27: Florida

“Tell me what I’m looking at.”

“It’s a graph, sir.”

“Who am I, Laurel and Hardy? I can see that.”

“Abbot and Costello, sir.”

“Which one?”

“One, sir?”

“The first or second?”

“Who was first?”

“Don’t start with me. Davis!”

Davis snaps his head up from his notepad, where he’s been doodling furiously, drawing either a giant flaccid penis or the State of Florida. “Yes, sir?” He asks.

“This looks like the chart of my last heart attack. What does it mean?”

“It’s the numbers from last week, sir.”

“Christ. Dora!” he yells in the direction of the door. “Get me BP on the line.”

“Yes sir,” comes a voice through the intercom.

Davis resumes doodling. The other three men in pastel polo shirts squirm slightly in their chairs. The man holding up the chart – Cooper – begins to put it down, then the phone on the desk rings, and he leaps back to attention. The director picks the receiver up. “You smarmy British son of a bitch!” he yells. “We need another twenty-five million.”

The voice coming through the receiver is muffled. The men pretend not to pay attention, looking out the plate glass windows onto downtown Tallahassee or rereading the motivational posters on the walls. The director makes an obscene gesture with his free hand. A tiny green lizard runs across the outside of the window. An orange flash of lightning lights up the horizon. The tinny voice is still talking, without pause.

“Look,” the director says, interrupting, “it’s embarrassing, emasculating. We have to put this little box up on our website with all this bullshit about black balls and deep whatevers. Look at that exclamation point! It’s pink, for Christ’s sake. And the charts!” He points at Cooper, who stands up stiffer. “They’re limper than Prince Charles’s prick. We’re getting fewer tourists than Kansas. You owe us big time.”

Lightning flashes again as the storm clouds swirl in. Thunder covers some more incomprehensible dialogue. The director shouts again: “Is that the best you can do, you lily-livered limey bastard? Well, I suggest you get that queen mother of yours over here and tell her to suck it.” He slams the phone back onto its cradle. Davis jumps up and looks around. The rain starts more or less on schedule.

“All right people,” the director gazes around the table, “rally caps. It’s the bottom of the ninth with two outs and the bases loaded. It’s first and goal with 5 seconds remaining. We’re at half-court and the shot clock is running down. It’s some sort of, um, last minute soccer situation. But we can turn this thing around.” He stands and pounds on the table with his fists. “This doesn’t have to be the Gulf Oil Crisis – it can be the Gulf Oil Opportunity!”

“Like in Chinese, sir?” The man seated next to Davis asks.

“Gomez, have you seen me out working in the rice paddies? Wearing one of those pointy hats? Building a giant wall to keep the Mongols out? Did my skin turn yellow while I wasn’t looking? Am I being inscrutable? Mysterious? Exotic? Oriental?”

“No, sir.”

The director pounds the table again. “You’re damn right I’m not! And if you say I am again I’ll have you and your family sent to the goddamn labor camps. We’ll see who’s a Maoist then, you pinko. Why, if this was thirty years ago I’d take you out back and shoot you myself.” He sits back down and looks around the table. Now, what the hell were we talking about?”

“The Gulf Oil Opportunity, sir,” the man seated next to Cooper by the window says.

“I like it!” The director snaps his fingers. “Good thinking, what’s-your-name. Give yourself a kiss on the ass.”

“A pat on the back, sir?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” The director looks at him more closely. “What is your name anyway?”

“Wang, sir.”

“Wang?” He stares incredulously. “What the hell kind of a name is that?”

“Chinese, sir.”

“Chinese? Well, I don’t like it.”

“Should I change it, sir?”

“Change it!” He snaps his fingers again. “That’s it! You’re on fire, what’s-your-name. Give yourself that pat on the ass after all. Dora!” He yells at the door, “get me someone in Design – tell him we need the biggest map he can find. Gomez, convene us a focus group.”

“Yes, sir.”

Gomez leaves. A designer arrives a few minutes later, dressed all in black, carrying a silver laptop under one tattooed arm. He sets it on the table facing the director, launches a web browser, and stands back as a map of Florida loads, pushing black frame glasses up his pierced nose. No one says anything, so he shrugs his shoulders at the room in general, and leaves. The director grabs a Sharpie from the table and scrawls “Gulf of Florida” on the screen, then steps back to admire his handiwork. The wind howls dully through the plate-glass windows. The rain rakes across the glass. Palm trees cartwheel down the streets like tumbleweeds. Gomez enters with the janitor. “Sorry, sir,” he says, “he was the only one I could find.”

“What about me?” comes the voice from the intercom.

The director looks around. “Did someone say something?”

Cooper and Wang both shake their heads. Davis is busy doodling. “It was just the wind, sir,” Gomez says.

“Dora!” the director yells, “close the damn door!” He turns the laptop toward the janitor. “Okay, José, what do you see?”

The janitor glances at it for a second, then back at the director. “The Golfo de México, señor.”

