My improbable profession

This article was downloaded by: [Aalto-yliopiston kirjasto] On: 29 October 2013, At: 06:37 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Consumption Markets & Culture Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gcmc20

My improbable profession John W. Schouten

ab

a

Department of Marketing, Aalto University Business School, Helsinki, Finland b

Center for Customer Insight, University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland Published online: 28 Oct 2013.

To cite this article: John W. Schouten , Consumption Markets & Culture (2013): My improbable profession, Consumption Markets & Culture, DOI: 10.1080/10253866.2013.850676 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10253866.2013.850676

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/termsand-conditions

Consumption Markets & Culture, 2013 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10253866.2013.850676

SHORT STORY My improbable profession ∗

John W. Schoutena,b

Department of Marketing, Aalto University Business School, Helsinki, Finland; bCenter for Customer Insight, University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland

Downloaded by [Aalto-yliopiston kirjasto] at 06:37 29 October 2013

a

Consumer ethnographers by virtue of their craft develop levels of knowledge and understanding about people that run deeper than what they report to corporate clients or in the pages of academic journals. It may be knowledge that does not tell a particular brand story or serve a popular theoretical framework, and yet it matters. This story plays in the realm of that surplus understanding. It is a work of fiction. All characters and incidents are the author’s creations. Keywords: ethnography; anthropology; commercialization; material culture

I am the world’s first and probably only ethnotherapist. To the extent that there exists a field of clinical anthropology, I created it. This is my business card:

Ethnotherapy, according to my website, which is the ultimate authority on the matter, is a “holistic balancing of the personal ecosystem,” achieved by the therapist’s “immersion in the individual’s life context.” This means if you are unhappy, confused, existentially fucked up, or just rich, bored and lonely, I will come to your home, workplace, or wherever, and help you sort things out. My argument and the unique selling proposition of my service is that personal problems develop in a real-life context, are pinned to that context, and cannot be solved effectively from a sofa in a therapist’s office. You got to fix ‘em where you find ‘em. The whole enterprise started out almost accidentally. Many years ago, as a nonstarter in academia where hundreds of applicants vied for every opening in anthropology, I took a job working for AnthroTech, a market research firm. It was rare then for an anthropologist to end up in the private sector, except maybe as a sous chef or a Volvo mechanic. These days it is different. The Fortune 500 loves anthropology, or at least ∗

Email: [email protected]

# 2013 Taylor & Francis


2

J.W. Schouten

what it calls anthropology. Under the mantra of “getting close to the customer,” marketing executives use anthropologists to get into consumers’ homes and heads. For Procter and Gamble, for example, I personally observed dozens of men and women dressing, grooming and getting ready to go out on dates. I videotaped scores of hours of diaper changing for Kimberly-Clark. I logged hundreds of miles riding around with people in their SUVs, luxury sedans, sports cars and econoboxes for Ford, Chrysler and Toyota. I accompanied families to amusement parks and softball diamonds and all-you-can-eat barbecue chuckwagons. For one job, I actually spent a week on the streets of Chicago, offering passers-by sticks of Wrigley’s gum and paying them to let me videotape them unwrapping it, chewing it (in excruciatingly close-up detail), and disposing of it. In each case, I was paid the equivalent of 20 bucks an hour to observe, interview, digest information and prepare reports and presentations of my findings. AnthroTech was a boutique firm owned, operated, and oppressed by the iron personality of Dr. Virginia Lassiter, a cross between Margaret Mead and Joan Collins with a little Mussolini thrown in. When I worked there, Virginia handled all the client contact, and salaried anthropologists did the fieldwork, analysis and report preparation. We incentivized our way into people’s real-life product-usage situations in order to observe, interview and videotape our way to a better understanding of consumer needs. Think of it as professional voyeurism. The fieldwork ranged from just sort of interesting to downright fun. I met people from all walks of life, in all parts of the country, and saw how they lived, worked and played. I also gave our clients good value. For example, after about two weeks of in-home interviews with women in the suburbs of Dallas and Atlanta, I identified a new and profitable market segment for the perfume industry. It turned out that conservative Christian women were underserved. Following my suggestion, our client produced a fragrance named Obedience for a famous, born-again singer-songwriter. It was a big hit in Utah and the Bible belt. The client made millions, AnthroTech made hundreds of thousands, and I made 20 bucks an hour. Which at the time, given the dwindling remains of my savings, was 20 bucks better than nothing. Not long after I started working for AnthroTech, I learned something very interesting. The people I interviewed often found the process to be therapeutic. The first time a research participant thanked me warmly for interviewing her, I was surprised. What she had said, sitting in her kitchen, was, “Wow! That was wonderful! I didn’t even know I felt that way. I feel like I should be paying you!” The subject of the research had been breakfast cereals. But, of course, we had not just talked about breakfast cereals. We talked about life, and health, and wellness, and family, and work, and stress, and so on and so on. And, to be accurate, we didn’t really talk. I only intermittently tossed out a new question to steer the topic of her narrative. She talked and I listened. That was the real secret. Listening. Think about it. When was the last time you had someone’s undivided attention and interest for two hours? Or half a day? Or longer? How long since a trained interviewer guided you through an investigation of your own motivations, experiences, relationships, needs and emotions? Even if the entry point was something as mundane as breakfast foods or shaving systems, the underlying issues were often profound. I worked for Virginia Lassiter for over four years, and by that time I was ready for some kind of change. Part of the problem was advancement. There was no room for it. Virginia was a control freak of the first order, and with an infinite supply of young and


