First Gold
“Hey, Evan, you missed all the excitement Saturday night.” Connor McKee stood at the opening to Evan Moore’s cubicle, making faces at the mug ofbitter agency coffee in his hand. “I can’t believe you didn’t show!”
Evan didn’t look up from his monitor. “The in-laws are in town. Dana’s dad insisted on taking us out to Mancy’s and the symphony.” Not only did he miss the Ad Club dinner, he had to spend the night listening to the old bastard wail about the lamestream media and their fake news.
“You skipped the awards dinner for your in-laws? Wow, that’s dedication. Anyway, congratulations, man, that’s terrific! Nice piece!” He turned to leave.
“Congratulations? What for?” Evan lifted his head from Adobe Illustrator, where he was putting the finishing touches ona logodesign for Hanover Construction.
“The award. Didn’t you know? You got a gold medal Saturday!”
Evan’s heart locked up and his mouth went dry. A gold? Me? He spun around on his chair. But then he remembered he hadn’t entered anything.
“I did? What for?”
“Yeah, a gold medal. For the Atkins poster.”
Evan felt an icy hand grab his spine. Not the Atkins poster. No. He had that handled. “But I didn’t enter that. I had Kathy pull it.”
“Well, lucky for you she didn’t pull hard enough—it got a gold. Your first, isn’t it?”
“Jesus Christ.” Even jumped up and waddled across the bullpen toward Kathy’s office. The large, open area was dimly lighted to avoid screen glare and distraction forthe designers. Although he never found it a distraction and wondered if the real reason wasn’t just to save on electricity. For privacy, the space was divided into small cubicles with fivefoot fabric-covered walls, which gave about as much privacy as a half-open bathroom door.
A half dozen designers tapped intently away at their keyboards. Oversize screens flashed and beeped and belched video into the semidarkness ashe passed. Acolony of moles sifting for precious metals: gold, silver, bronze.
“Hey, Evan, congratulations!” called someone from a cubicle.
He popped his head into Kathy’s doorway. The administrative staff had their own individual offices, with four walls and a door that actually closed, as though they were more important to the agency than the designers who createdthe product. “Didn’t youpull the Atkins posterfrom the entry pile?”
Kathy looked up and nodded. “Yeah. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“How could it win an award, then?”
“Damn, it did, didn’t it?” Kathy thought a moment. “The client must have entered it himself. It was somebody fromAtkins that accepted the award. Congratulations, by the way. Is that your first gold?”
By the time she was finished speaking, Evan was halfway back to his workstation. Crap. The first gold was the passage to manhood as a designer, the coming of age, the signaling of a future star. Something he chased as hard as any of the other creatives. But this sure as hell wasn’t the way to do it. If only he hadn’t been so wiped out. If only he’d had more time. This would hang over his head for a month, maybe longer, until he was sure nobody had caught on. Well, hell—everybody did it. Why should he sweat?
Connor had moved on by the time he gotback to his cubicle. Evan watched him drift through the bullpen, looking more like an account executive than a writer, with his tailored jackets and Stephano Ricci ties. Connor was tall and) and burly (he didn’t like the word ) and his closet was filled with X sizes in heavy fabric, like denim shirts and pants, to disguise unflattering bulges. On the positive side, denim wore like iron and only needed washing once a month or so. And denim was never out of style in the bullpen.
