Аннали Ньюиц: #Selfcare

“Oh shit, Edwina,” she said with a quaver. “Ohhhhh shit.” Her eyes had that foggy look of somebody accessing a lot of feeds on their contacts.

A chill crept up Edwina’s arms. “What is it?”

“Mrs. Landsdale posted a seriously psycho review of Skin Seraph on Mommyland and it’s blowing up everywhere.”

“Omigod let me see.”

Daisy flicked the link to Edwina’s contacts. It was posted in the San Francisco shopping forum, and already had thousands of upvotes after only an hour.

Disgusting experience at Skin Seraph—DO NOT GO THERE

I have been going to Skin Seraph in Noe Valley for more than a year, and have always had a pleasant enough experience but NEVER AGAIN. Last night a hobo attacked the windows and smeared them with excrement, and the management did NOTHING. The entire place smelled terrible, and made me extremely ill. My skin peel was ruined and my doctor says I may have scarring. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE AND DANGEROUS. This is a medical establishment and the management has NO SECURITY. The girls who work at the store did nothing to stop it, and then they rinsed the windows with nothing more than a little tap water. Can you believe it? That window is probably coated in all kinds of disgusting microbes now, and who knows how much has been tracked inside to infect everyone who goes there. I’m warning you, as a concerned mother, to avoid this place. It’s another case of a local store becoming a chain and the service suffering as a result. I’m also contacting the city to recommend an inspection IMMEDIATELY.

The comment section was filled with outrage and recommendations for other local skin spas. When she got tired of blinking through them, Edwina looked up to see that Daisy had the same expression she’d worn last night when she was cleaning up in back. Her eyes were going red.

“At least she didn’t name me,” Daisy said shakily. “There’s that. She didn’t link to me or say I had personally done anything wrong.”

Edwina touched Daisy’s shoulder. “Nobody will be able to track this back to you. Skin Seraph might be canceled for a few days, but you’re not.”

Daisy looked vague again, and then refocused her eyes on Edwina. “Good. I gained a bunch of followers for this video I posted yesterday. So far, I’m fine.”

Then they both checked Skin Seraph’s socials, and it was a bloodbath. Followers had plummeted, and people were screaming at them about how they were unsanitary and disgusting and doomed. There was some conspiracy group that was fixated on the term seraph as a sign of Satanism, and now the store was on their radar too. Skin Seraph’s timeline was full of reminders that “the Beast can’t hide” and vague threats to Isobel and Brad. Somebody had even dug up Isobel’s mobile number and was urging people to text her about the dangers of consorting with devils.

“These guys don’t even understand that seraphs are angels,” Edwina grumbled. She got a half-hearted laugh out of Daisy.

“They are idiots, but Mrs. Landsdale is a huge influencer on Mommyland. She could actually kill the brand.”

“I wonder what Isobel and Brad are going to do? Do you think they know about this?”

Daisy looked at her like she was basic. “Edwina. Of course they know. I’m sure they’re having a very bad meeting with their marketing people right now.”

Most of the afternoon appointments were canceled, so Edwina and Daisy did a deep clean on the garden suite and unpacked a new display of frog milk bottles. They got a memo from Isobel around three p.m.

To: All Staff

From: Isobel Chang

Subject: Exciting changes!

We are pleased to announce that Margot Redberry is taking over as Skin Seraph’s new marketing manager. Brad will be stepping down to focus on special projects, working closely with our partners in the Philippines to develop new markets. Please take a moment to congratulate Margot. We’re so excited to have her in this big new role!

“Wow—she fired her own boyfriend!” Edwina exclaimed. “This must be really bad.”

“Uh, yeah. Did you see the story in Teen Vogue ? Basically it’s quoting Mrs. Landsdale’s post and then linking to a bunch of other people talking about how the Skin Seraph stores have all become super unsanitary. Also they’re saying the frog milk line is made with endangered tree frogs or something?” Daisy looked dubious. “I’m pretty sure that’s not true. All this stuff is biomimetic. It imitates animal proteins, but it’s made in labs.”

Edwina stared out the front window. There was one smeary spot left in the corner, where the skinless woman had pressed her fingers last night. Were they going to lose their jobs? She still needed a hefty amount to build a solid nest egg for graduate school, and she didn’t want to go back to gigging for a dollar a minute.

As if she’d read Edwina’s mind, Daisy pulled out her mobile and spread it open to a page full of task offers in San Francisco. But then she wiped those away and opened up her Twitch dashboard. “Want to see something totally secret?”

“Sure!”

Daisy poked at an unpublished video called “Sweety Quest.” It was a teaser for a new streaming romance series, starring Daisy, the hapless heroine looking for snuggles in the big city. Sponsored by Sugardew, the new Korean-style face-care brand. “They hired me to do a show about their new line of nightlife skin products—like all the stuff you need for going out and recovering afterwards. Isn’t it dope? I’m a real influencer now!” Daisy made a face. “I mean, I know that sounds awful but I’m really excited. I get to write and direct all the episodes, and they said I can do queer content and have lots of stories about women of color.”

Maybe Daisy believed in fae, Edwina thought, but she was also a genuinely nice person. It was hard not to like somebody who was promising to make romances that pandered charmingly to your exact demographic. She smiled. “Wow, congrats! Are you allowed to rep other brands while you’re here, though?”

Daisy looked around, as if Isobel might jump out of that memo and scream at them. “I was worried about that, but I think now… well, now might be a good time to think about finding other brands to rep? You know what I mean?”

Edwina hung her head. “Yeah. I know. I have no idea what I’ll do if this job goes away.”

Impulsively, Daisy hugged her. “Maybe it will be fine here. But if not, I know you’ll find something.”

That night, Daisy came along with Edwina and Alyx to an old bar in the Mission where the drinks were strong and grizzled millennials sat around debating politics with their thick phones propped on the tables next to their face masks. The wildfire smoke was back again.

“I love this place,” Edwina said. “It’s been around for forty years—like since the early 2000s. It’s the real San Francisco.” She finished her scotch in two gulps, and ordered another one.

Alyx sipped slowly on a rum and Coke. “So I found out something pretty interesting about Skin Seraph today while everybody was losing their shit about… the shit.” They raised an eyebrow.

Edwina sighed. “I don’t know if I can take more Satanist conspiracy stuff.”

“Did you know that Isobel hired a fae-owned firm to promote Skin Seraph last year when she took the chain national?” Alyx asked. They flipped open their mobile on the bar so the two women could look over their shoulder at what was onscreen. It was a Tweet from a brand consultancy called Witchy Wonders, announcing that they’d just signed a contract with Skin Seraph to “sprinkle a little fairy dust on their already excellent brand.” Alyx thumbed to the next screen. It was a PDF of the actual contract. “Obviously you never saw this,” they said. “But Memegen has access to a lot of private corporate information. It looks like Isobel has been hemorrhaging money, missing bill payments. And she stopped paying this Witchy Wonder contract too.”