Consumption Markets & Culture

3

otherwise unemployable anthropologists coming out of doctoral programs, we fieldworkers were entirely replaceable. Using my skills and training to profit corporate America and Virginia Lassiter made me feel a bit like a whore, which might have been more palatable if Virginia hadn’t been such a miserly pimp. The day I really and fully discovered ethnotherapy, I was on the job in Beverly Hills. AnthroTech’s client was a luxury car manufacturer, and it was my last of six customer encounters for the week. Each encounter involved a two-hour, in-home interview and lifestyle tour, and a ride-along in the participant’s car. In this case, the participant was the petite, 36-year-old Muriel Mannheim with her multimillion-dollar house and her new 7-series BMW. We had finished the interview. I had just handed Muriel an AnthroTech envelope containing 500 dollars, the agreed upon incentive for her participation in the research, and was putting away my video-recording equipment. Muriel laid the envelope and its contents on an ebony hall table and asked, “Shall we say next week at the same time? We can talk about whatever subject you like.” She said it with the authority and expectation of someone used to having her own way. “I . . . uh . . . I mean . . . what?” “Another session.” Session? “I think you’ve got the wrong idea, Miss Mannheim. I’m just a market researcher.” “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, pulling a checkbook out of her purse. “I got more out of this session than I normally do from a month of psychotherapy. My shrink charges me three hundred dollars an hour. Can you live with that?” “Well . . . sure . . . I could . . . but . . . ” “But what?” She placed her diamond-Rolex hand on her hip and made a circular, questioning gesture with the checkbook-wielding one. “I’d love to, really. But there’s my job . . . ” which, at 20 bucks an hour, was suddenly looking much less appealing, “and . . . I mean . . . I live in Cincinnati.” Virginia Lassiter’s first big client, you see, had been Procter and Gamble. She had followed the money. Muriel shook her head slightly, her lustrously highlighted auburn hair bouncing me into a live shampoo commercial, and smiled her perfect orthodontia. “So?” she said. “You could build a client base here. I could help with referrals.” While she wrote a check, signed it and tore it out, I pondered this most bizarre turn of events. “I’d have to move,” I mused aloud. “I suppose that could be complicated,” she acknowledged with thoughtfully pouty lips. “Is there a Mrs. Sam?” “No,” I said, turning suddenly wistful at the thought of my short, unhappy marriage. “No Missus.” She studied my face silently. I thought about my uninviting walk-up apartment in Cincy, the cold, sloshy winters and muggy summers, and my complete lack of a social life. “No,” I said, “it’s not complicated. Just a little . . . ” I had wanted to say loony or off-the-wall, but was it really? “ . . . sudden.” “Oohhh,” she stretched the syllable as if it pained her to let it go, “I suppose you’re right. I tell you what. You think about it anyway. If it seems right, give me a call.” Then she picked up the envelope of incentive money, added her check to it, and pressed it all into my hand. From Beverly Hills, I drove straight to LAX to catch my scheduled redeye back to the land of Tide. At the Delta counter, they confirmed my upgrade to first class as a


