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  “Perfect!” said Jed. “You are the man!”

  They did several more takes (for “safety”) and then Dick grabbed his latte, filled out some paperwork, and said his goodbyes. Walking toward the bus, he reflected about his current gig as a pharmaceutical commercial voiceover announcer—a gig which brought him from sunny Los Angeles to rainy Seattle three and a half years ago.

  He remembered talking to the producer at the ad agency, Driscoll & Partners, who told him that his voice had a very unique quality to it. At first Dick thought it was his resonance, his warmth, and the reassuring quality of his voice, but the woman at the ad agency said that they ran some tests on his voice and it turned out that his voice is in a weird frequency range that many people have trouble hearing. Thus, it was perfect for the disclaimer part of a commercial, which both the client and the agency would prefer that no one pay attention to. So Dick moved to Seattle, which was an emerging biotech center that spawned a small ecosystem of pharmaceutical industry-fueled ad agencies, recording studios, marketing firms, and even actors like Dick.

  Although his current claim to fame was as a voiceover announcer, back in the mid 1960s, Dick got his start in movies—mostly Westerns—where he was the go-to guy for the comic sidekick character. One of his more notable roles was the scene-stealing Cappy McDougal in Wild Canyons. Dick did a million Westerns until the demand for them dried up. Luckily for Dick, that’s when he got his “big break.”

  Every actor dreams of being discovered, but for most it never happens and they end up quitting the biz and going into real estate. But Dick was lucky. He happened to be in Philemina’s Deli one afternoon when legendary producer Shel Sidstein came in. It turns out Sidstein’s lunch got cancelled at the last minute, but the producer was hungry—and not one for eating alone, plopped himself down across from Dick, a guy he recognized from having met at a few parties over the years.

  “Shel,” Dick exclaimed. “Long time, no see. What the hell’s going on?”

  Shel took a bite of his sour pickle and said, “I’m getting out of pictures. TV is where it’s at, ducky.”

  It turned out that Shel Sidstein was developing a pilot for a show called Pot o’ Gold that he invited Dick to audition for. After some back and forth with the network, Dick got the job. He was “Uncle Angus,” although he had no idea of what he was getting himself in to.

  Pot o’ Gold was kind of a crazy idea for a TV show. The pitch was a young widower and his eight year old kid are visiting Grandma in Ireland when they discover a pot of gold under a tree stump in the back yard. They dig up the gold, inadvertently releasing the leprechaun who was guarding it. Dick ended up playing the leprechaun who, instead of turning them all into tadpoles, decided to go back to Minneapolis to live with the family and pose as “Uncle Angus,” their eccentric Irish uncle. Uncle Angus could transform from a normal-sized man to an eight-inch leprechaun. Of course, he had all kinds of magical powers which resulted in five seasons of hijinks, syndicated in 32 different countries.

  He even had a catch phrase: Begorrah! Any time something wacky went on, he’d let loose a Begorrah! and they’d cue the audience to laugh.

  The show was a great opportunity for him that he wouldn’t have traded for the world. He made the cover of TV Guide, got laid more times than you could imagine (who knew leprechauns had sex appeal?), but there was one thing that irked him to this day. And it irked him bad. Real bad.

  He didn’t see a dime from all the success Pot o’ Gold had. Not one red cent. Back then the actors really got cheated. No such thing as million-dollar contracts. No residuals. Dick got his weekly paychecks while he was making the show, but not a drop more. Which was especially bad since five seasons of playing a leprechaun pretty much typecast him. Very few roles came his way after they wrapped that final season. Sure, there were the odd commercials: that green and white soap commercial, that frosty kids’ cereal commercial. He couldn’t keep them straight. But soon he was reduced to appearing at supermarket grand openings. Then nothing for years. His agent dropped him.

  There was a brief glimmer of hope in the early ’80s when an English rock band almost hired Dick as part of their stage show, to dance around some monument they had on stage, but the gig fell through when they found out that he was not a true “little person.” Which was especially disappointing to Dick because his first love as an actor was musical theatre.

