In His Kiss

Chapter 5

Justin’s first month at Plexus.


“Daphne, you are not going to believe this!”

“What?”

“I went for my final interview today.”

“I know, I know! What happened? Did you get the job?”

“Almost not!”

“Why, what do you mean?”

“The guy, doing the interview? The partner in the firm? His name is Brian Kinney.”

“So?”

“So BRIAN Kinney!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“Shit!”

“Yes!”

“So what happened?”

“He started by saying I couldn’t have the job, which really pissed me off. I mean, I own this job! I’m probably the best candidate they‘ve ever had!”

“Yeh. The most modest too…”

“Come on, Daph. You know I’m right. So I asked him if it was because he was too humiliated that I had shot him down…”

“Oh, good move, Justin!”

“Well, at that point, I didn’t have the job, so it’s not like I had anything to lose,” Justin pointed out. “He said no, that wasn’t it.”

“Bullshit!”

“Right. So I asked if he thought it would be too distracting to have me around, you know, sexual tension and all. He said no, again.”

She just laughed at him. “That might be a problem for you though…”

“Shut up. Anyway, I figured it out.“

“Justiiiin. Spill!”

“He still thinks he’s going to get in my pants. And he can’t if I work for his firm. For three whole months. And he just didn’t want to have to wait that long.”

“Oh my god! What a jerk.”

“No shit. So I told him that was NEVER going to happen. Just NEVER.”

“And he believed you.”

“Well, it is never going to happen.”

“Of course not.”

“Daphne, it’s not. I’m not a masochist.”

“I know. So you convinced him, and…”

“Evidently I did. I got the job.”

“So now you go to work, and you get to see him every day?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t know. I doubt the partners ever come down to the Art Department. I might not see him at all.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“…Good. Yeah. That’s good.”

“Poor Justin.”

“Shut up!! …So, have you found a roommate yet?”

“Trying to change the subject?”

“Not trying. Changing the subject.”

“Okay. Well, I have a prospect. Kat, from my abnormal Psy class, works at this store, Torso, and there is a guy she knows, who used to work there, looking for a place. He is older, but she thinks I’ll like him because he’s gay.”

“Because you like me and I’m gay.”

“Exactly.”

“Well, that’s kind of an insulting generalization.”

“Yes. Apparently I’m officially a fag hag.”

“You are my fag hag.”

“Don’t worry, Justin. You’ll always be my favorite fag.”

“Oh, yes. I am terribly concerned. When are you meeting this guy?”

“Thursday, for coffee, at that diner on Liberty Avenue where we went that one time, when we couldn’t get into Babylon.”

“…God. That was such a long time ago…” A lifetime ago. A bashing ago.

“How’s your hand?”

“It’s fine.”

“…”

“Really Daph. It’s good. I don't draw that much, I use the computer mostly. It’s all right.”

“Okay. Shit. I gotta go to work. Talk to you soon?”

“Thursday. I want to hear about my competition.”

“Don’t worry. He can’t be prettier than you.”

“Or have a better ass.”

“Oh, Justin. No one has a better ass.”

“Thank you, Daphne. I love you.”

“Love you too.”

***

 

Justin had spent the day getting acquainted with the Art Department at Plexus. The environment was exciting. The pace was daunting though; they were all under pressure. They had put him to work coloring layouts.

For each campaign, the art department received general directions, sent up some mock ups, got feedback and more refined directions, until what they sent back up was exactly what the person responsible for the account wanted. The partners handled the biggest accounts, with the associates handling the smaller ones. The partners were also responsible for bringing in clients.

Plexus was very successful, a small company, but with many very lucrative accounts, giving more personalized services than the bigger firms. At least they liked to project that boutique image. In reality, they had bypassed a few of the ‘bigger’ companies in client numbers a long time ago. In advertising, image was everything.

From the rumor mill, in his first couple of weeks, Justin learned that Brian Kinney, though the most recent partner in the firm, had also brought the lion’s share of accounts in the past eighteen months. He was driven and demanding, creative and exacting.

All four partners had nicknames in the art department.

Alan Curry was ‘His Nibs’. He had founded the firm, came from old money, and brought in accounts through his country club contacts.

Paul Markowitz was ‘The Coach’. He had most of the sport related accounts and created the images a couple of very successful sports teams projected to their fans.

‘The Professor’ was Marcus Shelburn. He taught part time at New York University, and was responsible for market surveys, projection analysis and customer trials.

