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“Electronic nail builder. Hair and nails are basically made of the same stuff. This device breaks down the hair, then applies it in fine layers on top of your nails. Put your finger in.” The hole, Risa now realizes, is not pencil-sized, but large enough for a woman’s fingertip. She’s hesitant, as putting one’s finger into a dark hole is a very counterintuitive thing, but in the end she acquiesces, and Audrey turns it on. It buzzes, vibrates, and tickles for a minute or two, and when she pulls her finger out, her nail, which had been uneven and ragged, is now smooth with a perfect curve.
“I programmed it for the shortest setting,” Audrey tells her. “Somehow I can’t imagine you with long nails.”
“Neither can I.”
Risa endures the process for all ten nails. It takes almost an hour.
“Not very efficient, is it?”
“No. You’d think they’d make one that can do a whole hand at once, but they don’t. Something to do with limitations on the patent. Anyway, I use it only when someone has patience and can actually appreciate the thing.”
“So it doesn’t get much use at all, does it?”
“Nope.”
Audrey, Risa realizes, is probably around the same age as her own birth mother, whoever she is. She wonders if a mother-daughter relationship would be something like this. She has no way to judge. All the kids she knew growing up didn’t have parents, and after she left the state home, she only knew kids whose parents had thrown them away.
Audrey leaves for the night, and Risa settles in the comfortable niche she’s made herself in the storeroom, complete with a bedroll and comforter that Audrey provided. Audrey has offered her the foldout in her apartment, and even the stylists, who are all as kind as Audrey, have offered to take her in, but there’s only so much hospitality Risa’s willing to accept.
That night she dreams of the cold, impassive multitude again. She’s playing a Bach étude much too fast on a piano that’s hopelessly out of tune, and right in front of her are the countless looming faces lined up and stacked like shelves of trophies. Deathly pale. Disembodied. Alive and yet not alive. They open their mouths but they don’t speak. They would reach for her but they don’t have hands. She can’t tell if they mean her ill, but they certainly don’t mean her well. They reek of need, and the deepest terror of the dream is not knowing what it is they so desperately desire from her.
When she pulls herself out of it, her fingers, new nails and all, are drumming against her blanket, still struggling to play the étude. She has to turn on the light and leave it on for the rest of the night. When she closes her eyes, she can still see those faces like afterimages on her retina. Is it possible to have the afterimage of a dream? She can’t help but feel she’s seen these faces before, and not just in a dream. It’s something real, something tangible that she can’t place. Whatever it is, she hopes she never sees it—never sees them again.
• • •
First thing in the morning—just five minutes after opening, two Juvey-cops come into the salon, and Risa’s heart nearly stops. Audrey’s already there, but none of her stylists are. Risa, knowing that turning and running will not go over well, hangs her hair in her face and turns her back to them, pretending to stock one of the stylist’s stations.
“You open for business?” one of them asks.
“That depends,” says Audrey. “What can I do for you, Officer?”
“It’s my partner’s birthday. I’m giving her a makeover.”
Now Risa dares to look. One of the Juvies is a woman. Neither of them takes much notice of her.
“Perhaps you could come back when my stylists arrive.”
He shakes his head. “Shift starts in an hour. Gotta do it now.”
“Well, I guess we’ll have to work with that, then.” Audrey comes over to Risa, speaking sotto voce. “Here’s some money; go get us doughnuts. Go out the back way and don’t come back until they’re gone.”
“No,” Risa says, not realizing she would say it until she does. “I want to do her shampoo.”
The Juvie doesn’t have a dog on her lap, but she does have a chip on her shoulder. “I don’t go for nothing foo-foo,” she says. “Just keep it simple.”
“I intend to.” Risa drapes her with a smock and leans her back toward the sink. She turns on the water, making sure it’s nice and hot.
“I’d like to personally thank you,” Risa says. “For keeping the streets safe from all those bad boys and girls.”
“Safe and clean,” says the Juvey-cop. “Safe and clean.”
Risa glances out to the waiting area, where her partner obliviously reads a magazine. Audrey peers in at Risa nervously, wondering what she’s up to. With this woman leaning her head back, totally at Risa’s mercy, Risa feels like the Demon Barber of Omaha, ready to slit her throat and bake her into pies. But instead she just dribbles shampoo into the corners of her closed eyes.
“Ah! That stings.”
“Sorry. Just keep your eyes closed. You’ll be fine.”
Risa then proceeds to wash her hair with water so hot she can barely stand it herself, but the woman doesn’t complain.
