The Word Read online

  ‘But I thought I was doing well.’

  ‘Still, you could always be doing better. Human beings are base, Kenric. I want you to recognise this, I want this knowledge to temper your product. I know that you’re passionate about words, and that you live for words. I require you, our primary wordsmith, to realise fully the baseness of humans, and to allow that knowledge to fully inform your work. We must delineate and draw out consumers’ desires, and they will be grateful to us for doing so, for in doing this we relieve them of their terrible secret, their shame of wanting, always wanting, wanting more – and getting it, preferably, at the same time as others are getting less – or, ideally, others getting nothing at all, but being obliterated and consumed. From you, Kenric, I require words that enthral, that captivate. I know you can do it.’ Quick looked at his watch and made a half-verbal calculation before continuing: ‘I’m relaying my thoughts in their essence because I’m stretched for time and I know you’re basically a clever man. So now I’ll give you the refreshed philosophy of The Firm in a nutshell and how it applies to you. Words are a major part of the package that makes people buy – if we’re going to use words, let’s put people under the spell of the words. And they will be entranced – so long as we show them we understand what’s in their hearts, that we understand their deepest desires. As I’ve said, your work until now, Kenric, has been rather high-flown and – well, poetic. I’m giving you this chance to accommodate the more efficient direction The Firm is committed to take. Think of what we’re doing, if you will, as a new kind of poetry – the poetry of temptation. I’ll be talking more about this at Monday’s meeting.’

  Growing increasingly unsettled as they neared the Spanish restaurant, Kenric had been keeping his gaze firmly on the pavement as they hurried along. Suddenly he walked straight into someone – a woman – who was bending forward while scrawling on a blackboard placed on the path. To his horror, Kenric realised he had marched straight into Paloma: the dove, the waitress. Paloma wheeled about and scowled, clutching her behind. Kenric was buried in scarlet. Still frowning, Paloma resumed chalking up the day’s specials; when Kenric apologised, she just shook her head and ignored him.

  ‘No, I haven’t time to sit down after all,’ said Quick. ‘You go too slowly, Kenric – I haven’t time for lunch now. Oh, one other thing – I’ve heard it’s to be Hush for the soap suds?’

  ‘No, it’s Dove now.’

  Quick began to smile, perhaps recollecting something once pleasant. ‘Dove,’ he repeated. ‘Not bad.’ Then his face closed: ‘But that’s exactly what I want to change in you, Kenric.’

  Kenric first met Maria at the Monday meeting. They were seated next to each other. Maria was on loan from their Brisbane ‘sister’ office, Quick informed all those assembled. Kenric was preoccupied at the time by the first appearance at The Firm of Quest, a new man headhunted from a rival company. A discussion developed unpleasant to Kenric, as it centred on his work. A marketing man, Pursey, complained that Kenric often failed to meet deadlines for a product name. Furthermore, said Pursey, Kenric always spent too much time and thought on the message – that meaningless accompanying line under the brand name. In addition, Kenric was notorious for changing the wording at the last moment. He was also obsessively particular, Pursey claimed. Pursey then articulated his doubts about Kenric’s ability to accommodate The Firm’s new, more hard-edged thrust, as outlined and expanded upon by Quick in his opening address.

  ‘But Kenric’s our secret weapon!’ Ramsey burst forth, taking it upon himself to defend his old colleague, ‘although I grant the change in approach could well disadvantage Kenric’s style, because, let me tell you, he appeals to something a bit different in consumers. I know, I know,’ he continued quickly, brushing aside protests from around the table, ‘I know that often his products don’t have that punchy, knock-you-down-dead immediate impact, but in the long run they sell. We all know they do. There’s something about them. They work long-term. They evoke memories, or associations – something like that, don’t ask me how, or why. The Purge dishwashing liquid project was a winner, and whoever would have thought Blush would work so well for a stain remover, eh? That’s clever, really clever. You see, he’s got the knack, it sells. My wife always buys it, and so do all the other women I know. Once Kenric has named a product, the name stays. The product becomes defined by the name, inseparable from it. He understands the business.’

