"Oltion-BeforeChristmas" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oltion Jerry)

JERRY OLTION

THE PLIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

MIKE WAS SCANNING THE morning newsnet for Christmas ads, checking the
competition as usual but also hoping to find a present for Sarah, when the phone
rang. Sarah had been cleaning the house last night, so she had set the ringer to
"air raid," and apparently forgot to lower it again when she was done. The
sudden clamor made Mike flinch hard enough to nudge his howl of cereal over the
edge of the table. It hit the floor with a thump, not breaking the bowl but
still spraying milk and Moonie Bits outward in a white fan of drenching
destruction -- most of which wound up in Mike's open briefcase.

"Christ!" he shouted, jumping up and upsetting his chair, which in turn upset
the shelf of African violets beneath the window. One of the violets also fell
into his briefcase.

The phone shrieked a second time.

He stood over his ruined briefcase-- and the mined Bundy artwork, over which he
had sweated for two long days to come up with a new concept and clenched his
fists while the phone rang again. The morning had started so well . . .

"Do you want me to get it?" Sarah asked from the bedroom.

Hmm. No reason why the morning couldn't keep going wall, actually. All it
required was the right attitude. "No," Mike said, unclenching his hands. "No,
that's all right. I'll get it." Slowly, deliberately, he reached out and picked
up the flatscreen from the kitchen countertop, set it upright on the table, and
flicked it on. With a fiendish grin he shouted, "What do you want?"

He heard an in drawn breath before the picture formed, then Greg Penzley, one of
the advertising firm's two senior partners, peered out of the phone at him with
wide eyes. "Michael?"

Mike grinned wider. "No, it's the tooth fairy. Who'd you expect, idiot? You
dialed my number, didn't you?"

"Michael, what in the world has gotten into --" Penzley suddenly laughed. "Oh,
so that's how it is, eh? Well same to you, then. I'd rather talk to the tooth
fairy than your whiny little carcass." He leaned back in his padded office
chair, giving Mike a view past his bald head and rounded shoulders through the
fiftieth-floor window overlooking downtown Portland. Penzley crossed his arms
over his chest and said, "Your miserable attempts to come up with a new Bundy
campaign are the laughingstock of the company. We've got a betting pool here at
the office on when you finally come up with something and I've picked December
31st. Five years from now."