At just 39, Jennifer Grinder should have been happy with life. As managing director of Pharmaglax, the second largest pharmaceuticals in the country, she was successful by almost anybody’s standards. She was still very attractive, possessing a classic lean face hinting of ruthless energy and determination, softened by light brown eyes and sculptured lips. She wore her dark auburn hair pulled severely back into a carefree pony tail which cascaded playfully down the contours of her neck. Her skin was perfect but beginning to line about her mouth. Her girlish chin she held in a confident poise, and her smile, when she chose, could transform her from the born corporate killer to coy schoolgirl.
Today she wore a pale blue Georgette blouse with cut away collar, long sleeves and narrow cuffs. Her narrow frame and tailored highlighting her small girlish breasts. She wore minimal make up, just clear lip gloss and a little brown eye shadow lightening upwards, where her narrow dark eyebrows gave her face a startling immediacy.
“Come in Caroline, said Jennifer. You know Dennis Gray, head of accounts?” Caroline, from marketing.”
“Ah yes, Ms Romper. One of the many young ladies spending all our hard earned profits,” he replied with a patronizing smile.
“Mr. Gray is just leaving, Caroline”
“Ah. I was given to understand this meeting required a financial focus, Miss Grinder.”
“I’ll let you know when we require refocusing, Dennis. In the meantime something urgent has come up and I need to talk to Caroline.”
Mr. Gray stood up and walked philosophically to the door. He could wait, best let them get on with it. The bitch was heading for a heavy landing anyway.
“Please sit down Caroline. Have you brought the schedules and proofs for the next marketing campaign?” While she spoke she gazed after Dennis. He was wearing the same lifeless grey suit he wore last week, and the week before come to that. It hung creased and shapeless from him like a camouflage net, which probably it was. She waited for him to reach the door.
“Would you be a dear and ask Jason to make us some coffee?”
He froze with his hand on the door handle, wondering if she was addressing him, but hesitating to turn around to check. He realized the indecision only exaggerated his ridiculousness. He fumed inwardly at how rapidly she had learned to needle him.
“Of course, Miss Grinder,” he said finally, to the disinterested door. He opened it and left.
“Caroline I asked you here to discuss the marketing implications of recent tests on our latest drug, K983. Briefly, the research, contrary to all initial indications, shows that the drug possesses no significant clinical effect.”
She leaned back in her high leather chair, smoothing her short black skirt over her lean thighs and cupping her chin playfully in one palm. It was a trick she had perfected at an early age and, like most of her complex body language, was now almost totally unaware of it in herself. She smiled generously and encouragingly at Caroline, assessing the effect of this news on the young girl. She was around 24, quite tall, with pearly white teeth a wide smile mouth, contradicting her dark sad eyes. She wore her hair cropped short and jet black, confidently emphasizing her good looks. She had the figure of a model, apart from her rather generous breasts.
Her gaze moved on unhurriedly to her smart but subdued outfit, a burgundy single breasted trouser suit with jetted pockets and top stitching detail. Her jacket hung casually open revealing her silk camel slash neck top underneath.
“Miss Grinder, if the results are confirmed, I think we will need to realign our marketing strategy,” Caroline started out tentatively. “The campaign was based on the assumption that we would be promoting a highly effective drug to alleviate male impotence. We may have to downgrade the campaign, perhaps towards the natural enhancements end of the market.”
“Call me Jennifer, please Caroline. It’s only pompous windbags who insist on surnames around here.” She stood up and walked across to her bureau, smoothing down her skirt. “I said the tests showed that the drug exhibits no clinical stimulation and that was true. What I didn’t tell you was the tests also showed that, psychologically, the drug induces a very significant effect for over 98% of male users.”
She gazed out onto the busy forecourt below. A group of workmen were digging a narrow trench, trouser legs caked in mud, their tops grimy and sweaty. She flinched inwardly as one overweight worker bent over to lift the sodden clay from the bottom of the trench.
“Caroline, times are changing for women, even faster than perhaps you realize.” She walked back and rested one hand gently on the girl’s shoulder and placed a cheque made out to Caroline Romper for two thousand pounds, on the desk in front of her. She turned towards her and sitting back on the edge of her desk, crossed her legs and smoothed her skirt.
“I don’t quite understand, Jennifer.”
“Caroline, has it ever occurred to you that what men really need, if they had the good sense to realize, is a clinical requirement for less sex, not more. Women throughout time have priced sex high as their only means for gaining control. In restricting supply, the cost of sex increases for a man, whether due payment is being a little nicer to Mrs. Brown and their six kids, or a seat on the board of a big multinational.
Potentially now, we are in a position to market a drug that makes men believe they need even more sex. As a company we can greatly stimulate demand. With restricted supplies and increased demand, the price will soar and so will our control. And with good marketing I can turn this disaster around, and promote women at the same time.”
She stood up again, and walking round behind Caroline’s chair, rested her hands on the girls shoulders in a motherly way.
“Starting today, Caroline, I want you to head up marketing. I’m shifting Anthony into accounts, he’ll be happy there, toadying around behind Dennis for a while. I’m trebling the previous campaign budget. I want some fabulous marketing angles on this one. Get yourself several more lovely outfits, and entertain a couple of your best media connections. I want a relentless string of wild stories and reports filtering out…stolen trial versions of the drug exchanging for thousands of pounds, fears of black marketing in the drug by desperate men unable to get prescriptions on the national health, men overdosing and running around in a frenzy, you know the form. And we’ll need a good name. Something that will grab them by the balls…”
“…and not let go,” said Caroline, recalling her bosses favourite slogan. She looked up, her confidence soaring, their eyes meeting as equals for the first time.
“I’ve already worked on that, Jennifer,” said Caroline. I thought, Viagra. It conjures up images of vital and vigorous, a gushing watershed, a Niagara falls for men.”
A Niagara falls for men indeed, thought Jennifer, as her fingers ran distractedly up the nape of Caroline’s neck in a distinctly unmotherly way.