Boss Babe
by Molly Osborne
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
Claudia fixed her hair into long, loose blonde curls before her start-up package from Pout arrived. She watched as the little delivery truck icon moved across the map on her phone, tracking exactly where her package was. She tried to preoccupy herself, taking practice selfies around the house, trying to find the room with the best lighting, but she still checked where that little truck was every couple minutes until it finally arrived at her door.
She tore open the box, and found a small box of sample lipsticks. The packaging was immaculate: slick black, minimalist design, and a thin sans-serif font just like the one Clarity used.
Her first selfie meant everything. This is where she would announce that she was a businesswoman, a #bossbabe. Sophisticated. Someone to take seriously. She found a neutral tone. She ran it over her pre-chapsticked lips. It felt okay, but she had to apply it a couple of times before the pigment really got into every crevice of her flesh. She examined herself in the mirror. She looked kind of washed out, almost dead. You can only make one first impression, and this wasn’t it.
She wiped it off and tried another. Something bolder, a hip fuschia. She looked like a clown from the 80’s. A classic cherry red: her great-aunt who loved bowling. A bubble-gum pink: a child putting on her mom’s makeup. A deep purple: worse than wine teeth, wine lips. Finally, a soft pink: it kind of didn’t look like anything but, if she turned her head just so, there was a bit of gloss. Subtle, but perfect. Maybe too subtle. She could work with it.
Claudia pinched her cheeks, raised her chin, puckered up and started snapping. She took dozens of photos trying every angle, every different kind of expression until she found the ideal one she could post on Clarity Board.
Claudia felt her life actually getting better with each star on her post. Each “You go, girl!” Each heart emoji. Every comment was positive. Encouraging. Supportive. Even if someone tried to post something negative, calling Pout a rip-off, saying it's a scam, urging Claudia to do something better with her time and money, she wouldn’t have seen it anyway. Clarity filtered that kind of negativity out, and she liked it that way.
Every day, Claudia posted a selfie with a new lipstick color. Her good colors were severely outweighed by the bad. Once she ran out of complimentary colors, she resorted to trying on the less flattering. She realized she could just edit and filter the photos until they looked the way she wanted them to, even if the end result was a wildly different from reality.
She appreciated all of the praise she was getting, but she wished someone of those stars would turn into sales. She was finding that her friends outside of the Pout community weren’t starring her posts as often, except Kendra who heart-liked every single post, photo, and comment that Claudia posted. God, she’s so pathetic. Can’t she just buy something? Claudia thought. Aside from Kendra, it seemed like every star and every positive hashtag was coming from someone else who sold Pout.
I can’t sell to other people from Pout, Claudia thought. She had sold only five sticks, total. She wasn’t anywhere close to making back her thousand dollars. She reached out directly to her friends on Clarity, starting by asking them personal questions. How are your kids? How’s work going? Didn’t you guys just take a trip to Hawaii? But she did so only before trying as casually as she could to encourage them to check out her Pout Page, where she kept a listing of all her products.
Most people gave her a friendly “No, thank you,” but some would start to type something that Clarity immediately filtered out. They usually blocked her right after trying to send those messages. Claudia was glad she didn’t have to see them. She didn’t need people like that in her life, anyway.
* * *
For months, Claudia tried everything she could to move product; videos, text messaging, setting up a booth at her daughter’s dance recital, and eventually she sold all of her inventory. She was proud. But when she ran the numbers she found that she still hadn’t made her thousand dollars back yet. She called Pippa.
“Pippa, I need to place an order,” she said while simultaneously skimming through posts in the Pout group. So much success. So many lives changed. She was so close.
“Look at you,” Pippa praised from across the line. “What can I sign you up for? There’s a really great Fall line coming out, auburns like you’ve never seen. Smoother than pumpkin pie.”
“Sure, let’s do that. The Classics, and the Fall line. Two hundred of each set.”
