Marketing Beef

MARKETING BEEF

  by

  Rick Bettencourt

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  https://www.beatentrackpublishing.com

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  This novel is a work of fiction and the characters and events in it exist only in its pages and in the author’s imagination.

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  Painfully-shy accountant, Evan McCormick, is conservative with his money and tough on his body, yet the decent nest egg he’s amassed and the toned physique he’s formed isn’t enough to fulfill him. Evan’s starving for affection. As an introvert, bonding with others isn’t Evan’s best quality. When Dillon—an impeccable-dressed and debonair ad executive—joins the firm, Evan lets his guard down. An office scandal and sexually-overt billboards popping up all over New England bring the two together in this funny yet romantic tale.

  ***

  First published as part of the Love's Landscapes Anthology

  (DRiTC 2014, MMRomanceGroup.com), based on the prompt:

  Dear Author,

  So, one day during lunch, I was walking and just happened to look up and saw this billboard. It cracked me up. But I didn’t think much of it; it made me laugh and thought that was it. Well, I saw another one the next week, and the week after that, and well, you get the picture. I was all, man, did the advertising world get a sense of humor all of a sudden? Then it hit me, all these billboards had one thing in common, these are my accounts in our ad agency. Obviously I wasn’t the one that were coming up with these one-liners because I’m not that oblivious, come on now, give me some credit! They were the accounts that I was handling the accounting for. Yes, I am an accountant for an ad agency. But I really keep to myself. I mean, I smile and say hi to people when they say good morning but I don’t go to bars after work to socialize if you get what I mean. I am a pretty happy guy, no drama really, but maybe a bit lonely. My last relationship ended in college and I get attached easily so there hasn’t been anyone for a very long time. Am I making too much out of these billboards? I thought I was until one day, I saw one that was directly addressed to me…it was quite clever because they managed to work my name on it and the ad was freaking hilarious but it was like a BIG HELLO. Those WERE for me but who? How are they getting away with them? Why do they want my attention? And really, WHO WOULD DO THAT FOR LITTLE OLE ME?

  Hi, dearest author, as you can see, I would love lots of humor, lots of EPISTOLARY elements (those are in caps because PLEASE, PLEASE, CAN I HAVE SOME?), and generally just a feel good, HEA story. I want to smile and laugh when I read your story!

  Thanks so much,

  Rissa

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Other Publications

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  Chapter One

  Dear Journal:

  Last night, I took a bath with Mr. Bubbles. I haven’t done that in years but I was sore from my workout. It felt good.

  This morning I ate a bowl of granola, a banana, and a glass of pomegranate juice. (I’ll have to log this in my spreadsheet when I get home.)

  Oh, I also walked Mrs. Johnson’s dog from 5:30 a.m. to about 6:00 a.m.

  What else?

  God, am I really that boring? (Please don’t answer that.)

  It’s just that…that…Oh, I don’t know!

  Okay, today marks the seventh anniversary of Gary and me splitting up. It’s not that it’s a bad thing. I’m glad we’re no longer together.

  It’s just that…seven years! Who…What have I done during that time?

  Alright, I’m not going to get myself depressed. I need to focus on my accomplishments. And there have been many.

  Evan Capri McCormick’s Septenary Achievements:

  Obtained job at Thoroughbred Marketing and recently vested with five years of service.

  Promoted to senior accountant with a 15% increase in salary—after only three years!

  Removed dairy from my diet and have no more indigestion. (Thank God!)

  Bought the house in Conant for 50% below (the Great Recession) market value. (And through scrimping, saving, making accelerated payments, and a rebound of the economy, I have over $285,000 in equity.)

  Increased chest measurement by ~5% (note: check BMI spreadsheet tonight for exact proportions).

  Increased pushups from ~35 per minute to ~55 (also check values in spreadsheet for exact time span…believe it was 10% per year).

  Decreased number of times I mastur…

  ****

  “Hey, Evan.”

  I slammed shut my leather Moleskine and looked up.

  “Looks like accountant-boy is working through lunch again,” said Madeline, from Account Services. She was out for her lunchtime walk.

  I pulled a folder out from under my lunch tote. “Oh, hey Madeline.” I slid out the company’s revenue report and glanced at it. I didn’t want to get into any small talk but she had a way of getting me chatting.

  “All work, no play,” she said, now standing with her hands on her hips in front of me. She was wearing some pink and black, tight-fitting gym outfit. She looked like a black raspberry ice cream cone, her well-endowed chest being scoops of dairy, which I now avoid. “At least you’re out in the sunshine, instead of eating at your desk like you usually do.”

  I chuckled and fidgeted a bit. Leaning back on the park bench, I held up a hand to shield the sun. “Nice day, huh?” I wasn’t very good at striking up a conversation.

  “It is, Evan. It is.” She looked out toward the river behind me. “Well, I’m going to walk off my spinach salad,” she said, without moving. She looked down at me.

  “Enjoy.” I pushed up the bridge of my brown-rimmed glasses, hoping to get rid of her, and studied the report in my lap,Thoroughbred Marketing, Inc. EBITDA Report.

