LITMIR.BIZ

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boost to her self-esteem. I have known Angie since we shared secrets and sorrows at Marine Park, where I lived until my parents decided that Brooklyn was turning me into too much of a bad-ass teen and dragged me off to Long Island at age sixteen. Angie and I stayed friends, spending our summers together on the beach, then once I got my driver’s license, weekends filled with shopping, club-hopping and, when we both managed to have boyfriends at the same time, double-dating. In all the years I have known her, I have never seen Angie look so radiant. It was as if her life were finally coming together, though the nervous frown now marring her pretty features suggested otherwise. Sometimes my friend Angie, who had an acting career on the rise, an amazing boyfriend and a rent-stabilized two bedroom in the East Village, needed to be reminded of just how magnificent her life was.

      “Maybe that’s for the best,” I said. “Aren’t you supposed to start working on Justin’s film in the spring?” Her boyfriend was a screenwriter who had received much critical acclaim himself for the feature-length film he’d made as a film student years ago. Now he had a brand-new screenplay and a leading lady, as he’d written a part especially for Angie.

      “Yeah, we’re starting in April….” she said, beginning to gnaw at her lower lip at the very thought.

      It wasn’t that Angie didn’t believe in her talented boyfriend. It was just that, despite the steadying assurance his love gave her, she was given to panic over anything that she didn’t know the outcome of beforehand. Which was just about everything, I supposed.

      “Well, then, there you go,” I said. “Your future’s so bright, you’re gonna have to go out and purchase a pair of Ray•Bans.”

      “I guess,” she said, unconvinced. I had known Angie so long, I could practically read her mind. See the little hamsters of anxiety on the wheel of her thoughts, running frantically on those “what ifs” that plagued her. What if I can’t carry the role? What if I get some life-threatening disease? Her father had died of cancer and like her equally neurotic mother, Angie seemed to think her own death by malignant cell growth was a foregone conclusion. And, most importantly and probably the real source of her anxiety, what if I’m a complete and utter failure?

      “You’re going to do great,” I said, picking the anxious thought out of her brain before she could voice it. I had heard the spiel one too many times: It happened whenever Angie embarked on a new gig.

      She gave me a sheepish smile. “But what about you, Grace?”

      “What about me?” I said. “I have a new campaign at work,” I said, reminding her of Roxanne Dubrow’s new mission, which I had filled her in on earlier. “And since Claudia’s in denial about the whole younger, brighter, better schtick the powers that be are on, I may have to shoulder a lot of the burden of developing it myself.”

      “I mean what are you going to do about Ethan?”

      “What’s to be done?” I replied with a shrug. “It’s over.”

      She pursed her lips, as if aware she was treading on territory I didn’t want to traverse. “I mean, don’t you think you guys should talk? For closure?”

      “I got all the closure I need,” I said. Like Ethan, I was capable of walking away without a backward glance. Which was why I was sure Ethan was doing just fine without me. Just like Michael Dubrow was apparently, I thought, the reminder of Claudia’s suggestion that he had moved on to his next “piece of ass” sending a surprising flood of anger through me. I shrugged it off. I guess that was just the kind of man I was attracted to: independent or, as all the self-help books Angie had tried to foist on me of late put it, “emotionally unavailable.”

      “Well, what does Shelley think?” she asked. Now I knew Angie was desperate to probe my inner state. Because in the months I’d been seeing Shelley, Angie had acted a bit like my therapist was the enemy, siding with me whenever I found fault, which was often, with the woman I was paying 140 bucks a session to cure me from whatever she believed ailed me. I secretly thought Angie was a bit jealous of Shelley. I guess she figured I should be able to confess all to her and get the advice I needed. She was, after all, my best friend.

      “Oh, you know her,” I said. “She’s always trying to tie everything back to Kristina. Some perceived slight she thinks I’ve suffered from a woman I’ve never met.” I waved a hand in the air, hoping to communicate the blandness I felt inside. “I thought I was safe from all that crap when I went to a psychoanalyst. Maybe I’m not remembering my Freud right, but isn’t it my father who’s supposed to fuck up my emotional life?” I sputtered out a mirthless laugh. What father? The original birth certificate I had managed to track down hadn’t listed one. And the father who raised me was probably a candidate for Man of the Year, judging by the way everyone—my mother, his students, even the neighbors—worshiped him.

      Now Angie was studying me as if, for a change, she thought my therapist might be on to something. “Another martini?” I said, downing the last of mine.

      She frowned.

      “C’mon, Ange,” I said, trying to rouse her. “This is New York City. There are plenty of men—” I waved a hand at our waiter, who I noticed was a particularly fine example of the breed “—and Stolichnaya to go around.”

      And plenty of work to do, I realized. But I was feeling more than up to it. It was a good thing, too, because Claudia had picked up the smoking habit she had given up months earlier after she had discovered a new line in her upper lip. Apparently she had bigger things to worry about now that Roxanne Dubrow had ruined her life, as she alleged whenever she returned reeking of smoke from the handicapped bathroom. I didn’t mind her frequent absences, seeing as I felt like I could run this campaign single-handedly, with the assistance of Lori, of course.

      But Claudia roused herself from her nicotine stupor just in time for the focus group testing. Because if we hoped to understand the desires, and insecurities, of the 18-to-24-year-old set just as keenly as we understood the desires, and insecurities, of the over-30 set, we needed to do some research. Even Dianne left the Dubrow family enclave in Old Brookville, Long Island, where she ran the Dubrow empire practically from the comfort of her home, to personally conduct the research. Although the building complex that housed Research and Development and one of our manufacturing complexes was only a short drive away in Bethpage, the market tests would be conducted in Cincinnati and Minneapolis. As VP of Marketing, Claudia had gone, too.

      Though I was surprised I hadn’t been invited this time, I didn’t mind. In truth, I always found focus group research, although necessary in many ways, borderline ridiculous. As if the New Yorker in me, the woman who had been born and bred in the shopping mecca of the world, couldn’t completely wrap my mind around the idea that a bunch of women from Middle America were going to tell me something about what women truly craved in cosmetic products.

      So I was happy enough to maintain the Roxanne Dubrow fort on Park Avenue while Claudia and Dianne headed off to the Midwest to observe a hand-selected segment of 18-to-24-year-olds who had been deemed our new target market.

      I was equally glad when Claudia came back, as Lori had started to angst again over Dennis’s pending applications. “What if he gets in? He doesn’t even talk about what that will mean for us….” she whined during those moments when I clearly hadn’t dumped enough work on her. I found myself nodding sympathetically at the appropriate intervals, all the while wondering if what Dennis did or ultimately didn’t do mattered at all. Lori would either go with him or move on. Life went on no matter how much we angsted over it. This was one of the wisdoms that age had brought me. I took some measure of comfort in the idea that I was free from all the pining that came from being twenty-three. It was all so useless in the long run, wasn’t it?

      But as much as I hoped to disregard the pinings of youth, once Claudia dumped the focus group findings on me to review, I found myself deluged in information about what the 18-to-24-year-old female wanted most. At least when it came to her appearance.

      She wanted color. Lots of it. Shine, sparkle, glitter.

      She wanted to stand out. Be unique.

      She

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