved it; now I just needed to perfect my pitch to the owner and CEO of Gloss. I glanced at my watch again. Ninety-six minutes until their limo was due to pull up in front of our building. I’d be downstairs in seventy-six, waiting to greet them.

I pressed the intercom button. “Donna? Have the caterers arrived yet?”

“Don’t you think I would’ve told you if they hadn’t?” she snapped. She hates it when I second-guess her. “They bought red Concord grapes, though.”

“Shit!” I leapt up so quickly I knocked my coffee to the floor. I grabbed a handful of napkins from my top drawer and swabbed it up. “I’ll run out to the deli right now—”

“Relax,” Donna said. “I already did. Green seedless grapes are in our freezer. They’ll be ready in plenty of time.”

Red grapes instead of green. It’s the simple things that can annihilate a career.

“Thank you,” I breathed as my heart slowed its violent thudding. I reached for one more Advil and promised myself with all the sincerity of a street junkie that it would be my last hit. At least until lunchtime.

I couldn’t be too prepared. Cheryl and I had won the two
chances to present our Gloss campaigns, and she was a wild card. Many of her campaigns were uninspired, but when she nailed it, she was spectacular. I was dying to sneak a peek at her storyboard, but I knew she was guarding it like a hostage. As I was mine.

Cheryl was thirty-three, four years older than me, and she worked hard. But I worked harder. I lived, breathed, and slept my job. Seriously; if I weren’t so chastened by Donna’s disapproving huffs when she noticed the imprint of my head on my couch cushion, I’d barely have any reason to go home at night. Even though I’d lived in New York for seven years—ever since Richards, Dunne & Krantz came recruiting at my grad school at Northwestern and made me an offer—I’d only made one real friend in the city: Matt. My job didn’t leave time for anyone or anything else.

“Lindsey?” Donna’s head poked into my office. “It’s your mom on the phone. She said she’s at the hospital.”

I snatched up the phone. Could something have happened to Dad? I knew retiring from the federal government wouldn’t be good for him; he’d immediately begun waging a vicious gardening war with our next-door neighbor, Mr. Simpson. When I was home for Thanksgiving—two years ago; last year I’d missed the holiday because I had to throw together a last-minute campaign for a resort in Saint Lucia that was suffering a reservations lull—I’d had to physically stop Dad from climbing a ladder and sawing off all the branches of Simpson’s trees at the exact point where they crossed over our property line.

“Oh, honey, you’ll never believe it.” Mom sighed deeply. “I bought a subscription to
O
magazine last month, remember?”

“Ye-es,” I lied, wondering how this story could possibly end in a mad rush to the hospital to reattach Dad’s forearm.

“So I bought the November issue and filled out the subscription card that comes inside,” Mom said, settling in for a cozy chat. “You
know those little cards that are always falling out of magazines and making a mess on the floor? I don’t know why they have to put so many of them in. I guess they think if you see enough of them you’ll just go ahead and subscribe to the magazine.”

She paused thoughtfully. “But that’s exactly what I did, though, so who am I to cast stones?”

“Mom.” I cradled the phone between my shoulder and ear and massaged my temples. “Is everything okay?”

Mom sighed. “I just got my first issue of
O
magazine today, and it’s the November issue! Which, of course, I’ve already read.” Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper: “And so has your father, but you didn’t hear it from me. That means I get only eleven issues and I’ve paid for twelve.”

“Lindsey?” It was Donna again. “Matt’s here. Should I send him in?”

“Please,” I said, covering the mouthpiece.

Mom was still talking. “. . . almost like they’re trying to trick you because they say ‘Save fourteen dollars off the cover price’ but if you end up with two of the same issue and you paid for them both, you’re really only saving ten forty-five with tax—Dad sat right down with a paper and pencil and did the math—and—”

“Mom,” I cut in. “Are you at the hospital?”

“Yes,” Mom said.

Pause.

“Um, Mom?” I said. “
Why
are you at the hospital?”

“I’m visiting Mrs. Magruder. Remember, she had a hip replacement? She won’t be able to manage stairs for six weeks. Last time I was here I noticed the waiting room only had copies of
Golf Magazine
and
Highlights
and I thought, No sense in me having two copies of
O
magazine. Maybe someone else can enjoy it. And there’s a recipe for low-fat cheesecake with whipped cream—the secret is applesauce, of all things—”

“Mom, I’ll take care of it.” I cut her off just before the pressure in my head began boiling and shrieking like a teapot. “I’ll call Oprah’s office directly.”

Matt stepped into my office, one eyebrow raised. He was wearing a black blazer, which looked good with his curly dark hair. I’d have to tell him black was his color, I thought absently.

“Thank you, honey,” Mom said, sounding the tiniest bit disappointed that she couldn’t milk it a bit longer. “It’s so nice to have a daughter who knows the right people.”

“Tell Stedman we should go fly-fishing again sometime,” Matt stage-whispered as I made a gun out of my thumb and index finger and shot him in the chest.

“By the way, did you hear about Alex?” Mom asked.

I should’ve known it would be impossible for us to end our conversation without a mention of my twin sister. If she compliments me, Mom has to say something nice about Alex. Sometimes I wonder if Alex and I are as competitive as we are because Mom is so scrupulously fair in the way she treats us. Probably, I thought, feeling comforted that I could reliably blame my personal failings on my parents.

I sighed and squinted at my watch: fifty-eight minutes.

