Each patch I’ve applied has been an act of faith in language’s ability to escape the copywriters’ grip. With Dermaluxe paint, I imagined unmoored LipService drift about walls tart to the touch. With Love Bites cat food, I promised myself verbal slippage on the savoury nap of fur coats. Even Spruce was chosen with a hopeless fancy that its tackiness might hide real flavour and texture. So far You have proved unrelenting in pushing product benefits and lifestyle enhancement. Nothing You say deviates from the great corporate project. But the girl with the Eternal Flame patch made me think I was wrong not to have tried the elite brands. Maybe I had misunderstood Mother’s distaste for cheap LipService. Perhaps she was right; privilege is better.
I stand waiting for Mother on the jetty looking out at the islands that form Archipelago Arcades. With the image of the girl from the coffee shop in mind, I have tried to dress appropriately but I know I lack the insouciance and labels. Being able to pay the high price that premium LipService commands isn’t enough; you also have to be the right fit with the brand. The exclusivity of Eternal Flame must be guarded. That’s why I need Mother. She’s bought their skin serums and eye repair treatment. And what she wears are not merely clothes but regalia, part of a complex courtly code of luxury materialism. Without Mother, I have little hope of getting an Eternal Flame transdermal.
We take a gondola to Beauty Island. It’s the only place, aside from the brand’s invitation-only events, where you can buy Eternal Flame. The store is a summerhouse fronted by a conservatory that juts onto the lake and is filled with specimens of the plants used in the cellular bioenergetics of skin renewal. Jets of mist periodically dew the orchids, and the stirred air sets the crystal chandeliers to tinkling against the percussive drip-drip of water.
The saleswoman who approaches to greet us is the girl from the coffee shop. Her name badge says Lucretia. With the charm of a bank manager keeping a running mental tally, she assesses the peekaboo lace of Mother’s camisole that is a porthole into the plunge of her décolleté and the Frisson Froufrou patch placed like an amulet between her clavicles. Extending a hand to Mother, she says, ‘Welcome to the flush of youth. Welcome to the glow of Eternal Flame.’
Her skin has the polished luminousness of rose quartz with the light behind it. I wonder what it would taste like to rest my fingertips on her cheek. She’s leading Mother to a divan and I’m being left behind. I have to keep my attention from brushing up against every surface.
They are about to sit when suddenly she turns to look at me. Mother must have just told her that I will be the one using the Eternal Flame LipService. A spasm of distaste, as if stepping on a piece of chewing gum in her designer heels, crosses her face.
She recovers quickly to ask, ‘Champagne?’
I smile, shake my head and move towards a particularly curious-looking flower with a throat sac like a marabou stork. Mother told me in the gondola that if I sincerely want this patch and am not just set on humiliating her, I am not to open my frumpy Spruce mouth.
So far Lucretia has said nothing with the surreal quality of ‘oyster-licking greediness’. That’s OK, she probably doesn’t want anyone to know about that, and nor do I.
Right now she is saying, ‘You must understand that our reputation rests on fighting free radicals, maintaining firmness and erasing irregularities.’ The muscles in her jaw thrash below the immaculate surface of her skin.
‘Yes, Frisson Froufrou also aims to give women support…’
‘Certain women. Eternal Fame is clinically proven to synthesise covetousness. The concentrated effects produced by extract of mass longing are what make our serums so rejuvenating. We cannot allow any impurities in the formula.’
‘Ah, the cups must always be half full for most,’ says Mother, settling her shoulders back against the divan. Her camisole shifts to reveal a distinctive salmon broderie anglaise bustier strap with candle cutouts. It was the limited edition Frisson Froufrou and Eternal Flame co-branded vintage-style bullet bra. Only ten were made. I don’t know how Mother got hold of one. The twin points of her chest prod at Lucretia, whose cheeks show pricks of red.
Mother continues, ‘But a brand must hug a customer base’s curves, coax them into shape, teach them to defy gravity. You want them in your training bras from a young age.’
Lucretia smooths her skirt over her knees and rises sharply from her wicker chair opposite the divan to clear the champagne glasses. When she returns, she holds an origami orchid that contains within its marabou throat a LipService patch.
On the gondola, I let Mother’s social climbing, her coy stratagem, slip into our watery wake, because all I can think of is that she did it for me. I hug her. I don’t say anything, so that You can’t ruin the lullaby of custard in my throat while pressed to Mother’s cheek. Mother just smiles.
I force myself to wait the mandatory three days until the Spruce hygiene gum patch is low but not flatlined. Strip, double over and dispatch. You slip off my skin. The Eternal Flame patch is powder-puff pink and is embossed with an orchid blossom lying in front of a lit candle. The only printing is the gold lettering ‘Eternal Flame’, and below, in a smaller typeface, ‘The glow that never leaves your cheeks’. It’s so lovely I can almost understand the appeal of wearing it prominently like an ornament. But it’s not just an ornament, it’s an insignia of social rank, a statement of identity, and I don’t belong. I apply it above my hip. And reach for a marker pen.
I fixate on the words ‘Formica’s oyster-licking greediness’ and put the pen to my left inner arm, preparing to inscribe my skin with its truth. The letters lurch along and I gaze at ‘Formula’s moisture-locking ingredients’. I don’t understand. How did this happen? Flicking mentally back and forth between the two phrases, I realise that they have the same auditory silhouette.
I must have filled in the outline.
You are laughing.
7
For two years, since my Eternal Flame folly, I’ve spent weekdays sitting behind the window at Lost Property. That’s the longest I have kept a job. My rubber-stamp responsibilities are so far removed from the gravitational pull of any corporate identity that no LipService brand is mandated for my working hours.
Sometimes, days pass without anyone approaching my window. Aside from your interruptions, I’m free to think my own thoughts away from the rapid fire of brand triggers. Plus, as I learned when Dad died here, hospital administration believes that people should be separated by sheets of sound-insulating glass like dead slices of brain between slides, all electric connections gone. Although I’m really the one inside the box, it’s the people on the outside who appear to flicker across a screen. They are remote, characters on a TV with the sound down. This is how it’s possible for the reception clerks at the hospital front line to remain as detached as a weather balloon. The world on mute, even with all the suffering, is faintly ridiculous. In here, it’s just You and me locked in our sullen sitcom.