Firm's First Day

August in Southern California is hot and sticky like a movie-theater floor in Pakistan. If it weren’t for the Santa Ana winds, the smog would get thick enough to carve. The rest of the county wonders why anyone would pay a dime, let alone millions, to live there. In 1973, a Nobel Prize-winning professor from UCLA discovered a mathematical formula that answered this anomaly. In laymen’s terms, the cost of living in Southern California is directly proportionate to the distance one must travel to buy a snow shovel.

     Tara drove with the radio off. Despite her cool demeanor, butterflies were doing the Lambada in her stomach. Normally, new work situations never made her nervous. Since college, she had worked as an account executive for two successful Fortune 500 companies and already had established a solid track record. But something was different this time. The quicksand of male existence, also know as women’s intuition, was sending her a telegram that there was more to this job than a career opportunity.

     She pulled into the parking lot, took one last look at her makeup in the rearview mirror and opened her car door. Seemingly out of nowhere, a tall and deceptively brawny homeless man blocked her path. “You alien bitch!” He pulled out a screwdriver from his coat pocket and made a threatening gesture. “I’m not gonna let you eat my brain!”

     Tara would have been scared if she wasn’t so annoyed. She blinked her eyes like a cartoon doe and smiled a smile that had spared her from seven speeding tickets in the past four years. She had an undeniable power over men, even the clinically insane ones. “I’m not going to eat your brain, but I am going to make you a soprano.” The question-mark gawk on his face quickly turned to wincing pain. The homeless thug was schizophrenic but both personalities felt the swift, lightning kick to the privates. He dropped to his knees. Tara finished him off with her car door. Mrs. Bruce Lee then grabbed her briefcase, straightened her jacket and headed into the building.

     Mac came out to the reception desk to greet Tara. “Welcome to Ad Infinitum. It’s great to have you on board, Tara. I’ll take you to your office to get settled in, then I’ll introduce you to the team. Any problems with the traffic this morning?”

     “Just parking,” Tara quipped.

     After settling in, Mac gave her the grand tour then introduced her to the support staff. They intercepted Derek in the hallway, who immediately initiated Operation Come-on before they had shaken hands.

     Mac introduced them. “This is Derek Armstrong, the design manager for the Dragon Star account.” Derek’s eyes ran up and down her body like twin hamsters on a new salt lick. She found him extremely attractive but was not so easily persuaded by looks alone. His licentiousness gave her a queasy feeling and the instant urge to take a long, hot shower and scrub vigorously with antibacterial soap.

     Tara tried to take Derek’s mind off her body. “You’re design work on the Buddy Boy line was truly innovative.” She extended her hand. Instead of shaking it, he grabbed it, kissed the back of it and then held it, a little too firmly and a little too long.

     “If you like my work, you’ll love the rest of me,” Derek replied.

     “Feeding time in ten minutes. Get back to your cage, Derek,” Mac scolded.

     Derek finally let go of her hand and headed to his office, keeping his eyes fixed on her the whole time until he bumped into a cubicle partition.

     “Derek is harmless, but if he ever gets to be too much, let me know and I’ll take care of him,” Mac said with a rote familiarity that had graced more than one female employee at Ad Infinitum.

     “I’m afraid I’m used to it,” Tara sighed.

     “Come on, there are a few more people I’d like you to meet.”

     Derek was overt, but all the men she met at Ad Infinitum gave her the double-take and either acted awkward or childish to mask their attraction. The women immediately loathed her to cover up their jealousy. There was one last person Mac wanted her to meet.

     Sheldon was immersed in an article when Mac knocked on his opened office door. “Sheldon, I’d like you to meet the new account manager for Dragon Star, Tara Firm.”

     “It says here that China will have to employ Western advertising methods to compete more effectively in the world marketplace. I’ll have to brush up on my Cantonese,” Sheldon commented, seemingly without hearing Mac’s introduction.

     “Mandarin is more prevalent,” Tara asserted.

     Without missing a beat, “True, but I prefer Cantonese cuisine and I’m more concerned with ordering a good lunch then copywriting for Chinese clients.” Sheldon smiled and stood up to greet her. “Tara, welcome to the team. Mac has said a lot of good things about you.” His handshake was warm and firm but unlike the other men at Ad Infinitum, he was not outwardly smitten by her attractiveness. Something in his expression reminded Tara of her very first adolescent crush—Mr. Kruger, her 7^th grade English teacher.

     Mac had brought in good-looking women before, thinking clients would be charmed into emptying out their wallets as if they were at a Heidi Fleiss buy-one-get-one-free sale. It never worked for very long. And with the exception of Gigi, Sheldon had been dissed by hot babes most of his life. He didn’t hate women, quite the opposite, but he wasn’t going to be swayed by beauty, be it natural or surgical. To add salt to the wounds, Mac hadn’t even introduced Tara to him during the interviewing process. Instead, he sprung the news like a panther on steroids just two days prior to her starting. Sheldon also had some hidden resentment because he was the acting account manager when they won Dragon Star and felt Mac should have at least consulted with him.

     Sheldon’s subtle sarcasm followed by kindness completely disarmed Tara. She could spar with the best of them but Sheldon had taken her by surprise and the first round went to him. He wasn’t much to look at but she couldn’t deny feeling an unmistakable surge of current when they shook hands.

