Biscayne Bay Blues
The following is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
***
Elevator doors open directly into the penthouse suite of a five star hotel offering panoramic views of the South Beach of Miami; the eye is drawn by deco lines and chromium embellishments to the floor-to-ceiling windows, and through a glass darkly, we see the surrounding terrace and beyond that, dissected by a cheese-wire balustrade, the twinkling lights of Biscayne Bay to the West, and the painted inky blackness of the Atlantic Ocean to the East.
It is the year of our Lord 2012.
We are here to meet the music impresario James Jovane.
Two handlers escort us to a long white couch. A man is already seated there. He is known as The Client. He is not the boss, but he is not not the boss. He inhabits a purgatorial space: a managerial limbo, suspended between his paymasters at the High Spec Computer Corporation in Taiwan, whose constant caprice requires him to make daily expiratory sacrifices, and the 300 hundred or so North American employees that report to him.
A year ago HSC acquired a majority stake in 808, the headphone manufacturer, for $300m with the intention of incorporating the company’s audio technology into its ON.e handset in an attempt to revive flagging sales.
We have been in Miami for the past two weeks in pre-production, readying ourselves to make an advertisement for this telephone.
And now The Client has a new headache to add to his other headaches. James Jovane, the co-founder of 808, is a hardware guy, but he’s also a music man, a dreamer of dreams, and therefore an unknown quantity. He has opinions that need to be listened to, ideas that have to be taken into consideration, introducing another layer to The Client’s intermediate state. James wants to see what we’ve been up to.
Oftentimes The Client feels like the filling in a shit sandwich, or more accurately the spoiled cream in corporate America’s dauphinois. He is well remunerated to deliver news that leaves a bad taste, while constantly buffeted by centrifugal forces over which he has very little control. This gives him a perpetual feeling of gnawing guilt, something to which his friends seem immune. His resting state is nervous. A gelatinous nervousness that seeps into every nook of his being in much the same way that sheep’s pluck is squeezed into a stomach lining to make haggis. On the good days he medicates this with Clonazepam and on the bad days with single malt. Nonetheless, he wakes up most mornings with the distinct sensation that even his hair is nervous.
Today The Client is particularly nervous about casting. He fears that we have included too many Black and Brown people in our selects. Of course, in his mind, none of this makes him complicit in any systemic racism. His room mate and closest confidant in college was Black, back when his whole life still seemed to stretch out before him, full of possibilities and blowjobs and Cosmopolitans at Mory’s. It’s just that certain markets have certain sensitivities that preclude them from buying a commercial if it has too many Black and Brown people in it, which is a problem for The Client as it displeases the Xindian District executives and can consequently get him fired. Fired hovers over his finances like the Sword of Damocles, pressing daily on his moral compass. Eighteen months ago he took out a loan against his 401(k), which he didn’t tell his wife about, to buy the house they couldn’t afford. He hadn’t wanted to disappoint her.
After weeks of talking about it in coded dog whistles, always stopping short of saying the thing he feels compelled to say — “they’re going to want more white people in this” — The Client is hoping that James will intervene and say the goddamn thing.
But first we have to wait.
James is in a meeting on the far side of the penthouse with three prospective producers. Like biblical Magi lining up at the manger, they each bear the gift of a beat. Each beat is played at a deafening volume. James listens impassively, occasionally nodding his head. At the end of the presentation the three men are dismissed with a polite “thank you.” James gathers himself. He has the stringy presence of a bantamweight prizefighter, all corded veins and sinew. He motions to another handler, who walks across the room to retrieve us.
We gather round.
James says, “Good evening gentlemen. Thank you for coming. Although I’m busier than Jesus, I have had a chance to look at the deck that you sent across, and I must confess, I’m impressed. And believe me when I say this, I’m rarely fucking impressed. I love the casting.”
The Client slowly looks down at his shoes; at his Microsoft Outlook shoes; at his LinkedIn shoes; at his had-to-move-hotel-rooms-because-the-WiFi-wasn’t-good-enough-to-stream-PornHub shoes. All the republic’s primal fears of miscegenation are etched into his brow.
He thinks about his father, Old Man Client, and remembers sitting by his bedside during those final few hypnagogic hours of his life as the canker chewed away at his vitals, and remembers his shallow breathing and the strange smell of his breath, slightly metallic like fish-scale. Old Man Client wouldn’t have stood for this. Old Man Client was a man who spoke his mind, whether it was in the boardroom or the barroom. Old Man Client would have had some timely words of advice for him.
“These sons of bitches will goose you in the grease hole, sure as shit and taxes. They’ll fuck the chilblains outta you, son, if you give ‘em half a chance. Your goddam haemorrhoids will be poppin’ out your eyes. It ain’t fittin’ to speak of. Now git some dander in that peckerwood and sling it to these cocksuckers, leastwise you start aggravatin’ me.”
But The Client does nothing. He keeps staring at his shoes.
Now James wants to have a little fun. He’s been in entertainment long enough to know a stooge when he sees one.
“I do have one question though, if you guys have the time,” James says.
He has our attention.
“I would appreciate it if you could answer it honestly.”
We mumble and shift.
“What do you think of the name of the phone? The ‘ON.e’. Do you think that’s a good name?” James asks, sniper’s eyes fixing each one of us in turn.
The atmosphere is tense and unpredictable. We don’t say anything.
“Come on fellas. Would anyone care to venture an opinion?”
Silence.
James says, “Well here’s how I figure it. I believe in the Age of Aquarius. I think we’re heading towards a technological paradise where we’re all running around in the fields and writing poetry and making love and painting pictures, surrounded by cool things with cool names. Names that encapsulate the very essence of the things they designate. Names that make us feel alive. The ‘ON.e’, however, sounds like the name of a fucking advertising awards show. It’s the dumbest fucking name of all time. We need to change it.”
The temperature in the room is air-conditioned to cold, but nevertheless a bead of sweat gathers at The Client’s temple. He knows full well that hundreds of thousands of phones emblazoned with the word ‘ON.e’ are already sitting in a warehouse somewhere waiting to be distributed. He knows that James knows this too.
James starts laughing, a cruel and mocking laugh.
Before we know it, we’re outside again on Collins Avenue. The humid night air tastes sweet. A Slingshot races past bumping Ricky Rozay.
“I think I'm Big Meech, Larry Hoover / Gettin' work, Hallelujah / One nation under God…”