Candles s1 in Chopping Block

Life is made of the moments that make you stand for something. Or something, Mollie Sheridan decided, looking down at the latest depressing ad campaign for what was possibly the most underappreciated cosmetic corporation in American history. Lyonnesse Cosmetics, while a smash hit in its native France, was ignored by the mainstream American woman - it just didn’t seem to get noticed. That was a problem that Mollie could empathize with on her own, at thirty five and a veteran survivor of the dating and mating game being played with great abandon and very little success by most of the inhabitants of New York City. The perfume, though, had all the earmarks of a success. Mollie feared she was a walking disaster.

“Gentlemen,” Mollie said, rising to her feet. She turned a few heads, most surprised, and for good reason. It wasn’t often that an accountant had anything to say at a product launch meeting, and she figured she’d make history when she really got started. “I’m going to state this as plainly as I can. The “done in France,” angle is dead. Hasn’t been profitable since before Hitchens - VanOeult took on the accounts, and that was,” she scrolled back, peered at a page, “1983. Wow. Okay. These ads. They’re timeless, they’re beautiful, they’re almost the same as the ones I grew up watching. New is what we need. But not tacky new, like getting Miley Cyrus to lick it on MTV. Tasteful new. What we need, gentlemen, is noticed.” And man, they weren’t the only ones. Her mother kept calling to remind her that she wasn’t getting any younger and she hadn’t had any miraculous births just drop children on the doorstep to make her mother a thrilled grandmother.

“The world of perfume is filled with celebrities and sexuality. It’s idealized. This is, however, not a great fragrance to run against the likes of, say, Shalimar, or even Poison. Yet, this ad campaign thinks that a light floral will bring to mind silk sheets and candlelight? It won’t. And worse, it looks like all our other Lyonnesse fragrance ads, and that does not help the target audience find and develop a fondness for the scent. We need to aim younger. People doing what girls do now, maybe the timeless stuff instead of the “Ermagerd I can twerk and wear sweaters that would squeeze the life out of Barbie,” she said, thoughtfully. “Because this scent is tasteful. And hopeful.”

“I really don’t think it’s going to sell well named Sin.”

“Miss…Sheridan, is it? Are you an advertising professional?”

“No,” Mollie said, flipping her auburn hair back over her shoulder. “I’m an accountant. And I’m a woman who loves fragrance and wants to see this one succeed. Hear me out. I was sixteen once. Whole year, in fact,” she said, smiling ruefully. “I stood right there in front of my cake and wished I could be noticed. This scent is like the girl I was back then. If we could just make it stand out, it’d become a classic. Sweet floral with water lily notes, it’d be all over every high school in America. The girls who love…Sin…now would grow up to enjoy Calico or Green Tea Musk. We could redesign the whole line,” she said, “go for the attractive packaging, color, and give it a catchier name. You know,” she said, frowning down at the simple cream box with its lipstick-pink Lyonnesse corporate mark, “Noticed is a good name for a perfume. It is what you want when you put one on. To be noticed.”

Her knees were knocking under the hem of her yellow wool skirt, but her voice was smooth. Feeling the weight of too many eyes on herself, she sank down into her seat, half wishing she hadn’t opened her mouth. The corporation’s trouble was nothing to her: she wasn’t even an employee of Lyonnesse Cosmetics. She owed them nothing, but she’d still spoken out. The board of directors was ancient, and the company seemed to be locked into its heyday - which was, unfortunately, 1956. Talk began around her: feigning nonchalance, she opened her lipstick case, removed the slender tube within, and fixed her lipstick, smoothing her jangled nerves as she did. When she glanced up, a tall young man was standing in front of her, his eyes traveling over her with a curious intensity.

“Do I have something in my teeth?” she inquired.

“I uh, I um, I don’t know. But if you want to go to the bathroom first, that’s okay?” the young man said, turning pink as he clutched his bag closer.

“First, as in I’d have to come back after?” she asked, wondering what was up with his enormous bag. He answered her question by withdrawing a camera, holding it up to her momentarily, as if he expected her to approve of it.

“The big guy, the corporate president, he likes to see people who are offering him ideas. And well, no one had a video camera of your presentation, which was really good, by the way, so I’m going to take some still shots of you and they’re going to put together some of the changes you suggested and have the president choose what he likes best.”

