Sheer, p.11
Sheer, page 11
Ellen wasn’t one for sentiment, though. She stood there in her chic silk trousers, her streak of gray hair like a comet across her face, and nodded.
“Of course, Maxine.”
Then she swept out of the room and I was alone, another decorative bauble in Ellen’s glittering apartment.
Hot and Bothered
In the late 1990s, there was no Instagram. There was no Twitter. Online newsletters were not a thing. Google Maps didn’t exist. If you were lost somewhere on the streets of New York, you had to stop a stranger to ask for directions. Cell phones didn’t have cameras or the internet and many people didn’t have cell phones at all. Your social network consisted quite literally of who you knew—and who those people knew. The most powerful tools for building awareness of your brand in this quaint, long-forgotten world were word of mouth and the press.
Ellen was the equivalent of a 2015 influencer in 1997. She knew all the right people, which is to say the richest people with the biggest mouths and the editors at the top magazines. Once the manufactured batches of Flush were ready in their custom bottles, I fulfilled the wait-list orders. We updated the logo to something more evocative. The labels read Flush in a gray scale of sans serif letters that transitioned from deep charcoal to the palest of pearlescent silvers. It wasn’t long before Flush spread beyond my elite clients to their friends and relatives and lawyers and personal trainers and, in some cases, to their household staff. We had to produce two more rounds of bottles to fill the new orders. Six months after I moved into Ellen’s guest room, she came to me with some exciting news.
“Vogue wants to do a story on you and Flush,” she told me, her words breathless as she stood in the guest room doorway. Nothing gets a Park Avenue doyenne hot and bothered like the prospect of Vogue coverage.
“We should use this article to introduce the whole company,” I said. “Time the launch of Reveal to this issue.”
“Yes, let’s do that. They want to take a portrait of you, too,” Ellen added. “They’re going to pull some looks.”
“No dresses—please,” I begged.
“It’s Vogue,” Ellen chastised me. “You’ll put on whatever they tell you to wear.”
That same year a Belgian fashion designer, Diane von Furstenberg, had relaunched her signature silk wrap dresses from the ’70s to great acclaim. Everywhere I looked, at tables in downtown bars, on the subway, I saw her colorfully patterned, long-sleeve creations with their demure V necklines and thick knotted sashes. I had nothing against this style. It was far more elegant than the ragged flannel and platform shoes that had proliferated a few years back or the plaid kilts and knee-highs with which so many adult women relived their schoolgirl days. But it wasn’t me. I could imagine a glossy magazine wanting to soften the power quotient of a female entrepreneur by wrapping her in an ultrafeminine dress.
On the topic of palatable femininity, one of the most iconic haircuts of the decade was a choppy blond shag on movie stars like Meg Ryan and Gwyneth Paltrow. Across America women were cropping their locks with abandon. It was all fine and well to have short, tousled hair as a woman these days, so long as you modeled yourself on an adorably straight rom-com actress.
The Vogue portrait session was at a studio in the far West Village, in a space that looked like a former garage, on a block dotted with turn-of-the-century town houses. The photographer was an up-and-coming guy who has since become famous. Fortunately, there wasn’t a frilly dress or pink ensemble to be found on the rack of clothes the fashion editor had assembled. Vogue was obsessed with the minimalist, high-minded Austrian fashion designer Helmut Lang, who had recently moved to New York. The rack featured a lineup of his slouchy black tuxedo pants and sheer tulle sleeveless tops, some with slashed cutouts across the torso. The effect was soft-butch fairy queen. I loved it.
