What Pretty Girls Are Made Of Read online

  Her white teeth glistened under the most perfect shade of plum wine on her lips as she looked me directly in the eyes. With just an unguarded and familiar glance, I felt like I knew her—or at least had met her before. I went in for the kill.

  “I’m here because I want to work for you. I can see that you’re a busy woman and I don’t want to take up much of your time, but I believe I can be great for your company.”

  Her eyebrows peaked.

  “I’m versatile and have a lot of experience,” I said as I pointed to my résumé in her hands. “I’m also organized and hardworking.” I didn’t want to come off as desperate, but she had to know my strengths. It was the acting role of a lifetime as I presented myself, Alison Kraft, like a publicist introducing the next Emma Watson to the world.

  “So wait—back up,” she said. “How did you hear about my makeup line and studio?”

  “I read about you in Crain’s,” I said. Oops—maybe I was so excited that I’d forgotten to mention that.

  “You read that? Impressive. Well, based on that, I should offer you a position on the spot!”

  Score one for Madison.

  “Do you have cosmetics experience?” she asked.

  “I have business experience, and I took makeup-training classes at Northwestern University. And I’m passionate, a fast learner, and can tackle anything.” Hoping I didn’t seem overeager, and choosing to leave out kiddie face painting from the roster, I tried to temper my excitement during the conversation, but I felt like a puppy begging at the dinner table.

  “I can see that,” she said. She paused. “Here’s the thing, Alison.” She remembered my name! My proverbial tail wagged.

  “I haven’t ever hired anyone without cosmetics industry experience before. And the positions that were mentioned in the Crain’s article were really upper-management positions—which you’re not at the level for just yet, especially with no makeup experience on your résumé.”

  The wind in my sails started to deflate.

  “But . . .” she said with a long pause as she scanned my face, “I like you.” Wind picking up again! “I’m going to introduce you to my international makeup artist, Giuseppe Giampietro, and then send you downtown to our corporate office. You can drop your résumé off with Keira Brendan, our VP of sales, and if something becomes available, she will have your information.”

  With a voice like bells, Sally trilled, “Giuseppe! Come meet Alison!”

  As Sally wrote a note on her official letterhead, Giuseppe Giampietro pranced his way through the door. Dressed in black, with a crisp blazer and black-and-white patent leather wingtip shoes, he looked like Don Juan—except gay and Italian.

  “Hiiiiiiii, I’m Giuseppe. You’re so cute! Nice to meet you. I’m Sally’s right and left hands and I go with her everywhere,” sang the extremely tan middle-aged man standing in front of me, kissing me on both cheeks.

  “You as well,” I replied. “I’m hoping to work with—”

  “Bellissima, my darling,” he interrupted. I could have double-kissed him back just for sparing me from having to repeat my entire tale again.

  “Alison,” Sally said, returning her attention to Giuseppe and me, “you need to head downtown with your résumé and this note. Here’s a goody bag of makeup as well.”

  Sweet!

  “Thank you. Are you sure?” I didn’t want Sally to think I was ungrateful or expected freebies, even though I was already mentally unpacking the contents of the bag with glee.

  “Absolutely. Just enjoy and make sure to let me know how you like them. My card is in the bag.”

  She smiled at me, though this time she didn’t look me straight in the eye and I could see that there was some other thought running through her mind.

  “One more thing,” she called out as I was just turning to leave. My heart started pounding as I turned back around, my eyebrows communicating for me with an arch that wavered somewhere between uh-oh and yes?

  “Nice face.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Non-comedogenic

  Résumé, cover letter, and shopping bag of makeup in hand, I took the handwritten note from Sally and walked across the park and down the twenty blocks I had walked up an hour earlier, past my apartment building, past DavidsTea, and to the eighth-floor corporate offices of Sally Steele Cosmetics. When the fast pounding in my chest slowed to a normal heartbeat, I proceeded to the reception area.

  A tall, statuesque girl who looked about my age and was dressed for the runway came down the hallway and greeted me formally. There was definitely a different tone to “corporate” from what I’d experienced at the studio. Austere and devoid of color, the lobby held a seriousness I hadn’t expected—probably due to my lack of office experience.

  “I’ll take your résumé and pass it on to Keira Brendan, our VP of sales,” the tall girl said, clearly already aware of why I was there.

  “Thank you so much,” I told her, “but I would really like to introduce myself to her, if at all possible.” Was I really being so aggressive? “I can wait, if necessary.”

  “Let me see if she’s available,” said the beanstalk, as she turned away from me with a smile on her face masking some sort of feeling that I assumed would be discussed with Keira in about three minutes.

  The five-minute wait in the office lobby felt like a good twenty, measured by the loud ticking of the clock by the elevators. But I wasn’t shaky or cold, as I would have been in an audition. I had unearthed confidence I had never felt before. Play this new role, Alison, I thought. You can be this girl.

  When Keira Brendan came out to meet me, I figured there must be a height requirement for the corporate office. At five foot two, I felt dwarfed next to Keira, who was pushing six feet. Her hair was styled after Kris Jenner’s pixie, and her heels were just as tall as mine. She was both gorgeous and professionally presented—I wanted to look like her in five years.

