'that I'd see something. You know? Something. I couldn't believe it was as bad as it seemed. But the cumulative effect of those spots ...

it's like watching Jimmy

Carter saying, "I'll never lie to you".' He took a drag from the new cigarette, grimaced, and stuffed it into the ashtray. 'No wonder George Carlin and Steve Martin and fucking Saturday Night Live had a field day. That guy just looks so sanctimonious to me now . .

.' His voice had developed a sudden watery tremble. He shut his mouth with a snap.

'I've got an idea,' Vic said quietly.

'Yeah, you said something on the plane.' Roger looked at him, but without much hope. 'If you got one, let's hear it.'

'I think the Sharp Cereal Professor has to make one more spot,' Vic said. 'I think we have to convince old man Sharp of that. Not the kid. The old man.'

'What's the old prof gonna sell this time?' Roger asked, twisting open another button on his shirt. 'Rat poison or Agent Orange?'

'Come on, Roger. No one got poisoned.'

'Might as well have,' Roger said, and laughed shrilly. 'Sometimes I wonder if you understand what advertising really is. It's holding a wolf by the tail. Well, we lost our grip on this particular wolf and he's just about to come back on us and eat us whole.'

'Roger

'This is the country where it's front-page news when some consumer group weighed the McDonald's Quarter Pounder and found out it weighed a little shy of a quarter pound. Some obscure California magazine publishes a report that a rear-end collision can cause a gas-tank explosion in Pintos, and the Ford Motor Company shakes in its shoes -'

'Don't get on that,' Vic said, laughing a little. 'My wife's got a Pinto. I got problems enough.'

'All I'm saying is that getting the Sharp Cereal Professor to do another spot seems about as shrewd to me as having Richard Nixon do an encore State of the Union address. He's compromised, Vic, he's totally blown!' He paused, looking at Vic. Vic looked back at him gravely. 'What do you want him to say?'

'That he's sorry.’

Roger blinked at him glassily for a moment. Then he threw back his head and cackled. 'That he's sorry. Sorry? Oh, dear, that's wonderful. Was that your great idea?

'Hold on, Rog. You're not even giving me a chance. That's not like you.'

'No,' Roger said. 'I guess it's not. Tell me what you mean. But I can't believe you're -'

'Serious? I'm serious, all right. You took the courses. What's the basis of all successful advertising? Why bother to advertise at all?'

'The basis of all successful advertising is that people want to believe. That people sell themselves.

'Yeah. When the Maytag Repairman says he's the loneliest guy in town, people want to believe that there really is such a guy someplace, not doing anything but listening to the radio and maybe jacking off once in awhile. People want to believe that their Maytags will never need repairs. When Joe DiMaggio comes on and says Mr. Coffee saves coffee, saves money, people want to believe that. If..

'But isn't that why we've got our asses in a crack? They wanted to believe the Sharp Cereal Professor and he let them down. Just like they wanted to believe in Nixon, and he -~

'Nixon, Nixon, Nixon!' Vic said, surprised by his own angry vehemence. 'You're getting blinded by that particular comparison, I've heard you make it two hundred times since this thing blew, and it doesn't fit!'

Roger was looking at him, stunned.

'Nixon was a crook, he knew he was a crook, and he said he wasn't a crook. The Sharp Cereal Professor said there was nothing wrong

with Red Razberry Zingers and there was something wrong, but he didn't know it.' Vic leaned forward and pushed his finger gently against Roger's arm, emphasizing. 'There was no breach of faith.

He has to say that, Rog. He has to get up in front of the American people and tell them there was no breach of faith. What there was, there was a mistake made by a company which manufactures food dye. The mistake was not made by the Sharp Company. He has to say that. And most important of all, he has to say he's sorry that mistake happened and that, although no one was hurt, he's sorry people were frightened.'

Roger nodded, then shrugged. 'Yes, I see the thrust of it. But neither the old man or the kid will go for it, Vic. They want to bury the b -'

'Yes, yes, yes!' Vic cried, actually making Roger flinch. He jumped to his feet and began to walk jerkily up and down the screening room's short aisle. 'Sure they do, and they're right, he's dead and he has to be buried, the Sharp Cereal Professor has to be buried, Zingers has already been buried. But the thing we've got to make them see is that it can't be a midnight burial. That's the exact point!

Their impulse is to go at this thing like a Mafia button man ... or a scared relative burying a cholera victim.'

He leaned over Roger, so close that their noses were almost touching.

'Our job is to make them understand that the Cereal Professor will never rest easy unless he's interred in broad daylight. And I'd like to make the whole country mourners at his burial.'

'You're cr –‘ Roger began then closed his mouth with a snap.

At long last Vic saw that scared, vague expression go out of his partner's eyes. A sudden sharpening happened in Roger's face, and the scared expression was replaced by a slightly mad one. Roger began to grin. Vic was so relieved to see that grin that he forgot

about Donna and what had happened with her for the first time since he had gotten Kemp's note. The job took over completely, and it was only later that he would wonder, slightly dumbfounded, how long it had been since he had felt that pure, trippy, wonderful feeling of being fully involved with something he was good at.

'On the surface, we just want him to repeat the things Sharp has been saying since it happened,' Vic went on. 'But when the Cereal Professor himself says them

'It comes full circle,' Roger murmured. He lit another cigarette.

'Sure, right. We can maybe pitch it to the old man as the final scene in the Red Razberry Zingers farce. Coming clean. Getting it behind us ~'

'Taking the bitter medicine. Sure, that'd appeal to the old goat.

Public penance ... scourging himself with whips. . .'

'And instead of going out like a dignified guy that took a pratfall in a mudpuddle, everyone laughing at him, he goes out like Douglas MacArthur, saying old soldiers never die, they just fade away.

That's the surface of the thing. But underneath, we're looking for a tone ... a feeling. . . .' He was crossing the border into Roger's country now. If he could only delineate the shape of what he meant, the idea that had come to him over coffee at Bentley's, Roger would take it from there.

'MacArthur,' Roger said softly. 'But that's it, isn't it? The tone is farewell. The feeling is regret. Give people the feeling that he's been unjustly treated, but it's too late now. And He looked at Vic, almost startled.

'What?'

'Prime time,' Roger said.

'Huh?'

'The spots. We run em in prime time. These ads are for the parents, not the kids. Right?'

'Yeah, yeah.'

'If we ever get the damned things made.'

Vic grinned. 'We'll get them made.' And using one of Roger's terms for good ad copy: 'It's a tank, Roger. We'll drive it right to fuck over them if we have to. As long as we can get something concrete down before we go to Cleveland. . . .'