“Oh,” Mollie said. Touching her auburn flip, she tugged the front of her mustard wool blazer straight, hoped the paisley blouse underneath didn’t make her look frightfully old fashioned. “Um,” she said, standing, “what should I do?”

“Do?” the photographer asked. “You could stand there, but it’ll wash out your face. How about we close the blinds.”

“Sure,” Mollie said, twisting the clear plastic wand. “Whatever you want, I guess.”

“I like the sound of that,” the photographer said.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Mollie said, grinning. The kid was maybe twenty five. She liked his sandy hair and the smile in his eyes, and he had the shoulders to match the hands cradling the camera: big and boxy. Maybe she did mean anything he wanted. He moved to her left, and she wondered if he’d been taking her picture the entire time she’d been entertaining lascivious thoughts about him. Well, what did it even matter? He was just a photographer. She was just an accountant. An accountant with a loud mouth. Oh hell, how much trouble would she be in if someone called Hitchens? She should have sat still, run up the dismal potential sales, and written her report. Instead, she’d gone and thrown herself into the resource pool - a place she wasn’t trained to go wading into. How the hell did she let herself get into trouble like this?

“Hey, those weren’t bad,” the photographer said, rising and putting out his hand. “Trevor Sandby,” he said, smiling. He studied her face as if he were expecting a response, but she wasn’t very up on art knowledge: if he were famous, she guessed she was flattered, but his name did not ring a bell.

“I’m, um, Mollie Sheridan,” she said, putting out her hand to shake his. The brief contact sent sparks sizzling up her arm. Attraction or carpal tunnel? She just wasn’t sure, and in today’s world, both were bad signs. Maybe they should trade numbers. No, he really was too young for her: she wasn’t desperate enough to try and poach from the cradle. There might be worse ideas, but she just wasn’t going to date anybody she could have babysat once upon a time back in her past. Which was a pity, because he looked disappointed as she grabbed her bag and her laptop, wrestling with the leather case and the plastic machine. It beat carrying a ten key machine around with her in its giant case - for one thing, it was a bitch to write a report on something with no letter keys - but she would have preferred a bag that didn’t scream out Corporate Minion. But company equipment was company equipment.

By midafternoon, she was up to her elbows in reports due, and by the time she boarded the train to get home, she had almost forgotten her morning crisis. Home, she dropped her expensive taupe pumps in a heap, poured a drink, and flopped on the sofa for a breather. The TV remote seduced her with a long list of possibilities. She skated from one to the next, dropping clothing as the night progressed. Other women would be out, hitting up the clubs and the gym and probably the Laundromat: for Mollie Sheridan, it was Thursday night, her olive green suit was clean and pressed, she didn’t need a man - she had Matt Smith. And, in a pinch, David Tennant. With mad men in their marvelous boxes, pretty photographers paled in comparison.

Why hadn’t she gotten his number?

Well, what if she had. They’d go out tomorrow night, she decided, doing a halfhearted pushup because there was still a coconut covered donut in the plastic wrapper on the coffee table. He’d pick someplace boring and probably artsy. She’d be bored before coffee. He’d probably ditch her for some starved model on the mezzanine, someone who’d call him Darling because she didn’t remember the names of the men she’d slept with any more. She rolled her eyes at how bitter she was and sighed. On the screen, the Doctor chased Amelia Pond around a bunch of vampire merpeople. She’d seen this one before. She didn’t really want to see it again. Well, all right, she didn’t really want to see it again right then. Skipping through her saved programs, she picked another, but her brain picked up the thread of her imaginary date and went wandering into places she hated. That episode got clicked off, too.

“Ghost Adventures,” Mollie asked the ceiling, “or do you want to try the gym?” It was a bit late - 7:45 - and she hadn’t eaten. Unless donuts counted, and since she’d promised Kimmie at work that they’d do paleo together, she was pretty sure they didn’t. But the train station had donuts, not steak, and she’d worked through lunch. Food was food. Calories were standardized. Of course, they argued healthy calories weren’t as hard to shed, but Mollie was willing to sweat a little if it meant she could eat mini donuts every now and again. Her weight didn’t actually bother her unless she had to stand with a dozen tiny toothpicks, and she hadn’t had to see her cousins in years. Just the thought of them was enough to roll her off her sofa and into her Lululemon yoga pants.

A couple Spin classes would wear her down to the point where thinking was too much effort, and she could snag a chicken Caesar salad afterward. She didn’t notice the blinking light on her answering machine as she passed by.