“You’re becoming quite the little entrepreneur,” Pippa said. Claudia beamed. “Lets see...so that’s four hundred... great. I’ll just need a deposit of twenty-five hundred to—“
“Twenty-five hundred dollars? I still have two hundred not paid off yet on the last deposit.”
“Sure, hon, but I still have to put this money down to make the order. Just keep selling and it will even out.”
“When?” Claudia asked. “I’m getting such a small percentage back it seems like it will take forever to—“
“You’re still a Bronze, girl,” Pippa explained. “Once you get up to Silver your percentage triples. You’ll be looking at nothing but profit then.”
Claudia wondered if Pippa was doing better than when she had seen her last at Panera Bread. Judging from what she had seen on Clarity Board, it looked like her life had really improved after hitting gold. It looked like she had gotten her SUV back. But that might have been an edited photo, the edges looked kinda fuzzy and... Pippa wouldn’t do that, Claudia chastised herself. Why would she lie about that?
“How do I get to Silver?” Claudia asked.
“It's like I said, just keep selling, hon.”
Just keep selling? Claudia thought. That’s all I’ve been trying to do.
Claudia hung up, more determined than ever. She started taking pre-orders. She did give-aways. She was posting selfies five times a day with perfectly crafted hashtags. She started messaging people she didn’t even know, talking to people in the grocery store. It was only working, somewhat. She felt so behind. Like a failure. What was she doing wrong?
Claudia couldn’t hide the twenty-five hundred dollar deposit from Will.
Will said, “It really seems like there’s a carrot on a string in front of you, and you’re the ass. I’m just saying.”
“I just have to make it to silver, and I’ll finally get ahead. Pippa said it's all profit from there,” Claudia insisted.
She ran over the numbers again. There was no way she’d hit silver with just this order. She’d have to sell at least fifty more sticks. Maybe I should just buy these last fifty myself. Then I can rank up faster. I’ll spend some money now, but then I’ll hit a profit even sooner, she justified in her mind.
They were behind on everything, even dance classes. Kaylee’s instructor gave her an ultimatum: if she didn’t pay behind payments by next Friday, she’d be kicked out. There were lots of other girls waiting to dance, and their mothers weren’t deadbeats. Every dollar Claudia found went to Pout. The sooner I rank up, the sooner I get profits. Sacrifice now for prosperity later.
* * *
After placing the order with Pippa, it had been radio silence for weeks. Where was her order? Customers were getting antsy. Some wanted to cancel their orders before Claudia talked them out of it.
Claudia tried calling Pippa. Her contact listing wasn’t in her phone. Had she deleted it? She didn’t think so. She looked Pippa up on Clarity Book. She hadn’t posted since way back when Claudia last saw her. Her last post was promoting the Fall collection, she used the same “smooth as pumpkin pie” line in her post that she used with Claudia.
Claudia tried to direct-message her, but the button to chat was greyed out. She reset the app, even restarted her phone, but Pippa was still inaccessible. Claudia was looking all over Pippa’s page for some sort of clue as to where the hell she was when a new post popped up.
“Hey, guyz,” Pippa wrote. “Just wanted to tell you that everything is soooooo awesome over here. I haven’t been posting very much because I’ve just been taking a little me time and p o u t c o s m e t i c s s t o l e t h o u s a n d s o f d o l l a r s f r o m m e I’ve been trying out a new meditation program. It’s really helped me focus on slowing down p o u t I s b a s i c a l l y a c u l t and taking self care more seriously o u r h o u s e i s i n f o r e c l o s u r e You only get one body so m y c a r w a s r e p o e d take as best of care of it as you g e t o u t n o w can. #Healthyliving #zen
What the hell is this about? Claudia wondered. Did someone hack her account? Claudia knew that whoever posted obviously was using the letter spacing to slander Pout and get around the algorithm.
As quickly as the message appeared, it disappeared from Claudia’s screen. Had someone reported it? She wished she had taken a screenshot. It couldn’t have been Pippa though, she loved Pout. Someone must have hacked her account, Claudia thought. Probably someone who couldn’t cut it and is just jealous of Pippa’s success. Claudia tried to avoid thinking about how close she was to “not making it” herself.