  “Hi, I’m Keira Brendan. I guess we’re having an impromptu interview. Follow me back to our office and we can talk.”

  I had never seen an office like this in my life. The actual room was a box with no windows on a floor rented with many other companies. Once inside the box, however, I saw what I hoped would be my future: three desks, four file cabinets, and a full makeup counter. I wanted nothing more at that moment than to sit next to a console of makeup. I had to make it happen.

  We talked for about fifteen minutes at Keira’s desk (one of the three in the box) before she said, “Look, I’m impressed by you. And I think you would do extremely well in this industry and at our company.”

  Before I could get out a thank-you, she continued. “I don’t have any open positions right now that aren’t senior-level management. But I would like us to stay in touch, and I will certainly keep you in mind if a position that you’re right for opens up.”

  “Thank you so much, Keira. I would love that.”

  “Madison, I know that something is going to come of this—I just know it!” I squealed into the phone once I was outside the building. “All the women seemed so great. I wish you could have seen their studio and the office with the makeup counter in it.”

  My heart raced as I spoke, my mouth trying hard to keep pace with my racing brain.

  “I’ve wanted a real job for a while, but today was the first time I really wanted to be at a specific company. I wasn’t talking with these people and thinking about my past. It didn’t feel like I would be settling for something random just because it would be a steady job. And you know how badly I need a job. This one felt different. I have to go home and write my thank-you notes.”

  “Slow down, crazy lady,” Madison, ever the realist, interrupted. “It sounds super positive, but they told you there were no positions available. I just don’t want you to get your hopes up if nothing comes out of this.”

  But I could hear something else in her ton
e as she cautioned me. It was excitement. We both knew.

  Exactly one week and one day later, I woke up at 10 a.m.—one of the benefits of working the odd-jobs life—to a voice mail: “Hi, Alison, it’s Keira Brendan from Sally Steele Cosmetics. How are you? Listen, I got your lovely and thoughtful thank-you note—great stationery, by the way—and funnily enough, a position opened up yesterday that we thought you would be interested in. Before we make this position public, we would like to know if you could come over to our corporate office today to meet with Sally and our team. Give me a ring. Thanks.”

  I called her back and we set the meeting for 2 p.m. Perfect. Enough time for me to get showered, dressed, made up, and over to Sephora to play with some of the Sally Steele products. I figured I’d better learn a bit about them before my meeting.

  At two, I was ushered into a small conference room, where Sally was waiting for me. With no makeup counter in sight and only a conference table and chairs separating me from a potential job, Sally dove right in.

  “Who knew that your timing would be so on point, Alison?” She paused. “My executive assistant gave her notice yesterday and we all immediately thought of you as a replacement.”

  I nodded, acknowledging my presence in the conversation. “It often comes down to timing, doesn’t it?”

  “Well, yes,” she said. “And while I’ve never hired anyone without prior cosmetics experience before, there’s just something about you that intrigues me. If you want to learn, work hard, and invest yourself, there could be significant growth for you here.”

  I was so excited that I barely heard the actual description of what the job entailed: something about QVC, scheduling, television appearances, phones, and travel. At that moment my pursuits seemed limitless.

  “Well, we’d love to have you as our new ‘it’ girl, because that’s what my assistant was—an ‘it’ girl. So if you’ll have us, I’ll have you sign some papers and we can make this happen.”

  She must have seen the smile on my face and the sparkle in my eyes, because before I could utter the words “I do!” Sally was standing up and reaching to shake my hand.

  One Greek salad, one feta cheese egg-white omelet, and one hamburger later (not all eaten by me!), Jill, Bradley (the third of our Northwestern-to-NYC trifecta), and I excitedly discussed my soon-to-be new life as we sat at our local twenty-four-hour diner—so local, in fact, that it was located across the street from the apartment that Jill and I shared.

  Midtown Restaurant was the scene for celebrations, first dates that we knew weren’t going anywhere, teary breakup dissections, and that oh-so-nice basket of french fries after a long night out. It only felt right to be planning the future from “our” booth.

  “I know this is probably jumping the gun,” Jill said, her mouth full of omelet, “but I’m calling dibs on the makeup that you bring home. I know you’ll want to give some of it to your mom, but your roommate has to get some love, too.”

  “Oh man,” Bradley interrupted before I could reply. “The makeup talk I’m going to have to endure is already killing me. I have enough of it with Andrea.” He rolled his eyes. “Is this like if I were to get a job with the Rangers and you guys were fighting for free hockey tickets?”

  “Yes, just like that, Brad.”

  “So you’re really going to make the switch and just go for it?” Bradley asked.

  “Yes, I’m ready. I’m going to dive in one hundred percent. I’ve always had the cosmetics bug, and it’s time to see it through. And health insurance is part of the deal, which is a nice first for me.” I will not bungle this opportunity.

