Curse of the Afflicted Read online

  "We unfortunately needed to undertake ... " I started.

  "Haley," Blair broke in, "had to tend to a family emergency. We told her to take all the time she needs. She'll be out a while. But Ned went to all the groups, he was in the back room, so he's totally up to speed on this. More so, in fact, since he was sitting behind the glass watching."

  My partner came into our business knowing precious little about focus groups, but Blair did know how to spin a yarn. An improvisational actor with impeccable timing, the truth was like warm clay, stretched and molded to fit whatever purpose lay in front of him. It was a skill that came effortlessly to Blair, one which often left me befuddled. Blatant lying was a trait that was becoming tiresome to endure.

  "I love this," Gretchen beamed and turned to Quinn. "Can you get the agency to start developing a creative brief, John? I'd like them to brainstorm and get some product names for Ned and Blair to test. PAA should also start looking at a media plan. This is going to be fantastic!"

  John nodded enthusiastically and then looked up at me. "Say, Ned. Did you get any feedback from the groups as to how best to position this?"

  "Thank you for providing a segue to my next chart," I said, the pain in my back growing more severe. I smiled broadly, not in reaction to John's question, but to avoid wincing. In some circumstances, a person exhibiting pain would evoke sympathy; this was not one of them. In the corporate world, appearing physically weak was akin to being weak in every other area. I tried taking a deep breath but the pain registered even more harshly. I thought longingly of the bottle of Advil sitting in my medicine cabinet at home as I soldiered on.

  "Let me step back for a moment and explain what we did. We sometimes use what's called projective techniques in focus groups. This allows people to get creative and personify a product. It gives them permission to either praise it or trash it, but without losing the veneer of being polite. If the product were a person, we ask what they would be like, how would they look, how would they dress, where would they live, what would they eat. I once moderated a focus group and asked them to describe an internet site that was under-performing. Someone depicted it as a man who had been wealthy at one time and now ate most of his meals at Burger King."

  "So what'd they think of DX-101?" asked Victor.

  "In this case, we had them describe the kind of a car a person who used this new Garter product would drive. The answers we got ranged from Porsches to Lamborghinis. We then asked what kind of home they would live in and they said a swanky condo, maybe in Manhattan. Or Miami, right on the water."

  "Wonderful!" someone said. "Sounds like we'll be able to charge a lot for it!"

  "But a word of caution," I said, tightening my abdominal muscles as my back pain intensified. "The lifestyle this kind of person lives is not necessarily aspirational. We are still a sexually confused nation. On the one hand, people admire those who have an active, freewheeling lifestyle. But they don't necessarily see that in themselves. These people acknowledge they don't live in a Park Avenue penthouse, and were a little hesitant to do what it takes to get there. They admire the life, but they don't necessarily approve of it."

  "Meaning?" John asked.

  "Meaning," I said, grimacing now at the heightened degree of pain, and feeling less able to choose my words carefully, "this needs to be positioned in a classy way. Any sexually related product can be tricky to promote. This is one of those. Do it wrong, and it can kill you."

  A pall of silence filled the conference room. Someone coughed. I took a deep breath and the pain in my back expanded sharply for a brief moment before starting to ease when I breathed out. Blair looked aghast for a moment, although he quickly morphed into good-old-boy mode. "But you guys'll never do it wrong," he told them. "You're Garter! You're the best!"

  The tensioned subsided, Gretchen heartily agreed, and the conversation around the table began to flow again. I sat down and pushed my back tightly against the soft chair. I eased back and tried to listen, although I barely followed the discussion, focusing more on breathing slowly and rhythmically through my nose, keeping my teeth clenched. After a good twenty minutes of discussion, Gretchen concluded the meeting by thanking us and saying they would be in touch with next steps. John led us back down to the lobby.

  "Great presentation, fellas," he said. "We definitely want you involved in the price testing. The discrete ... what was that?"

  "Discrete choice," I said. "It's multi-variate research. We show consumers a product with different prices in different size jars featuring different brands. The consumers then get to select trade-offs. It works very well. You wind up with the optimal price point. The one where you make the most money."

  "Well that's the one we want. And we trust you guys. We'll be in touch, this was great. Thanks."

  We said our goodbyes and Blair and I walked silently across the lobby toward the parking garage. We passed a Starbucks, its long line snaking out all the way into the street as caffeine-deprived office workers waited for their late morning fix. Had the queue been shorter, I might have stopped off for something. But I also sensed Blair's unusual reserve; Blair being quiet usually meant Blair wanted to talk. He just didn't want to do it in public. As we entered the garage area, he lit a cigarette and blew a plume of smoke toward the ceiling. We waited a long minute in silence before the garage elevator arrived. With timing worthy of a philharmonic maestro, Blair turned to me at the exact moment the elevator doors closed.

  "Did you really need to ask that?" he snapped. "Do you want to blow everything?"

  I stared at him. "Can you expand on that?"

  “You bet your ass I can expand on that. Were you really going to tell them about canning Haley?"

  "I don't think you need to worry about that."