“Oprah,” Matt croaked, rolling around on my office floor and clutching his chest. “Rally your angel network. I’m seeing . . . a . . . white . . . light.”

“The TV station is expanding Alex’s segments!” Mom said. “Now she’ll be on Wednesdays and Fridays instead of just Fridays. Isn’t that wonderful?”

When people learn I have a twin, the first thing they ask is whether we’re identical. Unless, of course, they see Alex and me together, in which case their brows furrow and their eyes squint and you can almost see their brains clog with confusion as they stutter, “Twins? But . . . but . . . you look
nothing
alike.”

Alex and I are about as unidentical as it’s possible to be. I’ve
always thought I look like a child’s drawing of a person: straight brown lines for the hair and eyebrows, eyes and nose and mouth and ears generally in the right places and in the right numbers. Nothing special; just something to pin on the refrigerator door before it’s covered by grocery lists and report cards and forgotten. Whereas Alex . . . Well, there’s no other word for it: she’s flat-out gorgeous. Stunning. Breathtaking. Dazzling. Apparently there are a few other words for it after all.

She started modeling in high school after a talent scout approached her at a mall, and though she never made it big in New York because she’s only five foot six, she gets a steady stream of jobs in our hometown of Bethesda, in suburban Washington, D.C. A few years ago, she got a part-time job for the NBC affiliate covering celebrity gossip (or “entertainment,” as she loftily calls it). For three minutes a week—six now that her appearances are being doubled—she’s on camera, bantering with the movie review guys and interviewing stars who are shooting the latest political thriller film in D.C.

I know, I know, I hear you asking what she looks like. Everyone wants to know what she looks like. Alex is a redhead, but not one of those Ronald McDonald—haired ones with freckles that look splattered on by Jackson Pollock. Her long hair is a glossy, dark red, and depending on the light, it has hints of gold and caramel and chocolate. She can never walk a city block without some woman begging her for the name of her colorist. It’s natural, of course. Her skin defies the redhead’s law of pigmentation by tanning smoothly and easily, her almond-shaped eyes are a shade precisely between blue and green, and her nose is straight and unremarkable, the way all good, obedient little noses should be. My father can still fit into the pants he wore in high school; Alex got his metabolism. My mother hails from a long line of sturdy midwestern corn farmers; I got hers. But no bitterness here.

“I’ll call Alex later and congratulate her,” I told Mom.

“Oh, and she booked the photographer for the wedding,” Mom said, winding up for another lengthy tangential chat. Alex’s upcoming wedding could keep our phone lines humming for hours.

“I’ve got to run,” I cut her off. “Big morning. I’m going after a new account and the clients are flying in from Aspen this morning.”

“Aspen?” Mom said. “Are they skiers?”

“The really rich people don’t go to Aspen to ski,” I told her. “They go to hang out with other rich people. My clients have the mansion next door to Tom Cruise’s.”

“Are they movie stars?” Mom squealed. The woman does love her
People
magazine. And so does Dad, though he’d never admit it.

“Even better,” I said. “They’re billionaires.”

I hung up and took a bite of blueberry muffin, but it tasted like dust in my mouth. It wasn’t the muffin’s fault; it was the unpleasant thought tugging at me like an itch. I’d told Mom about my presentation so the message would get back to Alex:
You’re prettier, but don’t ever forget that I’m more successful
. Don’t get me wrong; I love my sister—she can be generous and outspoken and funny—but no one can push my buttons like Alex. Around her, I light up like a skyscraper’s elevator control panel at rush hour. We’re complete opposites, always have been. It’s like our DNA held a meeting in the womb and divvied up the goods: I’ll trade you my sex appeal strands for a double dose of organizational skills, my genes must’ve said. Deal, Alex’s genes answered, and if you’ll just sign this form relinquishing any claim to long legs, you can have my work ethic, too.

If Alex and I weren’t related, we’d have absolutely nothing in common. The thing about Alex is that she doesn’t just grab the spotlight, she wrestles it to the ground and straddles it and pins
its hands to the floor so it has no chance of escaping. And it isn’t even her fault; the spotlight
wants
to be dominated by her. The spotlight screams “Uncle!” the second it sees her. People are dazzled by Alex. Men send her so many drinks it’s a wonder she isn’t in AA; women give her quick appraising looks and memorize her outfit, vowing to buy it because if it looks even half as good on them . . . ; even cranky babies stop crying and give her gummy smiles when they see her behind them in the grocery store line.

If Alex weren’t my sister, I probably wouldn’t be nearly so driven. But I learned long ago that it’s easy to get lost and overlooked when someone like Alex is around. In a way, she has made me who I am today.

I pushed away my muffin and glanced over at Matt. He was sprawled on my couch, one leg hooked over the armrest, half-asleep. How he always managed to stay calm amid the chaos and frenzy of our agency was a mystery. I’d have to ask him for his secret. When I had time, which I didn’t right now, since I was due downstairs in forty-four minutes. Mason was letting me greet the clients, since I was presenting first, and Cheryl would get to walk them to their car afterward.

“Can we do one more run-through?” I begged.

“We did twelve yesterday,” Matt reminded me, yawning. He opened one sleepy-looking brown eye and peered up at me.

“You’re right, you’re right,” I said, lining up the pencils on my desk at a perfect right angle to my stapler. “I don’t want to sound overrehearsed.”