4

J.W. Schouten

Platinum Medallion flyer. A blessing and a curse of working for Virginia Lassiter was that I had logged a lot of airline miles. While the plane was still on the tarmac, and after I had already downed my first whiskey of the flight, I pulled the AnthroTech envelope out of my jacket pocket and stared at the contents: Five 100-dollar bills and a check made out to me for another 600 dollars. For two hours of active listening Muriel Mannheim had compensated me the equivalent of more than a week’s worth of my regular pay. It had been summery in Southern California, but when I landed in Cincinnati, it was cold and bleak. March had so far been unsuccessful at prying open the jaws of winter. As I slogged through the long-term parking lot with my collar turned up, my head down and my luggage in tow, a white arc of sun broke free of the eastern horizon, laying down a garish glare and the taunting illusion of warmth. In the far reaches of the lot my aging Corolla sat hunkered beneath a lamppost like a tired, obedient spaniel. Halfway between a fading drunk and an approaching hangover from free airplane booze, I merged cautiously into the early morning rush. It was a right-lane kind of trip home. Home, I thought, with mild contempt. Nothing about Cincinnati said home to me. The landscape was barely more familiar than those of LA or Atlanta or Chicago or Dallas or anywhere else I routinely traveled for work. And besides a painting by my brother Mitch the only thing in my studio apartment that distinguished it from the dozens of Courtyards by Marriott I had slept in over the past four years was the lack of maid service. I kicked a week’s worth of newspapers inside the door, dropped my bags next to them and stood on the threshold of a depression. I left my clothes lying in a trail from the front door to the bathroom, where I washed down two Advil and stepped into the shower. Once the trip grime was washed away and I felt mostly human again, it was going on eight o’clock in the morning. I faced a choice: Coffee or bed? I pondered the likelihood of insomnia later if I slept. As the coffee brewed I dressed, and my pager buzzed on top of my dresser. I ignored it. The phone rang and I ignored it too. Eventually the answering machine beeped and Virginia Lassiter’s New Yorky double-time barked out. “Sam, where are you? It’s Tuesday morning.” I could practically see her pacing the floor in her office. “I need you to get your luxury car tapes to the office before you do anything else today. I mean it.” The lying-in-wait depression I had first sensed at the door of my apartment now started to close in on me. I didn’t have the energy or the will to deal with Virginia. I tried to imagine my life – 1 year, 5 years, 10 years on – in a future with AnthroTech. Even in the best-case scenario I was miserable. Maybe I could strike out on my own, I thought, build my own research business. But I didn’t have the stomach for the marketing and self-promotion, let alone the talent for managing a business. And academia was out. There was no conceivable path for me to a university position. I thought momentarily about teaching social studies, or something like it, in secondary school and found the idea mortifying. I’d seen what schoolteachers put up with. Hell, I had been what schoolteachers put up with. I was not tough enough or dedicated enough for that life. Which brought me back to Muriel Mannheim. Was she flakey? Or was she really onto something? Three hundred dollars an hour? Was that possible? I wouldn’t need very many two-hour sessions in a week to be considerably better off than I was at AnthroTech. The pager went off again, so I called the office, spoke to Virginia, and arranged to send her my videotapes by courier. Once the tapes were out the door, I drove to the



5

University of Cincinnati. Banks of cumulus clouds populated the sky. I parked in a visitor lot, found my way to the library and hit the stacks looking for books on counseling and therapy. I approached them like a student doing a quick and dirty literature review. I scanned books on theory, technique, private practice, ethics and law. Anything that looked helpful or interesting I added to a bibliography. Finally at around five o’clock, feeling suddenly ravenous, I headed for home by way of Arnold’s Bar and Grill where I could still catch happy hour prices. By seven, with a full stomach and two pints of attitude adjustment in me, I drove back to my apartment and booted up my laptop. From the recruiting roster for the luxury sedans job I pulled up Muriel Mannheim’s work telephone number. It was still before five in Los Angeles. “Mannheim Agency,” said a sunny female voice. “How may I help you?” I gave my name and asked to speak to Muriel. The call went right through. “Hello, Sam! Are you still in Los Angeles?” “No. I’m back in Cincinnati.” “I see. What can I do for you?” “Well,” I began without much confidence, but with nothing to lose, “I was wondering. Were you really serious about that therapy thing?” “Serious as a toothache, Dear.” “Right. And you think I could make a living at it?” “Absolutely.” I remained quiet, and she continued after another moment, “I know the market, Sam.” “So, what do you suggest?” I asked. “Come back out. Give it a shot. Treat it as an experiment. You remember the pool house, right?” I did – all 1500 square feet of self-contained, understated opulence. “It’s empty. You could stay there for a while if you like.” “Really. And you’d help me with referrals?” “I would.” “Hm.” I closed my eyes, searched the darkness and felt a smile forming deep in my psyche. “Well . . . ?” she said. “Are you still available for that session on Monday at four o’clock?” The next day I finished my report on luxury sedans and prepared another package for the courier service. In it I placed a disc with the report, a bill for my personal expenses and, almost as an afterthought, my pager. “Muriel . . . ” “My friends call me Millie,” she said with a smile at the outset of our second session. I had started thinking in the terminology of therapy, but I wasn’t completely at ease with it yet. At Muriel’s request we were sitting in her library. She wore a mint-colored workout suit and a pair of green-accented adidas trainers with three gold metallic stripes. “Millie. We started this process last week as a commercial exercise to understand you as an owner of a premium luxury automobile.” “Mm-hmm.” “And you said you found it therapeutic.” “I did.” “In what way?” I asked. “Well, I’ve been thinking about that.” She sat at the front edge of her chair, one of two masculine, brown leather affairs, rolled her shoulders a couple of times to loosen


