Tales from the Ad Biz...
FORTUNA UNLEASHED (Part 5)
A short story, truth hyperbolized
(Names have been changed to
protect the Inadequate)
…Meanwhile, Mary Ellen had been to Court and it was official; she was now and forever Fortuna Massey!
She changed her listing in the phone book, ordered new crinkly ecru stationery, and told everyone at the office they should call her "Fortuna,"--the complete name, please, she would not answer to "Fort" or "Fortie." She threw out everything in her closet that even whispered of polyester and bought a thin, leather belt for $150 at Mark Cross.
The new Fortuna loved Byron Altman, o.k.? But she still loved DeWitt Moore, and she was starting to feel dirty about having sex with one man, while writing long letters about her hopes and dreams to another man, hundreds of miles away, breaking his balls in a corn field, and with the sorry belief that his girl was keeping herself intact for him. Fortuna needed DeWitt's calming presence and sober reassessment of their situation. She also needed more time to think. Why couldn't DeWitt understand that a woman could have a need to hit the top in her chosen endeavor? And still, sometime, in the far distant future, be the mother of his children? Why couldn't DeWitt move to New York?
This is the letter Fortuna wrote to DeWitt one morning when she should have been doing backup TV for a line of pickles:
"DeWitt, Dearest..You canot image how dreary and cold it is here in good old NYC, and the snow is dirty and icy, not like our own dear snow in Mt. Ozzy, and yet the city is ALIVE. DeWitt, today they are bringing in the enormous Christmas tree for Rockefeller Center. When they turn on the lights, I'll take a pic for you. Yes, I know what you are thinking as you read this. One whole year has gone by and I should be coming home for Christmas, and to stay.
But DeWitt, darling, I am making such PROGRESS. I am the only writer they trust to do the pickles. Dearest DeWitt, would it be possible ever, for you to come here to me, instead of me coming to you?"
The letter ended abruptly for the pickle account man was steaming up her glass partition, staring in, with his hands cupped at his temples, trying to read what was on her screen.
***
Fortuna was pretty enough, or she never would have got on at the Grinder, even as a Wangette. In matters of dress, she had outgrown the naïve romanticism of her earlier days in the City, and now she dressed conservatively, wearing nice skirts and shirts and blazers, while everyone else--especially in the cubicles--was running about look like, well, street people. Fortuna believed that "No Talents" turned themselves into shabby performance artists because they couldn't write or draw, but needed look like maybe they could.
From the beginning, Fortuna kept herself pulled together for that was the way she was reared up in Mt. Ozzy. Which is not to say she failed to notice what went on in the corner offices, where people dressed for work, even when they were only stopping by to pack up their things.
At least one of the offices was always vacant, and with empty cardboard boxes piled outside the door, or full ones, stuffed with bottles of Evian water, and good British hunting prints, waiting. Senior lady writers, whom the C.E.O. referred to as "the wasted shanks people," got it in the neck regularly, but Fortuna copied their look anyway. Her skirts were good gray flannel, or tweedy, and cut right. Some of her shirts may have had a tinge of rayon, but the 30s/40s rage had made the fabric acceptable. And, as the C.E.O. once remarked, she had a head of hair. She wore it straight, held back by a simple tortoise shell clip, as they did in the old Vassar days when everyone had monogrammed hair brushes.
Byron Altman was another matter. To say he would straighten out one day was to say Jackie Collins had a bone to pick with Stephen Hawkings. Oh, Byron played a little squash at his club, and that helped control his gut. But otherwise, you could just forget it, just walk on by. He had taken his body and more or less shit canned it, the way the men did to the new Ford in Tobacco Road. He dismantled it; he just ran his body straight into the roadbed, and never checked under the hood, or wondered if he was running out of gas, or if his gears were meshing, or how his crankcase was doing. He simply junked himself, which was part of his devilish attractiveness. Nobody knew if he would make it through the next twenty-four hours. Of course there was the usual speculation about cocaine, although Fortuna watched Byron closely when he came out of a bathroom, and he never acted funny or hyper. She watched for runny noses, too, like a mother.
The way Byron chose to live, and all the talk about it, made him seem even more romantic and needful. Like Heathcliff, night after night, drinking at his lonely table, with his sorrowing hounds lying on his shoes. He melted Fortuna's heart; she wanted to cuddle him, and tell him everything would be all right.
Byron Altman needed a good woman to marry and stand behind him. Whereas DeWitt Moore was a gritty farmer, used to taking care of himself. And that is why Fortuna married Byron, because he needed her.
Mary Ellen…oops…Fortuna tapped her pen against her front teeth and tried to think how to tell DeWitt, gently, in a letter, of her marriage to someone else.
She knew she was rationalizing, but it helped steel her for the task. To begin with, DeWitt should have parted with the airfare to come see her in New York, the dumbass. Things might have turned out as planned and, besides, he would have loved The City.
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12:38:08 PM 
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