  11. Moddities

  Right before closing, a potential new customer walked into BJ & Helen’s shop, Moddities. Stefan McMillan was a well-dressed bio-tech exec looking to furnish his new Belltown condo. He spent fifteen minutes silently examining a heavy blue fabric and chrome pedestal chair, waving Helen off three times as she tried to help him. Finally, at 6:20 PM, BJ strode over to Stefan and announced, “Did you know that Kolln only made 500 hundred of these beauties from 1955 to 1956? It’s a rare piece.”

  “Yes, I looked it up.” Stefan held up his iPhone, which displayed the Retropedia website.

  “Good,” said BJ. “An educated customer is a good customer, I always say. Can I ring it up for you?”

  “I’m just not sure about the condition. All of my pieces in the condo are pristine. This looks like it has a bit of rust on the base.”

  Demonstrating amazing strength, BJ hoisted the chair upside down with one hand to give Stefan a closer look at the base. She pointed out a dark patch on the chrome. “That? No, no, darling. That’s just a little soot.” Still keeping the chair aloft with one hand, BJ called to her partner. “Helen, can you bring over a rag?” She then turned to Stefan. “You did the research. This piece is going for way higher on the Internet.”

  Stefan put his hand on his hip. “Hmmm… I’m still not sure. The upholstery looks a little… I don't know… ratty.”

  “Oh, sweetie, that's nothing. Some fraying is inevitable. This chair’s much older than you, my friend. Let me grab the chair book and show you something. Here, hang onto this for a sec.”

  BJ handed Stefan the chair, but he wasn’t nearly as strong as she was, so he fumbled with its weight and almost dropped it.

  Ten minutes of convincing later, BJ loaded the chair into Stefan’s Audi while Helen closed up the shop. Or tried to. They had one last customer. Her name was Heidi Krauer and she was a stylish blonde in her 30s. She was also the competition. In more ways than one.

  Heidi owned a retro-modern boutique called “Sputnik” in Fremont, a trendy neighborhood across the lake in Seattle. She was also BJ’s ex. So, yeah, thought Helen. Definitely the competition. Still Helen was polite.

  “Hello, Heidi. How's business…?”

  “Not bad, not bad.” Heidi replied, with a fake smile. “I see you’ve got a new Keener piece back here—” She was looking at a rosewood bar on chrome casters.

  “Yes. Just came in yesterday,” said Helen.

  “Very nice.” Heidi opened the doors and took a closer look. “How firm is this price?”

  “You’ll have to ask BJ. She’s out back loading up a customer’s car.”

  Heidi often bought items from BJ & Helen’s shop, marked them up, and then resold them at her shop. And sometimes BJ would be over at Heidi’s shop and she’d come back with something that originally came from Moddities. Last month, they went back and forth on a chartreuse plexi salt and pepper shaker set. Helen finally took them out of the store and brought them home. The price had been inflated to $600 by that point. Now Helen used them as spice bottles for cinnamon and curry. Or was it chervil?

  “Well, I have to run to the symphony,” said Heidi. “Tell BJ I’ll stop by tomorrow. Ta…”

  “See you.” There was something about that woman that really creeped Helen out, but at the same time really intrigued her.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” BJ said, coming in from the back room.

  12. Caves & Beasts

  Ed LaSalle’s cubicle at the Macrondo Software campus in North Bogwood was three buildings away from the Marketing Department, but that didn’t prevent him from getting unwant
ed surprise visits from the Marketing folks. With his headphones blasting Cheap Trick, Ed was immersed in a new artificial intelligence quest function he was coding, so he failed to notice the scowling 20-something Marketing Exec until she tapped his shoulder.

  “Did your team create the model for the Grey Princess? Number 86?”

  “What?” With the music cranked up loud, he couldn’t hear a word she was saying. He slid the headphones off and turned to her. “Who are you?”

  “Lauren from Marketing,” she barked. “Model number 86. Call it up. Now.”

  Ed shrugged and hit a few keys on his computer and a 3-D graphics model came up on the screen. The model was of a naked, busty fantasy princess for the new online game he was working on.

