Touch

by Courtney Maum

  “Issues?” Sloane repeated. “Hi. No. But how’d you even . . . call?”

  “Oh, I had Leila look it up. It’s just that I don’t want to make something if Roman’s on one of his . . . I can never remember, is he a meat eater, or not?”

  “Mom,” she sighed. “He’s French.”

  “So . . . not?”

  “We’re both fine. We both eat everything. Fat. Sugar. Bread.”

  “Okay, well, I’m just checking,” Margaret said, with an edge.

  Unconsciously, Sloane’s fingers had tightened into a fist. She knew what her mother was saying, of course. It’s been so long since the last time I saw you, God knows what has changed. In the few times she’d spoken of her mother’s passive aggressiveness to her therapist, he’d said something helpful: Remember that she’s getting old. For some reason, Sloane had found this enormously comforting.

  “Of course,” Sloane said, forcing herself to soften. “We’re looking forward to it.”

  There was a pause. They both knew that she was lying.

  “Well, sure!” Margaret said, gamely. “We can’t wait!”

  After they’d hung up, Sloane tried to distract herself with the pamphlets Deidre had mentioned instead of allowing herself to read further between the lines of her mother’s call. She should cancel, is what she should do. The whole idea of the dinner had been ill-founded—she’d wanted to make a grand gesture, dinner at her mother’s her first full day stateside; something big and self-sacrificing that she could point back to if (when) she was accused of being caught up in her work. Accused of these things not by her family (who had stopped bothering about twelve years ago), but by herself.

  But in the meantime: pamphlets. Gym memberships, travel discounts, the perks of a corporate ID card. Sloane flipped through the catalogue of clubs she’d never attend: Hatha Yoga, Aerial Yoga, The Rewards and Challenges of Home Brewing, Adult LEGOS, Foosball, Pinot Noir tastings throughout February, “Connected to Calmness: Finding your bliss point through meditation apps.”

  A sudden knock on her door kept Sloane from considering the paradox of this last class. She scanned her desk for some kind of buzzer but finding nothing newfangled, she simply called out, “Yes?”

  “Oh,” said Deidre, coming in and noticing the literature in Sloane’s hands. “I just thought . . . or maybe you have something to suggest?” She’d turned bright red.

  “No, no,” Sloane said, clutching the brochures like a present. Deidre had something of the wounded animal about her that Sloane wanted to displace. “There’s good stuff in here! LEGOS! We all need our inner child.”

  Deidre looked hopeful, then less so. It was right there in the work contract: Sloane’s mission was anti-kid.

  Deidre straightened up and tucked her ashy hair behind her ear. “Well, if you don’t mind, we better get you to your meeting. It can be hard to find the conference rooms.” She pushed at her hair again. “They all look the same.”

  • • •

  To keep in line with their larger web of offerings, the Mammoth beauty department only released cosmetic and skin care products with a technological bent. Personal microdermabrasion tools and anti-aging face masks, scalp sunscreens, scented nail enamels. Given her background at Aurora, it was little wonder Sloane’s day was starting here. Although personal care rituals could appear petty, they were indeed endemic to greater trends at large.

  The color of a best-selling nail polish held clues to a nation’s overall mood, as did the scent combinations that were dominating the personal care landscape. To a shopper in the deodorant aisle of a pharmacy, antiperspirant ingredients might only be interesting to the extent that aluminum wasn’t listed among them, but to Sloane, the fact that so many products were formulated to smell like cocoa butter and seawater, palm leaves and exotics, was proof that there was a restlessness manifesting itself in the bathrooms of the upwardly mobile. People wanted, in effect, to escape their bodies. The acrid perfumes of their daily grinds.

