Spring Fever

“Riiiight,” A

They heard a tap on the door, and the sound of a throat clearing.

Davis leaned into the office, glancing from his brother to A

Mason stood up and walked around his desk, clasping his brother’s hand. “Come on in.”

“I’ll talk to you later,” A

“No, stay,” Mason said. “But close the door behind you, please.”

*   *   *

Davis, A

His face was jowly and sunburned, and his dark hair, already starting to recede, still bore damp comb marks. Unlike Mason, who usually wore khaki slacks and a Quixie logo shirt to work, Davis was, as always, impeccably turned out in an expensively tailored dark suit, a red silk tie with repp stripes, and black wingtip shoes polished to a low luster. A pair of flashy gold cuff links twinkled from the French cuffs of his shirt. He looked like a refugee from Madison Avenue.

When the three of them were seated, Mason solemnly handed cold cans of Quixie to his guests.

“Is this a stunt?” Davis asked, putting the can, untouched, on the edge of the desktop.

“Not at all,” Mason said, edging the can back toward his brother. “Come on, Davis, at least take a sip. It won’t kill you. You’ve been drinking it your whole life, for Chrissakes.”

Davis rolled his eyes, sipped, and put the can back on the desk. “Happy now? Actually, I never liked the stuff. I’ll take a Sprite or ginger ale any day.”

Mason leaned back in his chair. “Well, that’s one of the roots of our problem, right there.”

“I resent that,” Davis snapped.

“It’s not meant as a personal criticism. I just don’t see how you can sell what you don’t like and don’t believe in,” Mason said, his voice mild.

“I believe in the company,” Davis said. “I believe in profits. And I don’t need a marketing lesson from you, thanks just the same.”

Mason leaned across the desk, raising his hands, palm out, in a gesture of surrender. “Can we just have a friendly, nonconfrontational business discussion here?”

“You’re the boss,” Davis said. “What’s on your mind?”

“Our marketing plan,” Mason said. “Or the lack of.”

Davis’s face reddened. “Look, if you want to second-guess me and rehire Farnham-Capheart, I guess you can do that, since you’re the CEO. But I don’t see the point in doing an end run…”

“I’m not second-guessing you,” Mason said crisply. “And I have no intention of making an end run around you, which is why I asked you to meet with A

“As vice president of marketing, that was entirely my decision to make,” Davis said, glancing nervously over at A

It was A

“You deliberately sabotaged me,” A

“Hey!” Davis said sharply. “This was nothing personal. It was business.”

Mason looked stu

“I assumed you wouldn’t want your ex-wife around,” Davis said easily. “Because your fiancée sure as hell didn’t. I just did what I thought you would have done—if you had any balls, which you apparently don’t.”

Mason’s face darkened. “A

“Oh please!” Davis broke in. “She came to work here because Dad thought she was a cute kid and she was married to you, and she stayed on after the divorce because you somehow felt guilty about the breakup. Well, that’s on you, brother.” He gave A

A

“That’s enough,” Mason roared. He pointed at his computer screen. “If you’re such a marketing genius, explain to me why our sales have been sliding every quarter for the past two years. Also, explain why we’re paying a six-figure promotional fee to a scumbucket Nascar driver like Do

The photos fluttered to the floor. “That’s the face you hired to be the face of Quixie?” Mason thundered. “Check the front page of today’s Charlotte Observer. Or you can find the story online. It’s on all the wire services. The Mecklenburg County Police arrested Boggs at a motel in Concord last night, where he’d checked in with a sixteen-year-old high school dropout, a quart of Tecate, and eleven hundred dollars’ worth of Ecstasy.”

Davis’s ruddy face paled. “What? No. That’s not possible. I talked to Do

“He never made it to Spartanburg, or Greenville, thank God,” Mason said. “He was too busy hooking up with a teenager he met online. I want him fired. Today.”

“I can’t fire him. He’s got a contract,” Davis said. “We’ve got all the summer promotional materials set. Cardboard cutouts of Do

“Unset it,” Mason said bluntly. “Do whatever it takes. Call our attorney and have him start the paperwork. I want that contract canceled based on the morals clause. I want the sponsorship deal ended, and I want our name painted over on his cars, even if you have to do it yourself. I don’t want that degenerate turd’s name mentioned in the same breath as Quixie.”

“God,” Davis said, burying his head in his hands. “We’ve spent thousands on this campaign. Hundreds of thousands. We’ll have to do new ad buys, shoot new commercials … There’s no time to create a new campaign from scratch.”

“I can help with that,” A

Davis gave her a sour look.

“It’s what Mason was just talking about. Returning to our roots. Retro. I’ve got all the old mechanicals and illustrations for the Quixie ads from the forties through the sixties,” she said. “And I bet if I call Farnham-Capheart they’ve still got footage of the old commercials. We just clean up the graphics for the print ads, maybe reshoot some of the commercials, cut out the footage of Do