Sheer, p.22
Sheer, page 22
Alan began his reign of Reveal in late 2012, five months after the London trip, with the goal of preparing the company for eventual acquisition. I was demoted to chief creative officer, though they let me keep the “founder” title. Sandrine’s contract saw to that. And so far as the public knew, I was still the face of and vision behind Reveal. One of Alan’s first duties was an all-day, one-on-one meeting with me, what he termed “a download” of my activities at Reveal. My activities, I wanted to shoot back. You mean the fact that I have devoted my entire adult life to this company’s tight, discerning lineup while you oversaw cheap nail polishes and clumpy mascara for preteens?
Amanda cleared my schedule. I sat through hours and hours of Alan and his bloated arrogance. There was, for example, the exchange where he interrogated me about Reveal’s product roster.
“Why do you only have two heroes?”
Alan wore a wrinkled gray suit that strained to contain the paunch above his black belt. His skin was greasy, and he smelled like mothballs.
“Our heroes have deep, bestselling categories attached to them,” I replied. “And it’s more than two: Flush, Glow, our fragrances, Whisper.”
“Whisper was a disaster,” he replied. “The opposite of a hero.”
I imagined stabbing him where it mattered with a pair of tweezers.
“Whisper was a hero the market wasn’t ready for.”
“You haven’t answered my initial question.”
“Product creation is time-consuming and costly. We only want to release things that are truly deserving of a woman’s investment. We’ve iterated on Flush, Glow, our fragrances, and our home products many times to great profit. It’s about depth and loyalty.”
“That’s absurd. How do you expect to make money by limiting the number of things your customers can purchase? You should flood them with options and take away the market share from your competitors.”
“Reveal’s philosophy is substance over quantity, a focus on the essentials. We earn our customers’ trust by not overwhelming them with choices.”
Alan literally laughed out loud at this, while I breathed deeply to suppress my rage.
“Beauty isn’t about necessity or trust. I’ve been doing this since before you were born. The whole industry is built on convincing women to buy things they don’t need. The products don’t even matter. It comes down to marketing, not content.”
Alan smirked at me. I wanted to punch that smug smile off his face. What did a straight man know about beauty? No one cared how Alan looked. He had nabbed the top position at Reveal in a state of total dishevelment. Meanwhile, I wore designer suits and worked out like I was training for the Olympics and I was still picked apart by customers and Ellen alike for every aesthetic choice I made.
“Historically, that might be true,” I relented, trying to smooth out our rapport. “Reveal is a new model for beauty, based on instilling confidence in women, not robbing them of their self-esteem.”
“That’s fine on your own time. But you have investors. We have investors. A minimalist roster isn’t going to cut it, I don’t care how you justify it to yourself. I need ideas. I’ve already decided that we’re going to add concealer, foundation—”
“Foundation! Absolutely not.”
“—bronzer, setting powder, a makeup primer, lipstick—”
“Lipstick? Have you lost it?”
“—gloss, and lip liner to our offerings. I want a new product release for Reveal every six months going forward.”
“That’s insane,” I sputtered. Rapprochement was officially off the table. “We go through twenty or thirty iterations before each launch. It takes us eighteen months to two years to develop a new product properly.”
“Not anymore. There’s no way you need that much time. Labs can churn out a formula in weeks.”
“Next you’ll want us to sell products online.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what we’ll do: build our own e-commerce business.”
“Customers need to test the products in person. We should open a brick-and-mortar store.”
“Reveal can open physical retail on a future owner’s dime. Digital is the future. Technically, it’s the present. Look at all these new companies that sell directly to consumers. They cut out the middlemen and maximize their profits. That’s what Reveal needs to do. Take it from a veteran.”
“You’ve already decided on products you know are against my wishes and a digital plan that I oppose. Why are we even meeting?”
“You’re the face of this brand,” Alan explained. “Customers love a founder narrative. They still believe you’re in charge, so we need you to get in line.”
“I don’t make any product decisions going forward?”
Alan smiled. “Of course you do. We’d like to build out the eye category. Mascara. Eye shadow. We need a true hero there, not just Glow for Eyes. Something special that no one has done before. I want you to spearhead that while I roll out everything else.”
As awful as the onset of Alan’s tenure was, the silver lining to that tragic London trip was Amanda. Sweet, beautiful Amanda. After our entanglement in my hotel room, Amanda declined to spend the night, a decision I believed spoke to her discretion. The next morning, we met Elizabeth in the lobby and shared a car to the airport. Amanda didn’t so much as blink in acknowledgment of our rendezvous. There were no smiles, close-lipped or otherwise. By the time we landed in New York, I had convinced myself that what had transpired between us had been merely a blip on the otherwise static radar.
I worried, briefly, that she might go to HR. Intraoffice relations, however meaningless, are always a tricky business, no less so when they’re between two women. But she didn’t, not that I was aware of. I decided this was a sign of her maturity. She was an adult. If this had been a concerning development, she would have said something. Adults speak up when they’re uncomfortable. Her silence, to me and to the greater world, was the clearest message she could have sent.