  The personal always said something about the public. She often recalled a stain-stick focus group she’d led with Roman, where one young Parisian had actually been moved to tears when she related how it felt when one of her favorite articles of clothing got a stain on it. Roman came away from that to report to the Pfizer higher-ups that young people needed higher-strength detergents because they didn’t know how to properly care for their clothing; that they washed whites with brights and such. But to Sloane, the woman’s reaction reminded her of the inkling that had ignited the presentation she’d given to Kraft on roots. What Sloane had seen in the young woman (and sensed in the post–September 11th youth, too) was a push-back against discardability, against the short-term convenience of cheap stuff. Post the fallen towers, post landlines, post postmodern, the wired youth wanted to believe in something, anything. Unable to look toward politicians, deprived of peer examples who believed in a god, feeling estranged by the supposedly connective Internet, some of them hung their spiritual hat on clothes.

  And this generation? Sloane asked herself as she and Deidre padded across the carpet toward the glassed-in conference room where she could see people pawing their devices. Well, they placed faith in their ability to be the most alluring version of themselves. To be as attractive and competent as they could be both online and in real life; to be social in dual worlds; to have jobs that were both meaningful and fun.

  At the glass door of the conference room, she and Deidre paused.

  “I’ll be in most of your meetings,” Deidre said. “Dax likes me to take notes. So if there’s anything you need, at any moment, I hope you’ll lean on me.”

  Deidre’s smile was tentative, her hand still resting on the door, aware, perhaps, that once she pushed it open, the adventure would start.

  • • •

  There were thirteen people there, fifteen, counting her and Deidre. The staffers were alert and stiff, reminding her of Daxter’s comments that her interactions with them were going to be “much different than what they were used to.” But what were they used to? In Europe, the focus groups and brainstorming sessions Sloane ran were open, rambling, and pretty damn exciting. When a group’s energy aligned, it truly felt like there was nothing that real collaboration couldn’t change.

  Sloane didn’t work with spreadsheets. She didn’t work with whiteboards. Normally, she worked with obscure magazines and color swatches and fabric textures for people to pass around. But she hadn’t brought any of that stuff with her—she didn’t want to impose her methods on an already existing paradigm: she wanted to understand how the Mammoth culture functioned so that she could respect—and eventually shift—the way the staffers thought.

  “Hi, everyone,” she started. “For those of you I met this morning, it’s nice to see you again. For everyone else, I’m Sloane. I think the best thing is for me to start by asking: Have you ever worked with someone like me before?”

  An extraordinarily clean woman raised two polished fingers. “We’ve worked with color forecasting groups. To help us with our palettes. But not, like, someone who works with other trends.”

  “Okay.” Sloane nodded thoughtfully. “You know what would be helpful? I’m going to be meeting a lot of different people, a lot of different names. If you could introduce yourself by your name and job title when you comment, that’d be great.”

  Sloane smiled invitingly at the young woman who had just spoken.

  “Oh, um, Aster,” she said. “Business development.”

  “Great,” Sloane said, momentarily transfixed by the perfection of Aster’s ponytail. “So let’s start by regrouping around the task at hand. I’ll be coming to some of your meetings to help you present products for the ReProduction summit. So, as you know, that means we’ll be projecting ourselves into the potential needs and desires of a population slice that has decided to remain childless. What kind of personal care products would such a person want?�
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  “I guess I have a question, though,” said a girl with a black bob, sitting lotus style in her chair. “Why would their needs be different from people with children? I mean, I guess I can understand why their interests in, like, automobiles would be different, but cosmetics? I don’t know. Ugh, sorry.” She scratched her head. “Mina Tomar, graphic design.”

  “Exactly,” Sloane said, excited. “That’s what makes preparing for this summit such a challenge. Are the needs of people who, for whatever reason, decisively remain childless going to be different from those who want to reproduce? Why? How? I agree with you, Mina, especially in beauty, we’re really going to have to push. Maybe let’s start with: does anyone here have kids?”

  Sloane looked around the room. Heads were shaking, certain faces panicked. Sloane looked at Deidre, but she didn’t raise her hand.

