What Pretty Girls Are Made Of

by Lindsay Jill Roth

  I didn’t want to have to find that out.

  The next day, Jennifer contacted the Department of Labor to file a complaint about both Sally and the company. I wasn’t sure what she had up her sleeve, but I knew it would be great. What she wasn’t expecting was for the DOL rep to exclaim, “Oh, wow!” when she said that she worked for Sally Steele Cosmetics.

  “Sorry,” the man replied when she asked him what he was so excited about. “I shouldn’t have said that, ma’am. Can you tell me how many people work at that company, please?”

  She told him how many of us there were, then asked, “Why? Are there lots of complaints for this company?”

  “You seem like a nice woman, so all I’ll say is this: I’m blown away by the number of complaints about this company. It’s kind of ridiculous with such a small organization.”

  He didn’t realize how he made her day. Maybe with the new complaint from Jennifer, the DOL would take some action against the Beast.

  My three-day weekend was starting off with a snow day and continuing with a day date with Bret. Our first official date. We were going to have Saturday lunch in Chinatown at Bret’s favorite dim sum spot. We were likely to be one of the few non-Chinese groups there, and I was so excited. I loved to try new authentic restaurants, and I hadn’t been to this place before. I hoped they would have my favorite pork buns, cha siu bao.

  Bret looked just as handsome as he had when I’d met him at his party, dressed casually in jeans and a black V-neck sweater. His eyes sparkled and he looked as if he had just gotten a haircut. My heart was racing.

  Since when did I get nervous for a date? Probably since the pep talk I’d given myself while walking from the subway to the restaurant, which went something like this: Lower your expectations, Alison. No one can meet them. Lower your expectations—they are too high.

  Bret gave me a hug and we hopped on the escalator up to the big dim sum hall. We were ascending to what I imagined dim sum halls in China looked like: ornate gold and red drapery adorning the walls to distract from the modest tables and lazy Susans.

  We were seated at a large round table for ten. We took the last two empty seats. The place was packed, and the warm smells of peppercorn, scallions, and garlic piqued my hunger. We ordered small dish after small dish, each a little culinary adventure.

  “What is this? If it’s an octopus, it’s the funniest looking creature I have ever seen on a plate,” Bret commented as he held a three-inch vivid-red slippery octopus in his chopsticks.

  “They look better fried. You can’t see the little guy as much,” I said.

  Slimy and gross!

  “If you eat one, I’ll eat one,” he teased me.

  My scrunched nose and pursed lips said it all: No way.

  Bret laughed and ate the creature in one bite. “Mmmm, delicious!” he teased me.

  I loved it.

  Bret made sure to flag down the dumpling cart multiple times so I could nab the pork buns.

  “You like dumpling,” Liu, our waitress, remarked.

  “She likes dumplings,” Bret said, pointing to me. “And I like her.”

  Bret cracked up at the surveillance camera story and said that my boss sounded like a lunatic. He told me about his family and his job in finance, and the conversation flowed easily.

  By the time the check came, we had been at the restaurant for two hours. The other eight chairs at our table had turned over several times.

  Bret got the check, looked me straight in the eye, smiled, and said, “I’m not ready for this date to end. Are you up for a part two?”

  Of course I was. Sometimes you just know when you like someone. With this guy, wow. He was just, well . . . wow. My heartbeat quickened at the thought of more time with Bret—and that he had something up his sleeve.

  Once outside, Bret reached for my hand and clasped it in his for our walk. Chills ran through my body. Bret had read about a cool installation at a museum on the Lower East Side, so we decided to check it out. Dim sum plus culture—count me in!

  The New Museum of Contemporary Art was sparsely decorated, with minimal art on each floor. It was certainly diverse, with the ground floor featuring a digital-media Holocaust installation and the second floor featuring cereal boxes of all different sizes, screened and mounted on glass.

