Ron Goulart - How Heather Moon.pdf - Ron Goulart - widez2

HOW HEATHER MOON

KEPT MY LIFE FROM

GETTING COMPLETELY

FOULED UP AGAIN

RON GOULART

THE MORNING AFTER THE imps invaded the mansion for the second time, I went in and tried to get

my copy chief at the advertising agency to switch me immediately to a different project.

“Impossible, inconceivable,” Leon Gruskin told me without even looking up from the trade ad proofs

atop his wide, cluttered desk top. “We need your unique copywriting capabilities on our upcoming pitch

to get the Sunnyland Cigarettes account here at the shop, Harkins. We’re talking about a potential billing

of $12,000,000 a year.”

“Even so,Leon , I have some personal reasons why-“

“Exactly. Exactly, now get back to your office and get cracking on some fresh ideas for a Sunnyland TV

campaign. We have to make the damn presentation to the Sunnyland people in just ten days,

remember?”

This all happened some years ago, when I was a young advertising copywriter with sufficient hair and a

lot of potential and they still allowed cigarette advertising on television.

Instead of returning to my cubicle, I wandered into theArtDepartment to talk to Andy Lenzman. From his

single narrow window you could, if you pressed against the pane, hunched and tilted somewhat to the

left, actually get a glimpse of Madison Avenue far below. A lot ofManhattan ad agencies had their offices

on Madison Avenue in those days. Maybe they still do, I don’t keep up.

Lenzman was a small, lean man in his early thirties with crinkly, short-cropped dark hair. He later

became, I think, a moderately successful gallery painter. I’m pretty sure I read someplace about ten

years ago that they showed some of his work at theMuseumofModem Art . I haven’t stayed in touch

with him, but at the time he was my closest friend at the ad agency.

He pushed back from his drawing board, where he was roughing out a newspaper ad for Hopps Bros.

Beer. “What’s happening?”

“I’m doomed.” I shut the door and sat in his only other chair after moving a tumble of empty OatBursts

Cereal boxes.

“Alimony trouble again?”

“No, nope, I got my lawyer to make a deal with Sue’s shyster out inCalifornia .” Sue Smith had been my

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college sweetheart and I’d made the mistake of marrying her. I told you about that once.

“Then it must be Marny Olmstead,” he said, tapping absently on his board with

his charcoal pencil. “I believe I warned you about having anything to do with a

lady who copywrites for a rival agency. If memory serves, there’s a law against

it. Something to do with cross-pollination and the basic laws of—“

“It’s not Marny. Fact is, I’m seeing her this Saturday.”

He made the sort of face you make when you taste something sour. “Was Typhoid Mary busy?”

I leaned forward in the chair. “It’s imps, far as I can tell.”

“Hum?” He dropped the charcoal pencil into the trough at the bottom of his board. “Imps?”

I replied, “Right, imps. They’re attacking the mansion, plaguing me, eating all the Sunnyland Cigarettes ad

copy I type up, making rude and threatening remarks.”

“C’mon, Will, you’re supposed to be the top copywriter here at Hannigan, Arnold & Bolderwood,”

Andy told me. “You can come up with a better excuse than that for missing a deadline—‘The imps ate

my homework.’” He shook his head, indicating disappointment in me. “What, by the way, are imps?”

“Well, the ones who materialize at my Cousin Phil’s mansion inSouthport ,

Connecticut, are sort of—“

“Materialize?”

“Yeah, these things appear out of the air with a sort of popping sound,” I explained. “All over the house,

but the biggest flock of them frequents the den where I’m trying to work at night. They make mildly

explosive noises, coming and going.”

“That figures, I guess,” he said, nodding slowly. “I mean, you wouldn’t expect imps to ring the doorbell,

tip their hats and say, ‘Hi, we’re the imps come to eat us some advertising copy.’ What did you say imps

were?”

“I looked them up at the library, after they told me who they were -imps are sort of junior grade demons

who hang out in the netherworld,” I explained. “Mine are about the size and shape of piglets. Except not

at all cuddly.”