  "I'm more worried about you. And that other comment. That if Garter does it wrong, they'll kill their product? What was that about?"

  "I don't know," I said, not wanting to talk about my back pain. "It just slipped out. Why is this a problem?"

  "We're on the brink of landing the biggest client of our lives, the break we've been waiting for forever."

  I felt my breathing grow rapid, and the pain in my back intensifying. "You're not talking about Garter. You're talking about the vice president."

  "Of course I'm talking about the vice president," he said. "You've got to be very careful about what you say, and who you say it to. Especially if we're going to start playing in the big leagues with Richard Sudeau."

  I shook my head. "Don't you think your concerns are unfounded?"

  "I have a funny feeling they're very well founded. There's something going on with you today. Don't you want to be successful?"

  "Sure," I said, eyeing him warily.

  "You're not becoming one of those guys who's scared of success, are you?" Blair asked, wrinkling his nose. "The ones that self-sabotage?"

  "Of course not."

  "Then you should feel very lucky I was there to step in."

  "I'm beginning to wonder how lucky I am," I responded, the pain in my back weighing heavily. "I thought the meeting went well."

  "It did. Because of me. What if I weren't there? Where would you be without me?" he demanded, pointing the lit end of the cigarette in my face.

  "The same damn place you'd be without me," I replied, the restraint draining from me, but not enough to verbalize where he could stick his cigarette.

  We stared at each other for a long second, our words resonating, becoming louder through the silence, as we had nothing else to fill the void. It was not the first tense conversation we had had, and I sensed it would not be the last. Our partnership often went down this rocky path. Argue, confront, reconcile, repeat. A cycle engaged.

  The elevator door opened and we exited, Blair and I nodding silently, sullenly to each other as we walked off in different directions. Climbing inside my Honda Pilot, I shoved my back against the seat and grimaced at the pain. I wondered if this agony I was feeling was a harbinger of things to come. And I drove o
ff, not realizing I was about to enter the wildest ride of my life, a hellacious journey that was beyond anything I could have ever possibly imagined. The pain in my back was merely the beginning.

  Chapter 2

  It only took a few minutes for me to reach the medical plaza, but I kept shifting my body around in the car, never quite getting comfortable. When I walked into the doctor's office, the waiting room was empty. I sat for a long twenty minutes before a nurse in dark blue scrubs ushered me into the exam room. Dr. Elijah Sterling had been my next-door-neighbor in the freshman-year dorm; we bonded over a love of basketball, spy novels, and Belgian ale. It had been over twenty-five years since we first hoisted those brown bottles of Chimay, a bit of contraband smuggled in by another kid in our dorm, a fast talking New Yorker who had acquired a reasonable facsimile of his older brother's drivers license. Eli had always dreamed of becoming a doctor, an internist just like his father. He aimed to be a caring, respected, distinguished member of the community.

  My old pal had achieved his goal quickly, although being added to his father's burgeoning medical practice in his early thirties had smoothly paved his way. I had long been envious, not of his success, but of his single-minded passion. I was not blessed with his direction or vision; I did not have my path carved out. For many years I was unsettled, searching for what my calling was, dipping my big toe into various jobs, not staying long enough to spin them into a career. When I eventually settled into the profession that was right for me, it was only because survey research combined a dozen elements that I found intriguing. Eli loved to say that as a pollster, I had finally landed into the perfect situation, a career focused on asking questions rather than answering them.

  "If it isn't the political wizard," Eli crowed as the door opened. He stepped inside, dressed in the customary white lab coat and with his staid professional demeanor, stethoscope hanging from his neck. His black hair was now flecked with gray, but Eli's face remained smooth, the confident physician whose worries never seem to appear on his face. He placed a file folder carefully down on the counter and we shook hands warmly. "Last time I saw you, you were plotting to overthrow the governor of California."

  "And we succeeded," I said, "although our candidate may have been in the right place at the right time. Governor Rex Palmer self-destructed. He didn't need much help."

  "Modest. You helped change the course of California history."

  "For a few people, I suppose."

  "Well," he said lightly, "I can attest my life hasn't changed much."

  I would not imagine it had. Elections rarely impact the lives of the affluent. They may pay a little more or a little less in taxes. They may see a surge in homelessness as they drive to their plush offices, or they might learn of a few more burglaries in their exclusive zip codes. The potholes in their tony neighborhoods might not get filled as quickly. It was always the ones down on the low end of the wealth totem pole whose lives were most affected. For people at the level of Elijah Sterling, politics was mainly theater.

  "So I haven’t seen you in awhile. How've you been, Eli?" I asked. "How's the family?"

  "Oh, fine, all is well. Courtney won't be joining Angelina at the Brentwood School, she's headed to Harvard-Westlake this fall. I guess we jumped though all their hoops without tripping up."

  "Doctors get special privilege," I observed. Harvard-Westlake was the premier prep school in Los Angeles, one of the most elite schools in the country. When two parents get together in L.A., the conversation almost inevitably drifts toward schools, who's applying where, and the odds of getting admitted. "I'm sure you're pleased she won't have to besmirch the family name and attend Beverly Hills High School."