6

J.W. Schouten

the muscles, relaxed back and addressed my question. “I think . . . and I got this from you, Sam . . . that we encode ourselves . . . our lives . . . into the things we acquire. And we do it unconsciously. I mean, for example, when I bought the BMW I wasn’t consciously appropriating a symbol of masculine competency. I wasn’t deliberately hanging out a sign that said, ‘Never question my abilities.’ But I was doing that, wasn’t I? You helped me see that.” I just nodded my head slowly. I hadn’t done anything the previous week other than follow the protocols of an interview guide, improvising when I had to, to fit the situation. “It’s brilliant, really,” she said. “We can unravel our unconscious selves by decoding the messages of stuff. The keys are all around us. The evidence of our successes, our failures, our vulnerabilities . . . ” She steepled her fingers and looked past them into space. “But of course, we can’t decipher it on our own, because to us it’s just our stuff.” I nodded again. Millie Mannheim, whether she knew it or not, was helping me invent my job . . . my profession . . . and paying me generously for the privilege. It seemed a little surrealistic, frankly, but then surrealism was the leitmotif of my life. “You chose to meet here in the library,” I observed, falling back on the first rule of interviewing: keep ‘em talking. “What would you say is special about this room for you?” She talked about the importance of books in her otherwise lonely childhood, and then, with some gentle probing from me, about growing up as the only child of a rootless father. She described him as a heretical philosopher whose combination of brilliance, charisma, arrogance and stubborn self-centeredness made it almost equally easy for him to lose a job as to land one. The only thing he had cared about as much as a public forum for his ideas was his daughter. She had been his princess, his pet and his sidekick at cocktail parties. She explained that wherever they went for a lecture or party, she had always carried two things: a book and a clutch purse. The book, because after introductions in his constantly changing adult landscape, she inevitably was just a pretty, pre-pubescent novelty that soon wore off and was left to her own devices for amusement. The clutch purse contained taxi fare, because more often than not her dad hooked up with some admiring woman and found his own way home much later in the night. “And your mother?” I asked when she had finished talking about her dad. “Well, I suppose she couldn’t stand the competition.” Not knowing how to respond to that, I affected a look of incomprehension to encourage further explanation. After a lull of meaningful silence I said, “So. A philosopher ... ” “Uh-huh.” “That must have been pretty stimulating.” She inhaled deeply and then released her breath in what seemed like a surrender. “That’s what people always assume. Life with a genius. What could be more stimulating? Actually, it was quite the opposite. I was never allowed an original thought. Never allowed to be simply right about anything. Anything I said was just another opening for him to demonstrate his intellect.” “I see. And so, your choice of career . . . ” “My career?” “Sure.” Sounding more confident than I felt, I gestured toward the book-lined shelves. “As a literary agent. Your love of books, which were your constant companions. The routine exposure to ideas. And yet a reluctance to claim your own



7

intellectual turf . . . ” I was making this up as I went. She studied me closely as I did. “Then, of course, the early sense of independence . . . ” I was feeling my way forward. “ . . . tempered with a fear of abandonment . . . ” Her eyes narrowed. “ . . . could have produced an entrepreneurial temperament.” “Hunh. I’ll be damned. Well done.” She nodded, more to herself than to me. Then she broke into a smile. “Well done! I was right about you. You do have a gift.” She looked at her watch. “I’ve got to run,” she said. “But let me give you something else to think about.” “What’s that?” “This ethnotherapy . . . anthrotherapy . . . whatever you’re calling it, it’s fresh, interesting, and as far as I can tell, effective. Who knows? Maybe there’s a book in it.” That evening in the pool house I pulled out my trusty Toshiba laptop and created a file folder titled simply “Book.” Then I stared at the monitor until the screen saver took over. It was a stock graphic of little colored fireworks launching and blossoming against the blackness. The next day when the phone rang in the pool house, I set my pencil down next to my note pad and the book I was reading – Advances in Clinical Psychology – and glanced at my watch. Two fifteen. I had been reading for over four hours already from a stack of books on counseling and therapy that I had picked up in the morning at the Beverly Hills Public Library. The phone rang a second time, and I moved to pick it up. “Hello.” “Sam,” it was Millie. “How was your night?” “Great!” “Is everything to your liking?” “Perfect.” The pool house was decorated in a style that said Mission Viejo. Unglazed terracotta floor tiles, rough-hewn wood beams, solid wood interior shutters designed to close over deep-silled windows, wrought iron lamps and black iron plumbing fixtures were just a few of the more obvious details of authentic-seeming craftsmanship. I had been here for two days now and already I was in love with it. “Listen, I have another client for you. Or should we call ourselves patients?” I could tell from the tone of her voice that she was grinning. She was definitely enjoying herself. “You know, I’m not exactly sure. Clients, I think. I’m more comfortable with clients than with patients. So . . . good! Thanks! Who is it?” It was Rebecca Bonhomie, an associate of Millie from the publishing business. Millie, as I mentioned before, was a literary agent representing, among others, authors you would definitely recognize and possibly have read. Rebecca, it turned out, owned and ran Flying Elephant Press, a publishing company specializing in books about yoga, organic gardening, low-impact eating, alternative healing, kabala, astrology, tarot, and various other flavors of mysticism, self-help and general inspiration. Our two-hour appointment was set for six o’clock the next evening at her house, also in Beverly Hills. Having renegotiated a longer-term rate on my Avis rental, a bronze-colored Chevy Cobalt, I drove to Rebecca’s address and was stopped at the sidewalk by an ornate gate of wrought iron painted pale pink. I pushed the intercom button on a keypad and waited for a voice that never came. Instead, the gate slid open with a rhythmic mechanical growl. I nosed the car along a flagstone driveway to the front of a pink house with


