The Appetite Factory

Chapter 1

Leonard waited for the man to say something. It was easier to gauge the dynamics that way, to let them talk it out. Sometimes they argued, sometimes they cried. They’d go on about their careers or their kids or the money they’d lost, how they’d contemplated suicide, attended rehab, found God. Every job was different, and every job was the same.

So, how do you feel?

His client sat fidgeting in his bathrobe. He was several days unshaven, and his face looked ruddy in the sour light, like a microwaved hot dog. Leonard recognized the movements, the wringing hands, the restive eyes. Animal distress, mechanical failure. Stricken with some newfound realization, as though the ground was dipping beneath his feet. It was an unfortunate requirement of his work that he saw people at their worst. His best guess as to why he possessed a gift for fixing their problems was he recognized a latent truth in them, that maybe, given enough money and opportunity, we’d all eventually become what we hate.

You had a rough night, Leonard said.

The hotel room was spare and sanitized, walls and textiles assigned muted colors: taupe, sage, and slate. There was a low purling in the ducts and hints of disinfectant in the air, laboratory interpretations of vanilla. A band of sunlight crossed the floor from the window, motes of dust winnowing away from the sill.

Are you sorry for what you did?

His client pitched forward and barked a spume of bile into the gap between the bed and wall, pawed at the covers, and gasped for air as an acetone stink of spirits filled the room.

I don’t know, the man said. Why do I have to apologize?

Because that’s how this works.

But I’m not sorry. An apology wouldn’t be real.

Nobody likes reality, Leonard said. That’s why we tell stories.

Leonard crossed the room to open the window. He palmed the glass, shielding his eyes from the skyline’s opalescent glow as he watched the street’s swelling crowds. To the south a range of buildings poked through a yellow brume of fog. Beyond it pillars of smoke rose from jetties of Hudson shoreline.

This wouldn’t have been a big deal a couple years ago.

We’re more connected now. The whole thing was on video. It’s trending online, on the social media network you created.

That doesn’t make what I did any worse.

You assaulted a competitor in a bar, Leonard said. You dropped your pants and tried to urinate on him. You referred to him with a homophobic epithet.

Cocksucker is an epithet now? It’s still a free country.

That isn’t the issue. You’re a brand. If we don’t push back against what they’re saying, the public will resurrect this incident anytime your name is mentioned for the rest of your life.

It just feels phony. The man stood and staggered to the bathroom.

The thing about drunks, they were already crisis experts in their own way. They’d been selling different versions of themselves to family and coworkers for years, and they were resistant to change because they believed their own fictions. Leonard noticed subtle incongruities in the room now, stray details that disrupted the four-star narrative. A dime-sized chip of particleboard was missing from a corner of the dresser. A framed print to the left of the television hung conspicuously lower than a print to the right. The wall clock’s minute hand didn’t line up with the dial markings.

I won’t deny there’s a performance element, Leonard said as the man knelt on the tile and hugged the toilet. We’re a sentimental species. The only thing we like more than watching public figures self-immolate is a redemption narrative. That’s why most people in my position advise the traditional route: own up to what you did so you can stir their sympathies. So, we send out these canned, corny statements acknowledging your newfound self-awareness in the hopes you’ll get off the media’s radar as quickly as possible. It’s shortsighted. It fails to recognize the opportunity events like this present.

The man stifled a laugh as he returned to the bed. What opportunity?

You keep a low profile. You never talk to the press.

I’m a computer programmer, not a celebrity.

You basically created social media. You should put yourself out there, own your authority. Facts and rumors are treated the same online, but we can use that to our advantage.

I don’t follow.

You’re launching a new software company.

This summer. So, yeah, last night comes at a bad time.

I want your team to dovetail the launch announcement with the apology statement we discussed over the phone.

I can’t. We’re in beta. It’s months away.

The blogs have been speculating on it for a year. Push it forward. In the meantime, I want you to change your clothes. Start wearing jeans, don’t shave.

I see where this is going, the man said. The populist image—

The founder of a cutting-edge software company gets into bar fights. It’s Steve McQueen with a laptop. Just the image your industry needs.

Why do you think it’ll work?

