Novel: Letters From Ceilia

Ceilia Lybrand has it all, a career that's bringing her money and recognition along with a live-in stockbroker jock boyfriend.

A chance finding of a company document on the copy machine sets her on a path of self and career assessment that turns her life upside down, brings her face to face with who she is and tests her willingness to put it all on the line.

Support is half a world away in a continuing e-mail exchange with someone she's never met, close as a keyboard, distant as a voice in the night.

Letters from Ceilia touches on issues sucessful women would rather keep in the back closet. Like all women, Ceilia approaches her life and work with female emotions, despite the fact she lives in a world lagerly defined and run by men.

Through her correspondence, we get an intimate look into Ceilia’s psyche. Searching for strengths, struggling to survive, she puts a relationship and a career at risk. But is it worth it?

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READ CHAPTER ONE

It wasn't great sex and it oughta be. Every once in a while, it oughta be. That should be a rule. Ceilia Lybrand lay very still and studied the ceiling fixture, a diamond-stitched down comforter stretched across her and Bill, the ambient light of a sleeping city leaking through the bedroom window. She scrutinized it, contemplating the dimpled bubbles in the opaque glass like so many nipples in a translucent breast, examined as best she could from the half dark of the bedroom, all its minute and infuriating mediocrity. Round . . . half round anyway . . . half hemisphere, let's be accurate Ceilia, common as a country hardware store, ordinary as page ninety seven in the Sears catalog. She needed sleep, she needed Tiffany, longed for Bohemian crystal and most of all, far more to the point than this endless study of the crap that could appear in the details of a pretty damned expensive Gold Coast apartment, she needed to get laid.

C'mon Ceil, for God's sake, tomorrow is Monday, you've got to be ready for the Emerson presentation and another week juggling schedules. Close your eyes. She closed them, counted slowly to thirty five and opened them again to stare at the ceiling.

Sex would put her to sleep, good roaring breathless sweating sex, panting sheet twisting moaning do it again, please do it again sex, but they'd made love only an hour ago, or was it two? And he'd almost gotten her there, gotten her so close and she'd wanted so badly to be there, to feel herself rumble and chug, become a veritable unstoppable incredible insurmountable steaming hissing night-train of orgasm, headed for the Grand Central Station of dilated pupils, the Union Stockyards of every animal that ever fucked.

Then he'd come, moaned that little catch-breath moan she knew so well and slumped over her, breathing hard and withdrawing, giving her a hug. Rolled over and turned his back to leave her there with all her boiler doors wide open and fairly belching flame, sidetracked while he coasted to a stop. A hug, he'd given her a frigging hug like it was a hundred dollar bill left on the dresser for a hooker. Left her like a gutted fish still flapping on the deck to listen to his breathing become regular, to hear him drift off to sleep and fucking leave her there to study the unbelievably ugly detail of the light fixture from hell, the piece of shit from page ninety seven.

Two years and one month living with Bill, broad shouldered, big-grin Bill who supported her emotionally in ninety four percent of the ways she needed support, when he wasn't caught up with the Bears, Bulls or Blackhawks. Dependable Bill, moving up at the brokerage as she moved up at WMA, comfortable Bill, who didn't run around on her.

Her mind ran to the numbers, a mind made for numbers, a mind that terrorized every fellow student and nearly half the teachers in sixteen years of trig and calculus and world history. Sex an average four times a week over one hundred and eight weeks. Four hundred and thirty two sexual encounters with this wall of shoulders, peacefully and damningly asleep a foot away on the bed next to her. Give or take a few, forty times tenderly and passionately, give or take a few, a hundred times lustily and give or take a few, three hundred times like tonight, nights when they turned out the light and Bill pulled her to him with little more than a "hey, babe" and his growing hardness. Three nights a week his good night kiss a passing brush of lips and four nights a week a firmer held kiss, his mouth opening against hers whether or not she returned the touch of his tongue. Then the whispered "hey, babe."

It wasn't fair, not at all the place they'd started, but more a place they'd drifted to and she blamed herself as well as him. More than him, she blamed herself a hell of a lot more than she blamed him and if she were honest, if she were really square with herself, that was probably what kept her awake and drawn to the architectural failure above their heads. No drifting Ceil, you can't allow you and Bill to drift along like this or you'll end up eddying in some backwater, stuck up against the bank like a muddy leaf. You'll end up like Mom, drinking your way to the end.

