The Spiked Heel

“I once said that recognizing his power made me feel strong, but it doesn’t really, Marge. It makes me feel angry, but it doesn’t give me the strength to stand up to him. You want to fight, you want to, you want to… but you’re scared.”

She nodded in the darkness, feeling the tenseness of his arms.

“Marge,” he said, almost surprised, “he’s stolen our humanity, the son of a bitch has stolen our humanity. Why the hell won’t we fight him, even now? He’s only a man, Marge. What can one man do to another man? Damn it, isn’t there any sense in fighting for what’s right?”

His question hung on the fetid night air. She lay in the circle of his arms and tilted her head back to look at his face, and she saw him nod his head slowly and deliberately.

“It’s terrible to feel like a coward, Marge. I’m a man who can identify a murderer, but I won’t go to the police. Marge, Marge, we could have stopped him, in the beginning, when the dagger was still hidden behind a smiling face, before his spiked heel came down on the first broken back. But let him steal one man’s dignity, and he’s vanquished us all.”

He paused. “We’re dead now, Marge. The fight has to come from us, but we’re incapable of it. He’s taken our country, Marge, and now he’ll set about proving himself to the world, to Titanic. It’s too late, it’s too late.”

“Not if you feel this way, Griff. It’s not too late if you…”

“I have the feeling he’ll destroy us all, Marge, every single one of us. And we won’t lift a finger to stop him. Oh, Marge, Marge, what’ll he do next? What’ll he do next?”

She heard the words as they tumbled from his mouth, wrenched from somewhere deep within him. She heard the words, and she felt the sudden shudder of his body, and she moved closer against him, wanting to answer him, wanting to reassure him, but she did not know the answer, and his words hung on the night air until their echo chilled her.

17

“Naked Flesh,” McQuade said. His eyes were glowing. There was a smile on his face, and he produced the words with the triumph of a man producing a royal flush in a poker game.

Andy Neggler held McQuade’s eyes, trying hard to avoid the contagion of their fervor. He had had people come into his Chrysler Building office with ideas before. It was too simple to get on fire about something, only to have the fire suddenly cool off. Neggler didn’t like holding dead ashes in his fist.

“I want to make it the biggest shoe in our history,” McQuade said.

“We’ve had a lot of big shoes in our history, Mr. McQuade,” Neggler answered calmly.

“None that’ll compare to this.”

“You feel this shoe is really going to catch on, is that right?”

“I know this shoe is going to catch on, Andy,” McQuade said. “I know it’s going to catch on, because I’m going to make it catch on. This shoe is going to be my baby, Andy.”

“Well, Mr. McQuade,” Neggler said, “I don’t know very much about obstetrics, except that some babies are stillborn. There’s no telling what the consumer will go for, and what she won’t.”

“That’s why we have an Advertising Department, Andy,” McQuade said.

“Admittedly. But we could advertise this thing to hell and back, and if milady doesn’t want it she won’t buy it.”

“She’ll buy it,” McQuade said flatly. “It’s our job to make her want to buy it. When we get through with this shoe, she’ll think it’s more desirable than the Kohinoor diamond.

“That’s a pretty optimistic viewpoint. Naturally, Advertising is here to advertise, but—”

“Of course,” McQuade said.

“But,” Neggler continued, unruffled, “you have to realize that we don’t guarantee results.”

“You should,” McQuade told him. “If Advertising doesn’t get results, we need a new Advertising Department.”

“Well, uh, that’s not exactly what I meant, Mr. McQuade,” Neggler said. He studied the man from Titanic carefully. He would have to be cautious now. He would have to watch what he said. “I simply meant that the female consumer is a fickle person who—”

“What’s your usual advertising outlay on any single shoe?” McQuade broke in.

“Well, we don’t usually work it that way, Mr. McQuade,” Neggler explained. “The Cost Department generally works up a tentative budget for the whole line, figuring in our profit, and figuring what sort of an outlay would be feasible for—”

“Julien Kahn no longer has a Cost Department,” McQuade said.

“Well, even so, our job is selling every shoe in the line. To concentrate on one particular shoe… well, that could be disastrous if the shoe didn’t catch on. Here in Advertising, we try to—”

“One big shoe,” McQuade said, “could carry the whole line. And that big shoe this fall will be Naked Flesh.”

“Maybe,” Neggler said. “It depends on—”

“No maybe’s about it. I want it to be the big shoe,” and it’s going to be the big shoe.” He paused. “How many ads do you take in a given month?”