  “I love the really sugary cereals,” Bret said. “You know, the ones that your parents don’t let you eat as a kid because they’re more like dessert than breakfast?”

  “Of course. Like what? Count Chocula? I’ve never actually had that, by the way,” I replied.

  “I’m more of a Frosted Mini-Wheats, Life kinda guy.”

  “Oh my God!” I exclaimed, perhaps a bit too dramatically for a conversation about cereal. “I was addicted to Life during my freshman year of college. Seriously, I won’t eat it now. I would need a twelve-step program. And after being out of school for this long, I can’t even remember what it tastes like.”

  “You’re high on Life,” he teased me.

  “You’re a nerd,” I replied, smiling. I liked nerds.

  We laughed all the way up to the third floor, which the museum had designed (for reasons completely unfathomable to me) to resemble the human nasal cavity.

  “We just went from cereal to boogers,” Bret joked. “Is this a Lower East Side thing? I don’t get the point.”

  The top floor was almost vacant. Centered in the room was a red staircase made out of rubber.

  “It’s just a staircase,” Bret said, as if reading my mind. “The only thing on this entire floor. Don’t you feel like you could also build a staircase and call it art?” He looked at me, waiting for a serious answer. He didn’t know that I had one prepared, based on my parents’ modern art experiences.

  “It’s not as easy as it looks,” I told him. “In 1980 or so, my parents went to an art exhibit at MoMA. They found themselves asking the same question you just did, except it was about why a square canvas painted solid blue was hanging there.”

  “Exactly,” said Bret. “A solid blue canvas. What about it deserves notoriety? Was it the first canvas ever painted solid blue?”

  “Okay, buddy. Just listen to the story,” I interjected, before he got deeper into this modern art frustration. “So my parents figured that if Jackson Pollock could splatter a canvas, or Mark Rothko could fade colors into each other and call it art, my parents could make names for themselves in modern art, too. And with limited means, they set aside money for an art budget.”

  “Seriously?” Bret asked. “I mean, I’m not ready to go out and start painting, but I get it.”

  “Seriously,” I said. “They went to Pearl Paint and picked up brushes, paint, canvases, and whatever else they needed. They were going to become modern artists and eventually phase out their teaching careers. Thirty years later, they are both still educators.”

  “So I guess I have to bow to the solid blue canvas. That’s the moral of the story.”

  We were both quiet.

  “I’m glad that Andrea thought to chase after you on my behalf,” I said hastily, not comfortable enough yet to live in the silence.

  “I am as well,” he replied, and returned my smile. I didn’t want this moment to end, but I’d let Bret know earlier that I had dinner plans and had to get uptown.

  Outside the museum, he leaned in, slid his hand to my hip, and gave me a lingering kiss on the cheek. He smelled clean and fresh. I wanted to run my hands through his dark hair and make out with him right there on Bowery. Instead, he swiftly and gentlemanly put me in a taxi and handed the driver a twenty. I wanted to rip his clothes off and behave not so much like a lady.

  I wasn’t in the cab for five minutes when my phone buzzed and Bret’s ID showed up on my screen. I picked up.

  “How’s your Wednesday looking?” he asked, skipping the hello.

  “It’s yours,” I repl
ied, and hung up. My cheeks hurt from smiling by the time I got home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Clock-Stopping Ingredients

  My Monday-morning shower lasted thirty minutes. Not a sexy shower with Bret in mind, just pure dread thinking about going to work. I’d had such a blissful weekend, and the thought of being back in the studio, sans Jennifer, was upsetting. I knew there would be lots of talk and gossip. I also knew that Sally would start bad-mouthing Jennifer to the staff, and my ears were burning just thinking about it.

  We were all scheduled to arrive at the studio promptly at 8:45 a.m., as Sally and Simon, the casting director for the hypothetical Sally Steele Cosmetics reality television show, were meeting with a possible production team. Sally wanted everyone ready, awake, and dressed to make a good impression. None of us wanted to arrive at work forty-five minutes early for a possible reality show that we wanted no part of in the first place. But we did it.