Brian Kinney’s nickname was still fluctuating from the most common one, ‘The Asshole’ to ‘Rage’, to more rarely but no less meant, ‘God’. There was a definite love-hate relationship between him and the Art Department. He was creative enough to sometimes put them to shame, and arrogant enough to rub it in, (The asshole), driven enough to keep them working overnight if need be, terrorizing them with barely contained anger when he felt they were not bold enough, not pushing the envelope hard enough, not giving him their full potential, (Rage) and brilliant enough to make clients accept campaigns they all thought were way over the top, and doomed to fail, until they were all proven wrong (God).

Seventy-five percent of his campaigns used sex rather blatantly to sell products. The other twenty-five percent used sex as well, but in a more subtle approach.

The first of his campaigns Justin got to see develop from beginning to end was the Vuarney account, focusing on their designer sunglasses. The account representative for the company was female, which led most of them to worry about the obvious use of female objectification Brian had chosen for the campaign, the lens of the glasses reflecting a scantily clad female.

Justin was gay, and still he thought it was brilliant. Were he stupid enough (and rich enough) to be in the market for a three hundred dollar pair of sunglasses, he would totally want Vuarneys, after seeing the campaign. The only thing he didn’t like was the color of the lettering, though The Professor’s market research showed the blue color chosen to be the customer’s preference. He would have used orange. It was warmer, more evocative of the sun, of being blinded by the setting sun on the road while driving west.

For his own edification, he prepared the boards in both colors, doing the orange one during his lunch hour. It was better. He had no doubts. The Vuarney meeting was at three. He was supposed to bring the boards to Cynthia at two. Brian came down to pick them up himself at a quarter of one, while everyone else was still out to lunch, and while Justin was admiring his orange ones.

“Taylor.”

“Mr. Kinney.” Though he looked great at the club, Brian Kinney in his work attire was hotter than hell. He looked right out of the pages of Esquire, with sex appeal added.

“Where is everyone?”

“At lunch.”

“What the fuck is this?”

“The Vuarney panels”

“No,” Brian answered, as if speaking to a two year old. “The lettering on the Vuarney panels is blue. This is not blue.”

“Well spotted.”

Two could play that game. “The blue ones are over there. Ready to go.”

Brian was raising an eyebrow at him. Fuck. He explained, “I just wanted to see them in orange. It’s the new blue. I did it during my lunch hour.” Justin hated to feel on the defensive. The expense in materials to produce the extra panels was completely negligible, yet Brian was looking at him as if he had been squandering the company’s resources.

Without another word, Brian grabbed the blue panels and left the room. Justin’s cock was half hard, his heart was beating as if he had just run a mile, and his hands were sweating. Fuck. He carefully stacked the orange lettered panels behind his desk as his co-workers started to return from their breaks.

When the phone on his desk rang at three-twenty, he jumped out of his skin.

“Justin, it’s Cynthia, Mr. Kinney’s assistant. Brian wants the other Vuarney panels in the conference room NOW.”

Justin hung up the phone, grabbed the panels and ran.

Cynthia was waiting outside the doors. He made to hand her the panels, but she shook her head.

“Go right in.”

Justin walked in as Brian was finishing speaking.

“…Which is why, despite the overwhelming preference for the blue lettering in the preliminary survey, we opted to give you another choice. Taylor, could you put the orange panels over the blue ones, please?”

If Marcus Shelburn looked a little nonplussed at the sudden appearance of a seventeen year-old-looking blond into the make or break meeting with Vuarney, with panels that had no right to exist, he certainly recovered rapidly. The Vuarney account representative was an attractive woman, in her early thirties. She did not look impressed, until Justin finished placing the new panels up. Then she smiled.

“That’s much better. You can feel the sun. It’s warm, it’s suggestive. It’s perfect.” She turned to Brian. “I see where you get your reputation. You do not disappoint. Excellent work.”

Brian did not even acknowledge the compliment. They were starting to discuss magazine spreads when Justin discreetly walked out of the room.

Cynthia, who apparently was following the meeting on the interphone, gave him thumbs up. He stopped by her desk, curious.

“Why did you send me in instead of going in there yourself?” he asked.

“Brian did not want another female in the room with Ms. Chadwick. He wanted her to enjoy the undivided attention of two attractive males. With you, that made three. Even better.”

“He thinks about these things?”

She shrugged. “When it comes to work, he thinks of everything. Except apparently, in this case, he didn’t think of the fact that ‘Orange is the new blue.’” She grinned at him.

He frowned. “What?”

“That’s what Brian said when I came back from lunch. ‘Cynthia, did you know Orange is the new blue?’” Her imitation was spot on, including the roll of the lips. Justin just cracked up. She shook her head. “I had no idea what he was talking about. Now, I know. He was talking about you…” Her eyes twinkled as she added, “But then, he does that a lot.”