The magazine had a hairstylist on set, who slicked my blond hair back into a low ponytail with a deep side part. Using swipes from a tin of wax pomade, she patted down every baby hair until my strands were lined up in submission. Naturally, I took care of my makeup. I forwent foundation, true to my signature. At twenty-three, I had skin as perfect as it was ever going to be. I patted some oil-free moisturizer across my face to create a smooth, shine-free base to which my makeup application could adhere. With my ring finger, I dappled on a custom concealer shade I mixed for myself on my under-eye area, my chin, the bridge of my nose, and the slightly redder indentation beneath my nostrils. I tightlined my lower and upper lash lines with a cocoa pencil, then smudged some chocolate powder on top with a cotton bud so my dark eyes had some extra smolder. I added a delicate daub of champagne eye shadow in my eye corners for a subtle highlight. Flush gave my lips and cheeks a rosy glow, and I finished my mouth with a dainty pat of clear balm.
The hairstylist, Jessica, watched me in the studio’s oversized mirror. She nodded her approval when I was done.
“You really know what you’re doing,” she said admiringly.
I met her gaze in the mirror. She had freckled pale skin and a halo of strawberry-blond hair that sat atop her head in a bun, strands poking out all over, on the verge of breaking free. She wore a simple black T-shirt and dark blue fitted jeans that highlighted her shapely thighs and butt.
“You bet I do,” I replied, staring straight into her blue-green eyes. She didn’t look away. Instead, a knowing smile teased at her lips.
Something had shifted after Caroline dumped me. I realized I was attractive to other women. Caroline had shown me this when she plucked me from behind the makeup counter. She had told me there were “signs” and that I would learn to sense them for myself. Jessica’s unabashed gaze seemed exactly like a “sign.”
I knew that love with another woman was an impossibility. The world kept reminding me of this fact. Harmonious love between men and women was barely achievable, and they had the luxury of legality. Sex, though, that had nothing to do with love or relationships. The sex part was great. So long as I separated the flirtation and the sex from its romantic complications—and kept that flirtation and sex on the down-low—I would be fine.
“What are you doing after this?” I asked.
“No plans,” Jessica replied coyly. “What about you?”
“I have the interview,” I said, nodding in the direction of the Vogue beauty writer who sat in a far corner of the studio, eyeing me impatiently. “After that, I’m free. I don’t really know this neighborhood. Any suggestions?”
“I live a few blocks away, on Greenwich and Perry. Come have a drink after.” Jessica pulled a piece of paper and a pen from her dopp kit and wrote down her address and phone number. She handed me the paper; I folded it in half and slipped it into my makeup bag.
“Thanks, I will.”
“Better trot over there,” she said, tilting her head in the direction of the photographer and beauty writer. “Jillian doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
The photographer had me sit on an overturned crate; a gray drop cloth hung behind me. The next hour was a blur of flashes and clicks and “Yes! Gorgeous!” and Jessica touching up my hair, the lead singer of an Irish rock band crooning from a stereo. When the photographer was confident he had the shot, Jessica packed up and waved her farewell, with a sly wink in my direction. Jillian and I settled into a pair of black leather armchairs. She pulled a hulking tape recorder out of her handbag, placed it on the coffee table between us, and clicked it on.
“Tell me about the inspiration behind Flush,” she began.
I gave her the origin story, including that cute anecdote of my childhood brush with a cherry Popsicle. Jillian’s thin lips maintained their tight, unimpressed line. She wore a matte powdery foundation that didn’t match her skin tone; there was a border of demarcation at the edge of her jaw, as though her neck had vacationed in São Paulo while her face sojourned in Iceland. That foundation had settled into the faint beginnings of creases at the corners of her eyes and across her forehead. It made her look older than I assumed she was, based on her junior editor status. Her lip and cheek colors were all wrong, too, like orange juice concentrate dumped on nonfat vanilla yogurt.
I finished my spiel. Jillian’s lips seemed like they were trying to express a grievance or an unkind thought, it was hard to tell.
“So it’s the equivalent of sugary syrup for a woman’s face?” she asked.
“Well, that was the inspiration,” I said. “But the effect is more postcoital than post-Popsicle.”
“Postcoital?” she asked.
“Women look their happiest and most radiant after sex, from what I hear,” I said. “Assuming there was an orgasm involved. Orgasms are nature’s best beautifier.”
“I see,” she said. “What are you working on next? Are you starting a line?”