8

J.W. Schouten

cream-colored trim in what I believed to be a French Huguenot style. I mounted two steps to the front door, rang the bell and looked back over the yard, a manicured garden-maze of grass and flowerbeds at the center of which stood a magnificent topiary of a winged elephant. Ms. Bonhomie answered the door herself. She was a thin five-four or so with startlingly green eyes and a bob of jet-black hair. She looked me up and down, and smiled in a way that betrayed some doubt about what she was seeing. “Dr. Young?” she asked. Next to her burnt orange, Asian-styled silk pant suit and gold sandals, my khakis, polo shirt and Top-Siders made me look more like a pool boy than a therapist. “Would you mind just calling me Sam? Every time I hear ‘Dr. Young’ I end up looking over my shoulder for my father.” Her smile widened and she backed into the foyer, swinging the door open. “Please come in.” She showed me into a room that I supposed should properly be called a parlor, asked if I would like a cocktail, which I declined, and indicated one of a pair of matching green, lattice-print Louis XIV armchairs. She slipped her feet out of the sandals, relaxed back into the other chair, and in a gesture that seemed utterly unconscious ran two fingers gently along the arc of a deep green man’s necktie, knotted loosely at the neck of a milky silk blouse. On a small table next to her chair sat a martini, with cocktail onions, and a crystal and silver shaker capable of at least two refills. “Well, Sam,” said Rebecca, lifting her martini glass, “my dear friend Millie tells me you are quite a gifted, if unconventional, therapist.” I smiled. “What can you tell me about your techniques?” Perched on the front edge of the chair, elbows on my knees and hands clasped, I thought about her question for a moment. I had thought deeply about the same question ever since Muriel Mannheim pressed over a 1000 dollars into my palm the week before. “I have to be honest with you, Ms. Bonhomie . . . ” “Becca, please.” “Becca. I never trained as a therapist.” At this she raised her eyebrows. “My PhD is in anthropology. As an anthropologist, I was trained to observe, interview and interpret. So that’s what I do. It’s not so very different from psychotherapy, really, except that I conduct it in the context of your life, not my office.” “Interesting,” she said. I responded with an it-is-what-it-is gesture, and then continued. “I believe that our lives are products of both agency and context, and that to understand them we need to account for both our choices and the contexts in which we make them.” “Contexts such as . . . ?” “Places. People. Stuff.” “Stuff,” she echoed. “Stuff. Ours is a culture of stuff. Through some possessions we reveal our inner selves. With others we cloak and hide ourselves, from ourselves and from others. I try to help you decode the stuff.” “Hmm. That is interesting. So, where do we begin?” “Just by getting acquainted. Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself?” I pulled a mini voice recorder from my shoulder bag and hit the red “record” button. Rebecca looked at the recorder, then at me, made a face and shook her head no. I instantly turned it back off, dropped it in my bag and took out a notepad instead.



9

Her look turned to one of mild exasperation. “Why don’t we just keep everything off the record? Okay, Sam?” “Sorry.” I dropped the pad as well. “No problem.” “I do have one more question before we begin,” she said, holding her martini in one hand and tapping the rim of the crystal glass with the index fingernail of the other. The chime it made was ethereal. “Are we protected by doctor-patient privilege?” “You know, I’m not sure.” According to my interpretation of Clinical Psychiatry and the Law, one of the many books I had borrowed from the Beverly Hills Library, we would be protected if I were a licensed psychiatrist. But I wasn’t. “I’ll have to get back to you on that.” I learned that Rebecca had been born in New York, an only child. That her mother, who had immigrated from England to work in theater, was still alive but confined to a rest home with debilitating dementia. That her father was estranged. That her maternal grandfather had been one of the principal engineers of a World War I super-tank nicknamed the flying elephant, which had never been manufactured. That Becca had graduated from Columbia University and gone to law school, but never taken a bar exam. That she had done some acting in commercials and daytime TV, and that she had previously been married. “Divorced?” I asked. “Widowed.” Light from the chandelier played through the moving liquid in her glass, tossing shards onto her lap like evanescent jewels. The effect was hypnotic. “So,” I broke the spell, “you named your company after a World War I British tank?” “Yes!” She flashed one of those smiles that is so spontaneous and pure that it seems like a window into a self before sin. “One that was extinct even before it was born!” She refreshed her martini from the shaker. It must have been pretty well diluted by then. “Actually, I didn’t call it Flying Elephant right away. I tried at least five or six other names first, but every one of them was already taken. You have no idea how many small presses there are in this country. Goodness! In Los Angeles alone! Anyway, a flying elephant seemed apropos of what I was trying to do.” She went on to describe how she had taken over a struggling publishing business. It had been part of her late husband’s portfolio of investments, something he had picked up as part of a holding company acquisition and which had required too much managerial effort for too little gain. With a back catalog that was all but dead and nothing promising on the horizon, he had been determined to divest it for the value of its hard assets. Rebecca, however, had had other ideas. Through the 70s she had seen first-hand the rapid growth of New Age spiritual practices and mysticism. In the eighties, when the New Age had been pronounced dead, she had known better. It hadn’t died. It had gone mainstream and upscale. She had recognized it for what it was, an amorphous, free-flowing network of seekers; a manifestation of cultural poverty and spiritual hunger; a loosely defined group of non-religions with no definitive text and no central tenets or dogmas. Mostly, she had seen a vast, diffuse, literate and latent multibillion-dollar market without structure or organization. So, for her birthday – she resolutely refused to say which birthday – she had persuaded her husband to give her a publishing company. It had probably cost him, she said, less than a decent Italian vacation. Then with a new business card and a new company name Rebecca Bonhomie had hit the streets of Southern California. She combed the yoga studios, the ashrams and the temples for unpublished or selfpublished tracts. She wrote to authors of out-of-print books on spiritual awakening,


