It was 7 a.m. in Hawaii, and just after lunch in New York. Jim Hillyer had been back from London only a day, and one of the first calls he returned was Cy's. Jim had eaten a poppyseed bagel smeared with tunafish while sitting at his desk during lunch -- he was desperately trying to catch up on paperwork. Cy was sitting on the lanai -- nothing more than a screened-in cement slab with geckos scurrying around the legs of the aluminum beach chairs -- in front of his beach cottage. Jim's phone call had awakened Cy, and he'd taken the cordless phone out of the kitchen and outside, to breathe in the morning air.

"I haven't had any coffee, Jim. I need at least two cups before I can keep up with you. Always did. Be kind," Cy said the moment he heard Jim's voice on the line.

"Cy, you old goat, how are you? Where are you?" Jim hollered like the ex-college jock he was.

"Don't ask," Cy said, rubbing his eyes. "I'm in Hawaii. The west side of the island of Kauai, to be exact. In semi-retirement, remember?"

"Don't remind me," Jim countered. "You picked one hell of a time to cash out of the agency business, guy. Do you know what I've been through the last couple of months?"

Back in the fray. And not a moment too soon. Jim's glad that the Meg Townsend nightmare is over, and he's happy to be communicating with Cy again. But does he really need to take on Cy's latest cockamamie charity project, at a time when the agency is falling apart around him?

"Do I know?," Cy answered rhetorically, walking into the "kitchenette" of his cottage to try to get some coffee on to brew while he was on the phone. "How about it was on CNN around the freaking world! Fooling around with a 22-year-old? You've gotta be out of your mind, Jim! I'd have thought you'd learned from my mistakes!" "I was out of my mind. Screwed up big time. What a nightmare. I feel like such an idiot. And it's still not over, Cy. Abigail's barely speaking to me, my kids think I'm the devil. I was in The National Enquirer! And the bloody London Sun & News of the World! I'm a laughing stock."

"Hey, I'm not laughing. A little jealous, though. Meg Townsend. Wow."

"It ain't worth it, Cy," Jim said sagely. "Trust me. Wait a minute. Back up. Did you say 'semi' retirement a minute ago? I thought you were out of the business for good. You certainly took your share of the partnership, dollar wise. Not that I'm bitter, or anything --"

"Gimme a break, Jim. I took what was mine. But I didn't call yesterday to talk to you about money. I need your help."

Cy spent the next 20 minutes filling Jim in on his involvement with the little "beach urchin" Ano, the financial problems at St. Agnes's Orphanage, and Sister Anne's request to Cy to help in a fundraising effort. Cy told the story with passion and concern, and it was clear to Jim, as he was listening, that Cy wanted to help. Do some good. When Cy had finished talking, there was silence on the line, as Jim -- to use one of his own favorite words -- "processed" the information.

"So this is your idea of rest and relaxation?" Jim started in. "You move 6,000 miles away to get out of the fast lane and now you're saving widows and orphans?

"Not widows, smart-aleck," Cy laughed. "Just orphans. Seriously, Jim, these guys need help. Maybe it's that I feel a 'karmic responsibility' to do something, maybe it's guilt about my kids and my grandson, I don't know. But you've gotta do what you've gotta do ... you know?"

"This from a Clio-winning copywriter?" Jim responded, teasing his oldest friend and colleague. "So what do you want to do?"

"Well," said Cy, taking a sip of the coffee that had finally brewed, "you're always talking about the agency doing pro bono work, but we never really do. This could be a good opportunity."

"Pro bono work, Cy?" Jim said, audibly raising his eyebrows. "Lucien's a maniac, Bernadette is having god-knows-what crisis, you're sitting under a palm tree somewhere, poor Sydney is practically managing both Cummings Footwear and Chewy Crumbly cookies single-handedly while on jury duty, and I'm just back after 8 weeks' house arrest in Europe. Yeah, we're in a great position to take on non-paying charity work! Are you nuts?"

"No, I'm not nuts," Cy said, beginning to get angry. "I'm trying to be human, for a change, Jim. And I think you should do the same. And it sure wouldn't hurt the agency's image right now, if you know what I mean."

"All right, all right, Cy, don't guilt me out. I've got enough of that from Abigail these days. What do we have to do?"

"I'll sum it up in two words," Cy said melodramatically, sounding like the character in "The Graduate" who tells Dustin Hoffman the future lies in "Plastics."

"What two words?" Jim asked, puzzled.

"Direct mail," announced Cy.

Jill Campbell in her office, on the phone:

"But it's a figure of speech!" she said with an enthusiasm that bordered on hysteria. "Don't you understand? I don't mean it literally. It's an expression!"

Jill was on the phone with Ed Grassley discussing a line of copy for a Cummings running-shoe ad.

"Ed," she went on, taking the plastic clip out of her frizzy-beyond-belief hair -- the result of a 95% humidity level in midtown Manhattan and the fact that she insisted on keeping the windows in her office open -- "anyone in the world would get that!" Anyone but you, you big doofus, she thought.

She waited.

"Ed, if you don't like a copy line, and you want me to change it, you're going to have to tell me what to change it TO. You can't just not like something without suggesting an alternative!"

Agnes Ramirez stood at Jill's office door listening in. Playing mother-hen as always, Agnes tended to get nervous when she could hear Jill speaking to a client in tones that were ... less than professional. Agnes flashed Jill a "calm down and lower your voice that's that's the client you're talking to" expression. "Ed, you are impossible. Consider yourself lucky you're one of the clients I like. Goodbye." She slammed down the phone, put her Frye-boots-clad feet on her desk, and reached back and gathered her mane into a ponytail, securing it with a rubber band that had been around her wrist. "Get this, Agnes," Jill said to Agnes. "My copy line read 'At Cummings, the future is now.' And Ed Grassley is like, 'How can the future be now? That's a contradiction in terms.' So I'm like, 'Ed, it's figurative language. Hel-lo!' And he's like, 'People won't get it, Jill,' and I'm like, 'Yes they will, Ed, everyone's not as lame as you.'"

Shhhh! Agnes is so polite and image- conscious -- she just doesn't understand how agency "kids" like Jill Campbell can be so disrespectful to the clients and get away with it. Little does she know clients like Ed Grassley love it -- it makes them feel they're dealing with creative geniuses. So NOT true.

"Jill, honey," Agnes said, shaking her head and turning to walk away, "if Hillyer heard you speaking to a client like that you'd be toast."

"How can I be toast, Agnes?" Jill yelled after her. "I don't get it. Is that like, a figure of speech?"