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She goes to the salon because the old Vietnamese man with paper skin will hold her hands for the price of a French manicure for her brittle nails. He doesn't have to look her in the eye or attempt broken small talk. The name on his station is An and he's a saint.
Along with polite grimaces, both know the acrylic dust in the salon will someday choke his airways and metastisize. Nonetheless her grubby nails were buffed and the dead skin deftly shaved away each appointment. He held her hands delicately, ordering her with jerks of his chin and pointed looks, while mumbling abuse in a language beyond her comprehension. She rested in his gentle hands.
Most of her days are spent laboring at Ethan Allen; goddess of lacquered wood and overpriced luxury, slave to the rich and tasteless seeking safe haven between four poster beds, a beacon of shining silverware atonement. Her own apartment features packs of ramen noodles stacked on a three hundred dollar side table and a designer duvet half on the floor. It overflowed the two-layer stack of mattresses in the corner of her bedroom. The whitewashed cupboards featured songbird porcelain pulls hiding only boxes of oatmeal with little else to hide the bareness from the shelves.
Somewhere in the upper cabinets, not easily reached, an ancient bag of Spangler Circus Peanuts leans, which she was thinking about righting, as the woman buying the two hundred dollar sheets in safe, safe, cream fumbled for her cell phone. She was surprised the phone didn't slip like a silver fish from those neon acrylic claws. Somehow the woman managed to toss her credit card from the bouquet arranged in a Coach clutch. They glittered in the flourescent light; betraying their debt. The unfortunate one of the other side of the speaker must have displeased the lady, because as the salesgirl asked about her shopping experience, the woman's lips bulged angry with cheap Restalin. They looked like two bloody strips of T-Bone trying to make a run for it.
"I don't care if you have the flu or the bubonic plague Virginia, just get it done. God, you never gave your father this trouble.Fine. Fine."
Now, she knew better than to make careless judgements, but after three years in the retail of fine home furnishings and accessories, she could tell when to play the unassuming help and when actual opinions and signs of intelligent life, or at least when enthusiasm for the client's third set of dinner plates in a calendar year, were needed. The woman's lack of taste showed through the layers of barely matched labels worth more than the salesgirl's rent and withered any common ground the two might have found beyond how great cream is, because yes, it really does go with anything.
"Did you find what you were looking for today"
The lady tossed over a platinum card of plastic and grabbed the girl's hand in the process. Rubber met velvet.
"Hold , Hold on Delores." she tapped her understated manicure and smiled. "You should really get tips on. These make your fingers look stubby. Where do you go?" Her smile was more terrible than her permanent sour disposition. Her teeth were broken white tic-tacs.
"Mrs. M-"
"It's Ms. and never been more satisfied. You should see the young thing I've got on the side now. Amazing what a divorce can do."
"Uh, yes. Ms. Mannfield. Thank you for shopping with us. I hope you enjoy the sheets, they're fabulous and maybe next time you come in I'll have found a new manicurist, you never know! I go to a little place in Westwood. I'll see what they can do. Thank you , now."
Since finding out the world wasn't all sunshine dust and giggles, she'd found a special talent for giving customers what they wanted to hear. As a rule, in life she had trouble distinguishing between the desires of others and her own needs.
Her name is Mary and she subjects herself to Ethan Allen and fantasizes about stale Circus Peanuts she'll never open. They were collecting dust fast from childhood.
Her name is Mary and she knows exactly what to do when she sees expectation in the eyes of others.
Mary imagines what An's family is like and if he smiles for them. She's never seen him move those thin lips into a natural genial expression. When she goes to the salon next week she will squeeze his hand and give him her thanks. Only in their carefully negotiated silence has she learned to be at home.
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