Nurse Peaches was wearing one of those old-fashioned long underwear tops—light blue, with big white snowflakes printed on it. It was tight, pulled over the softness of her upper arms and stomach. The open circle of her belly button was heartbreakingly visible beneath the shirt. She didn’t seem to mind. Stuart definitely didn’t mind.
He released his tattooed hand from his pocket and ran it through his hair again. “I don’t know how to handle the whole lice thing,” he began. “My son brought home your letter and I checked him. But I just can’t get it out of my head, so to speak. I feel like they’re all over me.”
“Would you like me to check you?” Peaches offered in the same indifferent, professional tone she’d used before.
“Could you?” Stuart asked, resisting the urge to hug her. “That would be great.”
Peaches pulled a LiceMeister comb out of her drawer and stood up. She pointed at her chair. “Have a seat.”
Stuart unzipped his gray hoodie, bundling it into his lap as he sat down. “I took a shower last night. Not that it makes any difference.”
“It’s easier with conditioner,” Peaches explained, placing a tentative hand on top of his head. His hair was soft. Strands of silvery gray were interspersed with the reds and browns. Thank you Mom and Dad, my dear husband Greg, and my son Liam, she thought as she combed, admiring the sinewy ridges of Stuart’s shoulders beneath his worn black T-shirt. Thank you for cheering me on through those impossibly humbling hours of nursing school.
Stuart reached behind him and lifted up the shaggy hair on the back of his neck. “Under here’s where it itches most,” he explained. “I can’t sleep. I can’t sit still. I just keep scratching. And the more I scratch, the more it itches.”
Rhymes with bitches, he thought to himself. Sandwiches.
Back in the day, the Blind Mice used to get in trouble all the time for using the word bitches in their lyrics. They heard the scoldings of their critics and agreed that perhaps bitches was insulting and degrading to women, but they kept on using it anyway because there really was no better word, except for chicks, which rhymed with dicks, which opened up doors way worse.
Peaches inhaled indulgently and dug in with the lice comb. His hair was so fine and wavy it was hard to part. He smelled vaguely of smoked meat. Of course he did. He and his kid’s mom—whose name was Mandy, Peaches remembered, and who’d once been a teen model—probably went out to those hip new barbecue bars every night and had a rockin’ roll of a time, doing shots and snorting lines in their leather jackets and perfectly worn jeans, while she and Greg and Liam stayed home and ate penne with jarred red sauce for the ten thousandth time and binge-watched whole seasons of long-forgotten TV shows like Fawlty Towers and Mork & Mindy.
“See anything?” Stuart asked with his eyes closed. Even when he’d been kind of a celebrity he hadn’t done any pampering, like getting a massage or a cuticle treatment or having the pores on his nose expunged. He took a hot shower once a day and went to the barber for a haircut a couple of times a year. Peaches’ comb-through felt awesome.
“So far so good,” Peaches said vaguely. “You have so much hair though. This could take hours.”
Stuart kept his eyes shut. “I tried to do the conditioner thing on myself, but I couldn’t really see what I was doing.”
Peaches pulled the top of his right ear out of the way so she could check behind it. There were half-closed holes all the way up his earlobes. She remembered the studs that used to fill them. They looked like screws.
“So, if you didn’t always want to be a school nurse, what did you want to be?” Stuart asked.
Your girlfriend.
“Oh, I don’t know. A singer or a writer or a musician. Something totally useless.”
Idiot. She yanked hard on a hank of his hair to distract him from the fact that she’d just insulted him, but it was too late.
He chuckled. “Maybe I should become a nurse.” Nurse, purse. Rhymes with verse.
Hot school nurse opens up her purse,
Gives me a Slim Jim for my sick verse!
The Blind Mice were known for their flippant virtuosity and total lack of reverence for one particular genre. Their songs were a tongue-in-cheek mixture of ska, punk rock, pop, and hip-hop, with a lot of New York City private schoolboy thrown in. All three Blind Mice had gone to Bay Ridge Country Day School, the only school in New York City with its own duck pond. The Mice’s songs ranged from the angry “I Hate My Art Teacher” and “Driver’s Ed,” to the sweetly romantic “My Girlfriend Wakes Up Pretty,” to the wildly danceable “Omnia Vincit!” in which the Mice shouted rhymes in grammatically correct Latin. The band used to get fan mail from Latin teachers and was featured in Romulus, a magazine devoted to ancient Rome. The cover was shot at the Coliseum. For the video, the Mice staged an entire concert with an audience of thousands all dressed in togas.
“What about your wife?” Peaches asked nosily. “She could comb through your hair.”
Stuart opened his eyes and then closed them again. “Mandy would help,” he said, “but she’s having a hard time right now.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Peaches bit her lip, her curiosity blossoming. Had Mandy gotten hugely fat after the birth of their child? Was she depressed about how fat she’d gotten? Was she too heavily medicated to leave the house? Did they have to raise the ceilings and open up walls to accommodate her?
Stop it, Peaches scolded herself.
“She just got diagnosed with MS,” Stuart said. “A couple months ago. It’s already worse though.”
“Jeez. That stinks,” Peaches said. So Mandy was a brave martyr, boldly facing a debilitating disease. And she, Peaches Park, was an asshole.
Peaches drew the comb sideways from Stuart’s right temple to the crown of his head. A minuscule brown spec tottered out of the follicles in the parting and skittered off toward the nape of his neck. “Oh!” she cried. “I think I saw one!”
Stuart swiveled around in the chair, yanking his hair out of her hands. “Are you sure?” He shuddered involuntarily, horrified that there were actual bugs in his hair and embarrassed that she’d been the one to find them. “Oh God. What do I do? Should I call a lice lady?”
Peaches wrinkled her nose. “Nah. They all live in like, Brighton Beach, and you have to go to them. Plus, they’re expensive and mean.”
She smiled her beneficent nurse’s smile, the smile she’d practiced in the mirror until Liam gave it his “not too creepy” blessing. “Don’t worry, that’s what I’m here for. I’ll take care of them.” She picked up her purse and her denim jacket. “I just have to run to Key Food for conditioner. And I’ll need to call your son down. And maybe even your wife.”
Stuart checked the time on his phone, unnecessarily. Mandy would be right where he left her—in bed, either sleeping or watching TV.
“Mandy’s pretty busy today. Doctors’ appointments and stuff.” He removed his battered canvas wallet from his back pocket. “But yes, let’s do it. Conditioner, check Ted, whatever it takes. I just want to get rid of them.” He pulled out two twenties and handed them to her. “Here. Thank you. Buy a whole bunch.”