Finally the party repaired to a bar down the street. Shouts and laughter like gunfire erupted on Seventh Street as the agency folks wandered down the deep canyons made by the fifty-one-storey IDS Centre and several department stores, including Dayton's. One couple, whose respective husband and wife had been unable to be at the party, stood in the centre of the street alternately kissing and then pointing up at one of the tall buildings where Brolan-Foster had its agency on the ninth and tenth floors. The chill night only made all this insanity even more fetching and precarious-soon enough it would be bitter Minnesota winter; soon enough they would be home and sober with their respective mates. But for now it was time to laugh and shout and hit on whomever you could get away with hitting on. Before the predicted snow came the following day.
The five bartenders behind the bar looked as wary as cops at a particularly unruly demonstration. In less than five minutes the place had filled up, the jukebox thundered rock and roll, and people usually so staid they looked like Bible college graduates were out there shaking their asses as if they were trying to get rid of them.
Brolan paced. He was a pacer. Maybe that was why, at forty-five, he was reasonably trim. Pacing. He'd paced his way through nine different jobs in twenty-three years in advertising, paced his way through a divorce, and paced his way through three earnest but hopeless affairs. He tried hard not to think about Kathleen Logan. Jealousy never did anybody any good, least of all somebody as naturally suspicious and pessimistic as Brolan. So, even in his dinner jacket, his startling white hair and gaslight-blue eyes complementing the black outfit well enough that he should be able to pick up somebody that night, he paced.
In fact, he hated parties, and he hated groups of drunks. One or two drunks at a time was all right, but groups of drunks were oppressive. All that hand-shaking, back-patting, laughing in your ear. All that repeating of the same thing over and over and over. All those sudden embarrassing moments of overmuch sentiment. ('I couldn't ash for a b'er boss'n you, Frank, I really mean that, no shit.') Pacing was partly a way of avoiding all this stuff's being inflicted on him. It was harder to hit a moving target.
The time was 9:57 p.m., and nearly everybody had wandered in by then-account executives, art directors, media buyers, copywriters, television production people, and the accounting department.
He was at the bar having a straight club soda when his partner, Stu, came over. Earlier this evening, Stu had gone somewhere.
'This is just incredible, isn't it?' Stu said. He had the slightly unkempt, chunky look of a college lineman, his blonde hair still worn in something resembling a Beaties' cut, his wine-red dinner jacket giving him the air of a high school heart throb at his first prom. Despite a certain hard-ass quality, there was a peculiar vulnerability about Foster that most people sensed, and many people enjoyed. Maybe that was how you could account for his otherwise inexplicable success in the agency business over the past few years. Quite on his own Foster had been able to snag several of the Twin Cities' largest accounts. As the creative side of the partnership, Brolan knew that the agency could compete with anybody. They had three particularly good writer-artist teams. But even so, Brolan was spellbound by the way Foster had been able to go out right after they'd opened up shop for themselves and start landing the biggies.
Foster rattled his glass. 'You as hungover as I am?'
'Worse, probably.'
Foster laughed. 'It was like college days last night.'
At 3:23 the previous afternoon, Brolan and Foster had been informed by telephone that the Down Home account was theirs. Down Home was especially nice to win for two reasons. First because it more than tripled agency billings and took them from the status of a small shop to one of the majors (as a major agency, they'd be more impressive when they pitched major clients). And second because they'd stolen the account from Richard Cummings, their former boss, and a man of whom it had been said, 'He gives psychosis a bad name.' Until that afternoon, Cummings had been head of a twenty-million-dollar shop. Until then.
'You remember that woman?' Foster asked.
'From last night?'
'Right.'
'Uh-huh. Sort of, anyway.'
'What the hell was it all about?'
'One of us must have said something.'
'You remember saying anything nasty?'
'Huh-uh.'
'Neither do I. Boy, that was spooky,' Foster said. 'Throwing that drink in your face.'
'No shit.'
The previous night they'd gone out celebrating by themselves. Though Foster's wife, Dana, had wanted to go along, Foster convinced her this was kind of a 'guy' thing and that the next night, at a dinner party the agency was hurling together, she'd have her fun.
Both Brolan and Foster had grown up in Minneapolis, Brolan going to Washburn High and Foster to Southwest, and both graduating from the University of Minnesota, so they knew a lot of places to hit.
Around midnight they ended up in one of those little hotel piano bars where salesmen always try to put the expense account hustle on divorced secretaries who are just starting to look matronly. They'd been standing at the bar quietly having one or two final drinks for the evening, talking about all the plans they had for the agency, when a beautiful woman in a simple white blouse and floor-length dark skirt bumped against Brolan, spilling his drink all over the arm of his sport coat.
Being drunk, and having something of a temper anyway, Brolan started to swear, not at the lady particularly, just swear in general at whatever dopey god permitted such little irritating accidents to happen.
The woman said, 'That's not the sort of language a gentleman should use in front of a lady.'
Brolan, angry with her contemptuous tone-had she ever thought of apologizing for dumping the drink?-started to tell her that despite her beauty he was not necessarily going to act like a gentleman.
Which was when she threw her drink in his face.
It was one of those terrible moments when everything seems to freeze, when everything seems to become hushed, when everything about the knowable universe becomes irrational and spooky. One moment you're having a quiet drink with your best friend and partner, and the next you're in some insane kind of confrontation with a great- looking woman who appears to have been sired by the same man who gave the world Richard Speck.
Irrationally Brolan had swung his arm out, not to strike her, just to claim some space for himself that he didn't want her to invade. The bartender, having misinterpreted the gesture, jumped over the bar and got Brolan in a hammerlock. 'We don't hit broads in this place, ya got me, pal?' the beefy guy had shouted into Brolan's face.
Brolan spluttered that he'd had no intention of hitting this 'broad,' but it did no good. Other eyes were on him now, watching, disapproving. Some drunk asshole trying to cream a broad. Hate guys like that.
The woman was gone. Vanished.
'Let's go, Frank,' Foster had said gently.
'Lucky I didn't call the freakin' cops,' the bartender said. He was still mad. To Foster he said, 'Get your pal outta here right now.'
As they stood talking about what had happened the night before, Foster said, 'I kept waking up all night and thinking about it. It was really crazy.'
'Tell me about it' Brolan shuddered. He had always worried that he drank too much. At least that's what his ex-wife had told him. Things had been so out of control with that woman in the bar. He kept seeing and hearing fragments of the incident. Total loss of control. Scary shit. No doubt about it
'Hey,' Foster said.
'What?'
'Look at your hand.'
Brolan looked down at his hand. Twitching. Lordy.
'It's past, my friend. Last night. The woman and all that Past.'
'Yeah. I know that, but my nervous system doesn't seem to have gotten the message.'
'God, Frank,' Foster said, putting a heavy arm on his partner's shoulder. 'We deserve to have a good time. Am I right?'
'You're right. When you're right, you're right.'
'For six years we bust our asses, and people laugh at us-those little piss-ants, they'll never amount to
