“I know for a fact that City Slickers loved our original campaign,” Janie told Michael and Zach. “Remember? ‘You are what you wear?’ All we did really was take off from there, shoot the models from the back, add a few bells and whistles. As you can see,” Janie added, pushing the printed ad across the conference table toward them, “we dropped the headline, ran City Slickers big across the bottom, and added the tag ‘For people who are going places.’ ”
“Not bad,” Michael mused, staring down at the ad over his glasses. “Nice layout. Very hip. So why aren’t they happy?”
“They’re not making their projections,” Zach replied. He opened up a manila legal file that held a dozen or so ruled pages of Zach’s scrawled notes. “Research has been putting in marathon hours, and I think we now have a pretty accurate picture of City Slickers’ expansion efforts. Over the last six months they opened up stores in Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, L.A., and San Francisco.”
“That jibe with what you know, Janie?” Michael asked.
“Yes,” Janie said. “They were hoping to expand into ten markets, but started to cut back when things didn’t seem to be going as well as they’d hoped.”
“How bad is it?” Michael demanded, turning to Zach.
“Pretty ugly,” Zach told him, running his right hand through his already tousled hair. He threw his pencil on top of the open file, stood up, and paced the length of Michael’s office. Janie was surprised that the carpet wasn’t worn down the middle from the years of Zach’s nervous tracking from the conference table, to the plate glass corner window, and back. He had on a light blue cotton shirt, rolled at the sleeves, and unbuttoned at the neck. His tie, as usual, was loosened and flapping against his chest. His jeans were a faded dark gray, his beautifully tooled leather belt was well worn, only his shoes—a blazing red pair of racing Nikes—seemed to have been purchased within the last decade. And yet, her sister Cynthia was right, there was something oddly attractive about Zachary Dorn.
Janie had been pleased and a little overwhelmed when both her married sisters had come into her childhood bedroom after the engagement party and proceeded to conduct a postmortem on the evening. She had never been in their confidence before, never shared their secret adult opinions, and so she was eager to hear their views on anything and everything. The three women talked long into the night.
“Alain is divinely handsome,” Victoria commented at one point, “and such an elegant dancer. We didn’t have much of a chance to talk, Janie … is he fun to be with?”
“Fun?” Janie replied, wrinkling her brow. “Well … he’s actually a pretty serious man. He has very strong, deep feelings about things, you know.”
“Things?” Cynthia asked lightly. “Such as?”
“Oh, family, for instance,” Janie replied, smiling from one older sister to the other. “Tradition. Society. The Chansons go back ages and ages.”
“So do the Penrods,” Cynthia said. “I must say, I thought his parents were a bit … standoffish.”
“I think they were just a little surprised,” Janie said, quick to defend her future in-laws, “by how informal we all are. I think they were expecting a lot of servants and limousines and so forth. Instead, you know, there’s Faith with her fingernails rimmed with garden dirt and Henry picking them up at the airport in the Jeepster.”
Victoria laughed aloud and said, “I saw Henry’s new beagle puppy chewing on Monsieur Chanson’s cane at one point. That probably didn’t endear them to us either.”
“Well, if our manners don’t please them,” Cynthia said acerbically, “I bet our millions will.”
“What do you mean by that?” Janie demanded quickly, a blush rising to her cheeks.
“Oh, nothing, dear,” Cynthia replied hastily, remembering Zach’s wise admonition that Janie had to make her own mistakes. She reached across the bed and took her younger sister’s hand. “I’m just happy you’re happy. My one regret is that it’s taken so long for us to get together … as sisters. It’s a real joy to see how you’ve turned out, Janie … you’ve made an exciting life for yourself … and found some great friends.”
“You’re right, Cyn,” Victoria said. “If I were not a happily married woman, I would fall head over heels for that Zachary Dorn.”
“Me, too,” Cynthia had said, adding, “There’s something very special about him. He’s not your standard gorgeous hunk, but he has something all right. You could feel it … as soon as he took you into his arms to dance.”
“That’s for sure,” Victoria agreed. “I even saw Faith flirting with him! What’s his story, Janie … were you two ever an item?”