I love New York with all my heart. I’ve loved it since I first visited its teeming sidewalks as a suburban kid. That said, New York is not a place that ever permits complacency. Just when you think you’ve accomplished something noteworthy, when you’ve sold your first painting or published your debut novel, along come the curious onlookers begging you to tell them what’s next. I hadn’t even sold Flush to a department store and already this Vogue editor wanted to know my five-year plan. I guess I should have been flattered by her faith that I would last long enough to have a next thing.
“I am starting a line called Reveal early next year. We’re giving you the scoop,” I told Jillian, flashing her a disarming grin. “Trust me, this is only the beginning.”
There were no formal plans for Reveal beyond Flush. I was a twenty-three-year-old playing at adulthood and flirting with beauty stardom. After the interview ended, I practically sprinted those few blocks over to Jessica’s apartment. Nothing turns me on more than the prospect of my own success.
By the time that Vogue story came out ten weeks later, it was 1998 and Jessica and her fantastic ass were small objects in my rearview mirror. I was on to my next stop, one of the most pivotal of my career.
Day Four
Morning
In my chilly, dark bedroom, I open my eyes, reach for my phone, and glance at its illuminated screen to see a notification from Elizabeth. It is “the email.” The subject line reads, URGENT: Board Sets Meeting Date, punctuated with one of those tiny red flags, as though the word urgent in all caps isn’t alarming on its own.
The timing of this email couldn’t be more ironic. Just as I finish reliving the launch of Reveal I am faced with the possibility of its demise. Well, not Reveal’s demise, but mine. The Board members of Reveal have set a date for the meeting, five days from today, during which they will decide my future at the company. What this means is that those six Board members, Ellen chief among them, will consider both sides of things, mine and Amanda’s, and arrive at a conclusion. As if there are only ever two sides and no one is aware that triangles or squares or pentagons exist.
Elizabeth’s email is from her Reveal account, so it features the bland language of corporate responsibility avoidance. She knows that I will understand this as a necessary evil rather than a slight. Just in case, she has followed up with a text message from her personal cell.
I’m sorry. Wish I had more info to share. Call if you need ANYTHING.
Elizabeth should not be concerned. Sure, I had a partial breakdown last night. A release, really. And now, I have recovered. That’s what women like me do. We bounce back—fast—because we can’t afford to dwell on regrets or worst-case scenarios. This isn’t therapy, it’s leadership. You reap what you project. I am confident in my rightness. I am the founder of Reveal, a woman whose beauty vision earned her a profile in Vogue at age twenty-three, too important a figure for a Board to risk losing. This email is really cause for celebration. It marks the road to my impending freedom.
I text Elizabeth back some banal drivel in keeping with her tone.
All okay. Doing just fine.
Boosted by thoughts of my eventual win at the Board’s hands, I stride to the kitchen where I scoop some pre-ground coffee into my machine’s gold filter and press the brew button. I notice a slight tremor in my hands. Must be low blood sugar.
My kitchen is as pristine as the rest of my apartment. The most I’ve ever sprung for in the help department is a housekeeper who cleans my already immaculate place a couple of times a week. It’s the easiest gig she’ll ever score. The coffee table is unblemished by the dreaded tchotchkes and decorative glossy books that are all the rage in design magazine pages. My tidiness is a symptom of my adult candor: what you see is what you get.
That self-sufficiency extends to my professional life, too. But Ellen convinced me, when Reveal’s shining success first exploded, to hire an assistant. Her argument was that my brain could be put to better use than filling an appointment book and answering my own phone; let some cute Ivy League grad do those things so I could focus on product development. How nicely that has turned out: Amanda was my fifth assistant and the first one whose name I learned.
I trusted Amanda with the maintenance of my life. When the moment suited her, she snatched my confidence and thrust it back in my face. Her motive was upward mobility, I assume. She probably struck a deal with Ellen or the whole Board. One “difficult” founder served straight up in exchange for Amanda’s own career ascension at Reveal.
