Cosmetic Recovery

There was little tying the woman to Didier except his beautiful name and heated apartment. Didier, the man with the lovely continental name and warm home did not show love to the woman. In fact, he had a girlfriend, a cosmetician from another town. In all respects, the woman was an easy and available convenience to Didier. It was a fact that the woman accepted and sometimes even relished. It fed into her wounded side that sought recognition and physical touch almost at all costs. Over time that side grew larger and heavier, and the woman, feeling nameless but secretly powerful, carried on seeing the man at his every behest and last-minute text.

This less-than-perfect connection formed over years. There were months of no communication and then months of back-and-forth trysts with a touch of heart-felt conversation. Although created with little romance, exclusivity or obligation, their relationship continued and a civil, yet uneven, camaraderie was built over the years. It was a nod to mutual interest, but above all, it was a bow to convenience. Upon this canvas of coarse, mercenary love, an unassailable hurt pervaded the woman which made her seek out her own small stratagem to achieve personal satisfaction and justice. One that would help heal her resentment at being an agreeable convenience to a man with a lovely name, a heated apartment and a cosmetician girlfriend with many, many creams. 

The woman's pilfering of trial-size gels, lotions and high-end cosmetics began slowly and meticulously. The woman at first just played with the vials, fingering them, monitoring their size and placement of the items; some were thrown randomly in Didier's small bathroom drawers and others were strewn haphazardly in plastic bins near the bathroom sink. There seemed to be no particular system to where the cosmetics, creams and miracle masks ended up. There was a Coco Chanel perfume tester in a sticky unkempt drawer and a Charlotte Tilbury Terracotta bronzer in a small plastic container along with cheap palettes in another drawer. No consistency. No methodical manner or placement - just sheer dissonance. How is it possible that this woman - a professional in the world of make-up - throws her cosmetic collectibles around in such a god-awful fashion? Her heinous style almost begged thievery. Cautiously, yet creatively, the woman developed a plan, conceived during innocent trips to Didier's bathroom. The woman understood that the most important thing was to choose an item - a good one - but one that would easily go unnoticed and undetected by the unwitting girlfriend and, of course, Didier.

With almost each rendezvous a small tester, lip-balm, or creme palette found its way surreptitiously into the woman's bag or pouch. And every small steal gave her an almost giddy sense of cunning and victory, and of settling a long overdue score of injustice and insensitivity delivered to her heart. The small misappropriations did not come pain-free. There were times after exiting Didier's home that she felt the object, caressed the cold jar of whatever miracle cream she pilfered, and felt stupid, ashamed, and scared. Maybe this time she picked the wrong ampule, the one they like and reach for, the one that fades all imperfections. The one used routinely to blur dark circles and then tossed aside into a wet, open drawer. "If I get found out this time, I'll die of embarrassment," the woman said to herself. She said that to herself so many times and after so many trysts, that she almost felt invincible.  

And so, it went. Some weeks there was no contact from Didier and then a flurry of messages appeared, friendly but rushed and full of code and acronyms. 

The woman held the phone. There were a few panicked seconds while making out the words and symbols on the screen and she felt that maybe, maybe this time, her luck had finally run out. Every message was read with fear that the cosmetician cannot locate her eyebrow gel, concealer, body mist or highlighter and that it is high time for their once "valued friendship" to cease. And the woman will stand there, phone in hand, reading a small but unforgiving text stating that she is nothing more than a two-bit thief and should go to hell. 

But this message was clear. HRU? Hope to CU @ 8. Bring wine!

The woman was relieved. A sense of last-minute success made her happy and she toyed with the idea of replying: No Thnx. I ASAP -

(I Already Stole Armani Perfume).  

An interlude, like previous ones, ensued. She grabbed her coat and bag the next morning and vowed to let her stratagem come to a final end. She would go home free. This time around she will leave and claim nothing, nothing at all. 

As the woman stood near the door, he handed her a bag, a garbage bag bearing evidence of their evening - an empty bottle of wine, a broken cork and some tissue paper he gathered from the night stand. The woman grabbed it, hesitated, set the garbage bag down defiantly and asked to quickly use the bathroom before heading home. She looked at the array of toiletries, soaps and oils and quickly picked up a brown bottle, unused, apparently unwanted. The woman placed it in her bag and walked out from his home carrying her concealed booty in one hand and the garbage bag prepared by Didier in the other. 

A few days later she saw it. In the morning sun she could barely make out the words. The woman moved to the shade. It mentioned in misspelled upper-case letters the name of a serum. Did she take it, mistakenly? Did she see it? Did she use it? is it broken? "Good morning," she replied. "No idea," she added and deleted all messages. 

She bore a heavy sting of regret. She carried it with her, shamefully, like she carried that last bag of garbage handed to her by Didier as she left his home. She winced from a sick, hollow feeling in her stomach when she thought of her actions - the way she served as a convenience for Didier, the way she broke an unspoken oath of integrity in hopes of compensating for her bruised ego and fragile self-esteem, fragmented and decomposing like powder and residue in corners of a make-up drawer.  

Time went by and the woman heard nothing from Didier, not even a three letter HRU. The cosmetics and oils she accumulated were long ago emptied out and spread on face, neck, and body, making little improvement in the tone of her skin or texture of her scars. She looked in the mirror and repeated: "I'm shameless, petty, the personification of what I abhor in others, but I'll rise above my clepto-cosmetic crisis and carry the hell on." 

Her bathroom blunder and isolation were small preparation for the pandemic and lockdown that hit months later. It magnified her self-inflicted wound and made her doubly regret her last foolish plunder. Without thinking of the consequences, she reached into a cabinet and took down the one item remaining from her now empty supply of hidden booty - a brown bottle with an oily, frayed label.

The woman put the brown bottle in a bag with a bottle of wine and set out for Didier. She placed the bag in front of his apartment with a note: 

I have your serum. I couldn't resist. It looked like an Elixir, so I made it my gift. It proved to be useless so it's here by your door. I would like to see you and settle our score.  

An answer appeared on her phone: HRU???? CU@8. Thx 4 wine&serum!!!

The woman knew that there was little tying her to Didier except his beautiful name and heated apartment. (It was clearly not his absurd texting). Yet, judged within the parameters of winter lockdown and her unorthodox admission of guilt, his invite offered the woman a convenient return to a familiar retreat and a rare, elfin blessing, almost like an Elixir.