what Ethan had once referred to as my Botticelli belly—like the goddesses depicted by the old masters, I was a bit more rounded about the hips and breasts than today’s waif standard. Yes, Ethan had always liked my body. Just as I had liked his. And it had been enough, I supposed.
Until last Saturday night.
What had I expected of him, really? I wondered, finally rousing myself from the sofa and grabbing the ticket stubs to toss before I hit the bathroom for my nightly cleansing and moisturizing ritual.
I had expected nothing.
And that was exactly what I got.
“Morning Mist,” Claudia said when I stepped into her office the next day and found her gazing at a tiny glass jar with branding I recognized to be that of Olga Parks, our main competitor in the older woman’s market.
“Morning to you, too,” I said, wondering at the gleam in her eye.
Claudia shook her head, picking up the glass vial in one hand and holding it before me. “Have you seen this yet?” she demanded.
I glanced at the bottle, hearing the reprimand in her voice. One of my jobs was to keep an eye on the competition, and clearly Claudia thought I had been remiss in this area.
I decided to set her straight. “Olga Parks. Spring line. Two years ago.” I remembered the product well, as I myself had been seeking something to restore the dewy look that seemed to disappear just after my thirtieth birthday. At $65 for two ounces, Morning Mist hadn’t promised to restore moisture—that was the job of the $85 moisturizer it had been paired with. Morning Mist had more of a cosmetic purpose; sprayed on my face, it added a sheen that suggested I had run a mini-marathon during a ninety-degree NYC day. That was a little too much dewiness for me, and I had mentioned that in my report to Claudia, also two years ago.
But my manager had already moved beyond ire to fascination. “Why didn’t we latch on to this concept? It’s pure genius!” she said, spraying the back of her hand and studying the resultant sheen. “Look!” she said, holding out her hand to me, as if the evidence were clear. “When was the last time you saw that kind of glow on your skin?”
“At the gym. It looks like sweat, Claudia. Besides, aren’t we supposed to be focusing now on products for women who are still suffering from excess oils?”
I saw a shudder roll through her, as if the very idea of catering to our younger counterparts disturbed her. “Speaking of which, where is our slick little admin this morning? It’s ten o’clock and she has yet to make an appearance. I need her to run off some sales figures for me.”
I knew from the soft-spoken voice mail waiting for me on the phone this morning that Lori had been feeling a bit under the weather and was going to try to be in by noon. Though I detected in her somewhat despondent message that whatever ailed her was probably more emotional than physical, I covered for her. “She has a touch of a stomach virus. She said she’ll be in by noon.”
“Girls today,” Claudia said with disgust. “Bunch of wimps.” She shook her head. “They’ll never be what we once were, will they, Grace?”
And we’ll never be what they are now, I thought. Ever again.
Not wanting to dwell on that, I decided to steer Claudia back to the purpose of our meeting, which was to debrief me on the corporate agenda that had been hashed out in the Swiss Alps. “I’m ready for the debrief if you are,” I said, eyeing Claudia as she gazed with a mixture of fondness and disgust at the pretty little jar.
“Right,” she said, a look of resignation descending over her aristocratic features. “Well, first I should tell you it wasn’t so much a brainstorming as a corporate screwover. They didn’t invite us up there to come up with the new vision for Roxanne Dubrow, but to cram their new mandate down our throats. I guess Dianne figured her distasteful little plan would go down easier with a little sparkling water and pâté.”
“Don’t tell me Burkeston finally got the go-ahead from Dianne on that product line she’s been testing forever?” Winona Burkeston, Director of Research, was a bit of a maverick. Though she was close to fifty herself, she had been pushing to get a youth line at the company’s forefront for years.
“What, are you living in a cave, Grace? Burkeston’s gone. Has been for what—two months now? They called it a resignation, but I think she was forced out. Dianne sent down the memo herself. Surely you must have—” Claudia frowned. “Maybe I didn’t pass it on to you.” She shrugged, as if the fact that she repeatedly forgot to pass on vital corporate info really wasn’t an issue. “Anyway, she’s been replaced. By a pretty little Brit named Courtney Manchester, who looks like she’s all of sixteen herself and fresh from London with some fancy degree and a pair of tits I’d swear were silicone if I hadn’t caught sight of them in the steam room.” Her eyes narrowed. “You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if those perky tits helped push her agenda through. You know how Michael is when it comes to a fresh piece of ass.”
That sent an unexpected stab of heat through me. And why shouldn’t it? Because Michael Dubrow, the baby of the Dubrow clan and only son, had once claimed me as his piece of ass, for a brief, passionate period in my early history at Roxanne Dubrow. But just as quickly as we got caught up in the perilously romantic idea of our being together despite the company-wide stir an affair between the Dubrow heir and the new—well, I was new at the time—Senior Product Manager would create, we were weighted down by those same facts. Well, Michael was, anyway.
“C’mon, Grace, you can’t be serious,” he had said when, during a romantic weekend rendezvous in the Hamptons, I had speculated on the future. “You and I are friends,” he declared, his only acknowledgment of the deeper intimacy I thought we shared indicated by the way he squeezed my hands in his. “Besides we work together. Think of what people might say….”
In truth, the only thing I had been thinking of until that point was that I had found my soul mate. Yes, even I had fallen under the spell of that foolish notion once. In fact, I was so enthralled by the idea of Michael and myself as the future golden couple of the Dubrow clan that I was blind to the reality of us. Instead I was focused on the moment when I could tell the world that I was in love—yes, in love—with Michael Dubrow. But that moment never came. Because as soon as I realized that Michael wasn’t dreaming of an “us,” the very notion effectively ended in my mind.
Ironically, there was no drama at the end, despite the strength of feeling I had developed for him during our short affair. No damning speech. Not even a real breakup. I ended things just as easily as they had started over cocktails at a sales conference four months earlier. Not two weeks after our debacle in the Hamptons, Michael and Dianne came to New York for a few days of meetings. When, at the end of the first day of strategizing in the corporate boardroom, he discreetly suggested we sneak away for an after-work drink, which was usually code for “Let’s go fuck,” I politely declined, saying I needed to get to bed early that night if I hoped to be fresh for our next round of meetings in the morning. It was a clever blow-off on my part. Michael Dubrow considered himself a model employer, and I knew he would never argue with good employee behavior. As predicted, he didn’t argue. And after a while, he stopped asking. Soon enough our relationship went from intensely personal to coolly professional. As if everything that had come before didn’t matter. As if he didn’t matter to me.
Now I knew that, on some level at least, he had.
“What in God’s name is wrong with you?” Claudia asked, startling me out of my reverie.
I quickly composed myself, masking whatever dismay might have shown on my face with a lame excuse about not getting enough sleep the night before. I had to. No one knew about me and Michael. Not Claudia. Not even Angela. And whether out of some warped loyalty to Michael, or a desire not to reveal that bit of romantic foolishness on my part, I wanted to keep it that way.
Fortunately, Claudia was too wound up by the evil she saw in our new corporate direction to be bothered inquiring into my feelings.
“You know that little product line we bought from that floundering