Chapter 2: Folded-Arms

There are three of us, best pals since childhood. Credit due, Trish McGovern is the successful one. Froggy flogs used cars at his old man’s Cadillac shop. I’m on the way to the top pier of the advertising industry, but with still some ways to go.

But Trish, well Trish defies consumption. She graduated from the Yale Architects’ School, which is rumored, a priori, to be top shelf.

Sometimes all lessons aren’t learned in school. In fact, should you live in the Brewster Household, more education takes place there than in any classroom I’ve graced with the cream of the Birdie brain.

Case in point. Even though it was after midnight, well after, when the mater was driving Froggy and me home from the police station, Auntie Pru and Wandy were waiting up.

I can tell you from experience of the most personal aura, there is nothing uplifting about padding naked into Chez Brewster with three folded-arms females scrutinizing your appearance.

Auntie Pru passed a one-word verdict, “Shower.”

Well, that streetcar ride is, as the Parisians say, hîstoirë. Or, nolle prosequi if you prefer Greek. In the past four years, it’s been nose-to-grinding-wheel for yrs. truly. Consequently, I am probably due for another well-deserved promotion. Overdue, almost certainly because the agency’s owners, my mother and Auntie Pru, don’t want to be accused of napa ... nepo ... something-ism, you know the word.

My first major career move launched me from the mailroom to the number three exec in Digital Filing. Then, over the years, after a couple of people left and another one retired, I rose to Assistant Customer Relations Executive on the esteemed Gibraltar Soup account.

(Chivalry precludes me from mentioning my following in the footsteps of certain family elders. Re: my perhaps inclusion in the Advertising Industry’s Whose Who. It could happen someday, I will go so far as to say that.)

Now, it’s not all glamour and three martini lunches. In fact, no martinis; the Gibraltars are devouted Mormons. So ... tact, delicacy, discretion, that’s my middle name. Or, names, for you technocrats.

The account manager herself, Louise Lane, is what you might call old school. In fact, I do. She told me, for some reason gritting her teeth, “Birdie, I’ll let you meet the Gibraltars when Hell ... when you’ve studied the account. Understand the campaign. Can recite the goals, strategies, tactics — in other words, after you’ve learned your corporate catechism.”

Like I mentioned, old school. All that business babble could be summed up, and I do, “Sell more soup!”

In ascending order: (I believe it’s ascending when you start with the shortest; if not, it’s descending; one or the other, pretty sure):

Froggy Attenborough. Small baby, small toddler, small as of today. But heart of gold. And his nice quiet ways have some girls becalmed into thinking he needs mothering. Pshaw! He’s used that shy manner to ease more panties down more thighs...

Trish McGovern. About halfway between Froggy and me, elevation-wise. Of course she arrived on the scene fully outfitted with all the necessary f. equipment. Which turned out to be v. useful in the Show & Tell classes she inducted.

Birdie Brewster. The tallest, but certainly not the quickest. That accolade would reside on The McGovern’s shoulders. She reminds me of the Sisters, quickness-wise. In a non-sisterly way.