“Jesus H. Christ,” the director bellows. The janitor cringes and crosses himself. A swarm of cockroaches skitters up the wall. “Okay,” the director says, “I say we write the whole Panhandle off. Maybe lease it to Mexico until this all blows over. José, give your people a call. I’m prepared to make concessions: a chupacabra in every pot, all the pesos you can eat, and free siestas for everyone.” The janitor says nothing. “Not mañana, you lazy Mexican,” the director shouts. “Now! Make it happen!”

The janitor nods. “Si, señor.” Water spills across the carpet as he opens the door, soaking it, coating it in a thin glimmering film. His footsteps slosh down the hallway. A couple of small fish swim in.

“Sir, aren’t there a few other states in the way?” Wang asks, pointing at the screen.

“Fuck ‘em,” the director says. “Hell, maybe they’d even want in. I mean what the hell kind of tourist goes to Texas or Alabama? Gomez, get our focus group back here – we’ll ask him. Dora, get me Alabama on the line.”

The intercom is silent. The lights flicker and the air conditioning sputters off. Outside, José floats in a yellow bucket, using a mop to pole himself away. A family of five is huddled together atop an overturned mobile home. A couple of lifeguards paddle a surfboard past a half-submerged elderly woman wearing a clear plastic rain bonnet and holding a transparent umbrella aloft. Two men in suits prepare to dive from different windows of an office building. One jumps, and then – after flowcharting his potential best-practice action items going forward, leveraging the most up-to-date metrics of rational self-interest and goal-oriented excellence, and synergizing real-time big picture data analysis – the other operationalizes a proactive paradigm shift as well. Inside Visit Florida, the dark liquid rises above the ankles of the five men in the conference room. The director looks down, grabs Davis’s water glass, scoops some of the liquid up, and puts the glass back on the table. The liquid sloshes back and forth, and when it settles a thick, black-brown-red-orange layer forms across the top.

“Tell me what I’m looking at.”

“It’s oil, sir.”

“Oil!” He slams his hand down. Oily water flies everywhere. “It’s profit! Here’s the idea: We open the beaches and charge a flat fee for people to come and take as much as they want to carry away. ‘Winter’s coming in Minnesota,’ we tell them. ‘The next increase in gas prices is just around the corner. Heat your home, fuel your car, etc.’ If BP can turn a profit on this, why can’t we?”

“Is that legal, sir?” Wang asks.

“What do we care? It’s business! Hell, invite the foodies, too. They love oil!” He leans over, grabs one of the gasping fish that’s flopping in the shallow water on the floor, and smacks it on the tabletop until it dies. It lies there, glistening. “We’ll sell ‘em our seafood as pre-oiled. Pre-seasoned, even! Organic and all-natural, fresh from the Gulf of Mexico.”

“Florida, sir.”

“Shut up, Gomez. We can even get some celebrities on board. Rachel Ray, if she’s still cheap. Or that guy who says ‘bam’ all the time.”

“Bigelow, sir?”

“No, Bourdain. That asshole will eat anything.”

“What about FDA approval, sir?” Wang asks.

“Approval? What happened to the free market? What happened to life, liberty, and the pursuit of business? What the hell country is this?”

“America, sir.”

“America! Don’t talk to me about America, you namby-pamby East Coast Ivy League liberal puke. I spent 10 years eating gooks in Indo-China for breakfast and for what? America! Listen up: America is an obese toddler crying for his mama at the Fourth of July fireworks because his deep fried ice cream just fell into the dirt. America is a 40-year-old bleach-blond bimbo in daisy dukes draped across the hood of a red Camaro. America is Mr. John Doe working every day to buy a second home in a state so sunny that the Mexicans pay for the pleasure of cutting the goddamn grass. America is little Janey and Jimmy settling in the suburbs, where its designer chinos, appletinis, plastic picket fences, and a vacation home in Florida where the sand is always whiter than the population of Bumfuck, Wisconsin and the rain is as regular as me after a bran muffin. America is your goddamn balanced breakfast, made in China. Get me?”

“Yessir.”

Lightning flashes. Outside, the water is on fire. The lights inside go out. The room glows blue-green a moment longer, before the battery in the computer dies, and then everything is dim and orange.

The director leans back in his chair and looks around the table. Oily water pours from his shoe as he crosses one leg over the other. “All right. Let’s hear some slogans for next year.”

“This one is for the thrill-seekers,” Davis says, selecting a mock-up from his sodden portfolio. He flicks a few cockroaches off and holds it up. Gomez leans over and lights the glass of water on fire. “Florida,” the placard reads in a jaunty font, orange on green, “Rock you like a Hurricane.”

“Christ,” the director says, and looks out the window. The burning water is halfway up the spiderwebbing glass. A manatee drifts by forlornly. An alligator swims after it, glancing into the office and yawning like a bored tourist at SeaWorld. The director fans himself with a stack of brochures. “It’s too hot today,” he says.