Did she send them text messages? Emails from an anonymous account? Do Ellen and the Board possess details of my alleged malfeasance? The possibility is sour in my mouth. It leaves a bilious film on my teeth and tongue, the kind that no amount of high-end coffee can wash away.
Image Is Everything
After Reveal officially launched as a company in 1998 with Flush rebranded under its umbrella, nearly two years after I first mixed those amateur versions, I hurtled forward at a sonic pace. That early stage of Reveal was a sleepless blur of constant iterating and steep learning curves. All my energy went into the proliferation of Flush, while my makeup clients became side work. In some ways this was the toughest period of my career, from the sheer demands on my time. Through another lens it was the freest. There were no employees to manage, a Board was years away, and my sole investor was Ellen. We had nowhere to go but up.
The Vogue story on Flush and Reveal dropped. Ellen was not pleased with the profile’s pull quote: “Orgasms are nature’s best beautifier.”
“Have you lost your mind, Maxine?” Ellen asked me, the Vogue issue trembling in her hand. “You are clearing all talking points with me going forward.”
“It’s a great quote,” I said. “And an accurate one.”
“We didn’t discuss marketing Flush around sex. I would never have agreed to that,” said Ellen. “It’s tasteless, unseemly.”
“All makeup is about sex,” I fired back. “I just made the point more explicitly. Anyway, Flush is really about seduction, not in-your-face sex.”
“You described it as an orgasm, that sounds like sex. Women don’t want to talk about that explicitly,” said Ellen.
“Yes, they do. Everyone is obsessed with Tom Ford’s collections for Gucci—the models look like they came straight from bed. All the women you know go to that salon on Fifty-Seventh Street to get Brazilian waxes,” I argued. “Women today love talking about sex.”
The hottest models in fashion magazines were tan and bubble-butted and hailed from Brazil. Vibrators were petal pink, with rabbit ears to tickle your clit. Women’s pubic regions—and anuses—were now hairless, save for sliver-thin landing strips that evoked a dictator’s mustache or a Caribbean airport. Sex and the City premiered on HBO a few months after Reveal launched. Ellen came around to my sales pitch once I was flooded with phone calls from interested parties, women who wanted me to take them on as clients, retailers who wanted to sell Flush.
We bought ads for Reveal in some of the major glossies—Bazaar, Allure, and ELLE. I insisted on a product-driven image to contrast with the standard beauty campaign that typically featured a twenty-year-old model caressing her face while tubes of lipstick and vials of perfume hovered in a bottom corner. Flush was the star of Reveal’s first ad. We photographed a single bottle of Flush lit from behind and below, so it shimmered with mystery. A thick stroke of Flush oozed across the page, temptation in cosmetic form.
A medium-sized cosmetics group reached out wanting to buy Reveal from me. “Wait until we have more to give them,” Ellen instructed. “Never take the first offer you get.” At the time, that we made me feel supported. I wondered where her assurance came from, though given her investment, I didn’t feel able to question it.
I was fully enmeshed in Ellen’s daily routine. She woke every day at 7 a.m., regardless of her plans. Donald woke at five to ride his bike in Central Park with some buddies before work. One morning, I was up early and Donald passed me in the kitchen; he was in his cycling clothes, his helmet hair matted to his head with sweat. Normally, Donald ignored my presence as he had when I first encountered him in Ellen’s boudoir. Ever since his argument with Ellen when I moved in, he had been silent, so far as I knew, on the topic of my living arrangement. He was either on his bike, at the office, or at a social engagement with Ellen. He spent so little time at home, I wondered why he had even cared that I was there. The guest room was in a separate wing of the apartment, near the servant entrance in the back. I had taken to using this door, unprompted by Ellen, to avoid run-ins like this.
I expected Donald to continue to his bedroom. Instead, he paused at the granite island.
“You’re up early,” he remarked. “Ellen doesn’t so much as blink until seven.”
“Yes,” I said. “There’s coffee.” I gestured at a pot by the stove. “But I guess you’ve already had some.”
