Monday
Off to Tokyo on a full Jumbo, sitting in the back given Armadillo & Pounce's (lack of) cash flow. We're doing a freebie project for a Japanese shirt company to prove ourselves. Four movies on the way there, at least two of which star Hugh Grant, one of my least favorite people. Heide Vertig, accompanying me, seems to find him cute. Am reminded that she previously demonstrated appalling judgment in men by marrying Monk Bonanza, but decide not to mention it.
Tuesday
Arrive at Narita. Taxi in to downtown hotel costs $250!!! My back is so knotted from the plane that I head for the hotel's sauna and end up with full-on massage. Brutal. Wonderful.
Wednesday
Over to the shirt men, lots of bowing and exchanging of cards. They find my name very amusing. I give the A&P shop preez, full of witty examples of competitiveness in assorted industries, but my crowd barely cracks a smile, even when I throw out Mars bars and Hersheys and ask them to guess who makes more money. They only want to talk about shirts, and since our whole premise is that you bring us in precisely because we know nothing at all about shirts (or whatever your business is, we know nothing), I begin to wonder how well Marky Wahlberg "sold" this trial case.
Dinner in a traditional Japanese restaurant, shoes off, ladies pouring tea, terrific shabu shabu beef, a bit too much cold sake, then relentlessly on to karaoke. Heide sings something by Madonna and I stick to the Beatles. Despite nursing our glasses, we're both staggering by two in the morning when we're allowed to leave. Hotel wake-up calls are done by tapping in the time you want into the telephone …
Thursday
… Uh-oh. Guess I didn't tap correctly. Surface at eleven to find six panicky messages from Heide, who ended up going to the shirt men without me. Arrive with pounding head around lunchtime to find her leading nine men in their fifties through a brainstorming exercise on 21st-century clothing trends. I see that idea #7 involves the Spice Girls wearing the clients' shirts in magazine advertising — good to see that A&P can recycle failed ideas with the best of them. Nobody comments on my tardiness, they're all far too polite. Apologize profusely to Heide during a comfort break, but she says she's having more fun than watching me do this for the umpteenth time.
We manage to avoid hospitality this evening and take the subway back to our hotel, proud of our map-reading skills. Lots of people are busy messaging each other on their mobile phones and someone even takes a picture of me with her phone and zaps it off to a friend. Hello, Kitty!
Friday
Check in for e-mail. Apparently we've been splashed in the paper because of our work with the CIA: A&P is described as "an ultra-secretive advice firm headed by former cult member John Bonanza." Ken Armadillo is apparently outraged at being overlooked. Meanwhile Hertz has now formally sued me for crashing no fewer than four of their vehicles during the past three years. Our million dollar check from the CIA has had a stop put on it, so we have not been able to pay salaries this month. And someone called "hotpal96" has sent me a nice little virus.
The shirt men thank us for coming and promise to consider very seriously our proposal for a paid engagement, subject to certain budgetary problems being resolved. Sounds like a no. Head for Narita feeling that management consulting can be awfully difficult some weeks. Ask Heide how she's bearing up under all our stresses (she quit BCG to come here, remember?), and she forces a thin smile. We just need a bit of luck, is her verdict.
Friday
Arrive in Boston to live through the same day again — I hate that. And Hugh Grant — again! Meet Heide at baggage claim. We weren't sitting together because they upgraded her for some reason. She waves a business card. Guess who I sat next to, she says. I give up. The new head of Planning at Du Rite, she says. And he remembers all that work we did a couple of years ago. He probably wants to sue us, right?, I scowl. My bag appears on the conveyor with a big knife rip in it, shirts spilling out. No, smiles Heide. He just wants us to fix some of the problems we helped create. And he's even prepared to pay. I'm going down to see him next week.
So that's how it happens, then. The inevitable bittersweet day when your prot
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