Sealed with a Lie (15 page)

She looks impossibly chic but also friendly and approachable, which is hard to pull off—and it’s a combination that a major cosmetics company should find irresistible in an intern.

In the meantime, we’ve sent Evan to an art supply store for paint, brushes, and poster board. Our next step
is to create some suitable protest signs for our “animal rights activists.” Matthis and Gustav get to work while I research what kind of testing Jolie, Inc. actually does on animals. I figure it’s best to know the truth.

Jolie claims to market only cruelty-free products, but has a dirty little secret: China. It recently entered the Chinese market, where the law
requires
testing of products on animals. So Jolie finds that in the name of global expansion, it’s caught between a rock and a hard place. Interesting.

It gives our protesters enough of a platform for this afternoon, anyway. While we have no proof that the “testing” they’re doing actually harms any animals, we just need to create a brief distraction.

Matthis’s best sign reads
JOLIE’S ANIMAL TESTING NOT SO PRETTY
, and features a model with horrific burns and blisters, holding a bunny with the same. It turns my stomach and gives me even more reason to avoid makeup.

Rita turns a little green at the picture of the poor bunny. “Will you keep that away from me?” she begs. “And when I get back, I’m going to check every single cosmetic I own to make sure it’s not tested on animals. . . .”

Evan, Kale, and I will be the animal rights protesters. Accordingly, we put on rubber animal faces held in place by elastic. Kale wears the rat’s. Evan makes a terrible bunny, but I refused, so by default I get the dog nose. We camouflage the rest of our faces so we can’t be identified and tie or slick our hair back.

We also wear fake fur that we’ve “bloodied” with red paint, and assorted “blisters” that we’ve made with paper and dried glue and pink paint.

Finally everything is ready—or as ready as it’s going to be.

Evan’s asked the hotel to call two taxis, one for Rita and one for me, him, and Kale, the protesters.

Matthis watches from the window as we all get into the cars and drive away. The boys and I ask to be dropped off down the block from Jolie.

Thanks to her earring cameras and a special feed that Matthis has routed to our phones, we see Rita’s progress down the Bahnhofstrasse—Zurich’s main shopping street—and then east from there. It’s the same route that Evan and I took the other morning, and again last night.

After a few more turns, the cab eventually pulls up to the building, and Rita thanks the driver after paying him. Then she straightens her shoulders, takes a deep breath, and says, “Wish me luck.”

Rita is reflected in the glass doors behind the modern architectural “lace” of the building’s partitions as she walks into Jolie, Inc. Her shoulders are back, her head is high, and there’s a smile on her face that reflects total professionalism. She looks like a winning candidate, someone almost entitled to the internship. I have to admit that she’s playing it perfectly so far.

She is stopped just inside the doors by a uniformed guard and a metal detector. She puts her purse on a conveyer belt to go through an X-ray machine, similar to those at airports worldwide, then steps through. The metal detector bleeps.

“My necklace and earrings,” she says apologetically in French. “Would you like me to take them off?”

No! The earrings are our only visuals, and the necklace is our audio.

The guard shakes his head, thank God. He scans her visually and passes her through when her purse displays nothing unusual on the monitors. Who would ever think to examine her compact? It certainly doesn’t look as if it contains a thumb drive holding a computer virus.

Rita takes her purse back and heads for the reception area. This is all done in white, with screens similar to the architectural ones outside, perforated with Matisse-like cutouts. Here the negative space is utilized to display Jolie products and lit with neon blue. The long counter is done in silver and white. It’s all very artistic and modern.

Behind the counter are female employees in impeccably tailored dark suits with white blouses. One of them, a polished blonde with her hair drawn back in a clip, greets Rita in French, rather than German. Evidently the whole company conducts business in French, since the founder is originally from Paris.
“Bonjour, Mademoiselle.”

“Bonjour. Comment allez-vous?”
Rita says with a winning smile. “I have an interview at three p.m., with a Monsieur Luttrell.”

“Ah, oui. Un moment, s’il vous plait.”
The woman checks her computer.

“What a beautiful interior,” Rita says, switching to English and turning slowly in a circle as if to admire it. We know it’s actually for our benefit.

“Merci, mademoiselle. It is a privilege to work here in such surroundings. The design is by a young woman who studied with Frank Gehry.”

Since it’s still a few minutes before three, she asks Rita to wait and gestures toward a pale green, backless couch
shaped like the number 8. Inside the top oval of the 8 grows a ficus tree. Inside the bottom oval is a fountain with peach rose petals floating in it.

It’s pretty, but odd. I wonder if someone who works there has to shred a couple of roses daily just for this purpose—and clean out the old ones.

Rita sits down on the couch and checks her watch. “Go,” she whispers.

On cue, Kale, Evan, and I burst through the front doors with our graphic signs, chanting, “Jolie: not so pretty! Jolie: not so pretty!” in both French and German. “Stop animal testing!”

“Zut!”
The guard moves immediately to eject us.

Our plan is for Evan to allow himself to be “overpowered” by the guard while I scream abuse at the poor guy. As this happens, Kale vaults over the conveyer belt and bypasses the metal detector, setting off an alarm. He sprints like a maniac through the reception area of Jolie. He heads toward Rita, who screams and runs away from him, straight for the long silver-and-white counter. He heads after her and vaults over it, too, causing the two employees there to scatter.

Meanwhile, I’ve allowed the guard to eject me. He turns and heads for Kale. Rita has about five seconds to upload the virus to one of the reception computers. Kale decides to give her a little more time: He springs back up onto the counter and runs along it, shouting and gesturing. Then he does a handspring clean over the guard and runs for the door, the mortified guard in hot pursuit.