He sometimes manhandled her to the edge of complaint on those nights, bullying her in that kidding way of his and she gave in, always wanting more, mostly settling for less. You're settling, Ceil and you're too damned young to settle. A woman's always too young to settle, whatever age and you bloody well know it. Call it what it is, not worth the effort when he's feeling like a stud, but if that isn't worth the effort, what is? That's the thing that really scares you.

One time out of a dozen he left her sleepless like tonight, needing to be taken again but slowly, fondled and caressed and soothed and murmured to. Needing to be loved and stroked and played with and giggled at, a game played by teenagers alongside lakes where mosquitoes swarmed and no one paid a moment's attention until the itch and scratch of morning. Needing that long dreamy building from way down deep inside that would leave her breathless when he entered her, wanting him, wanting it, wanting the night train out of town. In those moments no mosquitoes bit and they'd live forever in each other's arms because death was merely an abstraction.

She eased her fingers between her legs, a momentary flicker of guilt skimming across the need, with him lying so close. But Bill had brought her to this sleeplessness and left her, turned his back, hunched the pillow comfortably and drifted off to somewhere else. His breathing was regular as hers increased and he lay still as she began to squirm. Away . . . she'd take herself away from the numbers, away from the clumsy beaded design of the ceiling fixture, from shadows on the wall and this abstract, vague and undefined anger.

Damp and perspirey and satiated, she relaxed and rolled on her right side, the wall of her back facing the wall of his, a stretched-sheet no man's land between them but the anger was fading as she drifted and it would be all right. Five hours to the alarm. Five hours of sleep would have to do before the week tackled her again.

•

"Where in the hell did you come up with that? Larry Watterson grinned at her and set the bottle of Black Label on the conference table and turned to the broad black lacquered credenza for glasses and ice.

"Come up with what, Larry?" Ceilia pushed back in the chair, pleased, her face a mask of contrived innocence. The presentation was over, the clients packed up and gone, she'd pulled a stalled media proposal back from the edge of disaster, her boss had the Black Label out for the post mortem. Life was good.

"You know damned well." He shoved the ice bucket to the center and circled the table, setting a glass in front of Ron Erland. Ron needed a drink and looked like it. Emerson Mills was his account and account managers aren't supposed to have their chestnuts pulled out of the fire by art directors. It's part of the written code, right there in fine print, check it out. If Ceilia hadn't stepped in when he floundered, the deal would be no deal at all. Nearly gone in a New York minute, blown coverage and Ron was too old and far too highly paid to drop a pass as the clock wound down.

Larry set a tall glass and can of Coke in front of Tom Esterbridge, the media buyer. Ceilia liked Tom almost as much as she disliked Erland. Quiet and unassuming in a brash and outspoken business, he'd been off the booze for five years now, the Whiz Kid of media placement. The last glass Larry slid with a grin in front of Ceilia.

"Here we are, sweating our way through our best pitch to Emerson Mills . . . a damned good pitch, I might add. But it was sweaty Ron, you'll have to admit that. Emerson and his guys were listening, but they weren't moving. Everything was uphill. Jesus I hate that in a pitch. Nothing rolls, everything has to be pushed. And at the crucial point, that pause we all know so well and fear so much, that moment of truth when the client buys the bit or turns to the numbers, good old Wally Emerson looks directly at my creative director and says, 'What do you think, Ceilia?'" He mimicked the client's soft Midwestern voice.

"And you . . . you look him straight in the eye and roll all the dice. Roll all my dice, I might add and that takes guts Ceil, but you pulled it off." Larry tried for Ceilia's voice and got only halfway there. "'Mr. Emerson, there are agencies who will pitch you with glitz and glamor for this account. It will look pretty as hell, but it won't sell sportswear.' I almost croaked. 'This is a well thought out program, with a lot of media balance and it will move product. WMA doesn't expect to win a creative award on your bankroll, we expect to take Emerson Mills up two or three notches against their competition.' And he buys it. Sits back in his chair, grins like a kid and says, 'That's what I was waiting to hear.' Those pretty much the words, Ceil?"

"You do his voice better than you do mine, Larry." Ceilia sipped the scotch. "Yeah, those were pretty much the words, you've got a good memory. Looks like next week just about this time you'll have another account, Ron."