“Right, you wouldn’t expect an imp to be cuddly.”

“They’re a sort of sooty gray in color and have a lot of extra teeth, sharp and spiky.”

“The better to eat your copy.”

“The problem is I don’t have time to do all my regular copy assignments here at the office plus the extra

stuff for the Sunnyland pitch,” I went on. “So I have to work at home, too, until we make the

presentation.”

Andy glanced at his closed door. “They haven’t followed you to work, far as you know?”

“Not yet, nope. Of course, they only started manifesting themselves night before last for the first time.”

He nodded again, even more slowly. “Well, since they haven’t popped up at the agency, why not work

late here? That is, if you’re really seeing imps and haven’t simply come down with a severe case of

advanced heebie-jeebies.”

“I think they only come out at night. So they might show up here, too, if—“

“Fine then. You could drag Gruskin—your esteemed copy chief works until the wee hours most

nights—into your office and point at them,” he suggested. “’Here, sir, is why my copy is coming in late

and with teeth marks all over it.’

About how many show up of an evening?”

I shrugged and it turned into a small shudder. “Not sure, Andy,” I admitted.

“It’s tough to get an accurate count, since they move around a lot, making

threats and all and—“

“Your imps can talk?” There was something in his tone now that indicated he was still not quite sure that I

hadn’t simply gone stark raving honkers.

“In little piping voices, sort of falsetto, yeah. With Swedish accents.”

“Is that standard operating procedure for imps?” He inquired, eyeing me. “The Swedish accent part?”

“No, I suspect they’re just doing that to annoy me,” I told my friend. “Hearing dozens of porcine imps

warning you not to write any copy about Sunnyland Cigarettes can be pretty unsettling. The fact that they

Page 2

start most sentences with ‘Yumpin’ yimminy’ just adds to the horror.” I gave a forlorn shake of my head.

“Wait now—it’s only the Sunnyland account these little dorks are ticked off about? They don’t care if

you keep writing about OatBursts and Terry’s Permanent-in-a-Box?” He was tapping his board with his

pencil again. “There are, you know, a whole stewpot of other agencies going after the Sunnyland

Cigarettes account. Maybe someone at one of our rivals has put a hex on you.”

“That’s what I suspect, sure, because the imps imply they’ll depart if I quit working on the Sunnyland

pitch,” I said. “Thing is, Andy, who the hell is behind it? I haven’t got any idea.”

“Isn’t Helfant & Associates also trying for that account?”

“Marny’s ad agency? No, not that I know of.”

“You certain?”

“She would’ve told me. We are, after all, pretty close.”

He watched me for a few silent seconds. “You don’t seem goofy, Will,” he conceded finally.

“I’m not nuts,” I assured him. “I’ve had experience with supernatural stuff

before, so I’m damn sure this—“

“When was that, old buddy?”

“Nine years ago, when I was going toBrimstoneUniversity ,” I answered. “A

professor sent some demons to persuade me to stay away from Sue, because he was

trying to court her and—“

“Sounds like a splendid guy. You should’ve heeded his—“

“I’m trying to convey to you that I know something about occult matters.”

“Okay, so how did you get away from those other demons? These were full-size demons, not the piglet

versions?”

I held my right hand as high above my head as I could stretch. “Tall guys.

Mean-minded and, in most cases, fire-breathing.”

“And you shook them off how?”

I walked over to his window, trying to get a glimpse of the morning Madison Avenue. “A friend helped

me.” “How?”

“Well, she had quite a few supernatural powers herself, but in a white magic sort of way,” I answered

quietly. “Whole family, on both sides, was magical in one way or other.”

“She? Was she cute?”

I kept facing the window. “She was, yes. In fact, if I’d had any sense back then...” I let the sentence trail

off.

“You’re still pining for her.”

I turned toward him. “No, I got over that,” I assured him. “She went up against this professor and, with

some help from her family, defeated him. I haven’t seen her since I graduated.”

“But, look, old buddy, you’re house-sitting in that mansion inConnecticut while

your cousin frolics inParis and—“

“Phil is frolicking inMajorca for a year.”

