Chapter 1 — Twelve Steps

Comments on Ines’s face today, 3. “Looking fresh.” “Tired today?” “So pretty.”

Twelve steps, forty-one minutes.

Ines never set out to time the routine. One Tuesday morning she glanced at the bathroom clock before picking up the cleanser and glanced at it again as she capped her lipstick, and the number stuck in her head for good. Forty-one minutes. Forty-two if her left eyebrow refused to cooperate. Forty flat if the commuter train was running on an early schedule and she skipped lower-lash mascara.

Steps one through five belong to her skin. Cleanser, toner, serum, moisturizer, sunscreen. Steps six through twelve belong to her face. Foundation. Under-eye concealer. Setting powder. Brows. Blush. Mascara. Lipstick.

Step thirteen isn’t listed on any bottle. Right before picking up her work tote, she stands in front of the hallway mirror and puts on her smile. Lips pressed gently together, corners lifted to the exact angle that keeps her cheeks smooth, eyes warmed by a fraction. People at the office often tell her she has a calming smile. Ines has never once asked whom it is meant to calm.

At six-forty she steps out of her apartment.

Inside the morning commuter train, she stands wedged in the center aisle. Reflected in the dark glass of the sliding doors, she can see six other women completing their final steps with compact mirrors cupped in their palms. One dusts blush across her cheekbones. One twists a mascara wand with her mouth stretched into a careful O. One blots her lipstick against a folded tissue. Not one of them looks at any of the others.

Ines checks her own reflection in the window glass. Her left brow sits half a millimeter higher than the right. She smooths the arch down with the tip of her ring finger without needing a mirror.

Across the aisle sits a high school girl in a pleated uniform, sixteen maybe, a small pimple on her chin and her hair still damp from the shower. She is laughing at something on her phone screen. Her mouth is wide open, her head tipped slightly back against the metal pole. Ines stares at her two seconds too long. Catching the stare, the girl stops laughing at once and covers her mouth with the back of her hand.

Ines turns her face toward the passing buildings.

“Looking fresh,” says the receptionist on the twelfth floor as Ines walks past the front desk.

“Thank you.”

“You always look so put-together. I honestly don’t know how you manage it every morning.”

“Plenty of sleep,” Ines says. She slept five hours.

The division meeting starts at nine sharp. Helen sits at the head of the long glass table wearing a pale grey silk blouse and lips that are already finished, always finished, every single morning since Ines joined the company three years ago. Helen is forty-nine, division head, a woman who can make a blank sheet of printer paper feel like an executive decree. Two chairs down from her sits Dara, thirty-five, with her hair pulled back in a plain elastic band and her face completely bare.

For the past two months, Dara has come to the office with nothing on her skin. She didn’t make a grand announcement about it. One Monday morning she simply walked off the elevator, and her face was just her face. Everyone on the twelfth floor acted as if they hadn’t noticed a thing, which was the politest possible way to stare at her all day long.

“Two announcements this morning,” Helen says. “First, the Client Team Lead position. Management has decided to fill the role internally. There are two candidates on the shortlist.” She looks at Ines, and then at Dara. “The two of you. Our director, Viktor, will interview both of you three weeks from Friday. Two o’clock.”

Nobody around the table makes a sound. Client Team Lead means a different salary bracket, an office with a floor-to-ceiling window, and sitting across the boardroom table from the firm’s largest accounts every week.

“Second, the quarterly pitch for Anders,” Helen continues, tapping her pen once against her folder. “That happens two weeks from Thursday. Anders and his directors will be sitting across from our team for two solid hours. I want a face at the front of that room that makes him feel completely comfortable. I haven’t decided which of you is presenting yet.”

Dara keeps her eyes on her legal pad. Underneath the table, Ines feels her palms go damp and folds them neatly in her lap.

After the meeting breaks up, Dara falls into step beside Ines down the corridor toward the espresso machine.

“I want that promotion,” Dara says evenly, pressing the button for a cappuccino. “I just wanted you to hear it straight from me first. So neither of us has to put on a surprised act in three weeks.”

“I won’t put on an act.”

“Good.” Dara lifts her paper cup from the tray. “Do you want it too?”

Ines opens her mouth. Step thirteen slides into place on her lips before her brain even finishes weighing the question.

“I’m not sure yet,” Ines says.

Dara looks at that closed-lip smile for a second, nods once, and walks back toward her desk.

At seven-twenty that evening, Ines unlocks her apartment door. The small studio still smells faintly of morning setting spray and cold coffee. She kicks off her heels, sits on the edge of the mattress, and lets her shoulders drop two inches.

Her phone buzzes inside her bag. A new group chat notification.

Class XII-3, Ten-Year Reunion.

An invitation banner fills the screen. Gold balloons, cartoon fireworks, bold metallic lettering. Saturday, three weeks from this weekend. High school auditorium. Mandatory attendance for everyone! Underneath the poster sit thirty-two names she hasn’t seen in a decade, followed by eleven rapid-fire messages. No way! Ten years already! Count me in! God, we’re getting old.

Saturday, three weeks away. She switches to the calendar app on her phone. Friday at two in the afternoon, the director’s interview. Saturday at seven in the evening, the high school auditorium. Two small colored squares sitting side by side on the same weekend.

Her thumbs move on their own. I’ll be there.

She stares at the three words in the text box. Every person in this chat knew her when she was eighteen, before the twelve steps existed. She holds down the backspace key and types a single word instead.

Maybe.

She taps send before she can talk herself out of it.

At eleven-oh-five she stands in front of the bathroom mirror and runs the entire morning sequence in reverse. Lipstick. Mascara. Blush. Brows. Powder. Concealer. Foundation. Three minutes flat. Forty-one minutes to build the wall, three minutes to wash it down the drain.

She switches off the bathroom light, climbs under the sheet, and reaches for her phone to set the morning alarm.

At eleven-ten, the glass lights up in her hand.

Marco tagged you in a photo.

An eighteen-year-old girl stands on the front steps of the high school in a crumpled uniform blouse with round cheeks. She is laughing with her whole head thrown back, mouth wide open, eyes squeezed nearly shut. Right between her two front teeth sits a gap wide enough to slip a playing card through.

Underneath the picture, Marco has typed a caption. Classic Ines! Who still remembers that laugh? Looked like a broken front door HAHAHA

In the dark bedroom, Ines’s hand rises on its own.

It covers her mouth.