Because people can’t process new information without leaning on their prejudices. So, if you want to build a better brand, leverage the prejudice.

And you make a living coming up with this stuff?

That and counseling adults who don’t understand what constitutes good behavior.

The client consulted a muted television: B-roll footage of mobs at some cow-country political rally. A chyron on the bottom of the screen reported that Senator Barack Obama had been projected winner of the North Carolina primary. Leonard took further inventory of the room. A sweating rocks glass on the nightstand beside an empty pint of vodka. A scattering of pocket change and wadded receipts. A cellphone, and next to it a tear-shaped bottle of men’s body soap. Leonard waited a beat and slipped the soap into his pocket.

I’ll be honest, I don’t even want to go back home, the man said, eyes still on the screen. You wouldn’t believe the culture there nowadays. Fifty-year-old men riding longboards to work. Millionaire housewives who discovered the internet and refuse to vaccinate their kids. He paused, and his face seemed to darken. People ask why I sold my shares last year, and I always say something about value propositions or slowdowns in social media ad spends, but I just wanted out. I swear, if they open that dog-yoga studio down the street from my apartment, I’m going to throw myself onto the CalTrain tracks.

That sounds extreme, Leonard said.

The life I had is over. This new venture, I don’t know—

Please. You should hear some of my other clients’ problems. You’re young. Things are bad now, but they’ll get better. You have to think positively.

Of all the prescripts Leonard brought to these sessions, only the last one was a lie. Optimism was the worst impulse a person could indulge. The doubts we entertain when we’re alone, the anxieties that visit us in the small hours, those are the meditations worth holding on to. No matter how good things looked now, life always regressed to the mean.

People externalize themselves in brands, Leonard said. It doesn’t matter if it’s a beer or a sports team, they consign their identities to an artifact that will achieve greater fame and success than they can hope for. It’s eternal life in a can.

So what?

So, if you forge a strong enough bond with people, you can get away with anything. They won’t criticize something they believe in, because that means they’d have to be critical of themselves. And that won’t happen.

Look, the man said. I make software. These theories don’t mean anything to me.

I’m telling you. As long as you can avoid challenging their worldviews, as long as you can make them believe they’re being represented in the marketplace, as long as you can feed their narcissistic obsessions enough to distract them from their shortcomings, the bullshit gets to walk.

The man kept his eyes to the floor. Why?

Because all we’re doing is tapping into their irrational behavior.

Leonard gathered his things, opened the door, and stood with a foot in the hallway peering into a roaring atrium, the descending spiral of floors to a panopticon lobby twenty-four stories below. He gripped the railing for a moment, considered the dizzying distance to the ground, spinning tourbillons of light that refracted from a bay of revolving glass doors and cast prismatic pinwheels along the lobby floors.

What’s the matter?

Old coworker of mine. Killed himself six months ago, Leonard said. I just realized this was the hotel. He jumped off one of these ledges.

Jesus. I’ll take it as an omen. Meeting adjourned?

A crisis is like a wildfire, Leonard said. You have, conservatively, five hours to get this story contained. If your apology isn’t circulating on the news this evening, the public will take your silence as an admission of guilt. I’ll have a press release ready within an hour. I want you to get a launch announcement prepared by the time I start booking satellite interviews this afternoon.

Fine, whatever.

There’s a silver lining to this, Leonard said. We learn more about ourselves in a crisis than any other situation. You find out what you’re made of. In the meantime, lie low. Focus on the message, practice reading our prepared statement aloud. Don’t get upset if someone asks what happened.

I don’t care what people think about me.

Everybody says that. You’re supposed to say that. It’s not true, Leonard said. It sounds strange, but the public is poised to love you. They hate you only when you begin reminding them of themselves.

Anything else?

You drink too much, Leonard said. Maybe take it easy.