  “Ah,” said Sloane, “looks like we’re going to have to bring in some outside talent, then.” She laughed. “We’ll set up focus groups to hear how non-mothers and mothers talk differently about personal care products. Men, too.” The room fell conspicuously silent. “You guys have participated in focus groups before?”

  More silence. Embarrassed laughs.

  “Somewhere someone has,” said a striking man in a fancy sweatshirt.

  “What Jones is saying is that we work off the feedback from the focus groups that market research runs,” Aster offered, countering her colleague’s sarcasm.

  Sloane balked. “So none of you have ever witnessed a focus group before?”

  The expensive sweatshirt shrugged. “We monitor public opinion online,” he said. “Bigger, better numbers.”

  “Okay,” Sloane said, deflating into a chair at the head of the conference table. She could accept the expansiveness of the World Wide Web. But there was something essential to be learned in watching the way people reacted: the movements of their body, the helpless clench of facial tics. Especially when you were making products that would go on someone’s skin.

  “Okay, product development,” Sloane repeated. “Let’s keep this nice and easy. Have you guys had the opportunity to start brainstorming about the kinds of products you might present?”

  “Dude, it’s almost Christmas,” said Jones. “We haven’t had time to breathe.”

  She smiled. She knew their product calendar was relentless. “So why don’t you guys just tell me what you have in the pipeline? And we’ll riff from there.”

  Jones looked across the table to a tight man in a polo shirt with a binder underneath his hands.

  “Oh, okay,” he said, having gotten Jones’s message. “I’m Brennen. I’m also product development.” He opened up the binder and started flipping through some line sheets. “In the fall, we’re rolling out a line of makeup products that are cell phone camera–activated,” he said, his color rising. “It’s our follow-up to the industry HD foundation products that became popular a while back. Except instead of being TV- and film-ready, this makeup is calibrated to perform best through digital networks. Like, selfies and video chats?”

  “Okay,” Sloane said. “Cool.”

  He took apparent solace from her response and stopped reading from the line sheets. “We’re also working on an infrared wrinkle scanner that will function as an app. Like a plug-in, basically, that you put into your phone, and then—” Beside him, Jones made the sound of something zapping as he scanned his face with an invisible device.

  “Okay, that’s interesting,” Sloane said, her interest piqued, “but there’s an inherent problem. What do you do about the fact that the high-energy light emitted from our cell phones is more aging than both UVA and UVB rays combined?”

  Sloane saw Mina frown.

  “Oh, for that, we have a full line of high-energy light creams.” Mina sighed sarcastically. “Hands. Neck. Face.”

  Several people winced. Sloane had stumbled on to something unexpected: shame. As creative as their jobs could be, they all knew they were in sales.

  “We’re going to work out the kinks, obviously,” added Jones, with a big smile.

  “Obviously,” went Brennen.

  She watched some Adam’s apples bob. They needed to get to know each other, she decided. No one could innovate alone.

  “What we do have, though, that’s really wicked,” Jones continued, spurred into action by the others’ silence, “though rollout isn’t for a while, are wearables that actually track the health and aging process of your skin.”

  Something pinged inside of her. It was a biochemical reaction when Sloane came upon the traces of a future trend. An image in a magazine could trigger it (she remembered coming upon a photograph in the early 2000s of a sumptuously dressed model in front of a thatched hut, and knowing in an instant that the entire decade would be about immoral luxury: irreverent and showy and not politically correct), a line in a movie, the color of a ripe fruit. She could feel such messages physically: amino acids joining together to form a protein molecule of cool.

  “Now that sounds like something we could work with for ReProduction,” she said, trying to curb her excitement. “Go on . . .”

