The Little Renaissance of J. H. Pearce

The Little Renaissance of J. H. Pearce(KT Joseph) The Little Renaissance of J.H. Pearce
A Short Story by
KT Joseph


Chicago’s Michigan Avenue’s Magnificent Mile at sixty floors up the slick steel and concrete Aeryopolis Building. On this otherwise friendly Friday morning in the Art Room of J.J.B. and F. Advertising, I was at my easel working a product concept storyboard. But just outside my door, in the beige walled and blue carpeted corridor crouched H.H. Zarkhanian V.P., a marketing director. Damn, again! Such was none other than techoid creep “No-No-Zarkho”. Oh, yes, that same fanatical Zarkho who munched, drank, rolled-on, gargled, sprayed, spritzed, and wore Jacobson Jahuty Balzinger and Futche Advertising clients' wares. Such was also that same V.P. who brutally and frequently nuked my Art Department’s hand-crafted art work into lifeless, electro-pixilated computerized road-kills. Now, on this Friday morning outside our door, he was, once again, straining to ideate himself into the Mercury Cat prepping his attack. But prepping not strenuously enough. Bundled in his gray three piece suit, he clopped through the door like a frenzied malt liquor bull. All five-feet and eight hulking inches of him galumphed down the aisle aiming for my work cubicle. Along the way, he crunched our pastellist Bottomly’s elbow into Hirschfield's water color buckets, splashing yellow and crimson rivulets onto Marla's story board. At which she squealed: "Oh, hell, not again!" Upon which plaintiff wails, as usual, charcoals snapped, air brushes sneezed, paint tins tinkled. All around the Art Room, my faithful five staff artists gulped down their morning coffees and stampeded for the johns. That was precisely when Zarkhanian’s paunchy double-breasted torso with fists on hips snorted to a stop somewhere above my head.

Friday morning. What I needed not the most was Zarkho veepeeing around my Art Room. Nor did I hanker after -- plop! -- that stack of yellow legal-sized sheets he fisted down to me. Before my disbelieving eyes, sixteen pages of Zarkho's red marker doodlings were littering my easel along with a cover sheet screaming his manic scribblese. "ATTENTION: Art Department! FROM: H.H. Zarkhanian, V.P. SUBJECT: Order To Re-configure Concept Art Work On Fluro-97 Toothpaste Campaign." End of decree. But, uh-uh, Zarkho! Neither a snorting V.P.’s re-config order nor Act of Congress could force us to resurrect that particular project --- and damn certainly not on a Friday. With a number-12 pony hair brush in hand I nudged Zarkho’s yellow pages away from my visual center, half expecting a vile slurpy-sludge to ooze out at me. Fierce consternation I could sense a-bubbling behind Zarkho's bulging eyes as he watched his re-config order scooting across my easel.

"Senior Staff Artist Pierce,“ looking as if suffering a bowel cramp, Zarkho excreted my name. "You will accept these ideations on the new, improved Fluro-97 campaign. And you will begin to re-accomplish the entire project beginning as of now, Senior Staff Artist Pierce. Today."

Neurotic cockroach --- Ideations, did he say? Re-accomplish the Fluro-97 concept work? Hoping Zarkho would vaporize into disgusting green smoke, I fingered the pages of his "ideations" in front of me – recalling how Zarkho had been plaguing the Art Room for some weeks. A month ago, he erupted about --- what he called --- “superfluous serendipitous foliage" on a woodsy panorama we did for an outdoor bug spray. Come to think about it, that was also a Friday. That morning, he bolted through the door, stomping down the main aisle like an arrogant wildebeest, huffing and chuffing that he wanted mathematical symmetry on that forest scene of shrubs, trees, and weeds. Yes, that’s right, “symmetry” in a forest of wild-growing natural green things. So, okay. We huddled on that one. Later, and grudgingly, we kowtowed, and scratched off a week's in-progress workload. That night, we re-conceptualized the V.P.’s ideation. Ah, but Oh, yes, a week later his symmetrical forest caused the ad campaign a giggling demise when the senior personal products chieftain looked at it and laughed out loud while tearing the symmetrical cover page a-twain.

Last week’s skirmish came out of the "Lovely Limbs Unguent" product. About two months ago, this was once a runny violet-scented zit-zapper. Not a hot seller in the marketplace. Now, the JJB and F client was peddling the stuff as a beautifying gel for milady consumers. During a marketing strategy meeting we presented our art work-ups based on the Lovely Limbs Unguent model. As we passed around our concept pages, Zarkho spotted a frisky little spray of freckles in Ms Lovely Limbs’ cleavage on one of our cover page concepts. Two pert, pink peaches with freckles betwixt made Zarkho go berserk. But Zarkho-Shhhha-larko! That model for Ms Lovely Limbs was a neat 40-ish person of classy womanhood. She had a comely smile, long, lush salt-n-pepper hair, elegant ballerina limbs, and, Oh!, those naughty perky breasts. Of course, to the Art folks, her freckles were visual spice. Not to Zarkhanian. He and his techoid twits wanted to mutilate her image into something improbably pristine 20-ish. Ah, but the nit-grit reason that detonated the V.P.'s ballzalitos? Turned out the friendly makers of Lovely Limbs Unguent bought our concept artwork. They loved those freckles and shook our hands to bless our concept work-ups. Right there, to Zarkho, the Art Room had blatantly ripped-off Marketing’s thunder and committed anti-tech blasphemy. This was grounds for inter departmental warfare. So he slithered himself up the corporate food chain to hiss at my boss, the Senior Art Director --- himself existing in a state of less than a normal testosterone count. After Zarkho’s meeting, a memo from on-high zinged down to me. When I read the memo, real world concerns like groceries and rent money scurried across my career’s optical center. And so came another gut-clutching cave-in to No-No, Zarkho. Oh, well, as someone in the business once said: “He who fights and runs away lives on to another day --- able to pay his ComEd utilities bill every month.” But, damn! That was then. And, now, with Zarkho standing over me on this Friday morning --- this re-do of the Fluro-97 gig! No way.