  These two were my buddies, my support staff, and my family. With them by my side and Madison supporting me from afar, I was ready to start a new adventure.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Cell Turnover

  My office wasn’t at “corporate.” It was at the Sally Steele Cosmetics Studio. It sat between the stairway to the basement shipping area and the hallway to the bathroom, and was positioned in an alcove directly in front of the passage to Sally’s office—she had offices at both the studio and corporate —where everyone seemed to congregate.

  But being at the studio had its perks, since I was with the makeup artists. And the lemon meringue scent in the air—whether from cleaning products or the candle burning in the front, I did not know—made me want to bring the essence home and bathe in it.

  On my first afternoon, I took a few minutes to look around Sally’s empty office, seeking (not snooping for) clues about my new boss that would help me know the woman whose schedule I would now keep. It was filled with tchotchkes of all sizes, giving me the impression that a cameo on Hoarders could be in this woman’s future. The walls and desk were white, her chair black, and all the accents a vivid red. Sally’s signature logo was a red lipstick tube.

  Her shelves were cluttered with lipstick-shaped pillows, a lipstick-shaped telephone, lipstick-shaped picture frames, lipstick-shaped business card holders, and lipstick-shaped makeup mirrors. I assumed that for the past ten or so years, everyone gave her gifts related to this fetish. If a product was shaped like a lipstick, Sally had it in her office.

  What I didn’t understand was the photographs and articles about Sally and her business that covered the walls. They were in frames hanging in a seemingly random pattern. It wasn’t the pride in her company that confused me, but the sporadic scattering of these tributes.

  “She likes organization,” I heard Jolie, one of the resident makeup artists, say with a chuckle from behind me. (Busted for snooping—I mean seeking.) “But none of us understand her wall pattern. One of the many great mysteries of this place, I guess.”

  “Got it,” I said, curious as to what the other mysteries were.

  “Your brows need work, hon,” Jolie kindly mentioned to me. “Come into my makeup room when you have about fifteen minutes and we’ll shape them.”

  “Do you think Sally would mind?” I asked, hoping for a no.

  “Of course she wouldn’t mind. She likes it when her girls look perfect. Always makeup, always mascara—even if she doesn’t always wear it—and she gets pissed when you don’t have color on your lips.” Jolie’s Bulgarian accent was adorable, and with dark hair down to the small of her back and lips akin to Kerry Washington’s perfect pout, she was an “it” girl to a T.

  “You can never wear snow boots, okay?” she urged. “Never wear flip-flops, and she hates bad skin. Oh, and you must always wear black.”

  “All right. I’ll keep that in mind.” I couldn’t wait to be given products of my own so that I could put on a great face every morning.

  A half hour later, my brows were tweezed. My first perk! And great timing, since I had a first date that night—lots of firsts. The other artists had appointments, so it was the perfect time to catch up with Jolie about the day and get the scoop about my new company.

  For example, she told me that snack time almost always involved fro-yo and cookies, which didn’t seem to show up on the asses of the tiny makeup artists.

  “Jan Lupman was here; did you do her today?” Carly asked with a smirk, peeking in to see how my brows were coming along. Her client was using the restroom and Carly was taking a minute to wash her brushes.

  “Big surprise,” Jolie replied. “She’s here every day. She told me yesterday that she had a funeral to go to and had to have her makeup touched up before, after, and tomorrow for the shiva. She said she wouldn’t wash her face last night since we could only fit her in for a touch-up this morning.”

  “Seriously?” I asked. She could afford to have her makeup done here almost every day but wouldn’t wash it off at night?

  “Yeah,” said Carly, “she was doing us the favor by sleeping in it. Crazy, right?”

  “Well, I guess if she can afford it, it’s a nice luxury to have,” I replied.

  “I’m moonlighting tonight,” Carly said.
“I have to leave after this client if I’m going to make the train.”

  “You’re moonlighting doing what?” was my reply.

  “I make some extra money a few days a week doing mortuary makeup after work.”

  I stared blankly.

  “Yes, dead people,” she said, reading my mind. “It’s really not that bad. And they let you do whatever you want to them. The best clients are the ones that don’t talk back.” She laughed the deep, throaty laugh of a smoker. “Okay, have to get back to my client so I can get out of here. Your brows look great—Jolie’s the best.”

  Oh my God. She uses Sally Steele Cosmetics on corpses. Note to self: you need to learn more about this.

  Not wanting to gossip, but really wanting to gossip, I asked Jolie to fill me in a bit about Carly’s life.

  “How old is Carly?” I asked, then quickly clarified, “Sorry, was that rude? She just looks like she could be either thirty or a great-looking forty-five.”

  “She’s forty-six—can you believe it? It’s that baby face of hers. She’s had it tough, but it doesn’t show on her face.”

  Jolie explained that Carly’s canary-colored hair, fair skin, and WASP-y manner hid the past five years of her life.

  “She literally escaped from an abusive Italian husband, was never able to have children, and has a three-hour commute each day and the exhausting job of taking care of her elderly parents.”

  I hoped my life couldn’t be so easily compressed into a single sentence.

  Quite sad. Carly, I learned, grew up eating Spam from a can, loved her Gucci handbags, slept with married men, and made extra money putting faces on dead people.

  For real?

  Sounded to me like a character out of a Mamet play.