LEONARD WALKED AGAINST THE CROWD. HIS FACE APPEARED MOST HONEST in the daylight, pale and porous like a lemon peel. He had a downturned mouth that sank into his chin with a permafrown, alert eyes that huddled close together, dull green, the color of tempered glass. His spine canted slightly, burdened under some obscure weight, a dogged nervousness in his gait, a look of repressed irritation as he negotiated his way up the swarming stretch of sidewalk, shoulders pitched forward, a mustache of sweat on his upper lip. It was an unseasonably warm spring morning, the first day that truly felt like summer, the air torrid and the avenue blanched with light, glass towers reflecting panels of unblemished sky. As the subway sent tremors through the pavement, he concentrated on the farrago of smells—vendor food, asphalt heat, piss—while his fellow commuters marched in various states of harmony and disarray up the conveyor belt of the concourse, a Whac-A-Mole of interlocking heads and shoulders filing into the revolving glass mouths of buildings or wandering into the vexations of traffic. They avoided each other’s eyes, appeared time-wary yet oblivious, wound on some mystery automation as though they were chasing after something just out of reach and trying to get away from it at the same time.

Just south of Fortieth, he entered a tired-looking building faced with windows that wept rust. A warren of delis and travel agencies, arterial, neon-lit passageways advertising locksmiths and massage parlors knotted around its perimeter. Leonard took the elevator, disembarked on the sixth floor, and entered the offices of Gurney Public Relations. The foyer smelled of dust and heated rubber, like the inside of a vacuum bag, walls yellowed and pocked with liver spots of mold and volutes of peeling paint, the heavily trafficked carpets, once maroon, now faded dull cerise. He grabbed a newspaper from the waiting area, nodded to a yawning receptionist, and entered an encampment of cream-colored cubicles that buzzed with keyboards and the cricket drone of phones. He reached the aisle along the back wall, passed the Travel and Hospitality division, Health and Wellness, Investor Relations. Silhouettes of Gurney lifers twisted behind the blinds of their respective offices: Ron Viola, Managing Director, Financial Communications, a garden-variety drunk for whom no company party was official until he broke down over his eternally failing marriage; Karen Clinkenbeard, Deputy Head, Technology, who insisted on printing every email she sent and received, erecting a paper fortress that encircled her desk; Bonnie Yoon, Practice Leader, Food and Nutrition, who crushed ephedrine hydrochloride tablets into her Diet Coke and rattled in her seat like a combine operator. After the photocopy machines stood the double oak doors to the office formerly belonging to Gibby Goodfriend, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, still vacant since his suicide. Then it was home, identified by the metal-rimmed nameplate: Leonard Lundell, Managing Director, Crisis Communications.

The team was waiting inside: Todd Shillenburg, Todd Armitage, Todd Colton. Stiff, streamlined-looking men in identical slim-fit charcoal. Leonard’s office was a stark contrast to the rumpus outside, the cherry bookshelves that lined the walls harboring Pantone scales of swaybacked industry journals and cloth-bound textbooks that gave off loamy, cellar smells. He acknowledged the men with a tired smile and settled behind his desk.

All right, Leonard said. Let’s make the donuts.

For the next several hours, they worked on accounts. They made lists and lists of lists, devised slogans and strategies, identified data sets of cooperative behaviors. Crisis: A recent oil spill in the Gulf had caused a precipitous drop in foreign and domestic travel visits to a luxury resort in Florida. Strategy: Offer a special, inclusive vacation package—prospective title: EcoCation—wherein families can pay to be admitted to disaster areas to help clean up the spill. Pitch earned media spots in progressive markets such as Mother Jones, Harper’s, and National Public Radio. Crisis: A beverage company expressed concerns over an upcoming article in a scientific journal regarding small levels of arsenic that had reportedly been found in apple juice. Strategy: Hire a research firm and publish a white paper detailing similar levels of arsenic found in rice, suggesting the chemical element, when ingested in small quantities, is safe. Crisis: A cosmetics brand, in a bid to connect with the Black American market, was accused of racism after it hired an advertising agency to manage a campaign in consumer magazines for its newest line of blemish concealer. The ad’s caption, posted above a photo of a female model, read: Unlike the man in your life, this actually works! Strategy: Apologize. Invite prospective customers to visit the company website for complimentary haircare products.