  By nine, neither Sally nor her guests had arrived at the studio. Everyone on the staff was there and ready. When the phone rang, we expected it to be Sally telling us how late she would be. The call came to my line and I saw her number on the caller ID. “Hi, Sally. Good morning.”

  “Alicat. Great, so happy you’re at the studio. Is everything spotless? Like, white-glove-test approved?”

  “Yes, Sally. We are all clean and all set, and everyone came in early today.”

  “Okay, great. Well, the meeting has been pushed back until 5:45, so tell everyone they’ll have to stay late.”

  The girls weren’t going to like that. I told Sally that I would pass on the message and we would see her later. To ease the suffering of the tired and cranky makeup artists who had to stay at work indefinitely that evening, I ordered in breakfast. Sally’s treat. I would take the fall if she freaked out when she saw her credit card statement. Perhaps then I would get fired and could file for unemployment. Wishful thinking.

  I’d taken on the jobs of five people, was paid for one, and couldn’t find a new position even though I’d been looking daily. I hadn’t heard back about the “blow job” trial run opportunity since interviewing, either. Dwelling on those thoughts made me want to vomit up the breakfast that Sally had unknowingly bought for me.

  Everyone was on their best behavior throughout the day, not only because of the upcoming producer’s meeting but also because no one was certain if we were being videotaped or possibly even audiotaped as well. I figured that if our voices were being recorded, our management team would already have been to the studio to let most of the staff go. I didn’t know if it was legal to audiotape your employees without telling them they were being recorded (isn’t that like wiretapping?), but I had a feeling that wouldn’t stop Sally from doing it.

  Simon showed up promptly at five forty-five. He and I sat in the lipstick office waiting for Sally and the others to arrive.

  “Have you heard of this new skin-care line called Olive?” Simon asked.

  “I’ve tried that line!” I told him enthusiastically.

  He couldn’t believe it. “How did you start using it? Is it good? Tell me what you know about it.” He was very passionate about skin products.

  “I’m crazy about taking care of my skin, so I’m always trying new products. Especially with free samples. It’s work to find the best ones for hydration and anti-aging that are actually affordable.”

  “Tell me more. Details,” he replied.

  “About my regimen?” He nodded. “Okay, well, with champagne tastes on a beer budget, you have to do some digging to find what works for you.”

  Simon laughed.

  “Lately I’m into oil cleanser for my skin. Everyone thinks that oil will clog your pores, but it’s actually the opposite. It sticks to the oil already on your skin and removes it without stripping the moisture.”

  “You don’t even have to say anything more,” Simon interrupted. “It’s crazy—you would be so perfect for this job I’m casting.”

  I looked at him inquisitively, my eyes urging him to continue, thinking about the fact that recently more hair than normal was building up in my hairbrush. A change was in order.

  “I’m in the process of being hired to find the new Olive spokesperson. And hello—the whole line is olive oil, which you seem to just have covered. You would be perfect for it. Beyond perfect.”

  I smiled at him. If he only knew how much I craved that opportunity. And how important skin care was to me. Should I tell him?

  “When I told Sally how great you were on camera, she mentioned to me that you were an actress, so it all made sense.” I wondered how much Sally had shared with him.

  “That was my past life,” I told Simon. My failed first career. “But I would love to be a skin-product spokeswoman, or any kind of host, really. When are you auditioning for it?”

  “Probably at the end of the month, but I’m still waiting to hear back about my contract first. I should get it in the next few days and hit the ground running from there.”

  “Well, please keep me in mind. Seriously,” I said, knowingly taking a risk by showing interest.

  I told Simon that while I would love to hang with him for the rest of the evening, I had work to get done. By “work,” I meant sending an email to my agent (or my former agent) to tell her about what Simon was casting, and to see if I could be considered for the position. Worth a shot! Well, if this one was meant to be, something would come of it. My agent replied that she would be in touch with Simon and that we should keep our fingers crossed.

