Perfect Lies by Liza Bennett Page B

smaller rooms: Meg’s office, a tiny conference and lunchroom, Oliver’s reception area, and the cubicle office of Eduardo de Marquez, the creative director. The bathrooms were, inconveniently, public and down a long hall. The elevators were temperamental. The cleaning service sporadic at best. But the reasonable monthly rent and the location—in the heart of the Fashion District—made it ideal.
    It was a busy shop, the kind of place where people tended to stay put, not because it was particularly good for their careers, but because it was as freewheeling and noisy and slightly crazy as a large, loving family. It was a warm, welcoming place in the middle of a tough and competitive industry. Though Hardwick had a great reputation, fashion clients came and went as they did in all industries—each change of upper management prompted a housecleaning that often resulted in a switching of agencies, deserved or otherwise. Meg had been very lucky. Over the course of the eight years she’d been in business, she’d lost only one account to management changeover. Lately, though, she’d been facing another bane of Madison Avenue—bad debt.
    Frieda Jarvis, Inc., a high-end, funky woman’s-wear line based in Los Angeles, had been, up to six months ago, one of Meg’s favorite accounts. Frieda herself was as wacky as her clothes—loud and flamboyant, a transplanted New Yorker who could talk her way onto the most reluctant buyer’s order form. Then Frieda, with the encouragement of a new husband, decided to take the small, growing company public. Donna had done it. Calvin as well. Why not Frieda? Meg, personally, had given her about sixteen reasons why it was a terrible idea, the foremost being that Frieda’s clothes were too special, too “nichey” to appeal to the kind of mass market the stock market expected. But Frieda seemed to have acquired, along with the new husband, a hankering for quick money and splashy stories in the business sections.
    The initial stock offering had gone up to thirty by the end of its first two weeks and Frieda, flush with her new paper wealth, had Meg run the most expensive nationwide Frieda Jarvis campaign in the company’s history. The orders poured in. The factory in Mexico worked overtime. The fall Jarvis line was featured at the front of every major department store and in the windows of all the best boutiques. But the average working woman, alarmed by the jarring color combinations and unfamiliar cuts, didn’t even try the clothes on. By the end of August the stock had fallen to four, and Meg was unable to get Frieda’s comptroller on the phone to discuss the invoices that had been overdue since June.
    With the recent ominous article about the Jarvis stock in the same business section that had touted the offering just six months before, Abe began pressuring Meg to sue for the overdue funds. But Frieda had been one of Meg’s first accounts. And a friend, besides. So despite the debt that had slowed Hardwick and Associates’ cash flow to a trickle, Meg had opted for tersely worded letters and threatening phone calls. What she needed instead, Meg had decided, was a new, healthy client, with a pristine D&B, and ready cash. So when SportsTech put their account into review, Meg had jumped on the prospective-agency bandwagon.
    SportsTech wasn’t really Meg’s type of client. The hugely successful New Jersey-based company produced midpriced sports- and action-wear for the whole family. Eminently practical and decently made, but with an uninspired logo and ho-hum packaging, SportsTech had the brand awareness of tap water: it wasn’t anyone’s first choice but it was everywhere and always within reach. Initially, when Meg had asked to be considered in the review, the SportsTech marketing director had expressed surprise … and concern. Meg was known for flashy, trendsetting creative.
    “I’m not sure we’re really your kind of product line,” Vincent Goldman had told her.
    “Of course