  “Yes. That's it. What the hell do you guys think you’re doing here?”

  “Huh?”

  “You are the team lead on this. You are responsible. Look at her breasts. Go ahead.”

  Ed zoomed in on the breasts. “Yeah?”

  “They are too small!”

  “Too small?”

  “This is the Grey Princess,” Lauren said in a condescending tone of voice. “She’s supposed to be selling this game to ten million 13 year old boys and your team’s got her wearing a 32A.”

  “I—”

  “Did you even read the design specs?!”

  It just got worse from there.

  Five hours later, stuck in traffic on I-405, Ed was still in a deep funk. How the hell did I end up at Macrondo—doing shitty mass-market games? The question was rhetorical, of course. He new exactly why he was working for the largest software company in the world. Because he had a wife, a baby, and a mortgage, and they needed security. And because he failed at running his own company.

  Sure it was a long time ago, when he was barely out of his teens. But still, deep down, Ed didn’t think he had what it took to run his own business. He had his chance back in the early 1980s in his hometown of Rockford, Illinois. Ed created and published a fantasy role playing game called Caves & Beasts with a high school buddy named Clive Weber. After three years of writing the game books and modules, testing the multi-sided dice combinations, perfecting the game dynamics, and selling Caves & Beasts at gaming conventions and to mom and pop game stores, they got their big break. A fantasy novel publisher from Germany wanted to get into games and they already had a big distribution network so they bankrolled Ed & Clive’s new company “Games Involving Magical Properties, Ltd.” or “GIMP” for short.

  One thing that Ed never expected was how big Caves & Beasts would get. Within 18 months, the game became a national phenomena. They made the cover of all the national magazines: Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Horse & Hound. Johnny Carson even made Caves & Beasts jokes on his show. There were cartoons, pinball machines, lunch boxes—even a C&B movie in the works starring the guy from Starsky & Hutch. Or was it Baretta…?

  But then they had a string of bad luck. Because Ed & Clive had done such a good job of making the game such a vivid, engrossing experience, some players actually went too far with it. And if Ed was completely honest about the situation, he’d admit that C&B actually made some people go crazy. There was the tax assessor who became delusional and showed up at work dressed as one of the characters in the game lore: “Melinda the Fairy Princess.” There were the odd disappearances—the senior bowling league that vanished in a drainage tunnel while playing the game. But the one that really haunted Ed was the secretary in Akron, Ohio who beheaded her boss. Chopped his head right off with a double-bladed axe she made for the game.

  He didn’t care what the PR folks said, there was such a thing as bad press, and that incident was not good for sales. Between the lawsuits and criminal negligence allegations, GIMP was forced to sell off the game and close its doors. And that was the end of Caves & Beasts.

  Almost.

  Last Christmas, Ed was on Facebook looking up some old friends and he managed to track down Clive who was still living in Rockford and working as a real estate agent. They began reminiscing about C&B and thinking how cool it would be to bring the game back in some form. Kind of like a retro thing. Who knows? Maybe he’d escape from that cubicle yet.

  13. Olympic Research

  The sun began to set on Olympic Research—a nondescript, two-story office building located in a small industrial park on the west side of Lake Bogwood. The first floor housed three focus group rooms—specially-constructed conference rooms built with a one-way mirror on one end—that were used to conduct consumer research. On one side of the one-way mirror was a small observation room—usually manned by ad agency folks. On the other side was the conference room where demographically-appropriate consumers gathered to voice their opinions about commercials, new product ideas, or even sometimes aspiring political candidates.

  The master of ceremonies for this event was the Focus Group Moderator, a professional researcher trained to draw shy consumers out of their shells, keep the conversations on track, and prevent any one participant from dominating the discussion.

  Tonight, Angela Cocci was the Moderator of a focus group with eight participants who were discussing a new nasal medicine. The research assignment had just come in today and it was an emergency. The product in question was supposed to hit Walgreens, Rite Aid, and CVS before the end of the month—supported by a $40 million dollar ad campaign, but at the last minute, the drug company was getting cold feet because of the drug’s potential side effects. It was Angela’s job to see how real-life consumers reacted to these ‘alleged’ side effects.

