This is the opening chapter, an excerpt from a novel-in-progress.
 

That her body turned against her did not come as a complete surprise: what irritated Paloma Lucah was the timing. The clinking of silver on china had just started to fade in the banquet hall, the chatter of the crowd subsiding into quiet, collective attention. “Oh crap,” she muttered and sighed, though Eddie, apparently lost in his own thoughts, didn’t hear her. Under other circumstances he wouldn’t even be attending her professional luncheon, but thanks to her recommendation, he was today’s keynote speaker. All eyes would be on him, and because she sat next to him, on her. She shook her foot erratically under the table, waiting for the emcee at the podium to finish his rambling introduction. At last Eddie rose, Paloma broke into relieved applause, and the moisture welled under her right arm, where it always began.

Just ignore it, she told herself, pressing her elbows to her sides. She knew the advice was useless, though she also knew that at that moment denial was her best defense. Adjusting the microphone, Eddie opened with his favorite joke about politicians, which got the expected belly laughs from the crowd. She liked the joke but had heard it too many times, and anyway she was distracted. She just wanted Eddie to get to the meat of his speech so she could slip out to the bathroom.

“No, seriously. In all seriousness.” Like cool water poured over a sizzling frying pan, Eddie’s voice and self-deprecating smile quelled the noise of the audience. “It is an honor to be here today, not just because it’s a pleasure to speak to such an outstanding group, but because clearly advertisers, like yourselves, and political consultants, like me, have a lot in common.”

He lowered his eyes and began as if the wood grain on the podium reminded him of an interesting story: “You know, I remember the first campaign I ever managed, for a state assemblywoman out in Spokane. Very hard sell. She was a moderate Democrat in a very conservative area. But she was the incumbent. She had money. She had a name. Her people thought she was a shoo-in. But come two months before the election, she was trailing in the polls to a wealthy Republican rancher who was pushing hard with his anti-immigrant, small-government line.”

He leaned forward on one elbow. His shoulders were square and solid in his well-cut Hugo Boss suit, lending him an air of easy, cool confidence. But with his torso half-turned in a vulnerable position, he looked as if he were about to think out loud or seek advice from an old friend. Paloma always found him sexy when he spoke in public, even now as a little trickle of perspiration ran from her armpit down her side. He had a knack for transforming almost any setting into an intimate experience.

“Long story short,” he continued, “they brought me in, and we sat up all night drinking bad coffee—in the pre-Starbucks days—and finally we decided not to sell her track record, which, by the way, was excellent, but her story: The daughter of a migrant family from El Salvador, devout Catholic, put herself through college by picking apples. The kind of immigrant that made America the global power it is today. You can guess the rest.”

Paloma’s colleagues at the table murmured in recognition, not a single eye on her. Yet another reason to appreciate Eddie’s stage presence. Relieved to feel inconspicuous, she took the napkin from her lap and subtly dabbed her underarm.

“It appealed to the Horatio Alger ranchers,” Eddie explained. “Latinos who could but didn’t usually vote, and working-class women. In advertising lingo, we appealed to the target markets by creating a brand out of a story. The brand of Rosa Perez-Miller: Putting People First.”

He extended a deferential arm to the crowd. “Did I get the jargon right?” he asked. The audience chuckled. Eddie was a pro. In a swift movement, Paloma folded the napkin and tucked it under her plate. Now was the time to make her escape.

In the ladies’ lounge, Paloma stood before the mirror in her bra, pumping the liquid soap dispenser and lathering her armpits. Her blouse lay in a heap on the sink. The miniature pendulum lamps that hung from the ceiling cast her, half-dressed and half-washed, in an almost glamorous photo-shoot glow. Of all of the places for this to happen, of all of the places it had happened, the Opera Hall was certainly among the better ones. The last time had been at the coffeehouse around the corner from her office. There she’d had to crouch under the hand dryer with her elbow raised over her head and hope that no one she knew would walk in. Here at least she could use the fluffy cotton towels that were stacked on the vanity, and she could still hear Eddie’s speech.

“So what’s the point of all this?” His voice was even more seductive through the speaker that piped in sound from the banquet room. “Something you all know. Brand is story, story is brand. But we need to do more than just know it. We need to embody it. We need to practice it ourselves. Because it’s not just about getting people to do what we want them to do, whether that’s voting for a particular candidate or buying more cars. It’s about making our experience meaningful, because meaning drives our choices. Take my ‘brand,’ the story of my immigrant parents. I’ll tell you, right before Solidarity broke out in Poland…”

With one of the soft towels, she patted her arms dry. It both impressed and unnerved her how well Eddie understood marketing, but she had to admit that his “story is brand” idea was inspired. Even she loved it and she knew it was a gimmick, though like all good gimmicks it contained a grain of truth. But she wondered what he would do with the next part of the speech. Last night when they discussed it before bed, he had wanted to tell the story in which his father, a professor of physics, and his mother, a professor of international affairs, labored underground with the rest of Poland’s intelligentsia waiting for the Communist bureaucracy to crumble under its own weight. His parents wrote article after censored article, raised their only child, Eddie, and eventually pulled enough political strings to escape from Warsaw and settle in California where they were given asylum. Eddie argued that that was the story everyone wanted to hear, regardless of the fact that it was only half true.

She thought it would be better to give the whole truth to this crowd. “They might get something out of it,” she had said. “Anyway, there’s no media coverage. It’s just an advertising luncheon.”

“Yeah, but the biggest one of the year. I think it’s too risky.” He switched off the bathroom light and sprawled on the bed next to her. “Anyway, those are minor details. My parents did fight for what they believed in. I’m not making that up. That’s what’s important.”