"Okay, Mr. Zarkhanian, I'm really sorry about that 'Lovely Limbs’ thing." Oh, yes, I lied.

Mustering up V.P. machismo, Zarkho jutted his jaw. From my desk top, he snatched up a perfume account storyboard. Through squinty scowling eyes as if reading a how-to on administering bovine enemas, he dangled my work at arm's length and announced, rather primly:

"Never mind this, now. You will re-open the Fluro-97 project. And you will adhere to those guidelines I have therein provided. As for the epidermal corruptions you intentionally left on Ms Lovely Limbs, when you refused to utilize PPST 437 as I required..."

"P.P.S.T. 4-3-7?" I cut in.

"Aha! So, you don't recognize company nomenclature for prepubescent skin tone number four-three-seven. I seeee, SSSSSenior Ssssstaff Artissssst Pierce." Zarkho was pushing.

"Veeeee Peeeee Zarkhanian." Stupid move of the first order --- I was pushing back.

Now, he shrieked. Then he stooped over my easel. "For months you've violated JJB and F's systematized, creative methodology. Oh, yes-yes, I've watched you. You've dragged this Art Department to the brink of gross ineptitude with your ..."

And that’s when push-back turned to shove-back. "Whoa, now. Cut the bull. Yo, Zarkho! Just so happens, in the past year, this so-called inept Art Department dragged in four --- here, count my fingers: a-one and a-two and a-three and a-four --- company commendations. Oh, gee, I suppose those must’ve been for lousy un-systematized creativity. Earned a couple national industry awards to boot. And that’s not to mention …. But, hey, wait a freakin’ second. Systematized creative methodology? Hell, is that even possible?"

Before I could say "Gotcha," Zarkho straightened up, unfazed --- except for, maybe, a slight twinge of his skinny lips at the corner of his mouth. He busied his pink fingers brushing imaginary dust balls from his left suit sleeve. His eyes rolled up to the ceiling with "heard it all before" contempt. He straightened his tie. He corkscrewed his head left to right. Then he clenched his jowls into concrete croissants. "In-sub-or-din-ation," he cawed like a whining vulture with gas pains.

"Insubordination ... to who?" I rolled his paperwork into a shabby log. "To techoid crap like this? This phony, garbage-reek? Look, Mr. Zarkhanian. You can stick this up your random-access-memory for all I care. Scuttle the Fluro-97 job that we’ve already done? You can't be serious. Six thousand work hours. Besides, that project is finished, been approved by the client and at senior exec level. The artwork's up in Repro --- yesterday. Get it? It’s finito. So, now, you want to kill all that so you can feed a re-work job to your techie crunchkins? You're putting me on."

Definitely, was he not putting me on. Zarkho exploded, babbling about computer assisted creativity. He ranted about virtual reality imaging, and hammered me on programmed marketing factualities. Finally, he dumped out an oat sack of god-awful sales hype. Just about thirty seconds of his techie- twaddle was all I could withstand. I struggled to my feet. My nostrils were gasping. My eyes were watering. The carpet in my cubicle, I swore, was sprouting green swamp moss. All around, daylight was clotting into filmy orange-brown hues. Out the door I hobbled into the hallway for air. Right behind me Zarkho jabbered on. Then, back to the Art Room -- Zarkho yapping at my shoulder. Three steps further, I collapsed into the chair behind my easel, and tried to shrug off the V.P.’s blubbering "new ... improved ... leading brand.”

Then, somehow, poof!, we were eyeball to eyeball. That’s when Zarkho grumbled a low, slow, guttural growl: "We know consumers and we have ways of making them buy."

And – kah-hooo-eee! Within that twelve inch air-gap between his face and mine, Zarkho breathed out a hot frothy vapor --- containing overripe fermentations of Ms Fannie Francie's Freeze Dried Coffee mixed with smoke residue of Pedro Petito's leedle cigareellos, and embalmed in Sweet-Shot Mouth Disinfectant. All of which was ruthlessly propelled by an inhumane putrefaction ozone of Yummy-Tummy Yogurt. Each ingredient a top-shelf account at JJB And F Advertising. That was when I knew. Oh, Hell, did I know! Zarkho’s flesh-corroding fog was festering up my very own corporate autopsy.

Desperately suffocating and brain-boggled, I grabbed Zarkho's paperwork and spread it shield-like in front of his face to fend off that pompous oralized flatulence. Just above those yellow pages, I saw his eyebrows suddenly violently convulsing over two huge rolled-up eyeballs, and his hair exploding into oily-brown bristles. After a long, long moment, his techie-babble choked. He slapped both his hands over his mouth, jerked himself around, and galloped out the Art Room door.

Last I heard of H.H. Zarkhanian, V.P., he was in the Men’s slouched over a wash basin faucet, sucking up and gulping down buckets of water right next to a nervous wide-eyed guy who was desperately zipping-up at a nearby urinal. As for myself, not long afterwards, I resigned. Sane of mind, sound of soul, and anxious of body, with my last JJB and F paycheck pushed into my rear pants pocket, I jumped into a stainless steel elevator and whooshed down sixty floors. In six hallelujah minutes, I stepped out the front door to sunshine and the rarefied air of freedom.
Alas, what price freedom?

End