“What?”

“Talk about you…” She smiled at him again, and her phone rang.

Justin went to the elevator, not really knowing what to make of the conversation. When had Brian Kinney the occasion to speak about him to his assistant?

The next time his phone rang, the Art Department was half empty. It was late, his gimp hand having earlier stopped him from finishing some work due the next day. He had taken a break from hand coloring copies for Randy, one of the three creative directors, and worked on computer based stuff that was a lot less urgent for a couple hours to give his hand a break before going back to it. He was almost done. It was Cynthia again.

“Justin, could you come up to Mr. Kinney’s office before he leaves, around eight o’clock?”

“What time is it now?”

“Seven-thirty.”

“Sure. Cynthia, am I in trouble or something?”

“No idea.” She was such a liar.

He put on the last touches of ink and set his work to dry. He realized he was starving. There was nothing left in his lunch bag, so he grabbed a power bar from the Art Department’s stash, and emptied a bottle of water. He had not drank enough today. Lack of hydration seemed to make the cramping in his hand worse at times.

Cynthia was at her desk, for which he was grateful. It would have felt weird to be alone with Brian in his office after hours. She gestured for him to go right in. The office was empty, but Justin hardly noticed. There was a new, large piece of art hanging on the back wall. He just stood there and stared.

“I just received it four days ago. Do you like it?”

Brian had evidently returned. Justin turned toward him, uncertain of how to react.

“Yes, I like it.” He was trying to read Brian’s face, but Brian was just looking at the canvas, a little happy smile on his lips, apparently enthralled.

“I got it from a small gallery in Los Angeles. I was googling ‘Justin Taylor’, trying to figure out who had designed the new image for the Essengy club months ago. I didn’t find you, obviously. But, happily, I did find this. I think its exquisite. Did you know there was an artist called Justin Taylor in Los Angeles?”

Justin was amazed to see that Brian was totally serious.

“I am familiar with the gallery, Mr. Kinney. The painting is one of mine.”

Brian’s eyes went from the canvas to his face, and he stared at him, expressionless. Finally he said, “You go to the Pratt institute in Brooklyn, but show your paintings in Los Angeles?”

“I transferred to Pratt nine months ago. Before that I was at the Los Angeles School of Design.”

Justin could see the wheels turning in Brian‘s mind. His tongue was pushing the inside of his cheek. He frowned.

“Of course you were. I should have known. We were on the same flight from Pittsburgh to New York, and the flight was coming out of Los Angeles.”

“We were?”

“Yes. You were traveling with an older man. I thought he was your father, until you shook hands and parted ways in front of the airport.”

“That was Chaz Anakian, the owner of Essengy. We designed his new image together on that flight. You have an amazing memory. Do you always pay that much attention to the other passengers on your flights?”

“I remember your ass. I was behind you in line, and I wanted to fuck it.“

This, delivered in all seriousness. Apparently in Brian’s mind, a perfectly natural explanation.

“Of course.”

“You designed their new image on the plane?” How Brian could be a completely hedonistic sex driven machine as well as a cool, brilliant ad executive in the same conversation was truly amazing.

“Yes. It was the quickest trip ever. We worked on it the whole time. By the time we made it to New York, we were done.”

“And you just gave it away.” A sarcastic and less than flattering comment on Justin’s naïveté.

“I would gladly have.” Justin wanted to rub it in. “But he wouldn’t let me. He made me sign it, and made me a permanent guest at the club: Free entry, free VIP access, free drinks, free guest.”

“That’s not much of a sacrifice on his part. You are prettier than most of the go-go boys and you only ever drink water.”

Trust Brian’s jaded attitude to make a kind gesture look like some calculated move. Justin felt the need to defend his friend. Brian made him sound like a jerk taking advantage of a kid.

“I happen to like Chaz.”

“Did he fuck you?”

Justin shook his head, disgusted. “You are such an asshole.” He got up, and started to leave.

“Taylor?”

Oh. Right. He had been summoned. And he’d just called his boss an asshole. Shit. He took a deep breath and turned back to face the music.

“Mr. Kinney?”

“Next time you think of an improvement to a finished campaign, like you did today, don’t keep it to yourself. The font color change was brilliant, but I would’ve never known about it if I hadn’t happened to walk in on you during your lunch hour. While you work here, your creativity belongs to us. Don’t let it go to waste.”

“Okay.”

“Good job.”

“Thanks.”

Brian made a little dismissive gesture with his hand, and Justin walked out. The man was such a prick. So why did Justin feel so pleased?

He was done for the day. He grabbed his messenger bag and his jacket and headed out.

 

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