  ‘Kenric is part of a team,’ observed Quick, ‘and as such, he must be adaptable.’

  ‘He can only do one thing,’ observed Pursey, ‘and that is to name.’

  ‘And create the message,’ Kenric said, addressing the meeting for the first time, ‘the subsidiary message is most important –’

  The new man, Quest, leant forward engagingly. ‘I think it’s fair to say,’ he began, easily talking over Kenric, ‘Kenric has an unusual ability with words – he knows what draws consumers to words. He knows the magic of words, one might say. Their hidden life.’

  Kenric suddenly realised where he had seen Quest before – he was the man in the office across the road.

  ‘Magic hidden life?’ repeated Pursey, and yawned.

  Maria scratched about her side, glumly surveying, from under heavy eyelids, the grey composite partition opposite.

  ‘What does Kenric himself think?’ asked Quest, redirecting his gaze. ‘Share with us your strategy for naming a product, Kenric.’

  Unprepared for the question, Kenric sat mute. The silence extended, and seemed to feel around the walls. Imogen, Quick’s personal assistant, covered her pretty mouth to stifle a giggle.

  ‘Ken – Kenric!’ prompted Ramsey. ‘Say something!’

  Quest tried rewording his question. ‘Are you able to tell us, Kenric, how you approach the naming of products?’

  ‘I … I think of a word I – I love,’ Kenric managed at last, with some effort. As this drew no response, he wondered if he had been heard, and repeated what he had said, only louder.

  ‘Yes, yes, we heard you the first time,’ muttered Quick, shaking his head.

  Maria stared at Kenric; he assumed she was thinking, Who is this fool?

  ‘Sometimes he’s a week late in coming up with a name,’ complained Pursey. ‘Kenric can’t sit there all day being intuitive, he isn’t a poet. Kenric may have had some success with brand names, but what about his unnecessary messages? They’re getting longer and longer – we’re forever cutting them back, and then he goes into a sulk. And they have to be word perfect, according to Kenric. When everybody knows, they don’t read past the first phrase.’

  ‘Now you’ve hurt him,’ said Ramsey.

  ‘We do want to make best use of you, Kenric,’ said Quick, adopting a conciliatory tone, ‘you do have a power, admittedly. You make people buy. But you must understand, Kenric, you will now be expected to incorporate the team’s harder, punchier line.’

  Kenric assured them he would try, which was all that was needed, apparently, to bring the meeting to a close.

  As Kenric was leaving the room, Quick took him aside to inform him that Quest had specifically requested the use of his, Kenric’s, office. ‘You can move into the vacant space down the corridor,’ Quick told Kenric. ‘As soon as possible, Kenric – today would be best.’

  Kenric returned to what had been his office for the past decade, and began clearing it out. After a while he realised someone was watching him from the doorway – the new woman, Maria.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m all right, thank you,’ she replied. ‘But can I help you?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I’m your new secretary,’ she explained. ‘Haven’t they told you?’

  Kenric’s new office, although admittedly smaller than the last, actually had a view of a wharf near the Harbour Bridge. Kenric soon fell into the habit of watching the ferries come and go; they disgorged little figures, before ingesting other very similar little figures.

  As the week drew to a
close, Kenric grew increasingly forlorn. He was having difficulty finalising the accompanying message for Dove Soap Suds. Proving especially difficult for him, as some of his colleagues had feared, was accommodating Quick’s harder line. Kenric had arrived at the perfect sentence in his sleep during the previous few nights, once even succeeding in drawing the message from the wordless depths to scribble it on a scrap of paper. The paper had fallen under the bed, however, and Janis – who had embarked on a great spring clean – had vacuumed it up and disposed of it before Kenric remembered its existence. Afterwards he never could recapture those words, not quite.

  Maria appeared with coffee. She made no sound as she moved in and out of the office, except to indicate her presence. When she reappeared some time later, files clutched to her chest, Kenric found himself furtively studying her for the first time. She craned forward, and an egg-sized lump on her nape became swollen and shifted slightly. She was concentrating on placing folders into a filing cabinet.