  “Well,” started Jones again, flattered, “we haven’t nailed down if it’s something wearable, like a bracelet, or spreadable, like a cream. But the idea would be to communicate your skin’s current state of health to your phone. Like, if you’re twenty-six, and your skin is experiencing your environment as if it were thirty-five, then you’ll probably make changes to adjust for your environment. Or if you’re hungover, for example,” he said this to some laughs, “your skin is gonna be like, whoa—”

  Sloane tried not to give in to the lure of her thoughts so she could guide these kids to clarity. But it was too delicious to resist, the sights and hallucinogenic visions that flooded her when a premonition opened up. A pull toward people in second-skin masks, their entire bodies grafted with smarter, stronger skin. Throughout Asia, a lot of people already went about their daily business in sun-protective head masks and bodysuits that weren’t that far from Roman’s Zentai ones. Skin damage from sun exposure was unthinkable to Asian people of a certain class. There were entire schools of people sunbathing in fully zippered catsuits. As the ozone continued to erode, such second-skinwear would become more commonplace. As easy to buy as chewing gum. People would put it on the neck, the face, areas most susceptible to light damage and aging. . . . Sloane looked up. The Mammothers were looking at her. She’d gone under. Off.

  “Sorry,” she said, fumbling for her original train of thought. “Let’s go with this one. Skin health trackers for people without children. Shoot.”

  The group looked at her blankly.

  “Don’t be afraid, guys. There’s no right, there’s no wrong. That’s what’s so fun about our collaboration on this conference—we get to think out loud. In fact, some of the ideas we’re going to present this summer will never become actual products. I need you to get comfortable with thinking of them as springboards, reflections of trends. Something you could feel or wish for, but might not actually buy. Make sense?”

  In the absence of an answer, several people reached for their cell phones. Sloane’s breath caught. She saw it now—they had smarts, they had a sense of humor, but they didn’t have instinct. Confidence of opinion only came crowdsourced.

  “I promise you,” Sloane tried. “Just go for it. What would you want if you stayed childless? This can actually be fun.”

  “We-ll,” said Mina, readjusting her position. “This is pretty out-there, but what if the smart skin let you know how long it’s been since you’ve been touched?”

  Mina must have confused the surprise on Sloane’s face with confusion, because she elaborated.

  “Like, I have a lot of brothers and sisters at home, and some of them have kids. The kids climb on me. I mean, they’re always on you. So I’m thinking that people who don’t have children, they’re probably not as touched.
So maybe, if there was an application that kind of checked in on your . . . your interpersonal health, I think that might be—”

  There was a rap on the glass door. Sloane turned, disappointed to find Dax perked behind the glass. He waved before he entered, sliding coolly onto the console table near Deidre’s seat.

  Sloane resented his timing. Mina’s was the kind of idea they could have grabbed hold of like a comet and flown across the sky, coming up with all kinds of applications for people who didn’t get enough skin-to-skin contact. But now they would reset. She could already feel it happening. People were sitting up straighter, itching for the in-boxes of their never-ending e-mail.

  “How’s it going?” Dax asked. “Just thought that I’d check in.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Sloane said, glancing at her charges, who had gone suddenly expressionless, as if nothing of any merit had been said. “We were just getting to know each other, swapping ideas.”

  “Perfect!” Dax said, hands clapping. “Anything good?”

  “Well, actually, Mina—” Sloane watched Mina’s eyes widen. Then, the quickest shake of her tiny, glossy head.

  “They were running me through the things you’ve got coming out this year,” Sloane corrected, “and we were riffing on how they could be re-envisioned for the ReProduction summit.”

  “Ex-ce-llent . . .” Dax said, drawing the word out. “Good thing we’ve got you under so many confidentiality agreements? Amirite?”

  Sloane smiled, tightly, against a chorus of forced chuckles.

  “Please,” Dax said, dismissive. He grabbed a clementine from a bowl of shiny fruit. Started to unpeel it. “Make like I’m not here.”

  “Right,” Sloane said, turning to the group again. “So we were talking about smart skins. And I think that the, um . . . the idea of having a wearable that tracks your physical interactions is absolutely genius. And important. Can we talk more about this?”

  She couldn’t ignore it, there were faces drained of blood. Mina had both of her feet flat on the floor, as if she were about to bolt.