“Hmm…that’s all well and good, in theory, but in practice, that normally means you making nicey with the main client, which clearly isn’t an option this time around.” What the fuck? Dillon very rarely weighed in on these types of conversations—normally leaving it up to Nate and myself to do any kind of strategizing that involved real life people. The fact that he felt moved to comment was disconcerting.
“Which means we need to rethink the way we do things this time around.” This from Raine, who was normally about as useful as a chocolate condom, and today, was either hungover, or still drunk, and still has an opinion.
The three of them had obviously been discussing this behind my back, and were closing ranks to execute a plan I had no knowledge of.
“Is anyone going to tell me what the fuck is going on right now?” Pissing me off today was either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid of them. I couldn’t quite tell which, yet.
“We thought that under the circumstances—what with your situation with Melissa, and the tête-à-tête yesterday—it would be better for you to take a back seat as far as contact with her is concerned.”
“No.”
“Excuse me?” Dillon looked genuinely surprised at my response.
“Going deaf in your old age? I said ‘no.’” I bit down, setting my jaw firmly. If this was their plan, they were going to have to rethink, and fast. Cutting me out of this process would be happening over my dead body. As in, they would literally need to kill me first. I clenched and unclenched my fists.
“You can’t—”
“I can and just fucking did. And given you guys have obviously been discussing this shit behind my back, you really don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to the matter of us operating fairly and in true partnership, do you?”
Nate opened and closed his mouth. Was it weird that I took sadistic pleasure in seeing him flustered and lost for words? It was such a rare occurrence, and I was so pissed off at the way they had rallied against me, it was all I could do not to bitch slap each of them. I figured gloating at Nate’s unease was a pretty good compromise.
“Did none of you listen to anything I said yesterday? She emailed me. Then she basically thrown down the gauntlet to me. Apart from the fact that it would look pretty fucking lame if I then disappeared from the process, when have you ever known me to shy away from a challenge? I’m not about to start now. So we’re sticking to the normal plan, and if we don’t win this pitch as a result, I’ll resign.”
“Come on man. There’s no need to be like that. Nobody needs to resign.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. Not. You’re supposed to have my back, which means knowing that nobody will need to resign, because we’re going to win this pitch. No, scratch that. I’m going to win this pitch for us. But thinking on it, maybe I’ll go ahead and resign when we do if you guys are going to act like limp dicks, and have fucking mothers’ meetings behind my back.”
“Listen—”
“No Bumble. You listen.” I was positively bellowing now. “We’re. Sticking. To. The. Plan. And by plan, I mean the, tried, tested, and unbeaten plan. Not the ‘we’re a bunch of pussies and don’t trust Beck not to screw this up’ plan. This means I’m going to be Melissa’s new best friend, and you’re going to be so far up Martin’s ass, that when he burps, it will taste of your cologne. Raine and Dillon, you’ll work your magic with the pictures and numbers, and we need to have the PAs start organizing the chemistry weekend.”
Judging by the looks on their faces, anybody could have been forgiven for thinking I’d said we needed to start planning the details of a mass orgy. Actually, they would have been less outraged if I had.
“Guys, can we get a little perspective here, please? She broke my heart, not murdered my whole family. And it was twelve fucking years ago. Now that the initial shock of running into her in my place of business has worn off and we’ve had the awkward confrontation, we’re good. Trust me.” It would seem that trust was pretty thin on the ground, which just added fuel to the fire of my indignation. I sprang from my seat pacing the room like a circus bear.
“We follow the process. The whole process. Like we always do. We. Trust. The. Process. We win the pitch. This is the first rule of Pitch Club. Let’s not fuck with the formula. Besides, we’re talking two days and nights of luxury and pampering upstate, what could possibly go wrong? No, don’t answer that.” They were clearly all about to. “We’re both aduland committed to doing this right. Nothing is going to go wrong.”
I walked out of the room then, leaving them no choice but to acquiesce.
Back at my desk, I got started on executing the plan, the first element of which was a proper apology for my behavior the day before. I’d apologized verbally, of course, but I wanted to express my regret in a way words couldn’t. After some thought last night, I had just the thing, and in a few short calls, it was all arranged.
Let the pitch winning begin.
Mel
If my life were a tapestry, it would be woven with brightly colored silken threads of lies, overlapping and crisscrossing, completing the picture as the days, weeks, months and years went on, with each thread making it more difficult to undo the last. The only way to truly separate them would be to unpick the whole thing and start again.
I’d lied to just about everyone I knew. Big lies, small lies, half-truths, white lies, lies by omission, and failing to clarify misunderstandings. A web of untruths spanning as far back as I could remember.
I had lied to everyone, friends, colleagues, strangers, Beck, Sam. I felt worse about lying to Sam than anyone, but I’d had no choice. Maybe one day I’d be able to tell him the whole truth about me, my past, and Beck, but for now, things were better off as they were, and I would continue to spin the plates of half-truths, and untruths, and hope that none of them fell from their plinths.
Despite the complexities, to give me my due credit, I did at least try to keep people in the loop on a need-to-know basis. Right now, for example, Sam needed to know about the pitch, and that we had two agencies involved, vying for one top slot. What he didn’t need to know was one of the agencies was run by an ex, and not just any ex, but the ex. The one that got away. Or more accurately, the one I let get away.
So to spare his feelings—and if I was honest, my own—I skimmed over that important detail whenever we spoke about the pitch, hurrying the conversation along so that I wouldn’t be forced to outright lie.
Again. For the sake of my own sanity, I classified lies of omission as “less” of a lie than an outright, blatant untruth. It was semantics, of course, but sometimes we had to do what we had to do to get out of bed every day, and keep putting one foot in front of the other until we made it back home to bed at night.
The lies were suffocating sometimes, making me as if I was being weighed down by my baggage and bad karma, so the one person I promised I would never lie to was myself. That I could control. The other lies were told out of necessity. The pact I had made with myself meant that I had no choice but to admit that my motives for challenging Beck to continue the pitch process like a mature adult were only partially professional.