  She huffed. “I’ll let you get back to your numbers.”

  I looked up again, but she already had her back to me and was waving to Jenny, the blonde, from Human Resources. “See ya,” I said but I don’t think she heard me.

  Madeline Alvarez was an attractive, single woman about my age, early thirties. I don’t think she suspected I was gay. In fact, I would say many of my office colleagues knew zilch about me. I pretty much kept to myself.

  I took the last bite from my ham and tomato sandwich and thumbed through the EBITDA. My journal could wait. “Hmm. The fund account is off again,” I mumbled to myself.

  I could have read the report at my desk but after a week of gloomy New England rain, outside was a welcome respite.

  After a few minutes of reviewing numbers, I pulled my journal out from under my thigh, where I had shoved it when Madeline approached. Its pages were nearly full. Need to go to Barnes soon and pick out a new one.

  I threw my water bottle in my tote, packed up my briefcase and got up from the bench. As I walked the graveled sidewalk back to the office, I heard a commotion over by Lynch Street.

  Madeline and Jenny, along with a handful of other people from the office, had congregated near the billboard that hung across from the Stop & Shop. I knew the sign well. Over the years, the firm had leased many spots on it. In fact, I was the one who had measured the potential advertisement yield based on variables such as traffic patterns, time of year and demographics for the surrounding n
eighborhood.

  I walked closer to them. From inside the park, it was hard to see what they were looking at. As I approached, there was chuckling and shaking of heads.

  “Did we lose the Yankee account?” Sam, from IT, asked another colleague.

  I looked up at the advertisement. “Wow.” Yankee Neighborhood Beef Co. had been one of our biggest clients, but we had seen revenue from them dip recently.

  “We didn’t do it,” I heard someone else say. “I would know. I would have seen it come across my desk.”

  I looked back at our little crowd. There were a few more spectators joining our assembly, even shoppers from the grocery store across the way were staring at us and then up at the sign.

  Madeline looked behind me, toward the office. “Shh. Don’t look now but here comes Dave.”

  I turned. Dave was the head of Creative and pretty much had his hand in every piece of copy written by the firm. Behind him were a couple of his team members, including the guy I had a little thing for. His name was Dillon.

  Dillon Deiss was known around Boston as a hotshot copywriter. The firm hired him about three or four months prior. He and Peter—a colleague of his from Corridor, our competitor in Boston—were hired around the same time.

  The three of them walked across the parking lot, but my eyes were locked on Dillon. His suit jacket blew back, and the buttoned shirt he wore revealed a bit of skin beneath. I gasped audibly and then quickly looked around to make sure no one had heard me. I scratched my ear and cleared my throat to cover my reaction.

  I tried to look away, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He was smiling and chatting with Peter. The sheen on Dillon’s gray suit suggested it could only have been made from the finest of material. What, I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been much into fashion.“On clearance” was the only qualifier I used in purchasing my clothes. His light blue shirt was opened at the collar and hugged a toned torso. Underneath it I imagined a solid set of pecs and firm abs that no doubt rivaled mine.

  I touched my stomach and looked away. I was afraid I was becoming too obvious. Dillon looked polished. His outfit probably cost more than the new set of tires I had recently thrown on my Explorer.

  He was probably a couple of inches shorter than me—not that I would have really known. We hadn’t stood close enough to tell. He had thick, dirty-blond hair. The type that would stand on end when he got it cut short, like he had a few weeks back. I had admired the square cut neckline of his new haircut while he was walking down the hallway to the cafeteria.

  My hair was a couple of shades darker than his but didn’t look good short. I kept it on the long side, which meant it was forever falling in my eyes and needing to be tamed with a comb or even a baseball cap.

  As Dillon approached the gathering, he smiled at me. I tightened up and averted my eyes downward. My briefcase’s strap fell off my shoulder, and I yanked it back up.

  He and Peter stood next to me and looked up at the advertisement.

  He smiled at me? No. He doesn’t even know you exist. That was just a courtesy. I was forever having internal conversations with myself; a result, no doubt, of living alone for so many years.

  He put his hands in his pants pockets, and his suit coat draped behind his forearms. “Not bad,” he said studying the sign. He turned to Peter and said, borrowing from the billboard’s slogan, “Never underestimate the power of advertising.”

  Peter chuckled and nudged Dave, their boss. “It’s got to be Corridor,” he said, eyes still trained on the billboard. “Dick, my old boss over there, has a bit of a phallic fixation.”

  Dillon laughed. His teeth were as white as my shirt. He caught my eye and quickly looked away.

  Oh, God. He saw you staring at him. Quick! Look at the billboard, you fool! I looked up.

  The advertisement displayed a woman standing in a kitchen. Shiny copper pots dangled from a pan rack above her. In her hands, she held a large piece of kielbasa. One hand grasped the tip of it and her left eyebrow was raised. Behind her a man and two teenage boys—presumably her husband and children—sat at the kitchen island. They were a little out of focus but were whooping it up, apparently joking around while waiting for dinner. Underneath her was the text:

  Never underestimate the power of the sausage.