Claudia drove to Pippa’s house, just a few blocks over from her own but one story taller. There really was a For Sale sign in the yard. Claudia knocked on the door, and a makeupless Pippa with a messy bun on top of her head opened the door. Claudia had never seen her like this: Pippa looked so old.
“Pippa, sorry to bother you at home but I... Are you really moving?” Claudia said, noticing all of the moving boxes around the living room.
“Yeah... well...” Pippa stammered before finally letting out the truth. “We fell behind on our payments.”
“But... Pout? I thought you were making so much extra money.”
“Yeah, right.” Claudia sighed. “What did you need? I’m sorry, I’m super busy. We have to be out before 6:00 a.m. tomorrow.”
“My order. I never got it.”
“Right, sorry about that, I’ve just been kinda distracted by everything falling apart around me. Did you see my post or did it get deleted?” Pippa asked, passing a large Pout box over to Claudia.
“I saw it, but—“
“Yeah, well, if you were smart, you’d sell this and get out. I’m being real with you.”
“Come on. There’s no way Pout is responsible for you losing your house.”
“It didn’t help. The last thing we needed was more debt.”
“But Pout is a good company. They empower women,” Claudia insisted.
“Sure, whatever. I’m out. If you aren’t gonna back out, you might as well take my client list. Here,” Pippa handed Claudia a floral notebook. “That’s how you make the real money anyway. Not by selling chalky lipstick, but by getting other people to sell that shit.”
Claudia turned around and started walking back to her car,
“Oh, and by the way,” Pippa yelled to her, “try looking up Pout sometime. Not on a Clarity device. Something that doesn’t just show you what you want to see. I think you’ll be pretty shocked by what you find.”
Claudia drove back to her house, her mind reeling. She was thrilled to have upgraded her rank in a matter of seconds, but she was torn trying to decide if Pippa was being truthful or not. She was there, she would finally be able to make that profit. Right?
* * *
Inside, the house was completely dark. She flipped the switch to the kitchen lights to make sure the power hadn’t been shut off. Not yet. She tiptoed upstairs to her bedroom, finding Will passed out on the bed. His phone lit up on the nightstand as a notification came in. She considered picking it up. What would it hurt to do some searching aside from Clarity? She already knew everything there was to know about Pout, maybe Pippa was just having some sort of mental break and well... why not reap the benefits at the right time?
Claudia took Will’s phone off the charger while he snored and typed in his password; she had memorized it long ago. Her finger wavered over the Internet icon before she let her gut take control and tapped it. She typed in each letter of the word Pout, questioning herself after each peck.
The results were astounding; article after article of scandal. The CEO was currently facing federal charges for fraud. A VP had lept from the 21st floor of their tower in Houston. HBO had even released a goddamn documentary about the saga of the Pout scam.
If all of this is true, Claudia wondered, then how can they still be around? She searched for this and, though the answer was complicated and unsatisfying, it was still there. They had reorganized over and over again into a number of different companies. When one company was shut down, the next popped up. Pout was the cockroach of capitalism.
Claudia thought about all of the product that was still sitting in boxes in her car. The money she owed to credit card companies, utilities, and even Pout itself. Could she really make the profit now? Was it even possible? Everything she had seen up until this point had told her that she was on the precipice of wealth, but everything she was seeing now told her that she had been ripped off.
She weighed her options; she could either try to press ahead with Pout and drop out the second her debt was paid back, or should could get out sooner and lose the risk. She’d have to find someone stupid enough to take on her product; she could entice them with Pippa’s customer list. It would really cost them, though, and it would have to be someone desperate enough, foolish enough—
Claudia whipped out her phone and dialed. “Kendra, sorry to call you so late. I have the deal of a lifetime for you.”
Copyright © 2021 by Molly Osborne
Bewildering Stories