Miss Sage was one of three copywriters reporting to a senior copywriter, who reported to the Mint-Fresh account executive, who reported to the vice president and account executive, APP Dental Products. There were three other vice presidents and account executives, one for APP Cosmetic Products (shampoos, acne medicines, hair tonics, et cetera); one for APP Health Products (cold remedies, cough syrups, et cetera); and one for APP Personal Products (originally nostrums for feminine complaints, but now-after APP had acquired controlling interest in the companies involved in their manufacture-including three brands of sanitary napkins and eleven brands of rubber prophylactics).
Each of the vice presidents and account executives had his own empire of account executives, assistant account executives, and so on through the hierarchy, under him.
Miss Sage knew more than just about any other copywriter about the upper echelons of the "APP Family" for the same reason that she had had very little trouble getting herself hired by JWT. That was not, as the vice president, creative personnel had publicly announced, because she had proved herself to be a very bright girl, indeed, by coming out of Sarah Lawrence with a summa cum laude degree (BA, English), just the kind of person JWT was always on the lookout for. Rather it was because the grandson of the founder of American Personal Pharmaceuticals (Ezekiel Handley, M.D., whose first product was "Dr. Handley's Female Elixir") was now chairman of the board and chief executive officer. His name was Ernest Sage, and he was Ernie's father.
This is not to suggest that Ernie Sage regarded her job as a sort of hobby, a socially acceptable, even chic, way to pass the time until she made a suitable marriage and took her proper place in society. She had decided in her freshman year at Sarah Lawrence that she wanted to make (as opposed to inherit) a lot of money. And after an investigation of the means to do that open to females, she had decided the way to do it was in advertising.
She had learned as much about the business as she could while in college, and she had taken courses she thought would be of value to that end. When she graduated, she had two choices. The summa cum laude would have been enough to get her a job on Madison Avenue if her name hadn't been Sage. But she decided two things about JWT. First, that they were arguably the best and biggest of all the large agencies and would thus offer her the opportunity to learn all facets of the business; and, second, with APP as their next-to-largest client, she would have certain privileges, while learning her chosen profession, that she would not have elsewhere.
It was her intention-once she felt secure, once she had learned the way things worked in the real world, once she had a portfolio of work she had done-to open her own agency. Just her, and an artist, and a secretary. She would find some small manufacturer of something who was bright enough to figure out that he wasn't getting JWT's full attention with billings under a hundred thou and convince him that she could give him more for his money than he would get elsewhere. She would build on that; she grew more and more convinced that she could.
Everything had gone according to plan, including the exercise of special privilege. She had almost bluntly told the vice president and account executive, APP Personal Products, that, substantial jump in pay or not, promotion to senior copywriter or not, she would not want to "move over into his shop" and put her now-demonstrated talents to work there.
There were a number of nice things about being rich, she told herself, and one of them was not needing a job so badly that she would have to spend her time thinking up appealing ways to sell Kotex-by-another-name and rubbers.
And then Ken McCoy had come along. And the best-laid plans of mice and men, et cetera.
The call she was taking from her father right now came about as a result of a call he had made to her the day after Thanksgiving. You were not supposed to make or receive personal calls at JWT, and rumor had it that there was official eavesdropping to make sure the rule was obeyed. No one had ever said anything to Ernie Sage about her personal calls.
"Honey, am I interrupting anything?" he'd said that Thanksgiving Friday.
"Actually, I'm flying paper airplanes out the window," she'd told him, truthfully. The way the air currents moved outside her window, paper airplanes would fly for astonishingly long periods of time.
"Has Pick called?"
"Any reason he should?" she'd replied. "I didn't even know he was in town."
Malcolm "Pick" Pickering had grown up calling her father "Uncle Ernie." Ernie Sage knew that sometimes her father wished she had been born a boy, since there was to be only one child. But since she was a girl, there was little secret that everybody concerned would be thrilled to death if Pick suddenly looked at her like Clark Gable had looked at Scarlett before carrying her up the stairs.
"He is," Ernest Sage had said. "He's at the Foster Park."
"He called you?" she had asked.
"He left a message on the bulletin board at the Harvard Club," her father had said.
"Why didn't he just call?" she had asked. "Wouldn't that have been easier?"
"He didn't leave a message for me," her father had said, as realization dawned that he was having his leg pulled. "Don't be such a wise-ass. Nobody likes a wise-ass in skirts."
"Sorry," she'd laughed.
"He's having a party."
"I thought he was in Virginia playing Marine," she'd replied.
"I don't think he's playing Marine," her father had said, more than a little sharply.
"Sorry," she'd said again, this time meaning it.
"He's giving a party," her father had said. "Cocktails. I think you should go."
"I haven't been invited," she'd replied, simply.
"The thing on the bulletin board said 'all friends and acquaintances.' You would seem to qualify."
"If Pick wanted me, he knows my phone number," she'd said.
"I just thought you might be interested," her father had said, and from the tone of his voice and the swiftness of his getting off the line, she knew that she had hurt his feelings. Again.
Several hours later, sitting in the Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel with two girls and three young then as they debated the monumental decision where to have dinner and go afterward, she had remembered both Pick's party and her father's disappointment. And the Foster Park Hotel was only a block away.
Doing her duty, she had taken the others there. Penthouse C, overlooking Central Park, had been crowded with people, among them Ken McCoy, in a uniform like Pick's. He'd been sitting on a low brick wall on the patio, twenty-six floors above Fifty-ninth Street, looking as if he was making a valiant effort not to spit over the side.
That had turned into a very interesting evening, far more interesting than it had first promised to be. Instead of catching a cab uptown to some absolutely fascinating restaurant Billy had discovered, she'd ridden the subway downtown with Platoon Leader Candidate, McCoy, K. After he had taken her to a tiny Chinese restaurant on the third floor of a building on a Chinatown alley, she had taken him to her apartment, where she gave him a drink and her virtue.
Quite willingly. This was all the more astonishing because she had ridden downtown on the subway a virgin. More than willingly given it to him, she subsequently considered quite often; she'd done everything but put a red ribbon on it and hand it to him on a silver platter.
And he had not been humbly grateful, either. He'd been astonished and then angry, and she'd thought for a moment that he was about to march out of the apartment in high moral outrage. He didn't in the end. He stayed.
But as he and Pick drove back to Quantico, Pick had told him about her family. Until Pick opened his fat mouth, Ken McCoy had thought she lived in the small apartment in the Village because that was all she could afford.
The result was that her letters to him had gone unanswered. And when she sent him a registered letter, it had came back marked REFUSED. At the time, she'd been firmly convinced he was ignoring her because he was a Marine officer, and Marine officers do not enter into long-term relationships with young women who enthusiastically bestow upon them their pearl of great price two hours after meeting them.