skit #78: MAKING YOU DESIRABLE

Her badge read:

MS. LARA F.
MAKING YOU DESIRABLE
BEAUTICIAN

Perfunctorily, she smiled. Fissures cracked around her mouth and eyelids; a make-up mask caked with desperate thickness betrayed her appearance of natural beauty. Mrs Hampson did not judge, for she knew she was far older and far uglier. She noticed Ms Lara F's lipstick perfectly matched the stain's shade.

'Good morning, miss. How may I help you?' chirped Ms Lara F.

'I want to look young,' admitted Mrs Hampson.

'Gosh, maybe we can knock off a year or two. How does nineteen sound?' Ms Lara F laughed a facetious laugh.

Mrs Hampson brushed off the vapid compliment. 'Your lipstick. What kind is it?'

Ms Lara F shuffled for the applicator, 'Furtive Flirt. Here, try.'

Mrs Hampson painted sloppy and sensuous colors around her lips. 'What do you think? How does it work on husbands?'

'Well, I've never been married. One day!' She knocked on wood with an naive eagerness that irritated Mrs Hampson. It reminded her of herself before marrying Arthur. 'You look beautiful!'

Mrs Hampson inspected herself in the mirror. She pouted her lips, imagining staining her husband's dress shirt with a pigment of her own.

Ms Lara F regurgitated the slogan, 'Making you desirable!'

Mrs Hampson paid the balance with her husband's credit card. Ms Lara F's inexperience prolonged the transaction, granting Mrs Hampson ample time to admire the familiar faces on the cosmetics magazines. The receipt printed. Mrs Hampson left, her echoing heels incising through the hollows of the cosmetics department, her lips a predatory pink under the fluorescent lighting, a new woman.