Page 47 of The Surrogate Mother
The subtext is painfully obvious:I’m going to stay in the room in case you mess up.
The last person to enter the room is Monica, carrying a plate of gourmet sandwiches. She’s wearing a vivid red blouse paired with a black skirt that shows off what are some really very nice legs. Between her boobs and her legs, every red-blooded male in the room swivels around to stare at her. Cofield’s mouth is hanging open. I wonder if Sam were here, he’d be staring too.
Monica is now close to six months pregnant, but she’s still able to hide it with creative clothes pairings. For example, her red blouse hugs her breasts, but is loose around her midsection. I expect in another couple of weeks, she won’t be able to hide it anymore at all. Which means that as painful as it will be, I’m going to have to give up Monica. Nobody at work can know about our arrangement.
When everyone is seated and has chosen a sandwich, I can begin my presentation. With their product information and the baby photos, we’ve written the copy for anddesigned a website to display their baby food. We’ve been going back and forth on it for months, and now I’m showing them the near-final version. Even as late as last night, Monica and I were going over a list of slogans to find the best one.
“Obviously the real website will be interactive and we’re working with our tech people on that,” I say, “but I just wanted to show you what we expect it will look like.”
I give everyone in the room a chance to look at the image I’ve flashed on the screen. In spite of my issues recently, I worked very hard on this website. I hope they appreciate it.
Jed Cofield is the first to speak. I was hoping he’d say something enthusiastic, but instead he frowns at me. “Um, Abby?”
“Yes?”
“This isn’t what we talked about at all.”
All eyes in the room are suddenly staring at me.This isn’t what we talked about at all.What does he mean by that? I incorporated absolutely everything he told me. How could he say something like that?
“What do you mean?” I ask carefully.
Cofield shakes his head. “These weren’t the babies we discussed using. Remember—I said we needed a more diverse selection. Also, I said I wanted to have the toddler foods at the top and the stage one foods at the bottom.”
He’s right. He did say all that to me. And I made the changes. Except when I look at the screen displayed overhead, I realize the image does not reflect any of this. I see the first baby in the image is the kid with red hair that sticks up, which I specifically remember Cofield saying was an “ugly baby” because I got offended by his calling any baby ugly. But here is Cofield’s “ugly baby,” staring me right in the face.
Oh my God, did I put theoldimages in my presentation?
Oh no.
I can’t believe I did that. What a stupid mistake. And to not even double-check it before a major presentation in front of the Cuddles executives… what iswrongwith me? I must be losing my mind.
“Um…” I shift between my feet, trying to figure out how to play this like it isn’t a huge mistake. I’m not sure if there’s a way. “Right, so these are the first images I used, so I could show you how much better our new design is.”
“Okay…” Cofield says.
And now everyone is waiting for me to show them the new design.
“I need a few seconds to load it,” I say. “Sorry.”
I’m not fooling anyone. Monica has to come to the front of the room to help me load the correct images, and it’s a complete mess. I can feel the anger emanating off Denise, who is doing her best to placate the Cuddles people while I attempt to salvage the meeting.
It takes twenty minutes, but I finally get the right image on the screen. Okay, fine—it was a bit of a snafu, but the important thing is, I’ve got a great website for their product. That’s all that matters.
“I don’t know, Abby…” Cofield is saying.
Jesus Christ, now what?
“Yes?” I say, as calmly as possible.
“I don’t love that slogan.” He shakes his head. “Cuddles Baby Food—nothing is more important than your baby’s tummy.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Aside from the fact that it’s terrible. I couldn’t come up with anything better.
“It’s clunky,” he says.
“Clunky?”
“I want something that rolls off the tongue,” he says. “You know?”
