Underneath It All. Nancy Warren

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      “I QUIT!” Darren yelled, almost as red-faced as his father. “I can’t take this anymore. Women are waiting outside my co-op when I leave in the morning. Women are hanging around outside the office with signs written in lipstick reading, “Choose me!”

      “You’re exag—”

      “I’ve been propositioned, stalked, proposed to about three thousand times. This morning the doorman handed me a woman’s bra with a phone number on it.”

      “It’s the excitement of the magazine, son.” His father tried to sound sympathetic, but he was as gleeful as a boy with a new Hot Wheels set. “A few months from now they’ll have forgotten all about you.”

      “Not if you can help it,” he mumbled.

      “We’ll hire you a bodyguard,” his dad replied.

      “I don’t want a bodyguard. I want my life back.”

      In fact, what he wanted was his life. His own life. Forget the family business, he wanted to succeed or fail on his own terms. Doing something he loved a lot more than creating artificial “need” in the marketplace for products anyone could live without.

      “Our business has gone way up in the past week. Think of what this could mean.”

      “No. Dad. I’m thinking about me. I love programming, it’s what I want to do with my life. Face it, I’m a computer geek and I don’t belong in advertising. I’m quitting. As of now.”

      Their voices were rising, but Darren didn’t care. He’d inherited his temper from his father, if nothing else.

      Just as angry, his father shouted, “You walk out that door, young man, and you can’t change your mind.”

      “I won’t.” Darren strode across the room but hesitated at the doorway of his dad’s plush office, feeling not so much fear for his own future, but worry that his father couldn’t cope without him. He was about to speak when he heard some sort of commotion down the hall in the direction of his own office.

      He turned and swallowed an expletive. There was a camera crew in front of his office, and damned if they weren’t filming some woman, some complete and utter stranger, leaving a dozen red roses outside his door. She was talking all the time, her face toward the camera so the flowers almost got knocked to the floor.

      Oh, no. This had gone far enough. His dad had turned his life and his job into a joke. He’d become, not an ad exec, but a product to be marketed. The hell with it. Kaiser Image Makers would survive without Darren.

      And Darren was going to be fine without Kaiser.

      But before he left, he was going to give that woman and the cameraman a piece of his mind. Angrily, he made his way toward them. Instead of looking guilty and hurrying away, the woman with the roses, beamed a thousand-watt smile his way, then shouted into the camera, “There he is!”

      She picked up the roses, yelled, “These are for you, Darren Kaiser. I love you,” and headed his way, hampered by her red stilettos and body-hugging red dress. She was followed by a skinny guy in a Knicks shirt balancing a TV camera on his shoulder.

      In a moment of horror, Darren realized that unless he disappeared fast, whatever happened next would be filmed. He abandoned his plans to dress down the camera guy and the misguided woman. He abandoned any thoughts of standing his ground.

      He turned on his heel and ran.

      KIM employees stood in the hallway, mesmerized, until Darren yelled, “Out of my way,” and set a world sprinting record racing for the stairwell.

      He was out of here.

      Running on instinct, he tore down several flights of stairs, spurred by the sounds of pursuit far above. Then he abruptly stopped and, as quietly as possible, opened the door to the twelfth floor and the law offices of Stoat, Remington, Bryce, where his buddy Bart worked. Since the receptionist knew him, she motioned him to go on through.

      “You never saw me,” he panted, and, ignoring her startled expression, kept going, racing through the hallowed halls of the law offices to seek temporary shelter with his old friend.

      Stumbling into Bart’s office without knocking, he shut the door, put his sunglasses on and borrowed the Yankees baseball cap Bart kept hanging on his wall along with a signed pennant. Then he slouched low in the leather club chair Bart kept for office visitors.

      “Drop in anytime,” Bart said as he watched Darren.

      “I’m in trouble.”

      “Hey,” Bart complained, as Darren tugged on the cap. “You can’t wear that! You’re a Giants fan.”

      “I’m in serious trouble, Bart.” Darren panted, expecting any second to hear the sounds of that crazy female after him like a baying hound after a juicy fox.

      “You have to help me.”

      As well as being a good friend, Bart was a dedicated lawyer. He immediately assumed an air of concern. “You did the right thing coming here. What’s up?”

      “I quit my job just now and I have to get out of town. Go far away where no one has ever heard of Matchmaker.”

      Bart’s expression of concern was replaced with one of hastily suppressed amusement. “Is that what your trouble is?”

      “Yes! It’s that magazine.”

      “I don’t want to make your day any worse, old buddy, but you’re everywhere. It’s not just the magazine. It’s the Internet, chat groups, newspapers and on the TV. You, my friend, are news.”

      “I need to stop being news. Damn it, I never agreed to be Match of the Year. I want to sue Matchmaker Enterprises or whatever they call themselves, Bart.”

      “What for?”

      “You’re my lawyer. Aren’t you supposed to advise me? How about defamation of character? Harassment? Libel?”