"Yeah, it was smooth sweetheart, real smooth. Guess I owe you a dinner over this one." Ron Erland smiled and raised his glass in a toast to Ceilia, but there was perspiration on his upper lip and he drained rather than sipped the scotch, reaching for the bottle. Numbers ran in her head again, numbers that multiplied commission percentage against the gross value of the booking, counting Ron's take of a major new account that he'd all but dropped.

Tom fiddled with his Coke and smiled shyly, not quite meeting her eyes. "Thanks for the bit about 'media balance,' Ceil. We worked real hard on that and I wasn't sure he was taking it all in."

Larry Watterson leaned back in his chair, rolled the ice in his glass and propped a leg on the corner of the conference table, reaching for a cigar and Ceilia winced. He lit it, erupting a plume of smoke directly at the ceiling. "Well, it's always a team thing, but Emerson Mills had every ad agency in town chasing their account. When we got short listed I thought we had a pretty good shot but hell, you never know." He reached for the Black Label and dusted the top of his drink.

"Wally Emerson's account puts us right where we need to be. We can afford to get tough now with a couple accounts that ask too much and pay too slow. One of those accounts is yours, Ron. Ceilia's just bailed you out, whether you know it or not."

"Hey Larry, I know . . . I know." Ron pulled a mock arrow out of his chest, with an accompanying thwunk of wet lips. "Said I'd buy the lady a dinner."

Ceilia sat forward in her chair and circled the fingers of both hands around the glass. Time to get something else out on the table.

"So, Larry . . . ?"

"Yeah?" He grinned at her.

"So I'm a hero, huh?"

"You bet, Ceilia. You're always a hero, that's why we pay you so goddamn much money." The grin was still there behind the cigar and she knew his mood would last for the rest of the week. Well maybe not the full week, but he'd be a pussycat at least through Wednesday, his step lighter down the corridors, the rare smile more evenly distributed among the proletariat.

"So." She paused. "Suppose it had gone the other way?"

"Whaddya mean?" The bushy light brown eyebrows shot up and the expression on Larry's angular face went from beaming to quizzical to wary. "Suppose what had gone the other way?"

"Suppose the remark had blown the account? Suppose Wally Emerson said, 'Glitz is what I pay for and glamor is what sportswear is all about. If WMA doesn't know that, I guess we need an ad agency that does.' I thought when I said it Larry, it was risky. But I didn't see any movement in our direction and I really thought if we didn't take ourselves out of the pack, the account was going south."

"But it worked, Ceilia." Larry was halfway back from wary to quizzical. "Worked beautifully. What are you looking for, all the credit? A few others of us were in the room too, you know?"

"It's not that."

"What, then?"

"I liked your saying that it's a team effort when we win, Larry. I guess I need to know it's a team loss, a WMA loss when we lose." She looked at him and wondered if he was getting it. "I felt very much out there on the edge with my remark to Emerson. Guess I'd like to know the agency would catch me, more particularly that you would catch me if the ground gave way and I fell off the cliff."

Larry was back to full grin. "Goes without saying, Ceilia. We're always behind everyone at WMA. Team effort . . . always goes without saying . . . "

Ceilia carried the warm glow of the scotch back to her office, stopping briefly in the art department, checking the progress of story boards for next week's presentation to Noble Electronics. They were one of the several accounts on Larry's shit list. Maybe now they'd be able to dump Noble, it wasn't good for the inside of her to do terrific work for a client who whined about every cost, questioned every ad placement and let the invoices run a hundred twenty days. A Ron Erland account and they'd come up with a hell of a campaign, the boards looked slick. That's good, she thought. Maybe too good to waste on Noble but if Larry Watterson was serious and they were ready to resign some accounts, it would feel just fine to wave goodbye from the strength of a slick presentation.

Get real, Larry's never serious Ceil, not about dumping clients anyway. It's a numbers game for Larry, his numbers only stack in one direction and that's up. Even the pain in the ass clients, the ones that take the heart out of creative staff, added to the pile of numbers. Not enough of a pain in Larry's ass, the problem accounts rumbled and grumbled and choked their way through staff meetings and private quarrels, taking their toll at lower levels.

