Eight days before Christmas Eve, people who work in advertising officially stop believing in Christmas.
Camille Delmas had formulated this law at twenty-seven, during a night spent moving cardboard stars in front of a display window due to open four hours later. At thirty-four, she no longer believed in perfectly conical trees, families all laughing from the same side of the table, or ribbons undone in a single gesture either. She believed in clear double-sided tape, production schedules, suppliers who answered after seven, and good lighting’s ability to disguise the fact that a brass angel had arrived with one wing shorter than the other.
“If anyone says ‘Christmas magic’ again, I’m sending them home,” she said.
Maud, crouched at the foot of Atelier Noroît’s large table, raised her hand without releasing the cable she was trying to untangle.
“Even the client?”
“Especially the client.”
“That’ll simplify the six-thirty meeting.”
With her fingernail, Camille slid a greeting card beneath the lamp. Ivory paper, red edge, understated embossing. On the cover, a fir branch drawn in black carried a single ornament: an asymmetrical, slightly dented bauble with a tiny star at its center. It was the version she had spent three weeks defending against gold garlands, holographic snowflakes, and a reindeer whose eyes suggested it had witnessed something involving the courts.
The Wendel campaign represented almost a third of Noroît’s winter revenue. Maud said “the client” with the cautious neutrality reserved for people capable of paying January’s salaries. Camille refused to let that reality enter her sentences. If she started thinking about the studio rent every time a marketing director asked for more gold, she would eventually find the reindeer acceptable.
She put the card in the approved pile.
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