  Kenric watched the folders slide soundlessly in and out of the cabinet.

  ‘I can hear Imogen laughing,’ he said, without thinking.

  Thumbing through the folders, Maria replied, after a pause, ‘She’s happy.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You said you could hear Imogen laughing. I said it’s because she’s happy.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She’s leaving,’ said Maria.

  ‘Leaving The Firm?’

  ‘She gave two weeks’ notice today.’ A smile began to push up Maria’s cheeks. ‘What, will you miss her?’

  ‘Yes, Imogen is – well, she’s fun.’

  The young woman’s laughter burst again from along the corridor. Kenric had never heard anyone laugh like that at The Firm.

  ‘Yes, she is fun,’ granted Maria, ‘not that I’ve known her for long.’ She opened a folder. ‘Although some might say she’s a bit light on.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ Kenric said, ‘when she’s still so young.’

  Imogen’s laughter was becoming almost indecent. What was Ramsey saying to her – or doing?

  ‘Did you know Imogen was going to leave?’ Kenric asked, responding to some slender communication from Maria’s body.

  ‘Oh yes. She asked me for my opinion. I encouraged her to go.’

  Rather taken aback, Kenric asked how she, Maria, was liking her new job.

  The work was the same, Maria told him – dull – but it was good to live in a new city. ‘I’m living with an old friend by the water,’ she told him. ‘My friend and I go way back, so we can talk. We sit on the verandah and look at the water and talk about old times. I became depressed after my husband died. A friend suggested I needed a change. So I came to a new city. We all need to move on sometimes. Have you never thought of leaving The Firm?’

  ‘Me? A man like me,’ Kenric murmured, ‘is married with a mortgage.’

  WITHOUT PATTERN

  At this Maria straightened and resumed an office-like tone. ‘By the way, Flower & Flower have rung every day this week. They say you have not returned their calls.’

  ‘Don’t tell me they’re after the message already?’

  Kenric went to the window; below, a ferry was sidling up to the wharf. Down the corridor Imogen no longer laughed. The ferry left, and soon another hesitantly approached from under the bridge.

  ‘You do like that view, don’t you,’ said Maria.

  Kenric started, not realising she had remained nearby. ‘Yes – words come to me here, or some words.’ As if from the water, it occurred to him.

  The telephone rang on Maria’s desk in the corridor outside. Kenric kept looking out the window, half-listening while Maria talked beyond the open doorway. He found he liked her voice. Some old part of him recognised something in it.

  ‘That was Ms Parsons,’ Maria called through the doorway. ‘

  Who?’

  ‘You’re supposed to meet her today for lunch,’ said Maria, coming back into Kenric’s office. ‘She’s been trying to arrange a time to meet all week.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I did tell you,’ said Maria.

  ‘I’m sure you did. What does she want?’

  ‘Well, she’s rather a mysterious character, Ms Parsons. I can’t quite tell you what she wants. She says it’s about a future project. But I think she’s after something else.’

  ‘Did you notice something unusual?’ Kenric asked.

  ‘No. But I could tell from her voice she was lying,’ said Maria. ‘Don’t look surprised. If you trust your instincts, it’s easy enough to tell when people are lying.’ Maria regarded Kenric a moment. ‘I hope you don’t mind me mentioning this,’ she said slowly, venturing to say it, ‘but I hear you’re very clever in your own way. Even up in Brisbane we’d heard about you. Odds on, then, this Ms Parsons is after a bit of it. That new man – what’s his name? Quest – definitely is, he’s always asking me about you.’

  Topnotcher

  ‘What do you tell him?’ asked Kenric.

  ‘The truth – I always tell the truth.’

  Maria continued to consider Kenric.

  ‘It must be lonely, being so clever,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t think I’m so clever,’ replied Kenric. ‘I think people might be having a joke at my expense.’

  Maria half-smiled, and withdrew.

  Kenric tried to work but found he was repeating the conversation with Maria in his mind. At that time, he found it strange to talk so openly to someone he hardly knew. Perhaps as a younger man he might have had a few such conversations – but none since he had joined The Firm.

