Everyone else in the room appears impressed. My assistant, Tyler, forgets himself and claps. I shift my eyes in his direction, and that’s enough to make him stop, but by then the others have joined in, both the clients and my account team. The CEO watches me, amused but undecided. It was a risk, publicly challenging him in order to galvanize the rest, but I’ll rarely interact with him; I’m told he shows up to advertising meetings only when he has no one else to antagonize. The marketing team members are the ones I need on my side. The CEO sits back and lets his underlings finish the session. He leaves halfway through the Q&A.
Five minutes later the clients have signed off on our strategy brief for the year. Handshakes and back pats are exchanged. Invitations to lunch are extended for the first time in months. The account team stays with the clients but I bow out. My lunch hour is for catching up on e-mail. If my inbox is empty, I spend the hour at the gym.
Tyler and I take the elevator forty floors down to the lobby of the Prudential Tower. I smirk while he raves about how awesome the presentation was. I didn’t choose him as my assistant; he was assigned to me. What he lacks in ambition （or any set of demonstrable skills, really） he tries to make up for with personality.
On Boylston Street I shiver in the cold while Tyler books an Uber. Once we’re nestled in the car, I turn toward him. “I want you to buy a box of Cohibas from the cigar parlor on Hanover. Wrap the box in navy blue paper. Send it with a note on the back of one of my business cards. Not the shitty agency-issued ones but the thick card stock I had made with the nice embossing. Do you have a pen? Then get your phone out. I want the note to say this exactly: ‘To a productive partnership.’ End that sentence with a period, not an exclamation point. Then, under that line, a dash followed by ‘Natalie.’ Got it? No ‘Yours truly’ or ‘All my best’ or ‘Cheers.’ Just a dash with my name. Send it to the CEO.”
Tyler gapes at me. “But he was so rude to you. In front of all those people.”
I tap a list of post-meeting to-dos on my phone. Without glancing up, I say, “When I was coming up in this industry, you know what I spent most of my time doing? Listening. And taking notes.”
Out of the corner of my eye I see his expression sour slightly. He’s only three years younger than I am.
“I want the minutes of today’s meeting on my desk within the hour. Please.”
“In my two years at DCV no one has ever done meeting minutes,” he mumbles.
“Maybe that’s why you almost lost the client that pays all of our salaries.” I wait for a snappy comeback. When I don’t get one, I pull a folder from my bag. “I glanced through your Starburst brief. It’s riddled with typos.” I find the marked-up pages and hand them to him. “It reflects poorly on both of us when the work is subpar. More careful proofreading next time, okay?” His jaw tightens. “And I told you: section headings in all caps and bolded. Not one or the other. Both. You’d be surprised how far attention to detail will take you.”
The car pulls up to our office building. We ride another elevator together, this time in silence. On the sixth floor we get off. As we’re about to part ways, Tyler sniffs. “If you’ve never met the CEO before today, how can we be sure he smokes cigars?”
“I know my target.” I head into the women’s bathroom.
A minute later I walk down the hallway, scrolling through my calendar （three more meetings this afternoon）。 I’m about to round the corner to my office when hushed voices in a nearby cubicle catch my ear. I recognize the first as that of one of the assistants, a woman who doesn’t know she’s being considered for a promotion. “I would love to work for her. She’s such a boss bitch.”
“Or your run-of-the-mill bitch.” That one is Tyler.
The other assistants titter.
“She treats me like a child,” he says, gaining steam from his friends’ reactions. He affects a shrill voice. “Tyler, I want you to go to the bathroom. When you wipe your ass, use four squares of toilet paper, but make sure it’s three-ply, not two. If it’s two, you’re fired.” They all giggle, these people who are almost my age but make a third of what I do.
I straighten, pull back my shoulders, and stride past the cubicle. Without slowing down I say, “I don’t think my voice is that high-pitched.”
Someone gasps. The last thing I hear before closing my office door is total silence.
* * *
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