  She held up the next concept board—a 24” x 36” piece of cardboard with an illustration of the proposed retail packaging of the drug. “Okay, concept #6…”

  Angela read this particular description of the drug. “Muclidopine is a new OTC drug that will alleviate symptoms of nasal drip and has a low occurrence of certain adverse side effects like skin irritation.” She looked around the room to see if the subjects were paying attention.

  “Everyone got that? Good. Now tell me, would you be more likely or less likely to ask your doctor about this one?”

  “What kind of skin irritation?” asked a heavy-set man.

  Angela checked a printed “cheat sheet” on the other side of the concept board. This was for her use only and not supposed to be read to the participants. But she found the information needed to answer the question.

  “Itching,” she said.

  Another participant seemed intrigued. “Itching?”

  Questions were good, Angela thought. “Itching, yes.”

  A third participant chimed in. A dowdy woman. “Does it say where?”

  “Where?” Angela wanted to make sure she got the question right. “You mean where’s the itching?”

  “Yes.”

  Angela scanned the “cheat sheet” and then smiled at the woman asking the question. “Uh, yes. The rectal area primarily. Some inner thigh itching. Mostly rectal, though.”

  The woman shook her head. “That doesn’t work for me.”

  “Me neither,” the heavy-set man added.

  A fourth participant shrugged. “I might go for it.”

  “Good,” Angela said as she reached for the next concept board.

  Fifty minutes later, all the participants had been released and Angela was alone in her office, decompressing with her third glass of white wine. Sometimes she wondered why she did this. The hours were kind of crappy—mostly working nights. The pay wasn’t that great either. Plus, she often had to sneak her dog, Cocoa, into the facility (although today he was kind of gassy, so she left him back at the apartment). Maybe the thing that attracted her to this job was the opportunity to get into peoples’ heads. Kind of like being a psychiatrist, but without all the hassle of getting a medical degree.

  Angela took another sip of wine. She just wished she could work on more interesting topics. Like attitudes about HGTV or antiques. Or something to do with dogs… Most of Olympic Research’s clients were pharmaceutical companies—which made sense
because so many had their headquarters in the Bogwood area due to the natural abundance of mosses, lichens, and other herbal medicinal ingredients.

  Still, even with boring pharmaceutical research, she got to meet some interesting people. Angela remembered a group last October. She kicked off the session by going around the room doing some warm-up exercises and asked everyone what they did for a living. And, of course, she got the usual list of professions: banker, computer programmer, hairstylist, real estate agent, dental technician, ventriloquist. But this one gal—a real friendly woman—said that she owned a shop that sold midcentury modern ”artifacts.” After the session the woman (whose name was Helen) gave Angela her card and said to visit the shop any time.

  That next weekend Angela was in the area and she decided to stop by Helen’s store. Kind of on a whim. She liked the name. Moddities. That’s a name that would test well with a focus group. Just clever enough, but not too tough to figure out.

  The bell rang as Angela pushed the door open and walked into the small shop that was packed with merchandise. It took Angela a few moments to take everything in. It was like going back through a time machine. All the breath left her body as she was transported back to the 1970s—to the house in Encino where she grew up. She had vivid memories (and sometimes nightmares) of the house on Petunia Circle. It was a split-level ranch with green shag rug, dark wood paneling, slate entry way, indoor planters, and open staircase.

  As Angela walked through Moddities, she was overwhelmed by the fact that the stuff in this shop was exactly the stuff she had in her house. The same tape dispensers. The same silverware, the same lamps, the same desk organizers, the same toys. Everything came rushing back to her. Memories. Smells. The time she got trapped under the stairs. It was unbelievable! Like some kind of massive panic attack. But in a good way.

  As she stared in disbelief at a Danish modern teak coffee cart exactly like her Aunt Mary Lou had, Angela started seeing spots in the corner of her vision. She hyperventilated and then everything went black…