A profile. Weekend Supplement.
I was sent to write eight hundred words about a gremlin who sells eyelashes with questionable label ethics and once caused a fire marshal to leave the country.
I had a list of questions. I had a recording device. I had, I thought, reasonable expectations.
I was there for two and a half hours.
I am not going to tell you what happened to my list of questions.
Magnificently Maude's Boutique is not difficult to find.
It announces itself.
I had been told to expect sequins. I had not been told to expect this many, or that they would catch the light in the particular way they do at 2pm on a Tuesday when the sun comes through the west-facing window and the chandelier — there is a chandelier, inside the boutique, which Maude will later describe as "structurally inevitable" — disperses it into approximately four hundred small suns across every surface.
Maude herself is already seated when I arrive. She is wearing something I will later fail to adequately describe, except to say it has three tiers and at least one of them appears to be on fire in a way that seems deliberate and not immediately dangerous.
She was waiting, which surprises me. I had expected to catch her mid-something.
"Darling," she says, by way of greeting. "You're punctual. I appreciate that. Sit."
I sit.
Tell me about the boutique.
"The boutique is a philosophy with a shopfront."
She smooths something that doesn't need smoothing.
"People arrive here believing they require something external. A product. A consultation. An eyelash. And perhaps they do. But what they leave with — if I have done my job — is the understanding that the eyelash was never the point."
What is the point?
She looks at me the way someone looks at a question they have been waiting for.
"The point, darling, is that they were already magnificent before they walked in. The eyelash simply reminds them."
I had read about the chandeliers. The ice dancing. The fire marshal.
"The fire marshal made a personal decision. I respect that."
And the chandeliers?
"Structurally inevitable." A pause. "Dennis built them."
She says this the way you say something that settles the matter entirely.
Dennis being —
"Our engineer." She considers. "He looked at what I wanted and said right then. No should we. No is this wise. Just — right then. He got to work."
She tilts her head slightly.
"He called me a chrome fender once. While I was wearing the dress."
Is that — was that a compliment?
"It was the highest compliment in his vocabulary." The chin-tilt. The pleased adjustment of posture. "A chrome fender is a thing buffed to its best possible self. Functional and blinding simultaneously." She meets my eyes. "I accepted it as intended."
There's a gremlin — George — who appears in a great deal of the events coverage. You seem —
"George is a litre."
I'm sorry?
"He believes himself to be a teacup. He is a litre. I find the discrepancy frustrating." She says this without heat. "He told me once that he hated it there. At the games. At whatever event it was. I said — no. You don't hate it there. You hate the process."
Is there a difference?
"An enormous one. Hating it there means you don't belong. Hating the process means belonging costs you something, and you pay it anyway, and the paying is temporary." She smooths the thing again. "George pays it every time. He shows up terrified and he does it anyway and he goes home and recovers and he comes back. That isn't someone who hates it there."
A pause.
"That is someone who loves his people enough to go through the process for them."
She lets that sit.
"He's a litre. He'll know it eventually."
Here she is briefly interrupted by a bird, which lands on the arm of her chair, regards me with what I can only describe as contempt, and departs.
I ask about the bird.
"She is not available for comment."
Is she —
"She is magnificent. Whether she's okay is a separate question and not one I'm entertaining today."
Your boutique is known for its motto. "People with vision and no fear of structural collapse welcome." What does that mean to the people who come here?
She is quiet for a moment. Not the quiet of someone thinking. The quiet of someone deciding how much to give.
"People arrive here having spent a great deal of time making themselves smaller."
She sets down her glass.
"They have been told, in various ways, across many years, that they are too much. Too loud. Too bright. Too whatever the current word is for taking up space without an apology attached."
She looks at me directly.
"And I look at them and I think — you are not too much. You are the exact amount. You have been pouring yourself into vessels that were not built for you. And when you overflow — because you will, eventually, overflow — you have been taught to blame yourself for the overflow rather than to question the size of the container."
The chandelier moves slightly, or the light does.
"A shot glass is one hundred percent full, or it isn't. It is not less than a gallon. It is not incomplete. It is a different size of whole. And a gallon —" she pauses, precisely — "poured into a shot glass is not a humble gallon. It is a tragedy. Most of what it is ends up on the floor. And then someone tells the gallon it should have been tidier about it."
I have stopped writing.
"The people who leave here leave knowing the size of the vessel was never the problem."
She picks up her glass again.
"The problem was always being asked to be less."
One more question. What would you say to someone who isn't sure yet? Whether they're a shot glass or a gallon?
She looks at me for a moment. Something moves behind her eyes that I don't entirely have words for.
"I would say — you already know."
A pause.
"The ache knows. The thing that won't quiet down at 2am. The dream you keep setting aside because now isn't a good time and you're being sensible."
She stands. When Maude stands, the room rearranges slightly around the fact of her, which I cannot explain in print but which is completely true.
"Weights and measures are for daiquiris, darling. Not for people."
She straightens something that is already straight.
"You are exactly the size you are. Be that. Fully."
I drove home.
I sat in the car park for a while.
I don't know what I was expecting.
I know what I got.
My editor wanted eight hundred words about eyelashes.
I have given her something else entirely.
I think I might be exactly the right size.
I hadn't known that before today.
Magnificently Maude's Boutique is open by appointment. Liability waivers are mandatory. The bird is not available for comment. Structural collapse is someone else's problem.
Maude regrets absolutely nothing.