10

J.W. Schouten

meditation and self-help to see if any of them were interested in updating and invigorating their work. Within a year, she had several promising manuscripts. She hired writing students from UCLA to edit them, and art students to illustrate them. Within six more months, she had a product line to promote, and she promoted the hell out of it. She visited every hippy-dippy bookstore in Southern California. Then she moved up the coast to San Francisco, Eugene, Portland, and Seattle. She talked her authors into offering adult education classes at community centers and colleges. She got them radio talk-show spots and, in two cases, their very own talk shows. She produced infomercials for books on psychic renewal. She organized vegan cook-offs and got them televised with sponsorship from the Flying Elephant Press. She sponsored meditation retreats in Santa Barbara and underwrote a chic clinic for alternative healing on Sunset Boulevard. Finally, from bits and pieces she had put together the country’s definitive mailing list of spiritual seekers. In a few short years, Rebecca Bonhomie had made Flying Elephant Press into the imprint for New Age literature. Our two hours were nearly gone, and Becca had coaxed the last drops from her crystal martini shaker. I leaned forward in my chair and closed the flap on my shoulder bag as a sign of winding up. “Becca . . . ” I had to ask, “What is it you hope to get out of our sessions?” “I want what everyone wants, Sam.” Her tired smile showed a hint of sadness. “Redemption.” “Redemption. May I ask from what?” “Not tonight.” She stood and walked to a semi-circular table, above which hung an ornate mirror. She considered her reflection in the mirror, for probably a count of four, and then opened a large leather-bound folder that was lying on the table. Inside, it held a check and a pen. She filled in a number, folded the check in half, and handed it to me. “When this is gone,” she said, “you can start billing me.” The Mannheim house, essentially a replica of a Colonial Spanish villa set behind palm trees just off Sunset Boulevard, was a hive of activity when I got there one evening a few days later. It was around nine o’clock. I’d an appointment with a prospective client in the afternoon. Afterward I had spent a few hours writing and noshing at an outdoor table at a Venice waterfront bistro. Back at Millie’s, a uniformed valet met me at the street and asked to see my invitation. I explained that I lived there and, after a quick walkie-talkie conversation, he waved me through. The lawn on both sides of the drive was a study in Southern California car culture. At least half the cars parked there were convertibles, ranging from 3-series Beemers to Mercedes SLs and even a milk chocolate colored Aston Martin. Tops down all. The rest of the vehicles were an assortment of Porsches, Range Rovers, big sedans and, standing out like a bag lady at a debutante ball, one old, misshapen Studebaker pickup. Once upon a time, it had been roughly the same bronze color as my rental car. I parked the Cobalt in its usual, inconspicuous spot and made my way around the rear toward the pool house. “Sam!” Millie stood waving between the swimming pool and an outdoor bar with three other people, who all turned simultaneously to see who had attracted her attention. I returned a two-fingered wave, took another step toward the pool house, and realized that Millie was beckoning me over. “Hey, Millie,” I said when I was close enough to be heard without shouting, “what’s the occasion?” “Book release party,” she grinned. I quickly surmised that she was gleefully drunk. “Let me introduce you. Sam, this is Reggie . . . ” indicating a short, rotund and ascotted