“Be that as it may, you’re residing inSouthport and that’s less than a hour drive from Brimstone,” Andy

continued. “Therefore, just get your butt over to Brimstone and look up this—what did you say her name

was?”

“Heather Moon.”

“Okay, you go and talk to Heather Moon. Apologize for not keeping in touch, then

mention that you’re mixed up with demons again,” he advised. “Emphasize that

it’s only just small demons this time. Would she, for old times’ sake, mind

helping you shoo them out of your life? That’s what old friends are for and—“

“I can’t do that,” I told him. “Chiefly because I don’t have any notion where the hell Heather is. She

leftConnecticut right after college—and her family moved toMaine orVermont four five years back.”

“Shouldn’t be too tough to track her down. That’s what I’d—“ The phone sitting on his taboret started

to ring. He picked up the receiver. “LouvreCity. How can we help youse?” Andy listened for half a

minute and handed the phone toward me. “For you. Sounds like a Swede.”

Page 3

I took it, swallowed and spoke. “Yeah?”

“You bane better not bring Heather Moon into this, by yingo,” warned an imp and hung up.

BY THE TIME I got home to theSouthport mansion that night, darkness had fallen and it was raining. I

parked my Nash in Cousin Phil’s big, shadowy three-car garage and went sprinting along the white

gravel drive and up the wide steps to the front door.

Hesitating before I inserted the key, I glanced back at the Sound, which you could glimpse over the top

of the high stone wall my absent cousin had built around his acre and a half of tree-filled property. The

foam on the dark water glowed faintly. Taking a slow deep breath in and out, I opened the front door of

the sprawling Victorian mansion.

There was only silence and darkness beyond the threshold. No sound of imp activity. I inhaled and

exhaled again, then entered.

Gingerly, I clicked on the overhead lights in the long, paneled hallway.

No imps.

There was a vinegar smell that I noticed now, strong enough to overpower the strong antiseptic odor of

the furniture polish Cousin Phil had made me promise to apply to every single stick of furniture in the

whole damn twenty-one room mansion at least once a week. I didn’t recall the imps smelling vinegary,

but I, nevertheless, scanned the corridor for any sign of them.

From the kitchen came a forlorn meowing. “Those assholes,” I observed.

Part of my house-sitting duties involved looking after two resident cats. They were fat and lazy, disdainful

toward me. Since the invasion of the imps two nights earlier, they spent most of their time in seclusion,

behind furniture, under beds, and hunkered in closets and cabinets.

“George? Ira?” I called, my voice sounding a little quivery.

More mewing from the kitchen.

Making my way there, I located George, who was the color of stale peanut butter, cowering under the

sink. “C’mon, fella,” I urged, squatting and reaching for him. “I’ll feed you and, if we can locate him, your

accomplice.”

Hissing George slapped at my extended hand with his clawed forepaw.

“Yow,” I remarked, yanking my hand out of range and standing. “Okay, I’ll put some cat food in a dish.

You emerge when you’re in the mood, schmuck.”

They’d only eat Kittytonic Kat Banquet #2, an expensive concoction that cost thirty-five cents a can. We

had a cat food account at Hannigan, Arnold & Bolderwood and I could’ve gotten sacks of it free, but

Phil had insisted that George and Ira be fed only Kittytonic Kat Banquet #2 and, once a week, Kittytonic

Kat Banquet #3. Both cats, for some reason, loathed Kittytonic Kat Banquet # 1, even though it

contained tuna. Under the deal I’d made with my cousin, I had to pay for all the pet food.

I opened the immense refrigerator and took out an opened tin of cat food. I was spooning it into the

special pewter dish that had George engraved on the side in Gothic script when the telephone rang.

That sudden shrilling in the rainswept mansion made me straighten up and stiffen, causing me to plop a

spoonful of Kittytonic Kat Banquet #2 on the spotless white linoleum.

I walked over to where the phone was supposed to be and noticed that it didn’t seem to be there. That

is, I couldn’t see it but I could still hear it ringing.