THEY TOOK A BREAK SOMETIME THAT AFTERNOON. AN ASSISTANT DRIFTED into the office with coffee and bottled water as the team mulled over press releases overflowing with aggressively cheery marketing superlatives. Leonard turned on the television affixed to the wall and jogged through channels. A study found people who consume large amounts of margarine enjoy amusement parks. Click. A network news special recapped George Clooney’s thoughts on child poverty. Groans, eye-rolling incredulity. A team of scientists had discovered a new way to make crispbread. On C-SPAN, crowds had convened on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. to protest the war in Iraq.

Leonard continued scanning channels as Todd Armitage read aloud a newswire release that had drifted out of the fax machine. Our mission is to leverage impactful communications strategies that deliver game-changing solutions, he said. Our team of information pollinators … information pollinators, he repeated, offers a vertical acuity to bridge the gap between globally evolving brands and today’s content curators.

Content curators. Jesus, Todd Colton said.

That last strategy is a loser’s game, Todd Shillenburg said. The client needs a media relations campaign, not a bunch of pissed-off moms.

People love to be outraged, Todd Armitage said. Pretending to be offended gives them an excuse to be self-righteous.

Put it back on the news, Todd Colton said. I want to hear about the protest.

Those assholes aren’t accomplishing anything, Todd Shillenburg said.

Of course you would say that, Todd Armitage said. At this point, your observations are a symposium on yourself.

Standing in a park and shouting slogans at passersby who don’t have any say in stopping the war is a narcissist’s idea of dialogue, Todd Shillenburg said. It’s a performative stance against a problem they know they’ll never be called on to actually fix.

It was the same thing every day. They talked and talked and talked, as though it relieved a welling pressure inside them, found gladiatorial entertainment providing color commentary against coworkers, clients, competitors, and, above all, the television, their animus a crude emotional reward for leading tractable, workaday lives. Leonard flipped open his cellphone and noticed he’d missed a call from his mother. He deleted her voicemail, stuck a ballpoint pen in his mouth, and looked over an earnings report riddled with industry koans. Zoning out, he considered his body for a moment. His stomach knotted with hunger. There was a twitch in his right eyelid, a slight pinch in his cervical spine. He consulted his reflexes, crossed his legs. Everything seemed to be in working order.

Scuttlebutt has it Griffin Cruz is getting Goodfriend’s Senior VP slot, Todd Colton said.

The guy’s a creep, Todd Armitage said. Goldbricked every account he’s had.

Elephant in the room, Todd Colton said. Leonard should be moving into Goodfriend’s office. That’s some bullshit, Leonard.

Goodfriend, poor bastard, Todd Shillenburg said. Should’ve known he was cashing in his chips once he started giving away his coffee mugs.

I heard his wife is suing his doctor for putting him on those meds, Todd Armitage said.

Sue the agency. They’re the ones who worked him to death, Todd Colton said.

The television now captured the Illinois senator in a candid moment, eyes squinting in the sunlight, a high, unburdened smile as a headline anchored on the bottom of the screen read Obama Wins North Carolina.

How about this? Leonard said.

He’ll never win, Todd Colton said.

The team left, and Leonard closed the door. He found a can of air freshener and hosed down the chairs, retrieved a handheld vacuum from his closet and voided the area of its human crumbs, discarded hairs and castaway threads and dermal detritus, before returning to his desk. Tobacco sunlight slanted through the window as he made a half attempt to organize piles of paperwork, brochures modeling condominiums he’d been researching for his mother. Then he reached into his pocket and removed the bottle of soap he’d lifted from the hotel that morning. He thumbed open the cap, held its plastic nipple under his nose, and drew in a warm profile. Citrus notes, bridle leather, the first breath of spring.

Sometimes he imagined what he’d say if they found out, if he was ever called to explain. The first taste made his tongue curl and resulted in a gag, because even after years of experience he couldn’t help it; no one could. As he continued draining the syrup into his mouth, bitter proofs began to rile his senses, tasked his palate with sour plastics, distant flavors of dried apricot and aged wood. By the second taste he was used to it, and then a strange and evocative warmth arrived, as though someone had told him a secret. He tilted his head back and drank the entire bottle this way, and there was an exhilarating rush, a roaring in his ears as he was plunged under impossible waves, drunk and helpless but safe somehow, cradled in great arms at a time before he’d been apprised of the world’s disappointments. He gagged again and grasped for water, which he threw down before surrendering in a grind of coughing and keening, as a single iridescent bubble that had traveled up from his gullet emerged at the gate of his mouth and popped on his bottom lip.