11

man, who acknowledged me with a nod of his head, “ . . . Brenda . . . ” blonde, statuesque, miniskirted and smiling, “ . . . and Cooper, the man of the hour, whose fifth novel was released today in hardcover.” The author had gray-flecked brown hair tied in a pony tail that reached the middle of his back, blue jeans that might have survived the 60s, once-black cowboy boots that were now mostly cracked and brown, and a rawhide jacket over a turquoise Ron-Jon Surf Shop t-shirt. I figured I had just matched the Studebaker with its owner. “Congratulations,” I said to both Cooper and Millie. Cooper nearly produced a thinlipped smile, but not quite. “Doctor Sam Young,” Millie announced, “is my very talented live-in therapist.” “Delicious,” said Reggie. “Isn’t he just? Make yourself at home, Sam. Grab a drink. Mix and mingle. You’ll never find more need for therapy than in this crowd.” I dropped my laptop inside the pool house door, passed by the bar, chose a Chivas and rocks, and explored my way around the patio and back garden and into the house, introducing myself to everyone I met, asking how they knew Millie, reciprocating with the information that I was her ethnotherapist, and elaborating as much as any given person’s interest would warrant. By eleven thirty I had two new clients and leads for three more. By midnight people were starting noticeably to leave. Just a little after 12, I headed back to the pool house and found the door ajar. I panicked momentarily thinking about my laptop and then relaxed and felt a little stupid when I saw it sitting right where I had left it. I had picked up the computer case to carry it to the kitchen table when I heard a snort from the direction of my bed. A beam of light from outside fell through the window, diagonally across the bed and onto the floor. My eyes followed it in the reverse direction, noting first a pair of worn out cowboy boots, then a pair of heels, a Twister game of discarded clothing and finally the passed out and totally naked bodies of Cooper and someone blonde, tanned and shapely. Back in the pool area there were no other guests in sight. One caterer was picking up glassware, plates and trash while another was dismantling the bar. I walked over to her, found a half bottle of Chivas keeping company with the other booze in a big plastic bin, and liberated it. “May I?” I showed it to the white-frocked, college-aged Latina, and she gave me a help-yourself kind of gesture without missing a beat of what she was doing. It was still on the warmish side of cool outside, so I pulled up a chaise lounge, put my feet up, uncapped the whisky and took a swig. I swished it around my mouth and savored it as it warmed and morphed before letting it trickle down my throat. Then I repeated the process, recapped the bottle and held it in my lap as I watched the caterers finish their work and leave with perfect and nearly invisible efficiency. I woke just as daylight began to wash hints of color into a few of the more vivid surfaces of the pool terrace. Not ready for what I might find still lurking in the pool house, I decided to explore Millie’s kitchen for the possibility of coffee. I had a pot brewing just as Millie appeared in a pale blue tank dress and a bold necklace of large amber and lapis beads that called out flecks of amber from her eyes. “You look nice,” I observed. “I feel powerful. Double Sweet-n-Low,” she nodded toward the coffee maker. I set two mugs between us and ripped open two packets of sweetener. “Early start?”

12

J.W. Schouten


“Movie rights to sell.” She looked out toward the pool house for an explanation of my presence in her kitchen. “Occupied,” I said. She nodded, took one gulp of her coffee, set it down, and in a fluid string of motions picked up her eel skin portfolio folder, scooped up her car keys and glided out the door to the garage. I got to Rebecca’s house an unfashionable 10 minutes early and punched in the security code at the gate. It had been a gray day by LA standards, but the grayness had burned off and it was turning into a beautiful evening. This would be our third session, and I was thinking I would start with a home tour to create a kind of baseline of Rebecca’s household ecology. That, I figured, would provide all kinds of material to work with in interviews. Our second session had not gone as I’d planned it. We had begun and ended it, like the first one, in her parlor. She had wanted to know more about me. And so, taking control of the interview process, she had elicited pretty much my whole life story. I had protested gently a couple of times that the session was supposed to focus on her, not me; but she had assured me that the rapport we were building was important and would make future sessions more productive. I had assented, but resolved that tonight’s session would be all about Becca. In the flowerbeds around the front steps I noticed evidence of fresh weeding and new plantings. The front door stood half open, but I rang the bell anyway. There was no answer from inside. Well, I thought, maybe she had been doing some gardening and was around the back of the house. I strolled around to the back yard, only to find it deserted and the garden shed locked. I returned to the front door and rang again. If the door had been closed, I would have simply waited for her. A big retainer buys a lot of patience. But the door was open, and that concerned me. I called her name, stepped inside and peered into the parlor. “Oh, shit! Becca!” She was sprawled on the floor, motionless, her face in a pool of vomit. I shook her and couldn’t wake her. I checked her breathing and pulse, rehearsing in my mind what I knew about CPR. I grabbed the phone and dialed 911. “I need an ambulance and paramedics.” I gave the address and the entry code for the security gate. “Is she breathing?” asked the operator. “Barely,” I said. Becca was wearing a man’s white dress shirt tucked into a man’s trousers – a taupe pinstripe belted with a man’s silk necktie – and no shoes. The tie was oxblood red with little yellow dots. Just as the operator was reassuring me that the paramedics were on their way, I began to hear the siren approaching. I stayed close to Becca’s side as the paramedics inspected the scene, hooked her up to an IV and prepped her for transportation. “Where are you taking her?” I asked as they lifted her to a gurney. “Cedars-Sinai. You family?” “No.” And they were gone. I took stock of the scene they had left behind. A crystal martini glass lay on the floor next to Becca’s customary chair. A foot or so away, like an alabaster marble, was a single cocktail onion. On the end table sat the shaker, empty but for a couple fingers of ice melt, and a half-full bottle of prescription antidepressants. I picked up the barware and went looking for the kitchen. Like the one in Muriel’s house, it could easily have posed for a spread in Architectural Digest. I stood at the