  "There's nothing wrong with public schools, Ned," he pointed out diplomatically, holding up a well-manicured palm. "We're products of them."

  "True," I said. "Berkeley's a state school, but it's still pretty exclusive. Tougher to get in now than when we were applying. Angelina will find that out next year."

  "Any chance of a scholarship for her?"

  "No. My daughter's smart, but not driven. She doesn't think she has to be," I sighed. My own upbringing had been vastly different from Angelina's, in almost every way imaginable, culturally, financially, geographically. Coming out of South Carolina, my choices weren't robust. My family could afford junior college, and made subtle hints at my joining the army after high school. I lucked out by earning a National Merit Scholarship, which gave me a springboard out of the low country, into a vast new world. It wasn't merely the other side of the country; Berkeley might just as well have been on the other side of the planet.

  "Things have a way of working out," Eli said. "She might even get a free ride for softball. I hear she's quite the pitcher. Brentwood's having a great season."

  "Long shot," I shrugged. "We'll figure out a way to pay for it. Business seems to be picking up. I've been doing some work for Garter Vitamins."

  "I thought you were focused on political campaigns, not those supplements."

  "Sometimes you have to turn a blind eye to things, especially when their business helps with the bills. You know, Garter's always looking for doctor endorsements. Would be an easy payday for you."

  Eli gave a small guffaw. "Sorry. There's a fine line between medicine and snake oil. I've taken an oath. First do no harm."

  "Good to know."

  "So," he said, quickly changing the subject, "what brings you to my doorstep?"

  "My aching back," I said. "It's been hurting like hell the past couple of days."

  "When did this begin?"

  I struggled to recall. It was probably over a month ago when I first noticed some irritation. Like many aches and pains that afflict the middle-aged, I just assumed it was the advent of a new phase of life, a distraction I would need to endure for a while. I imagined this ailment, like the many other annoyances that beset us, would eventually go through its progressions and then dissipate.

  "Maybe a month," I said. "I told Leslie about it. She's been bugging me to come see you."

  "Smart woman," the doctor smiled, instructing me to take off my shirt and engage in deep, methodical breathing. The pain ebbed and flowed as I took air into my lungs before sending it back out. Eli pressed the cold metal disk against various sections of my back and listened carefully through his stethoscope. He asked me where the pain was, and I stopped him at a spot six inches below the area where my neck and left shoulder connected. After a minute of poking and prodding, he stepped back and placed the stethoscope back around his neck.

  "Thoughts?" I asked, feeling my researcher's deployment of open-ended questions starting to take shape.

  "This is why married men live longer," he said, jotting a few notes down. "People think it's because of companionship, sharing experiences, regular sex. Nope. All wrong. It's very simple. It's because wives tell their husbands to go see the doctor when something doesn't feel right."

  "And?"

  "And then they nag their husbands until they listen."

  "I'll remember that next time Leslie and I have a fight and I start conjuring up fond thoughts about one of the cute, young women I work with."

  "Don't go beyond thoughts," he said, wagging a finger. "You've got a good deal there. Don't mess it up. All it takes is one dalliance and you're through. Wives never forget, even if they can forgive you. And you'll never hide it from them. They can practically smell the betrayal on you."

  "You're quite the fountain of wisdom," I remarked, thinking back on my most recent business trip, and the dalliance that was offered up to me by Haley, who was simultaneously comely and predatory. The temptation was there, but so was the feeling that such a tryst would not end well.

  "Second marriages can do that to a person. Socrates once said that when a man has a good wife, he becomes very happy. Want to know what he said about a man who has a not-so-good wife?"

  "You're going to tell me regardless, aren't you?"

  "He becomes a philosopher."

  We both smile
d. Leslie and I had married right after college. Neither of us dated much, we just blended together nicely, comfortable in the way a fuzzy, old sweater made you feel warm. Leslie was slender and pretty, she had those soft, delicate doe eyes that could tug on my heartstrings as well as light up my heart. We shared the same approach to politics, which is to say we enjoyed the strategy of a campaign more than getting into the nitty-gritty that came later, the wonky aspect of public policies, the actual act of governing.

  "So, what's the diagnosis, Doc? Am I going to make it?"

  Eli did not answer right away, instead he turned back again and wrote something in his folder. He looked down at it for a few seconds and then jotted down an address on a small slip of paper. Handing it to me, he gave me a long, concerned look.

  "I think you need to go in for a chest x-ray," he said.

  "Why?"

  "I heard some wheezing. And the pain is in an unusual area. Might be something, might be nothing. But you should get it checked out. The imaging center is a block away. It'll only take a few minutes."

  I nodded, a bit puzzled, but I didn't inquire further. Eli was telling me all he knew, and like a good doctor and a better friend, he was not going to speculate. I didn't want him to, either. I looked down at my phone and checked my afternoon schedule. Aside from returning a few phone calls, I was free.

  "Sold," I said, putting on my shirt before Eli walked me to the exit. I was about to say goodbye and suggest we get together for a family barbecue soon, but one of the nurses came out from her station, phone in hand, a puzzled expression on her face as she addressed me.