“Very funny,” I said aloud, assuming this was another imp stunt. “Invisible telephone. Clever.”

I prodded the air with my hand until I connected with the receiver. My first attempt to answer wasn’t

successful since I was apparently talking into the wrong end.

“Hello?” I said when I finally got it right side up.

“Working away, are we?” asked Leon Gruskin, my copy chief.

“Just got home.”

“Speak up, Will. You’re talking too far from the mouthpiece.”

“I am? Sorry.” I tried to get the invisible phone closer to my face, giving myself a hard smack in the teeth.

“Ow. That better?”

“I just had a brainstorm,” he announced.

People who worked in the Creative Departments of advertising agencies back then had frequent

Page 4

brainstorms. Maybe they still do. I have no idea what they call them now.

“Which is?” I inquired.

George had emerged from under the sink. After giving me an intense evil-eye scowl, he waddled over to

the glob of spilled food and began nibbling at it.

“How does this line hit you, Will? ‘Sunnyland Cigarettes—There’s magic in every puff.’ Well?”

I was watching the cat and listening to the heavy night rain slam at the high, wide windows. “Magic?”

“Makes them forget about tar and irritation.”

“Yeah,Leon , but it doesn’t especially fit with the ‘Let Sunnyland put some sunshine in your life’ theme

I’m working with.”

“This supplements that. We use it in some separate television spots that you’ll write,” he explained.

“Have you seen Harry Firedrake, Jr., yet ?”

“I don’t think so. Who the hell is he?”

“The famous magician.”

“Not that famous. I’ve never heard—“

“He’s playing at the Gotham Theatre on West 43rd. Show is called Oh, What A Magical Night! And it’s

terrific,” continued Gruskin. “He does a Floating Lady variation that’s sensational and would look great in

a commercial. This cute little assistant he works with would be floating there with a cigarette in her hand.

Firedrake, Jr., gestures with his wand and the cigarette lights up. She starts puffing, expresses

contentment. We dolly in on the magician and he says, “Sunnyland Cigarettes—There’s magic in every

puff.’ What do you think, my boy?”

“Golly, I’m sold. Rush me a carton of Sunnyland Cigarettes and put it on my tab.”

“Let’s be serious. I’m not busting my ass after office hours just so you can be inspired to make wiseass

remarks.”

“Sorry, sir.” Probably talking into an invisible phone was making me uneasy and even more flippant than

usual.

“You’re going to see the Firedrake show tomorrow night,” I was informed. “Angelica and I saw him

Saturday night and I’ve been kicking around this magic idea ever since.”

“Who’s Angelica?”

“My wife.”

“I thought your wife was named Georgine.”

“That was my first wife, two years ago. We’ll have to have lunch more often, Will,” he said. “There’ll be

a pair of tickets for you at the box office. Bring your wife.”

“I’ve been divorced for several years,Leon ,” I mentioned. “But I’ll get a date. And maybe tomorrow

you can fill me in a little more on the magic angle of this campaign.”

“Happy to, my boy. Good night.”

It only took me two tries to get the phone hung up.

All the telephones were invisible. After very carefully entering my den and typing myself a memo about

Leon Gruskin’s half-witted magician notion, I decided to phone Marny.

That meant feeling around my desk top for nearly five minutes before I located the phone. The imps had

also made my coffee cup invisible, which caused me to spill cold coffee all across my desk blotter. You

couldn’t see the stuff, but there was a wide splotch of invisible sogginess.

“Hello, love,” answered Marny in that throaty voice of hers.

“How’d you know it was me?”

“That greeting would fit any one of eight other guys, Will.”

I laughed, fairly sure she was kidding. “Listen, Marny, the agency is interested

in a magician named Harry Firedrake, Jr. I’ve got two tickets to see his show

tomorrow night inManhattan and—“

“Already saw him, darling. He is marvelous, although the skinny girl he’s got assisting him is abysmal.”

“Care to see him yet again? We could meet after work, have an early dinner and

--“

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Ron Goulart - How Heather Moon.pdf

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