When he recovered, he found himself on the floor, licking a leg of his desk. He made his way back to the chair like this, combing through an archive of wood oil and aged newspapers and dust, before he transitioned to base pleasures and began gnawing at the colony of pencils stationed in a ceramic coffee mug, licked and bit them, emancipating a sawdust mesquite in the erasers, salines in their ringed aluminum housings, before mowing down on the meat, eviscerating each wooden soldier with his molars into a mash cornmeal where a sour hibiscus lingered in the grain, coughing when the slivers stabbed his gums or caught in the recesses of his esophagus.

He hung his head in the bone pile, feeling jilted and satisfied. Something else had moved in now, the crash, the embargoed dread, a guilt that loomed over him like an old lie. He stood and examined the mess, feeling incorrigibly ugly, and went to work hiding the evidence, swept wooden chips into the wastebasket with his palm and tied the trash bag before stuffing it into a larger bag, which he left by the door for the janitor. Then he retrieved the handheld vacuum and got on his knees, where he attacked the floor under his desk, scrutinizing the shadows like some pitiful creature forced to live below the surface, searching for any stray pieces that had gotten away.

Chapter 2

The thing about people’s problems, they were almost never worth taking seriously. Listening to someone’s problems for a living was an exploration into the banal. Ultimately, people wanted a state of shared perceptions, to have what others said about them align with what they thought about themselves. There was always this gap between what we expected and the reality of our experiences, between who we’d wanted to be and who we actually were. There was no greater reminder of our inelegance as a species than the practice of persuading others to adopt our narcissistic perceptions of ourselves. It was as though we possessed only enough awareness to imagine a world that complied with our self-interests.

As a species, people possess two key advantages: an ability to see patterns, and an ability to tell stories based on those patterns. Leonard crossed the boardroom table, stopped at the windowsill, and eyed an abandoned bottle of glass cleaner that stood next to a waterlogged roll of paper towels. And those are the only reasons we’re no longer living in caves.

The executives sat in a triangle formation. The first was older, had a slack face with leathery skin artificially tanned to a tawny bronze. A younger man sat beside him, was square-shouldered and looked like he needed to shave once a week. A third executive blinked incessantly and jerked with manic pep, seemed vitalized by the lecture, and nodded with servile compliance, turning to her teammates with leering, wide-eyed excitement anytime Leonard said something that sounded vaguely aphoristic.

The problem, Leonard continued, is we aren’t particularly good at distinguishing the meaningful patterns from the meaningless. We confuse correlation with causation, gossip as gospel. Many of the ideas we share are, essentially, well-articulated nonsense.

The woman bounced in her seat. Leonard’s thoughts returned to the glass cleaner on the sill. He wanted to be alone with it, draw in its astringent colognes, imagined soaking a square of towel and dabbing its electric-blue tonics over his tongue. He wondered what it tasted like. Abrasively sharp, he decided, metallic but with a fatty brine finish. Glacial waters and berry vinaigrettes.

Brands touch upon human truths, he said. They satisfy emotional and social needs. Products simply express a brand’s tenets, and for the sake of this conversation are immaterial. Products mean nothing. There are only stories, minds connecting with other minds.

The cellphone in his pocket began to ring.

Close your eyes, Leonard said. And pick up your spokescreatures.

In their laps, each executive held a primitive puppet fashioned out of mauve-colored cloth. They were gingerbread genderless, naked, and devoid of distinguishing attributes, a stitched line of embroidery thread establishing an expressionless mouth, two googly, saucer-shaped eyes.

Tell me, Leonard said as the executives gloved their hands with the puppets. What did your company do wrong?

We inflated our assets. The older man coughed as he set his eyes on a felt nib of nose. He held a distant, drained expression, the look of someone recently deposed. We failed to disclose debts on our balance sheets.

It worked for a while, Leonard said. Please, keep your eyes closed.

We got lucky.

Luck isn’t a business model. What changed?

We got caught.