“Oh, no,” Janie muttered, but she could feel her face flush red. “I mean, Zach’s always been … we’re just friends.” Except they really weren’t anymore. He had avoided her at her own engagement party. She had waited all night for him to ask her to dance, but he had left without so much as a good-bye to her. And that had hurt her, more than she cared to admit to herself … and certainly more than she would ever tell anyone else. One thing she was certain about—it was Zach, not her, who was constructing the barriers. Despite the fact that they were putting in long hours together at the office, he seemed to take little interest in her personally. Gone was the laughter, the joking, the flashes of affection and insight. Janie resented the loss. It was, in a very real sense, like losing a best friend.
It hurt even more that he had made such a positive impression on Janie’s family. Typical Zach, Janie thought, swooping in and charming the daylights out of everyone—and totally ignoring her in the process. To make matters worse, Janie sensed that Alain and his parents had not fared quite as well in her family’s eyes. Was it the language barrier? The difference in cultures? Or had the Chansons behaved, as Cynthia claimed … well, the only word was snobbishly? And Alain, who was usually much more relaxed and outgoing in public, had withdrawn alongside his parents. Of course, he hadn’t known half the people at the party. But even as Janie introduced him to her family and their friends, she could sense his critical evaluation of their stature and worth. She couldn’t help but notice that he was warmer and more deferential to the political luminaries in their midst, and flip and dismissive with the waiters. But as soon as she found herself objecting to his behavior, she immediately thought up reasons for excusing it. The entire week before the party he had been traveling on business; he was undoubtedly tired, probably jet-lagged. He was concerned about his aging parents. Little wonder he stuck by them and tried to interpret the rather chaotic circumstances for them. He was doing his duty, after all, and no one could fault him for that. His manner toward Faith and Janie’s sisters had been polite, impeccable. It wasn’t Alain’s fault that he didn’t have Zach’s damned boyish charm.
As she listened along with Michael to Zach’s analysis of City Slickers’ financial woes, she felt her irrational anger toward Zach mounting. How dare he drift into the heart of her family with such ease? And when in the world did he find the time during his brief appearance in Baldwin to worm his way into even Henry’s good graces as well?
“That Zach’s quite a character,” Henry had told Janie with a chuckle the afternoon after the party. Alain and his parents had left after brunch for their flight back to Paris. Janie, Louella, Henry, and Faith were finishing up a game of croquet on the side lawn.
“What makes you say that?” Janie had demanded, smacking her ball into a flower bed. Looks, background, even intelligence didn’t count much with Henry—character did.
“Takes one to know one, I suppose,” Henry had replied vaguely, glancing at Janie over his half-glasses before making a difficult double wicket shot. “He seems to think the world of you.”
Not that anyone would ever know from the way he acts, Janie thought bitterly, as she listened to his summation of City Slickers’ bottom line. Since the party two weeks ago, he’d been true to his word about helping her shape a marketing strategy. He’d stepped in, organized her raw data, implemented research, brainstormed ideas with her—all the while being barely civil to her. Janie was beginning to think that he only tolerated her—and had perhaps only wanted her back at D&D—because she could help him woo back Melina’s clients. She was starting to understand why so many of his competitors called him ruthless, driven.
“They’re up to their ears in inventory,” Zach concluded. “Overextended debtwise. They’ve been floundering in each of their new metro markets. It’s a hell of a bad time for retail anyway, deadly if you don’t know what you’re doing. In other words, they’re heading for Chapter Eleven. Fast.”
“So why,” Michael demanded, taking off his glasses and cleaning them with a tissue, “are we wasting our time on them? They sound like a losing proposition to me. I’ve never much liked Seventh Avenue accounts, Zach, you know that. They’re finicky and flighty and don’t pay their bills. Have you checked their Dun and Bradstreet standing lately? I wonder what their payables record is like?”
“I already told Zach,” Janie replied irritably, “that they were slow as molasses. Two months was fast … and even then we had to do just about everything but sign the check for them.” When Zach and Janie had rehearsed their presentation to Michael the day before, they had agreed that she would sound peevish and worried at this point. From the quick, appreciative glance Zach gave her, Janie knew she’d done well.
“Then I repeat,” Michael replied sternly, “what the hell are we getting into here? Not only do we know their financial situation is wobbly—so does the rest of the industry. I’ve got news for you—take a look at this!” Michael dug into his out box and pulled out a copy of Women’s Wear Daily. He flipped to a back page and pointed to an article. “Come on, Zach,” he said, pushing the paper across his desk, “I want you to read this.”
