“Bette! What do you have to report for the assembly today?”

Shifting her eyes from Max to Leonard she smiled and looked at the rest of the staff around the table. Fuck, this man is going to be the death of me, she thought to herself.

She cleared her throat and Phyllis looked on with curious eyes. “We have landed the Planet as a new local account.” The brunette smiled proudly.

Leonard’s smile grew bigger as some of Bette’s colleagues offered a round of applause and voiced their congratulations to her.

“It’s going to start off small. Just a few print ads in the local publications for now, but Marina Ferrer, the establishment’s sole proprietor, wants KDG to handle everything from concept to design to print.”  Bette announced.

“Bette, you’ve done it again.” Phyllis beamed.

“Now people, this is KDG’s opportunity to market and brand the next Starbucks! I’m sure I don’t have to remind you how swearing your allegiance of patronage to this fine business only perpetuates increase profits for the them which, in turn, amplifies their advertising budget for us.” Leonard boasted.

Bette just rolled her eyes at his comment. She resented the commercialism of the corporate world. To her, big business was the core of masculine greed preying on the lust of American consumers.  In spite of her personal feelings about it, Bette knew how to play the corporate game and was extremely good at it.

“Who’s got some ideas on how to sell this mark to the public at large?”

—-

After the meeting, Bette and Max returned to Bette’s corner office. On the way, Bette had explained the phone call from the booking agent at the Roxy earlier.

“Man, that sucks. What are we gonna do?” Max asked.

The dark haired beauty responded with a grin.

“What? You already gotta plan B?”

“Max, when have you not known me to have a plan B? When I was picking up our drinks at the Planet and talked to Marina a little bit about our predicament, she offered to host the CD party.”

“Really? That’s so sweet!” Max was excited. The Planet had been kind of their hang out on the weekends. It was the West Hollywood watering hole for the hip gay, lesbian, bi, and transgendered community. Café by day and swanky nightclub by dark, the location was excellent for Kit and her band to debut their new material.

“Marina was more than gracious. I can’t believe I didn’t even think about the Planet as a possible venue. I mean, with Kit having emcee’d karaoke nights there for the last year and a half and Carmen occasionally DJ’ing Radar nights there, it was kind of a no-brainer.”

“Yeah, but everyone was so stoked when you booked the Roxy. It was just kind of big deal for them you know?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Bette sat behind her desk and awakened her snoozing computer. She pulled up her email and searched for the DigiPrint rep’s correspondence. “A-ha!” she said once she found it.

Clicking on the attached file, it opened in a new window on her screen.

Max stood behind her chair to look at the drafted product. Both of them tilted their heads to the right as they viewed it.

“What the fuck?” they both muttered at the same time.