As Jackie got off a shot of the chalky cliffs to our west, I ranged a long look toward the seawall, eying the three blondes as they climbed the stairs to the promenade that fronted the beach. “So your new best friends are the women you wrote to me about, hunh? The reps with the highest company sales?”
“They’ve been the top income grabbers for years, so imagine their surprise when yours truly joined their ranks by outselling the gal who used to set the gold standard for the northern region. I executed quite a coup for an inconsequential upstart.”
Which might explain why the ladies were “fawning” over her so much.
In her torturous quest to find the perfect job, Jackie had quit her gig as a life coach to try her hand at something for which she was uniquely qualified: beauty consultant for the country’s largest independent cosmetic manufacturer, Mona Michelle. As a Mona Michelle representative, she was responsible for convincing scores of average Janes that their pathetic lives could turn on a dime and explode with excitement simply by using the right foundation to match their skin tone. She threw makeup parties. She demonstrated the proper technique for applying eyeliner without poking your eye out with the liner brush. She explained the need to buy really expensive skin care products that only her company could supply. She handed out free sample-size lipsticks whose labeling attested that no animals had been harmed in the testing of this product.
And she rocked at it.
After only one year on the job, she was being rewarded for her stellar sales record with an all-expenses-paid holiday to France, which included a chance to rub shoulders with her company’s esteemed president, and an opportunity to pal around with the three other regional winners. Apparently, when her sales topped the million dollar mark, she’d be awarded the company’s highest honor—a pink Porsche with a Swarovski crystal-encrusted steering wheel, but according to her last email update, she hadn’t quite reached that pinnacle yet.
“So if you’re the regional winner from the north, what parts of the country are the other three women from, because they all sound like they’re from the same place to me.”
“You’re so good with accents, Emily. They are from the same place. Texas!”
I cocked my head, flashing her a squinty look. “How is it geographically possible that three winners from different regions of the country are from a single state?”
“Because more cosmetics are sold in Texas than in the other forty-nine states combined, so our national map is basically an oversized map of the Lone Star State. Why do you think women in Texas look so great all the time? Two words: Mona Michelle.”
Swinging around to face the Channel, she snapped several photos of a series of boxcar-shaped structures situated about a half-mile off shore. They formed an incomplete semi-circle around the beach, like a passenger train missing some of its cars, and were so massively big, I suspected if they were covered in artificial turf, the NFL could play Sunday football on them. Angling around forty-five degrees, she took aim at another seaweed-sprouting curiosity that lay on the tidal flats like the carcass of a prehistoric sea serpent.
Click.
“Fini,” she said as she dropped the camera into her bag. “Bobbi might have a bird if I use up all her film.”
“Do you have any idea what all these structures are?” I asked, wishing I’d done more research before leaving Windsor City.
“You don’t know?” She gave her hands a little pattycake clap. “Ewww! I’m so glad you asked.”
Whipping her booklet out of the side pocket, she flipped open the cover and held it at shoulder level while the interconnected pages accordioned downward like paper dolls. “Grab the end there, would you, Em?”
I caught the tail end of the booklet before it landed in a tidal pool, then stepped away from her, stretching the pages between us. I scanned it from left to right. “A panoramic photograph?”