Madison Avenue Shoot Read Online Free PDF Page A

rang for the elevator. Before it arrived, a musical chime sounded, followed by a simple tune. I looked around for its source. “That’s mine,” Betsy said, drawing her cell phone from a pocket, and squinting at the screen. “I hope you’re on your way,” she told her caller. “The meeting is about to start.” There was a pause. “You know I can’t pay you until the client pays me. Look, I can’t talk to you now. We can discuss it tonight. You can take me to dinner.” There was another pause and a shrug. “Break it!”
    The elevator door opened and the three of us stepped in. We stood in silence as the illuminated numbers went from one to two to three, but it gave me the opportunity to observe the agency’s chief creative officer. I estimated she was in her late thirties, although with her small stature I imagine there may have been times she was easily mistaken for someone much younger, especially when she wasn’t wearing the open-toe black patent leather four-inch heels she had on. Even with the added height her shoes provided, she was more than a head shorter than I. She was dressed elegantly but in clothing far from the corporate attire I would have expected. She had paired charcoal harem pants, an Indian scarf tied at the waist, with an aqua off-the-shoulder knit top, which revealed the heavy sprinkling of freckles on her shoulder, evidence that her hair was naturally red, if perhaps not the bright coppery shade she wore in loose ringlets framing her face. When the elevator stopped at the third floor, Betsy led the way, her stride long and hips swaying like a diminutive version of a runway model. My eyes were drawn to the scarlet soles of her shoes. How does she walk in those things? I thought. I’ve made some sacrifices for beauty and fashion in my day, but chancing a twisted ankle from an impossibly high-heeled shoe was not one of them.
    The office Betsy led us through was a huge loft space with tall windows at either end. All the utility pipes and ductwork exposed overhead were painted in brilliant colors—shocking pink, yellow, orange, acid green, deep turquoise. Everything else in the space was black and white. A series of eight or ten of what Betsy called “pods”—white tables lined up to form loose rectangles around the room’s supporting columns—were occupied by small groups of people sitting in black chairs, working on black laptops, most of them wearing black as well. At every junction between the pods there was a lounge area with deep armchairs, upholstered in white canvas, and modern sofas in black felt. Several of them were used by employees enjoying a nap.
    “We don’t have regular hours,” Betsy explained, pausing to straighten a chair. “Creativity can’t always be summoned from nine to five. The office is open twenty-four hours a day. Some people prefer to work at night or very early in the morning, and we encourage our staff to take advantage of whenever they feel productive.”
    “Must be tough on family life,” Grady muttered.
    Betsy heard him. “Families have to make sacrifices for art,” she said. “Our agency has won every coveted creative-advertising award there is—the One Club, the AICP Show, Cannes Lions, New York Festivals, London International, the Clios. We’ve won them all. We credit not only our staff but also their families in our success.”
    “Ex-excuse me, Betsy?” A young man had come up to her holding a board with a piece of white paper covering some artwork. Clearly nervous, he handed her the board, his hands shaking, the loose paper quivering. “Sorry to interrupt, but I thought you’d want to see this right away. I . . . I worked on it all night.”
    Betsy lifted the cover sheet and concentrated on the page beneath. I peered over her shoulder to see what she was studying so intently. It was a design for a logo with two A s intertwined.
    Betsy glanced up at me and quickly covered the design. She aimed a brilliant smile at the young man, whose