The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

The plane landed at ten thirty, slightly over an hour late. Wilson proceeded to the luggage carousel, where his bag did not appear. And did not appear. And did not appear. Finally he and a bearded old man in a black beret were the only ones left, and the last unclaimed items remaining on the carousel were a pair of snowshoes and a large travel-stained plant with drooping leaves.

‘This is impossible,’ Wilson told the old man. ‘The flight was nonstop.’

The old man shrugged. ‘Must have mistagged them in Birmingham. Our shit could be on its way to Honolulu by now, for all we know. I’m toddling over to Lost Luggage. Want to accompany me?’

Wilson did, thinking of his mother’s saying. And thanking God he still had his portfolio.

He was halfway through the Lost Luggage form when a baggage handler spoke up from behind him. ‘Does this belong to either of you gentlemen?’

Wilson turned and saw his tartan suitcase, looking damp.

‘Fell off the back of the baggage-train,’ the handler said, comparing the claim check stapled to Wilson’s ticket folder to the one on the suitcase. ‘Happens once in a while. You should take a claim form in case something’s broken.’

‘Where’s mine?’ asked the old man in the beret.

‘Can’t help you there,’ the handler said. ‘But we almost always find them in the end.’

‘Yeah,’ the old man said, ‘but the end is not yet.’

By the time Wilson left the terminal with his suitcase, portfolio, and carry-on bag, it was closing in on eleven thirty. Several more flights had arrived in the meantime, and the taxi queue was long.

I have a bumper, he soothed himself. Three hours is plenty. Also, I’m under the overhang and out of the rain. Count your blessings and relax.

He rehearsed his pitch as he inched forward, visualizing each oversize showcard in his portfolio and reminding himself to be cool. To mount his very best charm offensive and put the potentially enormous change in his fortunes out of his mind the minute he walked into 245 Park Avenue.

Green Century was a multinational oil company, and its ecologically optimistic name had become a liability when one of its undersea wells had popped its top not far from Gulf Shores, Alabama. The gush had not been quite as catastrophic as the one following the Deepwater Horizon disaster, but bad enough. And oh dear, that name. The late-night comedians had been having a ball with it. (Letterman: ‘What’s green and black and crap all over?’) The Green Century CEO’s first public whiny response – ‘We have to go after the oil where it is, you’d think people would understand that’ – had not helped; an Internet cartoon showing an oil well poking out of the CEO’s ass with his words captioned below had gone viral.

Green Century’s PR team went to Market Forward, their longtime agency, with what they believed was a brilliant idea. They wanted to sub out the damage control campaign to a small southern ad agency, making hay from the fact that they weren’t using the same old New York sharpies to soothe the American people. They were especially concerned with the opinions of those Americans living below what the New York sharpies no doubt referred to at their fancy cocktail parties as the Mason-Dumbass Line.

The taxi queue inched forward. Wilson looked at his watch. Five to twelve.

Not to worry, he told himself, but he was starting to.

He finally climbed into a Jolly Dingle cab at twenty past noon. He hated the idea of dragging his runway-dampened suitcase into a high-priced office suite in a Manhattan business building – how country that would look – but he was starting to think he might have to forgo a stop at the hotel to drop it off.

The cab was a bright yellow minivan. The driver was a melancholy Sikh living beneath an enormous orange turban. Lucite-encased pictures of his wife and children dangled and swung from the rearview mirror. The radio was tuned to 1010 WINS, its toothrattling xylophone ID playing every four minutes or so.

‘Treffik very bad today,’ the Sikh said as they inched toward the airport exit. This seemed to be the extent of his conversation. ‘Treffik very, very bad.’

The rain grew heavier as they crawled toward Manhattan. Wilson felt his bumper growing thinner with each pause and lurch of peristaltic forward motion. He had half an hour to make his pitch, half an hour only. Would they hold the slot for him if he were late? Would they say, ‘Fellows, of the fourteen small southern agencies we’re auditioning today for the big stage – a star is born, and all that – only one has a proven record of working with firms that have suffered environmental mishaps, and that one is Southland Concepts. Therefore, let us not leave Mr James Wilson out just because he’s a bit late.’

They might say that, but on the whole, Wilson thought … not. What they wanted most was to stop all those late-night jokes ASAP. That made the pitch all-important, but of course every asshole has a pitch. (That was one of his father’s pearls of wisdom.) He had to be on time.