  ‘Lunchtime,’ said Maria, poking her head around the door a little later.

  Kenric went to the bathroom before leaving the office, and as he was washing his face, he tasted something metallic in his mouth. Sometimes Janis tasted like that when they kissed. But when had they last kissed? He could not recall. Then, for the first time, it occurred to Kenric his marriage was empty, and unhappy.

  ‘Where did this woman say to meet?’ he asked Maria as he left his office.

  ‘That Spanish place on the corner.’

  Kenric hesitated.

  Maria asked if something was wrong.

  ‘No, only – why does everyone want to go to that place?’ wondered Kenric. ‘It’s nothing special.’

  ‘Ms Parsons said she’d heard it was your haunt. She’s done her homework, clearly. It’s Ms Sylvie Parsons, by the way. I can’t tell you any more about her, unfortunately. Well, be careful,’ Maria added, surprising Kenric again. ‘Ms Sylvie Parsons has an agenda.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like to come with me, would you, Maria?’ he asked, this time surprising himself.

  ‘Ms Parsons made a point of saying she wished to see you alone,’ said Maria, looking down quickly at the papers on her desk.

  Everyone and everything, Kenric thought, as he left the building, is conspiring to lead me back to this restaurant. But his thoughts soon gave way to excitement at his exchanges with Maria. He did not see the street as he walked, he felt so warm and weightless as he repeated her words in his head: They reckon you’re very clever … Then Kenric found to his dismay he was fast having an erection. This was not a usual daytime occurrence. He stopped and pretended to inspect a shop window. For a surprisingly long time the condition remained obdurate. He could not go inside the restaurant like this. At last, convinced from the shop window it was more or less decent to move on, and worried he was already late, he entered the restaurant, memories of Paloma’s behind blazing on his cheeks.

  ‘Kenric – Kenric!’ called a woman with strawberry-blonde hair swept back from a pale face. Kenric seemed to recollect Sylvie Parson’s image from some advertising campaign.

  Of course it was Paloma who took their order, her olive eyes flashing. Kenric looked away in confusion. Some current trembled between them – it grew every time he saw Paloma, he was not imagining it; it was becoming impossible to meet those eyes. There is nothing between us, Kenric
chided himself, of course there is not. It is only that there is something inexplicably sexual about waitresses, all waitresses …

  ‘I’ve been dying to meet you for so long,’ breathed Sylvie with a minty whisper the moment she had ordered. ‘I’ll be frank, I want to know – how do you do it?’

  Kenric moved his still-folded napkin to one side. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What keeps you at the top? What gives you that extra edge?’

  ‘What edge? What top?’

  ‘You are elusive,’ smiled Sylvie. She leant forward, the small flower of her cleavage blooming. ‘Kenric, you seem – well, different. I’ve been in advertising awhile now. It can be a perilous game, I think you’ll agree.’

  Kenric hesitated.

  ‘Perilous to one’s self, I mean,’ said Sylvie.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, take Quick, for instance. I’ve heard him speak, and he clearly thinks advertising is all one tremendous game. And it is, but that’s the danger.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Kenric.

  ‘Because it creates false realities, it creates illusions,’ said Sylvie. ‘But I should stop.’

  ‘No, go on.’ Kenric had not heard these ideas articulated before.

  ‘Well, advertising creates and fans desires and then claims it can feed them – that’s how it works, isn’t it?’

  ‘But it can be used for good,’ Kenric insisted. ‘Some products are good. They’re useful. They’re healthy.’

  ‘Oh, I know, some are, I suppose,’ Sylvie said quickly, smiling. ‘And I admit to being rather addicted to that certain buzz in advertising – that how much can we sell feeling. But fundamentally it’s a game of smoke and mirrors. And you’re very good at it.’

  ‘Me – smoke and mirrors?’

  ‘I wouldn’t normally share my thoughts like this,’ said Sylvie, ‘but I feel I can with you, because you don’t strike me as the brash or superficial type. Your work indicates depth. With you, I’ve decided to simply be up-front. I’ve heard that’s your style – what you see is what you get.’