Lucky Stars by Jane Heller Page A

supervisor—even gave her a standing ovation. I was astonished by their reaction, amazed that they would respond positively to her browbeating when I had always responded negatively to it. What in the world was going on here?
    “Mrs. Reiser,” said Mr. Terwilliger after the applause had died down. He was a thin-lipped man with sunken cheekbones and a dour expression. I had a hunch he wasn’t a picnic to work for. “I’m sorry that you were put through such anguish over our product, but I’m a man who appreciates bluntness and you were blunt here today. I won’t promise that there will never be another bone in a can of Fin’s premium tuna, but I will promise you that we’ll continue to do our best to cut down on the problem. It’s customers like you who remind us that we’re not just catching fish and canning it and shipping it out to faceless individuals, but that we’re providing healthy, nutritious meals to real human beings with real concerns. As a matter of fact, you’re exactly the kind of person we’re trying to reach with our television advertising. That’s what we’ve been doing here all morning, you know—talking about our advertising. Our agency seems to think our customers are morons, as evidenced by the crap they wanted us to go with today.” He glowered at the easel with the poster of the tuna can doing the backstroke. “It’s an embarrassment, isn’t it? So now that I’ve rejected it, they’ve got exactly two weeks to come up with something we won’t be ashamed to put on the air.” He glowered again, this time at the W&W folks. “Well, this isn’t your concern, Mrs. Reiser. Helen.” He rose from his chair and shook my mother’s hand. Mine, too, although he didn’t call me Stacey; he didn’t call me anything. “Thanks for stopping by and reading us the riot act We could all use a little cold water thrown at us from time to time.” He turned to Corbin. “See that we send Helen a complimentary case of tuna, would you, Beasley?”
    Corbin said he would, then hustled over and escorted us out the door of the conference room. “Wow. You were a big hit,” he told my mother during our stroll back toward the lobby of the building. “Mr. Terwilliger doesn’t usually dole out parting gifts. He’s on the frugal side, just between us.”
    “We won’t tell a soul,” I said, dying to get away from this bizarro tuna company and wondering why I consented to be dragged along in the first place.
    We were chitchatting with Corbin and giving him my mother’s mailing address and inching toward freedom when one of the men from the ad agency sprinted down the hall and rushed over to us.
    “Don’t go, Mrs. Reiser,” he said breathlessly, grabbing her hand and pumping it. “I’m Peter Sacklin, a vice president of Wylie and Wohlers. I’m the W and W executive in charge of the Fin’s account and I wonder if you’d mind coming back into the conference room for a few minutes.”
    My mother’s eyes narrowed. “What for?”
    “We’d like to talk to you about the television advertising we’re doing for Fin’s.”
    “Talk to me? What do I know about that kind of thing? It’s my daughter who knows about commercials. Personally, I never watch them—except the ones she’s in, of course.”
    Peter Sacklin gave me a puzzled look, as if trying to figure out what she could have meant. Obviously, he’d missed me as the Irish Spring Lady, the Taco Bell Lady, etc.
    “If you’d just give us a few more minutes of your time, Mrs. Reiser,” he said, “we’ll explain everything.”
    My mother shrugged in resignation. “Sure. Why not? I’ve got nothing else to do today.”
    Peter Sacklin smiled, took her arm in what I thought was a rather courtly gesture, and walked her back toward the conference room. I, meanwhile, was left standing there with Corbin Beasley, feeling like I’d been turned down for parole.
    “Are we supposed to go with them?” I asked.
    “We could,” he said. “I’m