Tyco, Union Carbide, Enron. They got caught too.

We fired our CFO, were transparent with the SEC. We knew if we rebranded—

Let me stop you there, Leonard said. ‘The pride connected with knowing and sensing lies like a blinding fog over the eyes and senses of men, thus deceiving them concerning the value of existence.’ You know who said that?

Lee Iacocca? the man said.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Leonard said. Why do you think your public image hasn’t recovered?

Because they don’t trust us. The man’s voice was strained.

Trust, Leonard repeated. As we discussed this morning, all successful brands exhibit four essential traits. Number one is trust. Every brand is its own religion. And anytime someone believes in something, adheres to an ideology, it’s because there’s faith, an assurance that reinforces their decisions and behaviors. Trust builds the ecosystem where brand loyalty thrives. Now, how is that trust earned?

Great marketing? the older man stuttered. Favorable reviews, word of mouth—

Number two, authority. Authority is an issue of expertise; it’s the practice of proposing that the illusion of the brand is as real as the table we’re sitting at. Authority is the company’s history and success story, the idea that it’s managed by capable, innovative leaders. Authority demands that a brand’s message be authentic and believable, that it reflect a consistent, unwavering awareness of identity.

His cellphone began ringing again.

Number three, the mission. Successful brands always provide an experience. Sometimes they petition a cause or align themselves with an existing social issue. These aren’t just slogans, they’re a tribal argot that crystallizes the reason for a brand’s existence. These recognitionals humanize the brand, place it in the catalog of history—

For the third time, the cellphone began to ring. The executives opened their eyes.

Excuse me. Leonard crossed the room, fingers crawling into his jacket pocket. Leonard Lundell.

Leonard, baby?

Mom, he whispered. I can’t talk. I’m in a meeting.

I’ve been calling for a week—

I’ll email you or something, he said and stuffed the phone into his pocket.

Number four remains the most misunderstood, and it’s the reason ninety percent of brands fail, Leonard said. The people who pursue your brand aren’t consumers; they’re loyalists who take up arms for your movement. Brands turn buyers into believers, audiences into advocates, and the followers who heed this call form a heterogeneous tribe, a cult driven by the most vital component your brand must possess.

Leonard paused for effect.

The appetite. People like what’s familiar to them. Given time, once trust has been earned, once devotees have been submersed in its language and culture, they begin not only to identify with the brand, but they adopt it into the milieu of their personal traditions. It’s the reason we patronize fast-food restaurants we loved as children, why we buy the same brand of beer our grandfather kept in the garage. Brands offer a subscription to the past. They satisfy a nostalgia for simpler times, like a song that lets us revisit our most carefree years. Brands exist because they’re a source of eternal comfort. They’re the idea of going home, which is the reward offered by every religion that has survived, from Christianity to Coke.

A muddle of coughs and clearing throats. Leonard surveyed the executives, their deferential smiles, and thought about those illusory interpretations we cultivate of ourselves that never quite define who we are. The older one, he’d made peace with his shortcomings years ago, convinced himself he’d achieved everything he’d wanted. What choice did he have at this point? The younger two, though, Leonard wondered what went on in there, what maladaptive daydreams they indulged in of futures that aligned with their aggrieved expectations, imaginary worlds they inhabited as their idealized selves as opposed to the people they actually were. They’d played this game of quiet resentments their entire adult lives, as though they’d started with their futures and worked their way backward, emulating the types of people they thought they were supposed to be until settling in defeat somewhere amid the necessary adaptation. The world never gave enough to allow the illusion to hold, but it was remarkably adept at reminding us of our failures.

This is a positioning session to uncover your brand’s identity, Leonard said. Given everything we’ve discussed, I want you to imagine the puppet on your hand is a living, breathing thing, a flesh-and-blood person formed by the confluence of ideas your company has put into this rebrand. I want you to think about the community it belongs to, its history, its habits, its wants and needs. I want you to envision its face, the color of its eyes. I want you to imagine the words it speaks, the voice it uses to say them.