As for me, well, I was completely unchanged by our London night. I didn’t look at Amanda differently because I had seen her naked. Because we had kissed. Because her fingers had slipped inside me and seized control of my body. Of course I didn’t. When I glanced at her across a desk and handed her my corporate receipts and said good night to her at the end of a long day, I didn’t imagine her beautiful skin, how soft it felt against mine, how her silky hair tickled my stomach as she kissed her way down my torso. No, I saw her as my assistant. Someone who was good at her job. A person I could trust with my life.
We settled back into our pre-London routine. She was as detail oriented as ever. Anticipatory. She brought me lunch before I knew I was hungry. She called me a car before I had to ask. She RSVP’d yes and no to exactly the correct events. There were no injured looks. I saw no hesitancy in her body language. She was as even-keeled as she had always been. Not a hair was out of place. There were only meetings and more meetings and the constant churning that was and is Reveal.
A Fresh Pair of Eyes
Six months after our return from London, Amanda and I were the last two people in the office, a not irregular occurrence. It had been a long day of twelve meetings. Outside my window, the sky had been dark for hours. Amanda knocked on my glass door out of habit. She sat at my desk, her leather diary open, and pulled up a digital copy of my schedule on her phone. I noticed that she wore a high-necked black maxi dress with a chunky, oversized cardigan. I had never seen her wear such baggy clothes.
“Are you cold?” I asked.
A light flush spread across Amanda’s cheeks. “It’s chilly in here and freezing outside,” she said, as she hugged her cardigan tighter around her torso.
“It’s these old windows,” I said.
“Yeah, they get so drafty,” said Amanda. “You have Elizabeth at nine a.m. tomorrow. Then accounting. Then HR wants to chat more about Alan’s transition. Then—”
“I don’t think I can do this.” I rubbed at my temples, which ached like someone had stabbed them with needles.
“You want me to move HR?” Amanda’s brow furrowed as she examined the rest of my schedule. “Maybe we could ask marketing to switch with them for the four p.m. spot?”
“No. I mean this, right now.”
“Oh, sorry. I can come back later if you need more time.” Amanda made a motion to stand up from her chair, but I waved her back down.
“No. That’s not what I meant. Are you doing anything right now? Do you have anywhere to be?”
A look I had never seen teased at her rosy lips.
“No plans.”
“Want to get out of here? Go get a drink somewhere? On me.”
“Sure, sounds good.”
Amanda walked back to her desk and slipped on her peacoat. It made her look collegiate. On our way to the bar I had in mind, we passed a Sephora.
“Do you mind if we duck in?” I asked Amanda. Why did I ask her if she “minded” things? “I’d like to see our latest gondola.”
“Of course not,” Amanda replied. “I never turn down a trip to Sephora.”
The place was abuzz, like those department store floors used to be. Young women flitted from brand to brand, swiping lipsticks onto their balmed pouts, tugging pencils across their lash lines, spritzing their necks and inner wrists with the latest and greatest ouds. A few salespeople in all black tended to customers seated in director chairs beside mirrored vanities. Most of the Sephora staff either fetched inventory or roamed the store desperate for a task. Their beauty expertise was in short demand.
All those many years ago as a student, I had wielded my cosmetics knowledge like a magic wand to make women feel beautiful and yes, to make at least one of them come. Beauty and seduction danced cheek to cheek in my world. I had met Caroline from my perch behind a counter. My makeup acumen landed me in her bed. In today’s landscape, we might never have crossed paths. What place did charm and talent have in a store whose customers knew what they wanted without the aid of an expert? What place did I have in an era where instant gratification had supplanted seduction?
“This is a site of discovery,” Amanda chided me when I raised my concerns to her, absent the Caroline anecdote and sexual subtext. She patted some expensive moisturizer on the back of her hand from a golden jar. “Department stores are so intimidating and exclusionary. Here, people feel uninhibited to try things, case in point.”
“I guess,” I said.
“Sephora has been amazing for brands like Reveal. All those indie start-ups can get a foothold here in a way they never could with a department store.”
“Great. Sephora is giving my competition a leg up,” I said. Nearby, two young women were sucking in their cheeks and pouting their lips as they dusted their faces with dark powder. They looked like dead fish. “Will the contouring trend ever die?”
“I don’t know, but it’s fascinating to watch.”
“Fascinating? More like deforming.”
Amanda’s eyes narrowed. “Drag culture is part of the reason contouring is so mainstream now. It has roots in the LGBT+ community.”
“So, I’m required to like it then?” I asked. “And what about that?” I nodded at a woman a few feet away who was using her finger to tap layers of green-glitter eye shadow across her lids. Her lips were already coated in an ultra-shiny magenta gloss. “She looks ridiculous.”
“She’s having fun,” said Amanda.
“It’s completely unnatural,” I said.
“That’s the point,” said Amanda. “It’s self-expression. She doesn’t care if it’s conventionally beautiful. Haven’t you ever worn glitter?”