     Tara fumbled for her next words. “Yes, uh, I—”

     “Come on, Tara,” Mac urged. “The welcome lunch is on me. Wanna come, Sheldon?”

     “Thanks, Mac, but I promised Derek I’d brainstorm new ideas for the Peters campaign. I’m looking forward to working with you, Tara,” Sheldon said. “By the way, is that an autographed picture of Linus Pauling I saw in your office?”

     “Yes, it is,” Tara said with some surprise. “He’s one of my heroes.”

     “Who’s Linus Pauling?” Mac asked.

     “Just one of the greatest scientific and humanitarian minds of our time,” Sheldon answered. “He discovered the importance of Vitamin C—”

     Tara cut him off, “And he won the Nobel Prize in ‘54 and ’62.” Tara was acting like a bratty eight-year old who couldn’t stand that her friend was getting more attention than she was. She couldn’t figure out what had gotten into her.

     “Thank you for the history lesson,” Mac answered sarcastically. “Do I have to take a quiz now?”

     “Don’t mind him, Tara,” Sheldon remarked. “Mac only knows about two things: how to run an advertising agency and the Brooklyn Dodgers.”

     “Then you’ve got to be a Sandy Koufax fan.” Tara directed at Mac.

     “Damn straight I am!” Mac answered as if he had been half-asleep and then suddenly goosed with a cattle prod. “Who isn’t?”

     “Take a look in my office, next to the picture of Linus Pauling.” Tara said.

     “The guy you don’t know,” Sheldon added.

     Mac took off to see what surprise awaited him in Tara’s office.

     “Friend of your father?” Sheldon asked.

     “Who?” Tara asked. She was fidgety and uncomfortable around Sheldon.

     “Sandy Koufax. That’s you as a little girl sitting on his knee, isn’t it? It looks like you’re in someone’s backyard, so I’m assuming he was a family acquaintance.”

     ”Did you go through my desk as well?“ Tara said rather snidely to her own shock and amazement. Tara couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on. She felt like a freshmen cheerleader in high school who had just been asked out by the captain of the football team to the senior prom, which of course in her life had actually happened.

     Sheldon was in no mood for attitude. ”If you didn’t want people looking at your pictures, you shouldn’t put them on your desk for everyone to see.“

     ”Sheldon, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so snippy.“ Tara said as if she had just been exorcised.

     ”Quite all right. First day jitters”. Sheldon smiled with one part compassion and one part concealed irritation.

     ”Well, fuck a duck!“ Mac proclaimed as he pounced back into Sheldon’s office. ”Pardon my French. How did you get a picture with Koufax?“

     ”He was a friend of my father”, Tara answered and looked over at Sheldon.

     ”Hang on to that picture! It will be worth something someday”, Mac surmised.

     ”It already is”. Tara said nostalgically and looked out Sheldon’s window as if watching a winged unicorn fly across the horizon. Mac and Sheldon sighed in unison. When a woman combines her femininity with something positive about sports, men instantly fall in love. Though Sheldon was more A&E than ESPN, it was hard to suppress his appreciation when she spoke so lovingly of the greatest left-handed pitcher of all time.

     Mac was also enraptured by this chick/sports moment, then snapped out of it remembering a million things he had to do.

     ”How about that lunch, Tara”? Mac pressed.

     ”Ready when you are”. Tara answered. ”Good to meet you, Sheldon.”

     ”Likewise”, Sheldon said and sat back down behind his desk. Tara and Mac exited his office.

     Tara felt like a complete idiot. She was totally tongue-tied around Sheldon. What was that all about? And what was that vibe she was getting from him?

     Sheldon sat for a long moment at his desk. She hadn’t exactly made the best first impression but another voice told Sheldon to look deeper. That voice came from his skin flute. But then another voice, the one unresponsive to even the early posters of Farrah Fawcett, said ”There’s more to this woman than meets the eye.“ Sure, she was a knock-out and despite his jaded nature, Sheldon was still a hot-blooded man who for the briefest moment entertained the idea of Tara, a bottle of baby oil and Barry White’s greatest hits. ”No, that’s inappropriate,” Sheldon scolded himself. ”We’re coworkers for God’s sake. Besides, she’ll probably go for Derek.“ Still, there was something else Sheldon felt, something he hadn’t felt since the first time Gigi sat next to him in economics.

     As fate would have it, Tara’s office was within eyeshot of Sheldon’s. She spent the rest of the day setting up voicemail, e-mail, her computer, Rolodex and office paraphernalia. If her eyes were iron pellets, than Sheldon was definitely the magnet. She couldn’t help but look at him throughout the day as if compelled by a force stranger than M. Night Shamaylan films. As far as she could tell, Sheldon never returned the glance. As far as she could tell, Sheldon spent countless hours hammering away at his keyboard.

     She finally wrapped up her work around 6 o’clock. Everyone else in the office had left, except Sheldon. He appeared to be completely focused on his computer screen. She waved goodnight, but no reply. Perhaps he didn’t see her. But after a delay that would have cost an Olympic marathon runner the gold medal, he waved back. Tara felt a slight thrill, which she pawned off as excitement for starting a new job. A deeper part of her knew it had to do with Sheldon. But it would be foolish to entertain such nonsense. She had a career to think about.