Tess McGill

You can bend the rules upstairs, but not while you're trying to get there. And someone like me can't get there without bending the rules.

— How'd you get this scar?
— Some guy pulled a knife in Detroit.
— Really?
— No. No. I was 19 and I thought it'd be cool to have a pierced ear. My girlfriend stuck the needle through and I fainted and hit my chin on the toilet.
— Have you been telling that story ever since?
— You're the only one who knows the true story.
— Except the girlfriend.
— I had her disappear. It's too bad. Nice girl. Real shame.

— Now get your... What did you call it?
— Bony ass.
— Right... bony ass out of my sight.

— Tess, this is business. Let's just bury the hatchet, OK?
— You know where you can bury your hatchet? Now get your bony ass out of my sight.

I read a lot of things. You never know where the big ideas could come from.

— These things are usually so boring.
— I wouldn't know.
— Power to the people.
— The little people.

— Did you happen to see this?
— What is it?
— It's an outline of your idea for a Trask radio acquisition. I was planning to send it over to Jack Trainer. I thought I'd give your idea one last go-round. It just occurs to me, looking at it, that it reads as though it were my idea. Jack got burned once. He was accused of stealing a plan for taking a company private. He's very sticky about the ethics of reviewing other people's strategies. He wouldn't do it if it was from a colleague, and I couldn't say it was a secretary's notion.

— Go ahead and laugh. He wants us to meet with his people first thing Monday.
— Oren Trask? The man who said: «What if we sliced the bread before we sold it?»

— As a matter of fact, I'm gonna see Trask himself tomorrow. I feel that we're strong enough to go right to him.
— Where are we meeting him? What time?
— He's not expecting both of us.
— Are you trying to fly this thing without me?
— No. I wouldn't do that.
— You go and set up this meeting without me. What the hell kind of a way to do business is this?
— Would you calm down?
— How am I supposed to calm down? One lost deal is all it takes to get canned these days. The line buttons on my phone all have an inch of little pieces of tape piled on. The names of new guys over old guys. Good men who aren't at the other end of the line any more, all cos of one lost deal. I don't wanna get buried under a little piece of tape.
— No one's trying to do that.

— «Dress shabbily, they notice the dress. Dress impeccably, they notice the woman». Coco Chanel.
— How do I look?
— You look terrific. You might wanna rethink the jewellery.

Well, they don't exactly have bouncers. They're a little more subtle than that.

— Well, you know how «Trask Industries» has been looking to buy into broadcasting?
— The department is...
— Working on it, yeah. I've been following it myself, and all of a sudden I thought «radio».
— Trask is looking for television stations.
— So is every Tom, Dick and Harry. My idea is that they get their feet wet in radio and build from there. It's not as glamorous as jumping right into TV, but it's a solid place to start and there's a lot more of them for sale. Plus it would solve Trask's problem with the Japanese trying to take him over, because FCC forbids foreign ownership of radio as well as TV.