A man's face is his autobiography.
A woman's face is her work of fiction.
~Oscar Wilde
Cigarette Smoke
Don Draper put out his fifth cigarette in an hour, and looked at his watch.
"Shit."
He had to be at the meeting with Peggy, Pete, and Sal in ten minutes. He was supposed to be critiquing their draft of the Blue Bell Ice cream picture. Something about he slogan "Like Heaven on your tongue" just wasn't doing it for him. But he couldn't think of anything better, and it was driving him crazy.
He picked up his pack of cigarettes to find that he had just smoked the last one. He instinctively, almost involuntarily, pulled out the top drawer on his desk and pulled out another pack, and chose yet another smoke to light. Just as the flame from his lighter was licking the tiny shreds of tobacco leaking out the end of the cigarette, he looked up.
Jane Marson walked through his office door, without knocking, her usual entrance. She always came right on cue: when Don was in the mood for her.
She shut the door behind her and strode to the file cabinet on the wall directly across from his desk, leaning against it, crossing her perfect left calf in front of her right shin, slightly creasing her pin-stripe, A-line skirt. She pointed her toe into his carpet, and folded her fingers across her stomach. Her head tilted down, letting her black ringlets of silky, metallic hair fall softly over the shoulders of her jacket, and her brown eyes narrowed into a stare that made Don's head spin.
Sexy didn't even cover Jane for Don Draper.
He was hopelessly in love with her.
"Writer's block?" she asked, lifting her head, shaking the black curls off of her shoulders.
"It certainly seems that way," he replied, taking a puff on his cigarette, letting the smoke float in front of him in silver clouds of his own desperation. He broke them with a wave of his wrist when they blocked his view of Jane.
"That Blue Bell thing, right?" she asked, walking over to the window, opening the blinds, leaning into the sunlight. "How hard can it be to sell ice cream? It's sweet, it's cold...it's irresistible."
She rested her right cheek in her hand, staring out the window, into the sky...into the city streets...Don Draper wasn't sure, but he saw the beautiful naiveté and innocence in her eyes as she scanned the world outside his window, like a child riding in an airplane for the first time, struggling to make shapes out of the clouds.
"I'm sorry, were you talking about the ice cream, or yourself?" Don playfully asked, then as he watched the words roll off his tongue and into his love's ears, he wished he could take them back, realizing how stupid he'd just sounded.
"God you can tell you're in advertising," Jane replied, her voice soft and smooth as she walked toward his desk. She pulled out each of his ball point pens, one by one in the clay cup his daughter had made for him, and dropped them back into place; "You're so corny."
She looked into his eyes, and he couldn't help but smile. Her stare made his muscles lock, his palms sweat, and his heart skip a beat, all at once...and he loved it.
The phone rang, and he begrudgingly answered it. It was his wife.
"Yeah, honey. Listen, you know you shouldn't call me at work."
Jane, like a young, bratty child, turned away from Don and folded her arms across her chest.
Jealousy, another trait Don found quite sexy at times.
"Look, can you just go the parent-teacher conference without me... I know they like both parents to be there but...okay, good. Yeah, love you too. Bye."
He turned to Jane, now staring at the back of her head.
She turned back around.
"Do you really mean that?" she asked, furrowing her brow as she spoke.
"What?"
"When you tell her that you love her, do you mean it?"
Don swallowed hard. He didn't like these questions, the questions he himself ran over and over again in his mind.
But before he could answer her, not that he was going to, anyway, she walked behind his desk, running her hands from his knees, up his chest, stopping at his cheeks for a moment, then around the back of his chair. She leaned into his face, and he could smell her expensive perfume and her cold, mint breath on his cheek as she whispered into his ear:
"What do you really want, Don?"
There was a knock on the door.
"Come in."
Pete Campbell walked in his office, his face lit up like he'd just won the lottery.
"Don, I got it. The new Blue Bell slogan: "It's like..."
"Pete, I'm kinda busy right now."
Knowing better than to respond to Don's harsh tones, Campbell just resigned himself to giving him a smug look, and exiting the office.
Pete Campbell did not see the stunningly beautiful Jane Marson leaning into Don Draper's ear. In fact, no one ever saw Jane Marson, except Don Draper. Of all the slogans and corny one-liners that Don had been paid to create in his years at Sterling Cooper, Jane was most certainly his most cherished product of his imagination.