They would be thinking now, and they would each be thinking the same thing, the same cutout tropes, the canned concepts already developed by their in-house marketing team. Leonard had been doing this long enough to know that when called upon, the barons of the private sector were incapable of expressing an idea without resorting to clichés. That’s why lying to them was easy. You simply told them what they wanted to hear and let them sit with their assumption that the world worked in accordance with their views of it.

The brand isn’t something you can create in a laboratory, Leonard continued. When the four conditions are in place, it reveals itself organically, perhaps at first only to the shrewdest practitioners … but if your message is clear, if it’s consistent and strong and true, the brand will manifest as a specific shattering the abstract, a bold, compelling concept—

I—I can see it! the woman shrieked. The other executives opened their eyes and turned to Leonard. She shook in nodding tremors, rattled in her chair, seemed possessed by tics. She turned to her coworkers, her eyes swimming with tears. I can see the brand! I can see the brand!

AFTER THE MEETING WAS OVER, LEONARD RAN BACK TO HIS OFFICE, locked the door, and removed the glass cleaner from his jacket. He huddled behind the desk, unscrewed the bottle’s spray nozzle, and held its handlebar shaft under his nose before pillaging its nectars: burning, assertive flavors humming with mints and chalks. Biting winds, downy clouds, whirling eddies of snow. Dizzy and sated, he knelt there for a moment, spitting into the wastebasket as he felt the tension release in his shoulders. Then he wiped his mouth on his shirt cuff, unlocked the door, and staggered to the bathroom.

The afternoon was wasted on paperwork. Leonard wrote reports and answered phone calls and stuffed envelopes addressed to his mother with condominium brochures. On the television, an investigative report showed algorithms dictate fifty percent of all stock market trades. A study found that people this year were smiling, on average, thirty percent less than usual. On C-SPAN, Senator Clinton spoke to a blue-collar assembly gathered in a cornfield. Then the Todds arrived for the day’s crisis meeting.

Crisis: After his latest venture was blasted in a newspaper’s restaurant review, a chef responded by sending an irate, profanity-laden email to the publication, wherein he made veiled threats against the journalist’s life. The newspaper printed the email, and the internet dog-piling began, with the public excoriating the restaurant and its chef on review forums and social media pages. Strategy: Issue a press release claiming the chef’s email had been hacked. Drop the release on a Friday so the public has the weekend to mull over the development without an active news cycle to decode potential believability issues. Crisis: An airline’s standby ticket policy came under fire after a mother found herself stranded at an airport hundreds of miles from home. Once her flight landed in Phoenix, the woman had raced her sick child to the bathroom, and by the time she arrived at the connecting flight’s gate, discovered the airline had sold her ticket. She later created a blog detailing her experience, which went viral. Strategy: Apologize. Give the victim a lifetime of free flier miles, then contact an SEO specialist and have the blog buried in internet search results. Crisis: A soft-drink company defended itself in civil court after a Wisconsin man claimed he’d discovered a dead mouse in his soda can. The story took a turn during a press conference, when the company’s spokesperson carelessly noted the plaintiff’s accusations were baseless, because high citric acid content in the drink would’ve effectively dissolved the mouse into jelly. The case was dismissed—and the plaintiff later admitted he had, in fact, fabricated the incident—but the spokesperson’s candor ignited a barrage of criticisms from health advocates who derided the effects of sugary beverages. Strategy: Launch a national ad campaign aimed at younger audiences with the following tagline: Extreme enough to dissolve your fears!

LEONARD TOOK A LATE LUNCH, WALKED TO A DEPARTMENT STORE IN Herald Square, and bought several pairs of slacks, which he refrained from trying on for fear of confronting the changing room’s conditions. The sun was setting, and amber curtains of light draped over Madison Avenue by the time he returned to his office, where he slipped on the pants and discovered they were too large. An aborted attempt at work followed, and soon he found himself under the desk, where he dug up a squeeze bottle of lemon-scented dish soap he’d lifted from the janitor’s cart. The label was in Spanish, and its logo—Sabroso!—and accompanying text were delightfully strange. The liquid was electric yellow, with a heady scent and an alkaline taste that stung his tongue and caused his face to seize up before leaving ribbons of drool over the chair legs. He was chewing on a handful of antacids when something punched the glass with such force it caused him to jump backward. He approached the