The glass wasn’t meant to stop anyone; it was decor, it was there to frame the skyline. The same way the Louvre frames the Mona Lisa to make sure you know she’s important. He’d been on that roof a thousand times. Getting drinks with clients, pitching ideas, looking out at the New York skyline longingly like the end of some indie movie with no real plot. He’d gotten distracted by that little glass barrier one afternoon when they were workshopping taglines for an energy drink campaign.
“Chaos in every can,” Joel had pitched the client, and Gordon could feel himself nodding along. The suggestion of danger was important for their fratty college kid demographic, and he knew the concept needed to be locked down that afternoon if they had any chance of invoicing by the end of the week and seeing the profit hit the P&L by the end of the month. The clients wrote down Joel’s tagline in their little black, moleskin notebooks. They always do, and it always had to be moleskin, embossed on the front with their company logo.
This night was different. Gordon stood on the wrong side of the glass. His gray-haired pompadour flapped violently in the wind; his wrinkles fought his Botox as he braced himself. The city, fifteen stories below him, buzzed as it always did, even after a train delay when someone decides to end it all. But that’s not why he was here.
BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.
The banging was like thunder, echoing far away, then suddenly here without time to count between strikes. The firm pounds of knuckles banging on hollow metal. Someone should really oil that stairwell door, Gordon thought for a moment. Nobody ever would.
BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.
Gordon looked back, and they were there, and there was nowhere left to go.
The insane woman across the street, who only spoke to her three cats Mindy, Margaret, and Melinda, watched the whole thing play out. Gordon’s perfectly polished Santoni dropping into the night. His shins, his knees, his hips, his chest, his head. A series of vanishing body parts disappearing into the darkness, swallowing him like a food critic taking one big, expensive bite at the newest, hippest restaurant.
Gordon didn’t scream. He had learned the advanced art of suppressed emotions at boarding school 37 years earlier. He could take any level of client criticism at any volume and would never crack. It was a skill worthy of a resume bullet point or at least a LinkedIn recommendation.
Down on the ground, the lookie-loos had already started to gather. The Halloway was a boxy, older model that was parked in a perfect position to catch him. The truck’s cab had collapsed in, creating a perfect, clean, person-shaped indentation. The windshield shattered under the weight but held together at the corner where someone at the manufacturing plant had placed the sticker “Built in Marion.”
Gordon had done the last thing he would be paid to do; at least he made an impression.
If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.
Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.
Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.
When is part 6 coming?
Love this babes.