At the intersection she says, “See those two?”
She points to an elderly couple. They hold hands and walk with measured steps, in silence.
“I wanted us to get where they’ve gotten.”
My friends aren’t so young anymore, either, even though they’re now behaving like children. After crossing the busy avenue, we turn onto a quieter street. I’m still walking a few paces behind them. And as I do I begin to understand what they’re arguing about.
They’d gone to their daughter’s school to listen to a concert and then they’d stopped to have a coffee. After that she wanted to take a taxi home, whereas he wanted to walk. He’d offered to call her a taxi and then return on foot. And this suggestion had offended her to the point where she’d exploded.
Now she’s saying that he’d never have suggested such a thing when they were first dating, when he was deeply in love with her.
“It’s a bad sign,” she says.
He replies drily, “You’re out of your mind, you don’t know what you’re saying.”
“You’re always going your own way these days. I don’t see how we can resolve this.”
After making this statement, she starts to cry. But he keeps walking slightly ahead of her. At the next intersection he stops and she catches up to him.
“Why were you so opposed to walking and enjoying this sunny day?”
“I’m wearing a new pair of shoes that I haven’t broken in yet.”
“Well, you could have told me that.”
“You could have asked.”
At that point I stop following them, having already heard too much.
At the Beautician
In general I avoid spa treatments. I’m not too keen on the idea of lying in a little room wearing a blindfold with mud spread over my body. I wear my hair long, there’s only a bit of gray, so all I need is a good cut one afternoon at the hairdresser’s, once a season. I wax my legs at home while I watch something trashy on TV. My one indulgence, twice a month, always on a Sunday, is getting my nails done, and this forces me, at least for an hour, to not do anything at all. No phone calls to make, no text messages to send, no newspapers to read or glossy magazines to leaf through.
I sit in front of a woman, rarely the same one. The beauticians also sit in a row, like the clients, behind a long narrow counter. There’s a mirror, just as long, that doubles the whole scene and all the work that takes place. I wonder how dull it is for them, while we clients relax. All the women come from the same country, and while they diligently see to our needs they talk continuously in their language. I always wonder what they’re talking about.
Lately there’s a stunning young woman among them. The others look tired, most of them are heavyset, round-faced, their lips misshapen. But this one’s a beauty: elegant, her dark hair drawn back and parted down the middle, her cheekbones prominent. The cotton apron that the rest of them wear looks like a dress sewn to fit her body. I feel more like the others, disheveled. I glance over at her now and then, her beauty distracts me, her features are so perfect. After I look at her I look at myself in the mirror, and yet again I resign myself to the fact that my face has always disappointed me. Every look in the mirror dismays me, that’s the reason I tend to avoid them.
Today I’m in a rush, I walk in without an appointment. I just need the polish taken off. The week before, feeling blue, I chose a dark vampy shade, but two days later it already started to chip.
“Hello, signora. Would you like a manicure?” the manager of the salon asks me.
“I don’t have time today, how much is it to remove the color?”
“Oh there’s no charge for that. Not for you. Just a tip for the girl.”
So I sit down in front of the beautiful one. She’s serious, she welcomes me without smiling, and she starts to study my nails immediately, as if they were her own.
She’s not hasty like the others. I give her my hands, she takes them into her own, and for a while she and I are connected. She smiles and speaks to the other women seated beside her without ever raising her head. She enjoys herself, all the while focused on her task. She takes off the polish, I’m sorry she’s already finished.
“Listen, I’ve changed my mind. Can you put some new color on, please?”
“Of course.”
She proceeds to work on my nails. She delicately eliminates the skin that grows around them. I see the little pile that accumulates, lifeless shards of myself. Satisfied, she applies a thick white cream and wraps my hands in a hot steaming towel. I don’t look at myself in the mirror while she perfects this one part of my body. I don’t want to spoil the moment, or this contact between us. I’d like to appreciate her attention and nothing else, so I try to focus exclusively on her, acknowledging that though we’re united we’re two separate people. For about twenty minutes this woman sitting between me and the mirror protects me from my reflection, from the image that haunts me, and as a result, at least this time, I feel beautiful, too.
She has a deep voice, and that language, coming from her throat, doesn’t sound harsh to my ears. At one point she stops to admire one of my rings.
“Husband?”
“I’m not married.”
She laughs. She doesn’t say anything else. She has nice white teeth. Why did she laugh? I don’t trust that laugh, it disconcerts me. The last thing she does is apply a pink polish, nearly transparent. My nails look good, but hers, untouched, uncolored, are lovelier still.
In the Hotel
I need to spend three nights out of town for a convention. The hotel is full, besieged by my colleagues. I dread this annual event: the same convention, the same crowd. The only thing that changes is the city in which it’s held, and therefore, the hotel.
This year, as soon as I set foot inside, I’m compelled to turn around and leave. The entrance, with its massive lobby, swallows me up. I’m nothing beneath that high ceiling. It’s an ugly hotel, noisy and cavernous. The space looks like a parking garage designed for human beings instead of cars, with curved balconies that rise up and up. They’re all built around an atrium, a chasm with places to drink and buy expensive scarves, shoes, and bags.
There are other groups all around, mostly men dressed in gray, herds of them, all of them laughing too loudly, too often. Their laughter reverberates and fills up the chasm, ringing out again and again.
My room, thank goodness, doesn’t face this collective chasm. The staff person tells me that in order to reach it I need to walk quite a ways, then proceed down a long hallway that leads to an elevator. It takes me five minutes just to get there.