Page 162 - Just Deserts

Scrubbers

somehow had tapped into the collective unconscious of the average
American consumer. Earl received his promotion and corner office;
Billy found a champion who pulled the necessary strings behind the
scenes to permit the bumbling messenger to keep his minimum-wage
job. And Billy’s sieve-like memory left a tabula rasa where all his
brilliant ideas once had been inscribed; he gave no sign of recognition
when a product name or recycled rock and roll song with commercial
lyrics he had conceived emerged from the workshops of
Bodkin/Thomler under the authorship of Earl Wells.
Now it was time to call forth the genie again. When Billy finally
found his way to Earl’s office, the latter was tapping a pencil
impatiently, wondering how many false turns and detours his absent-
minded oracle had made.
“You wanted me, Mr. Wells?”
“Yes, Billy. Please close the door and tie your shoelaces before
you trip over them.”
By the time the disheveled clerk had complied with these complex
assignments, he gave every indication of forgetting that the executive
had sent for him: “Uh, I don’t think there’s any mail for you, sir. Is
that all?”
“No, Billy.” Earl gritted his teeth behind smiling lips. He could
feel his blood pressure rising from resisting the temptation to hurl his
chair at Rubin. Instead, he opened a desk drawer and pulled out a
small square of white cloth. “Here,” he said, and tossed it to Billy.
“What do you make of this?”
Billy swiped at it mid-air, dropped it, stooped, dropped it again,
and managed at last with both hands to bring the object up in front
of his face. “Gosh, I don’t know. Feels kind of funny. Soft, yes, and
white. Hee-hee! Too bad it’s not a light bulb, Mr. Wells!”
“Oh? Why is that?”
“Because then you could have Soft White and the Seven Bulbs!
Forty-watt, sixty-watt, you know, all marching behind her out of the
supermarket. Hi-ho, hi-ho, off to work we go!”
Earl shook his head in amazement. “Very funny, Billy. But
Sylvania is not one of our clients. Too bad.” He made a mental note
to look into the account later. “Now what you have there is a brand-
new item. Interesting, eh? The latest thing from one of our clients, a
161