  Madeline pointed back toward the office. Mr. Whitfield, the firm’s president—with his head of stark white hair—stood in his office window, taking in the scene. The crowd dispersed.

  ****

  Jonathan William Whitfield, CEO

  Thoroughbred Marketing Inc.

  1150 Beacon St.

  Beverly, MA 01915

  Dear Mr. Whitfield,

  I am writing to inform you of some concerns I have regarding the firm’s finances.

  As senior accountant at Thoroughbred, I have been monitoring the investment portfolio for nearly three years. As such, I have watched the Firkins Fiduciary Fund (FFFX) balloon to unprecedented highs. A 650% average return is—as I’m sure you know—unheard of in such an investment vehicle. I realize this high yield has provided the firm the ability to expand and offer many perks to the staff, from which even I have benefited. However, I feel it is my duty to…

  I rolled my office chair back and nearly hit the wall on the opposite end of my small, makeshift home office. “Uh! I can’t send this.” I spun around. “Especially in writing.” It was getting late. I stretched. “Something like this needs to be done face-to-face.”

  I stood up, turned off the desk lamp, grabbed my mug of water, and headed to the bedroom. “Face-to-face, by someone other than me.”

  The light from the summer moon shone through the window and cast a couple of squares from the windowpanes onto my bedroom floor. I pulled off my T-shirt, threw it on the scatter rug, climbed into my bed, and pulled up the comforter.

  I lay there awhile with my eyes open, hands locked behind my head. I looked at the journal, lighted by the moon’s glow on my nightstand. I had finished the day’s entry, adding to my list of achievements.

  The air conditioner clicked on. The wall vent by the master bathroom blew, and the window curtains on the other side of the room started to sway.

  I watched the gentle fluttering of the sheer curtains and thought about my accomplishments. There was no relationship on that list. I got up and went over to the window to look out at the lake. The house was so secluded I didn’t worry about anyone seeing me dressed only in a pair of blue boxer briefs. Nor did I care that anyone could see the large wine-stained birthmark I had over my upper body. No one saw that.

  I took in the beauty of the lake. The moon’s reflection glistened upon it. “A shimmering dance,” I said. It was how my mother described the lakes in Michigan when we would go camping.

  My view of the water—now that I had one after cutting back all the dead brush—was one of the reasons I had bought the house. It reminded me of my childhood.

  Conant Lake, as it was commonly referred to, was really an oversized pond. But the name stuck. It was fed by various rivers and streams coming out of the much larger Wenham Lake to its north.

  I stood there, mesmerized by the moon dance, for what felt like hours, while I thought about my childhood, my mother’s death, my move to Massachusetts for school and ultimately meeting, and separating from, Gary.

  “It’s hard to believe it’s been seven years,” I thought aloud. “Seven years and practically no one else.” There had been a couple of one night stands—actually, exactly two.

  Gary and I split up the summer after we graduated from Salem State. Apparently, to him, our little college romance was something akin to a series of “dorm biffs” and being really good friends. I had been eyeing apartments for us to move into together, while he was enjoying Boston’s nightlife.

  During that summer, he got a job with a high-profile law firm that liked his economics and legal background, and so he moved to Boston. He found a boyfriend who was a lot more muscular than I—and, I’m sure, didn’t have a birthmark swashe
d across his chest.

  The hoot of an owl shook me from my reverie. I looked up and spotted the Big Dipper, followed its base up to the North Star, and then to the Little Dipper. I still remembered star navigation from Boy Scouts.

  I went and sat back down on the bed, turned on the lamp, took my now full journal from the top of the nightstand and thumbed through it. I liked the feel of the weighted pages, and its fullness felt like an achievement.

  I opened the bottom drawer, placed the journal on top of all my others, and selected an old one at random.

  I took the job with Thoroughbred Marketing! I just got off the phone. I might be able to get that old summer cottage in Conant after all.

  I thumbed through some more.

  I’ve decided to put the data related to my workout routines, calorific intake and finances in a spreadsheet, instead of clogging up my journal with numbers. Plus, it’ll allow me to run better analyses…

  The original intent of my journals had been to log my physical fitness and finances. But as they morphed, I found the writing part, not just logging of numbers, to be the most rewarding. The facts were better tracked elsewhere.

  I flipped to another page.

  I spent a good part of the day clearing brush and cutting back overgrown trees in the backyard. I felt a bit like Thoreau. Later, I went for a hike around the lake and happened upon a loon’s nest. And I met a neighbor, an older lady named Ann Johnson. She lives on the opposite end of the lake. With the brush cut, I can now make out the tip of her cottage. Her dog, Detritus, is cool. Her husband died years ago. She lives alone too and said we should…

  I leafed to the back of the journal.

  By couponing, making my own lunches and not eating out, I’ve added an extra $100 a month to my debt payoff fund. At this rate, I’ll be mortgage free in only five more years. At that point, I’ll be able to…