13

spotless steel sink, rinsed out the crystal, set it aside and poked around until I found an artfully hidden roll of paper towels and a plastic trash bag. With these and a pitcher of cold water, I returned to the parlor and alternately soaked and blotted the spot on the rug until the vomit was cleaned up. Back in the kitchen, I found a trash compactor and disposed of the cleaning mess. I was tempted to explore the rest of the house, but resisted, with one exception. On my way back to the front entrance, I felt more or less entitled to check out a partially opened door I had passed along the way. It was an office space. On an ornately carved desk sat a pair of reading glasses, a couple of manuscript boxes, one closed and one opened, a printed manuscript divided into two stacks, one face up, the other face down, three different colors of highlighter and a heavy bronze cup full of pencils and pens. No computer and no books. One entire wall, paneled in what looked to me like burly walnut, served as a photo gallery. Each photo, framed and signed, showed Rebecca and at least one other person. Many of the people I didn’t recognize by either face or name. Some had names I recognized but faces that were new to me. Others were impressively well known. There was a picture of Becca with Nancy Reagan. There was another one of her posing with Governor Jerry Brown and Linda Ronstadt. There was even one taken with the infamous sex-mystic, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, in front of one of the ninety-some-odd Rolls Royces he had accumulated prior to being arrested and deported from his Central Oregon stronghold. As I perused the photos, something peculiar dawned on me. In virtually every photo Becca, regardless of what else she was wearing, also wore a necktie. In some cases, they were knotted in male dress tradition at the neck of a shirt or blouse. In others, they were integrated subtly and artfully into a more feminine ensemble. Before I left, I called Cedars-Sinai. Rebecca’s condition was stable; I could visit her in the morning. I locked up her house the best I could without keys or alarm codes and drove to Santa Monica, where I strolled more or less aimlessly on the promenade until the sun had fully set. “Oh, there you are, Sam. Thank you for coming.” It was nearing ten o’clock in the morning and I had just poked my head through the partially open doorway to her private room. Sitting there on the hospital bed with her fierce green eyes and structured ebony bob, and speaking as if she had been expecting me, she reminded me of a postmodern Cleopatra. As I completed my hesitant entry, a man behind the door, obviously a doctor, scrutinized me with a look that conveyed deep skepticism. “I was just explaining to Dr. Malik here that you are my new therapist.” I had no idea what kind of contraband she was smuggling in that easy pronouncement. Was this her “old” therapist? Her internist? An attending physician at the hospital? Treading softly on Becca’s words I shifted the vase of flowers I had brought to my left arm and extended my right hand toward the fiftyish, Levantine-looking man in a dark suit and white lab coat. “Samson Young,” I said, suddenly wishing I had shaven my face and worn something a little dressier than cargo pants and a polo shirt. “Pleased to meet you.” “Um. Yes.” He said with the same level of enthusiasm he might have marshaled for a bad meal. Clearing his throat, he addressed me while glancing back at Becca as if to anticipate or fend off some kind of flanking attack. “Well . . . I’m not sure how much you know about Ms. Bonhomie’s . . . er . . . situation . . . ”


14

J.W. Schouten

I set the flowers on a windowsill and moved to her side. “I understand you’re the one that found me and called the ambulance,” she said. I nodded. She returned a pout I interpreted as feigned abjection. “I was explaining to Ms. Bonhomie,” said Dr. Malik, “that given the nature of her . . . um . . . accident, I was reluctant to discharge her without some period of observation.” The attending physician, I concluded. Becca expelled a puff of air that, if vocalized, would have come off as something like “nonsense” or “balderdash.” Dr. Malik obviously believed Becca had attempted suicide, and he probably didn’t want to risk the implications to her, him or the hospital of a successful attempt. “Oh, please!” said Becca with an extravagant eye roll. “I have a thousand things to do in the next few days, and killing myself is nowhere on the list.” My thoughts drifted momentarily back to Millie Mannheim. I considered my temporary residence in her pool house, now three weeks on, and the strange twist it had taken on the night of the book release party. “What if,” I suggested on a whim to all three of us at once, “Ms. Bonhomie were signed out in my care? I could provide close observation and support.” Dr. Malik scowled. “She needs twenty-four-hour supervision.” “What do you think, Becca, of having your therapist as a house guest for a while? We could continue the ethnotherapy more intensively.” She sat up a little straighter on her motorized, multi-adjustable barge. “I think it’s brilliant.” Dr. Malik frowned. “You would take responsibility for Ms. Bonhomie’s care?” I nodded. “In writing?” It was noon by the time I got Becca to checkout of the hospital. She rode quietly in the passenger seat of the Chevy, watching or not watching the passing stream of parked cars, construction sites, apartment buildings, and palm trees. When we reached her home, she insisted first on calling the office to “square away a few issues” and then on taking a bath. I had to ask, “are you sure you’re going to be all right?” She smiled softly, averted her eyes. “It really was an accident, you know.” “How did it happen?” She thought a bit before answering. “I felt so good after our first session, I thought maybe I could give up the antidepressants. I cut back on them for a week and I was doing fine. After our second session, I quit them cold turkey.” She made a kind of “dumb, I know” gesture with her hands and face. “By the weekend I was slipping into my old dark place. A couple of days later, it was a full-on downward spiral. I got up yesterday morning and took a double dose of the antidepressant. It didn’t help. In an hour or so I took another. Nothing. I panicked. Took another . . . .” “And now?” She shrugged. My rooms were just down a hall from hers. She gave me a quick tour and a set of keys. An hour later, she was bathed, dressed, and sitting at her desk. I settled into a chair across from her, scanned the photo gallery and said, “So, tell me about the neckties.”