Whenever she passed his office and saw him staring into his computer screen, Ceilia knew he was looking at the pile, urging the numbers up. Mentally taking WMA from number twenty three on Crain's list of Chicago's Fifty Largest Ad Agencies to number twenty two and eying the break into the top twenty. He was probably already at the screen, sipping scotch and factoring in the Emerson account, wondering if the year's numbers would leapfrog a couple steps to break onto that hallowed ground. That would bring a smile to Larry's face, allow him a surer step into the dining room of the Chicago Club and Emerson Mills could quite possibly do it. Then he'd be back at the computer, looking off into the screen as if it were a crystal ball, judging the distance to the top ten, pacing the halls, the challenge once again infecting itself into his language.

Well, maybe that was what it took to sit in his chair, it was a tough business. She walked into her office, sat down behind the broad white desk and thumbed through telephone messages, punching the speed dial to Bill's direct line.

"Bill Frankel." He picked up with the no nonsense, slightly upbeat but very busy broker voice that he took on and off like a trader's smock.

"Hey Billy boy, it's Ceil. What are you doing, this very moment?"

"Hey, hon." She could hear the grin, knew he'd be leaning back, propping a stockinged foot at the corner of the desk, watching quotes ribbon by on the computer. "You catch me at a bad moment. This very instant, my secretary has her pants down and is about to do some serious damage to me."

"Yeah? Put her on the line and let me tell her what to expect. She'll need some preparation for the disappointment."

"Funny girl." She could hear the grin widen. "Extremely funny girl. Actually, right this very moment, I'm looking at a hot utility bond offering and trying to figure out which of my worthless clients I'll favor with the chance to make a killing."

"Yeah, well I've just come from a more modest, but equally profitable presentation with Emerson Mills and, with no small help from your live-in lady, we nailed the account." Her voice lowered to conspiratorial level and she fiddled with the white mug that served as a pen holder.

"I'm still feeling the glow of a little celebratory scotch and the sudden rise in Larry Watterson's approval index. My stock is up, baby. For the moment, I'm very high on his list of 'attaboys' and before the reality of tomorrow, I thought I'd spring for dinner. Just the two of us, candlelight and a little vino at Le Escargot or whatever other romantic spot of your dreams."

"Aw, hon." Her heart sank as she read disappointment in his tone and knew they weren't going to have dinner. Now there would only be the reason. "You know I'd love to, but you must have forgotten tonight is the Blackhawks first night of Stanley Cup playoffs and Charlie and Joe and I have center ice seats. We're catching a quick dinner in Greek Town."

"Ahhh, yes . . . Stanley Cup." She felt the warmth of the scotch fading like the air out of a party balloon, stuck too long to the ceiling. "Yeah Billy boy, I had forgotten. That's okay, it isn't really all that important and it's Monday night anyway."

Small lies. Damn Ceil, why do you always run away behind the small lies and make it okay for someone. This is important. Only important if it means something to him, though. Not important enough to make an issue, because then it's not candlelight and a second bottle of wine, then it's obligation and forced interest. Why do you wish so badly Ceil, that he'd cancel the hockey game and come home early to have a drink, hold you in one of those bear hugs and take you off to candlelight and too much wine. Then home in a late cab to make love slowly, so everlastingly slowly like he used to.

"What time you think you'll be home?"

"Probably about ten thirty, hon. We may stop for a quick one after the game." His voice was apologetic. She hated the sound of apology, hated herself for hating it, him for making it, the slight scotch high draining out of her and leaving her bleak with need, unaccountably sad. Abruptly she turned the mug upside down, sprawling pens and markers across the desk. "How about tomorrow night, Ceil? We could make a night of it."

"Nah. Not important, Billy boy. You guys all have a good time and I'll catch you at home."

She hung up and fingered the messages. Another small lie accomplished and she bent over to pick up a yellow highlighter and a well chewed ballpoint that had fallen to the floor, stuffing all the pens back into the mug. She set the messages aside. Four o'clock. She rarely left the office before six thirty, but to hell with it. Today she was getting out and damned if she'd go shopping and then home to cold chicken and a solitary glass of wine.

Suzanne would still be at her office and Suzanne would bloody well drop anything, change any plans if Ceil needed a quiet talk over dinner. Yeah, that would work and the balloon drifted off the ceiling. Get the hell out of here and home to a long hot bath. Light all the candles in the bathroom, shut off the lights, make sure there was plenty of bath oil and soak for an hour with Oleta Adams in the background and a glass of red wine. Then eight o'clock dinner with Suzanne.

She dialed the number.

•

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