  Sally arrived fifteen minutes late to her own reality show meeting, yet none of the other guests had arrived. We received word that one of the producers was stuck in traffic somewhere between Soho and the studio. Great.

  The girls were cranky, since they had arrived at work early, and they wanted to leave for the evening. At 6:28, all the players were finally seated in Sally’s office. Just as the latest arrivals removed their coats, scarves, and gloves, Sally bolted up from the meeting (that hadn’t even started) and ran out to the front of the store, where I was standing. I had never seen the woman move so quickly.

  “Alison, my sweeeeet!”

  “Hi,” I said to Sally, surprised, with my face barely inches from her panting one.

  “I almost completely forgot. I need you to pick up Elliott right away from the psychologist. He’s six blocks away and is done at 6:45. I’m in a pinch here with this meeting, so you should put on your coat and get a move on it.”

  “Um, sure, Sally,” I replied, not really knowing how to handle the situation. “I’m happy to go pick him up for you today. But, it’s just . . . I’m not a babysitter, so I guess I’ll bring him back to the store and you can take it from there.”

  “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear you say that,” she said with her back to me, already walking back into her meeting. Babysitting wasn’t in my job description. But I had taken another baby step in advocating for myself.

  If I’d had any respect for my boss, or had been treated well by her, I wouldn’t have minded this personal errand. I loved children. But not in this situation. The last thing I wanted was for Sally Steele to see me as her new sitter.

  When Elliott and I arrived back at the studio, Sally, Giuseppe, and the other makeup artists were sitting around the center makeup island. Giuseppe was applying makeup to Michele, the female producer. Elliott said hello to his mother and ran to the back of the studio to play on the computer.

  “This is Alison, everyone,” Sally said, addressing the producers. “You didn’t really get to meet her before. But you’ve heard about her. She’s my personal assistant.”

  “Hi. Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m actually Sally’s executive assistant. Let me know if you need anything.” Baby steps.

  “Oh, right. She’s my executive assistant. She hates it when I call her my personal assistant,” chortled the Beast.

 
It was an insult when Sally called me her personal assistant, and she knew it. Though I did feel like a PA, especially after having to rush to pick her son up from the doctor’s office.

  “They haven’t even started talking about anything of substance,” Carly whispered to me as I walked back to my desk to take off my coat. “Doesn’t she understand that some of us commute and have family responsibilities and can’t wait around to watch Giuseppe put on eye shadow?”

  I completely understood. I, too, had plans that had been indefinitely pushed back. I was in no mood to socialize, so I hid behind my desk getting work done. I figured I might as well be productive. At 7:40, the meeting had moved back to Sally’s office, the girls were all still waiting around, frustrated, and I was fuming at my desk. But I kept silent and canceled my dinner plans with Jill.

  At 7:48, Helen did the unthinkable. She marched into Sally’s office with a parade of makeup artists behind her.

  “Excuse me for interrupting your meeting,” she boomed, her voice echoing in the hallway.

  Sally looked up in surprise, and the producers turned their heads. Helen continued talking.

  “The thing is, we’ve been at work since early this morning. We came in early for your morning meeting, and it’s really time for us to go home. Sally, if it’s all right with you, we are going to leave. The store is long closed and it isn’t fair to make the girls wait for your meeting to end.”

  Silence.

  For about thirty seconds. No one said a word.

  Sally finally responded after what felt like another hour of waiting.

  “Wow. Just walk in here and join our meeting,” she said with a smile. To outsiders, her comment would seem friendly with a hint of passive-aggressive. To us, it said, We’ll talk about this later.

  “Okay. Well, I need someone, or a few of you, to stay to lock up. So who has a key?”

  It was prime reality show meat. One by one, down the line, they spoke. First Helen. “Oh, well, I don’t have a key, do you?” she said to Jolie.