“I don’t have to,” Zach told him. “I planted it.”
“You what?” Michael asked in a whisper.
“I gave a friend of mine at Women’s Wear Daily a synopsis of the research we’d conducted on City Slickers.”
“Wait right there,” Michael said, standing up behind his desk. “Either I’m losing my mind or I understand you to say that you’ve just publicly disparaged an account you’re trying to pitch.” He looked from Zach to Janie, then back to his partner again. “Uh, is that correct?”
“Exactly,” Janie told Michael with a smile. At first she had thought Zach was utterly nuts when he told her his idea. But like so many of Zachery Dorn’s brainstorms, it began to seem more reasonable—eventually even wise—after it began to sink in.
“Okay, I’m game, guys,” Michael said with a sigh, collapsing into his chair. “I should have known you two had something up your sleeves. What’s the deal?”
“City Slickers isn’t worth much to us,” Zach began, pacing toward the window again, “as just another account. What’s their billing? A million? If that, right? Not a lot to win … not a lot to lose. In my mind, however, our pride’s at stake here. Ours and, more specifically, Janie’s.”
This wasn’t part of Zach’s prerehearsed script, and Janie felt herself start to blush as he turned at the window and went on, “Though Melina never really hurt us financially, she did her best to savage us in the press. Every move she made was publicized. She flaunted Janie’s departure to all our clients. She made hay of every piece of change—Ramona Cosmetics, the promo piece for Chanson—that she stole from us. In other words, she played dirty and she did it in public. And though we kept our heads down and to the grindstone, it couldn’t help but tarnish our image.”
“It’s true.” Michael sighed. “Now when we pitch an account, we’re always asked about why Janie left … why Madame Ramona followed.”
“We’ll get back to Ramona in a second,” Zach promised. “But right now I want to say that I learned something from Melina’s tactics. They work.”
“But come on, Zach,” Michael objected. “I refuse to roll around in the dirt with that woman!”
“I’m not talking about Melina,” Zach countered. “It’s City Slickers. You see … I don’t want us just to win that account. I want us to save it. Listen,” Zach went on, sitting on the edge of Michael’s desk as he began to lay out the plan, “the business is in trouble. Huge inventory. Sluggish sales. Poor local recognition. What do those things add up to in your mind?”
“Big sale time,” Michael answered.
“Exactly!” Zach cried, pounding the table. “Instead, you’ve got Melina running Janie’s hip, high-priced image series. What those stores need is traffic—lots of it and fast. Now, let’s take this a step further. They don’t have much money left for advertising. So what do we do? We plant stories—ever so carefully, mind you—in all the appropriate metro papers about the bad news at City Slickers. Word begins to build that they’re in trouble. Real trouble. Any minute now, they could go out of business. And then what do we do?” Zach asked, turning to Janie.
She held up a full page newspaper ad with a banner headline that read, “City on Fire!” And in slightly smaller type underneath, “The fire sale of the century now taking place at a City Slicker store near you.”
“Inventory moves,” Zach continued. “Store recognition mounts. We keep the sale running as long as we can. Maybe even years. We save their hide—and we save it publicly. We get our name in the trade press as the agency that brought City Slickers back from the brink. We make our own hay from this—and we never once mention the sainted name of Melina Bliss.”
“Zachary Dorn,” Michael said with a laugh, “I knew there was some reason I went into business with you.”
“A lot of this was Janie’s thinking,” Zach said quickly.
“I can tell,” Michael said, turning to smile at Janie. “Christ, it’s good to have you back. This looks great! When do we see them?”
“We have a meeting scheduled for next Thursday,” Janie said.
“And Madame Ramona?” Michael asked with a troubled look on his face. “That’s the account I really do care about, you know. I still can’t for the life of me figure out why we lost it. I guess more than anything over the last couple of years, losing Madame’s confidence really threw me.”
“I know, Michael,” Zach said gently. “But Janie and I have been talking about that, too. And it may just be that you never lost her confidence at all.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It’s kind of complicated,” Zach replied evasively, glancing at his watch. “And I’m already late for another meeting. Trust us that we’re working on it.”
“Trust you?” Michael sighed, taking off his glasses and shaking his head. “When have I ever had any other option, Zach?”