“No,” I said, as I watched a young woman in leggings and Birkenstocks dot a two-hundred-dollar serum beneath her eyes. When did women start walking around like it was perpetually laundry day? “The elevated part of cosmetics is missing. This experience doesn’t feel special. It’s like you’re playing with makeup at a glorified slumber party.”
“Exactly!”
“That’s a good thing?”
“Yes,” Amanda explained patiently. “Accessibility is more important than rarity. Who wants to feel so excluded they never buy anything?”
“Reveal is a cult brand,” I reminded her. “Cult status isn’t found in a sleeping bag.”
“How many cults do you know that have ended well, Max?” she asked.
I couldn’t take the crush of people anymore, so I ushered her out the door, to SoHo’s crowded sidewalks, and farther out to a nearby bar.
Amanda was right. I was now on the wrong side of beauty business history. To these young women, I was the equivalent of traditional. In Amanda’s eyes, I’m on the wrong side of other histories, too. The unfairness of that makes me want to scream. Don’t you know what I have been through, I wish to tell her. Don’t you understand that I had to suffer so you could exist?
I steered Amanda in the direction of a little hole-in-the-wall on Bleecker Street that had dim lighting. We found a table in a back corner. Amanda ordered our drinks, two bourbons neat, from the bar. She smiled at the tattooed male bartender a beat longer than necessary and I wondered about her relationship history. She seemed like someone who never needed to return home alone from a night out, but often chose solitude over others.
We sat at the rickety cocktail table and sipped our whiskey. In the bar’s amber glow, Amanda’s face beamed at me.
“Are you doing okay?” she asked.
“I’ve been better.”
“Is it Alan?”
“Yes.” I ran my finger across the edge of my drink’s glass.
The cocktail table had a rough, splintery top. An entire history of past patrons was carved into its mottled surface. It reminded me of the bar where Caroline had broken up with me.
“You need to stand your ground.”
“It’s a lot easier to say that when you’re a spectator.”
If Amanda was taken aback by the rising sharpness in my delivery, nothing in her expression suggested it. Her face was pristine like a fresh bullet of lipstick.
“I’m not just a spectator here. My job doesn’t exist without you.”
“If you needed to find something else, you would be fine.”
“Is that where you see this going?” Amanda’s dark eyes welled with concern. I remembered that I was the adult here, the boss, and it was my job to reassure and lead.
“No, definitely not. I meant that purely hypothetically. Everything will be fine. Don’t you want to move on to something else anyway?”
“I’d love to discuss that. I’ve been thinking—”
“You must be bored by me. I don’t blame you.”
“Oh. No, of course not.” Amanda’s eyes widened. “We can talk about it another time. Maybe I could put something—”
“I don’t know what I’d do without you.” I let the rest of my glass’s contents slide down my throat.
“You don’t have to worry about that.”
“Another?” I glanced pointedly at Amanda’s almost empty vessel.
“Sure.” She downed the rest of her whiskey.
“Maybe a change of setting?”
I believe this is what people call an inflection point. My first night with Amanda was something a person could write off as a poor decision made in the heat of shock. This moment could not benefit from a similar generosity. Yes, I was depressed over the state of my professional authority. Still, I wasn’t drunk or blindsided. My vision was as clear-eyed as could be on two inches of whiskey and a half-empty stomach. The one important note I can issue in my defense is that, as before, Amanda consented. On the topic of “signs,” there is no stronger indicator of mutual desire than that.
Back at my apartment, I lay on my duvet as Amanda hovered over me. I unhooked her black silk bra and reached for her breasts, small and golden with dark pink-brown nipples. They reminded me of Caroline’s chest, but they were smaller. Amanda caught my hand before it caressed her right breast.
“No touching unless I say so.”
Oh, we were going to play like that now, were we? Fine. Her long stare sliced through me. Then she offered me her lips with faux reluctance and I knew that I would be a cooperative participant in any game she chose.
This time, Amanda slept over. My alarm sounded at 5 a.m., per usual. I glanced at Amanda’s sleeping form. She appeared even younger in repose, her sharp intelligence no longer swooping in to complicate her innocent features. Not for the last time, I questioned how I had graduated from conquests in their thirties and forties to someone more than a decade my junior. As I admired her in the overcast light of day, her chest rising and falling, I understood that what I gained from Amanda, what attracted me to her nubile shores, was not the sizzling heat of sex—though make no mistake, she was dynamite in bed—but the embrace of hope. Amanda was the future wrapped in one delicate body. To be with her was to court an ageless, fresh start.
* * *
—
The next year was a roller coaster with far more lows than highs. At Reveal we released a new product every six months, per Alan’s directive. First came lipstick, in a range of fifteen shades, each one more cringe-inducing than the next. At least they were in a creamy finish. I girded myself for the future meeting where Alan would enthuse about the return of matte. I wasn’t so lucky in the concealer department, the second product launch under Alan’s reign. The formula he approved was so thick and pasty, it could have doubled as plaster on a rental apartment’s walls.