Rita, who has hidden behind the counter, finds herself
being comforted by the two reception employees, who rush over to her just as she closes her hand around the flash drive to remove it. Luckily, they’re too flustered to notice, and she pretends to just be leaning against the counter.

“
Mademoiselle, je regret
—we are so sorry—are you all right?”

“Oh,” says Rita, pretending to be shocked and dazed. “Yes, I think so. I’m fine.”

“This is not a usual occurrence, you understand. . . .” Clearly shaken themselves, they try to reassure her.

“That guy is crazy!” she exclaims.

They all commiserate with each other.

Things couldn’t have gone any better. Outside, the guard, purple in the face, threatens us and shoos us off the premises while we mock him and ask him how he likes working for bunny killers, etc.

Evan, Kale, and I take up marching in a circle with our signs across the street. Most people ignore us, but a few yell encouragement. I palm my cell phone and watch the feed, while Evan and Kale do the same with theirs.

Inside, Luttrell has appeared and ushers Rita solicitously toward his office for the interview. She continues to play it perfectly, asking for just a moment to powder her nose and compose herself after the unexpected drama.

In the WC, she slides the flash drive back into its groove in her compact, since her purse will have to go through security again on her way out. Then she smooths her hair and clothes before winding her way back through a sea of
modern white cubes, past more artistic displays of Jolie products, to M. Luttrell’s office.

It’s there, with him, that Rita delivers her most impressive performance yet. Evan, Kale, and I listen with raised eyebrows. Rita speaks knowledgeably about “thermal plankton” found in spring water. She talks about it becoming a “cellular collaborator” with keratinocytes, Langerhans cells, and fibroblasts. She demonstrates further knowledge of how it detoxifies the skin . . . and goes on about how exciting she finds other research of Jolie’s to be—how it will change women’s lives forever.

As she’s winding down, Madame d’Haussonville does indeed look in on Rita, wanting to meet her friend’s daughter. She finds her charming, of course. And
oui
, of course they will find a spot for her in the intern program!

I restrain a cheer as M. Luttrell agrees wholeheartedly that it seems clear she was born for a position in research and innovation. Rita will join the Jolie family.

There’s only one thing left for her to do: snag someone’s badge on her way out. Okay, two. She also needs to determine whether biometrics are used to get in and out of the laboratory wing.

Rita is palpably thrilled at winning the internship.

“Merci beaucoup, Madame d’Haussonville! Et vous, Monsieur Luttrell. Je suis
—oh, I am forgetting my French!—so very excited to have this opportunity. I cannot thank you enough. . . .” She goes on for a while in this vein and then begs for a tour of the premises.

“May I see where the cosmetics are made? I’m especially interested in that!”

Madame d’Haussonville deftly turns her over to a junior public relations employee and bustles off to more important things. Rita makes sure to get her business card and Luttrell’s first—so she can write thank-you notes.

Rita moves through the maze that is Jolie, Inc., and we move with her, getting closer and closer to the laboratory wing: the inner sanctum.

It’s a good thing that Rita got those business cards, because we will indeed need fingerprints off them to enter the lab section when we return tonight. Matthis will have to figure out a way to transfer the prints to a sheet of film that we can then use to duplicate them.

From the camera on Rita’s earrings, we take the tour along with her. The lab wing is the no-nonsense, sterile side of Jolie, Inc. There’s no sexy, überchic design here, just white tile floors, stainless steel counters and sinks, and stainless steel refrigerators . . . along with a lot of strange-looking equipment that I wouldn’t be able to identify if my life depended on it. I do see something I recognize as a centrifuge, and some petri dishes, but that’s about the extent of my knowledge.

Rita keeps up a steady stream of chatter and asks about all the skin-care products on Jolie’s website. She’s introduced to a small team of scientists in white lab coats. They wear rubber gloves and have goggles hanging around their necks. One’s an older guy, and two are women in their thirties or so.

Rita and her earrings begin to eye the badge around one of the women’s necks. I can feel her coveting it and
trying to figure out a way to get it off her. But there’s never an opportunity—even when they both go to the ladies’ room at the same time. It would just be too obvious who stole it.

I can almost feel Rita’s frustration. Her tour is coming to a close, and she’s desperate to get someone’s badge—anyone’s. The junior public relations employee tries to hurry her along, looking at her watch and making a clucking noise.
“Alors, je regret
but I must be in a marketing meeting in only five minutes! Let me escort you to, ah, how you call it? Human Resources, yes? And they will give you some papers to complete.”

Rita thanks her profusely for the tour and says she hopes to see her again soon. They hustle along to HR, coincidentally passing Madame d’Haussonville’s office. Rita breaks away to pop her head in and thank her again.

Madame gestures her in and tells her to have a seat. She begins to ask more about how Rita’s mother is doing, but the COO stops by and asks Madame to step out into the hallway with him for just a moment. She does, and a short conversation ensues in French.

Rita homes in on the ultimate prize: Madame’s own badge, lying draped over her raincoat in a corner chair.

“No!” I hiss, even though she can’t hear me.

Rita cranes her head to see the two in the hallway. They are completely oblivious of her.

“Rita,
no
.” I’m not even conscious of saying the words out loud.

She smirks. Then casually, she gets up, walks across the room, snags the badge, and stuffs it into her waistband.
Rita smoothly takes three steps to the right, clasps her hands behind her, and pretends to be inspecting the wall of awards that Jolie has garnered as Madame walks back into the room.

I’m holding my breath without realizing it, until Evan pokes me in the ribs and I jump. The air whooshes out of my lungs.

Rita calmly converses with Madame about her mother and her charities and her latest travels, as if she hasn’t just committed the ultimate in treachery. It’s a little scary, I have to say. I’m feeling guilty that she’s taken advantage of this woman’s good nature and her friendship with her mom.