Besides, she liked it. She liked pretending to have MS and staying in bed. It didn’t feel like she was doing nothing. It felt like she was doing something earned and deserved. She was resting.
* * *
Breathless, Peaches returned from Key Food. “They didn’t have Pantene, but Suave is just as good.” She set down a plastic shopping bag containing three bottles of conditioner, a family-size box of Cheez-Its, and two cans of Dr Pepper. “I’m afraid you’re going to smell like coconuts for a while. Sorry, it was the only white conditioner they had.” She cracked open one of the cans and offered it to him. “I got us a snack too. I couldn’t resist.”
Stuart put the soda can down on top of her desk. He hadn’t moved from her swivel chair since she’d left. Knowing he was infested with lice had immobilized him. He watched her tear open the box of Cheez-Its.
“Love these things.” She stuffed a handful into her mouth and offered the box to him. “Please, take them away from me.”
“Sorry.” Stuart held up his hand. “Not to sound like a total asshole, but I’m trying to only eat greens and drink fruit juices today. Mandy and I are trying to eat healthier.” The greens and fruit juice cleanse had been his idea, after reading some WebMD article about how the body absorbs vitamins better after a detox. He wasn’t sure he could make it all day, and he was pretty sure Mandy would cheat, but right now he was kind of digging the hollow feeling in his gut.
Starve myself with fruits and veggies,
Pants hang large, don’t give me wedgies!
“Yours is a worthier soul than mine.” Peaches threw back another handful of Cheez-Its and tossed the box aside. “Okay.” She pushed her hair behind her ears, hoping the electric-orange Cheez-It residue stuck to her teeth wasn’t too unattractive. “This is going to be sort of messy.” She opened the door to the office closet. Mop. Bucket. Disposable thermometers. Tongue depressors. Ice packs. Paper towels. “I just wish I had some real towels.”
Stuart looked down at his T-shirt. He didn’t mind getting conditioner on it, but it might put the nurse at ease if he wasn’t wearing it. He pulled the shirt off over his head. “Does this help?”
Oh yes. Peaches tried not to stare, but it was useless. For someone with such a boyish face and skinny arms, Stuart Little had a very manly chest, with less hair on it than she would’ve thought, and no middle-aged paunch at all. His belly was concave.
“Good idea. So helpful. Thank you. That’s great. Let’s get started.”
Stuart swiveled around in the chair. Peaches retrieved a bottle of Suave Tropical Coconut conditioner and a stack of white paper towels. She tossed the paper towels on her desk and stood over him, holding the bottle of conditioner aloft.
“I’m going to squirt a whole bunch of this stuff onto your head and comb through it. I’ll wipe the excess off on a paper towel. Hopefully we’ll be able to see what we’re getting. And hopefully we’ll get them all.”
Stuart took a deep, shuddering breath. “Go for it.”
Peaches popped open the cap, turned the conditioner upside down, and squeezed, ignoring the embarrassing farting and sucking sounds the bottle made as the thick white stuff oozed all over Stuart Little’s head. She put the bottle down and began to rub the conditioner into his scalp with her fingertips.
“Run away, little fuckers,” she said as she picked up the lice comb. “Prepare to die.”
Stuart closed his eyes once more and shivered. “I just want them off me.”
Peaches dragged the comb through a section of hair. Conditioner piled up and oozed off the comb, dropping onto his shoulders in clumps, like wet snow. She swiped at them with a paper towel. “Sorry. Told you it was messy.”
“Probably should’ve gone with a professional lice lady,” Stuart joked.
Peaches snorted. Emboldened, she drew the comb through another section of hair, letting the excess conditioner ooze down the back of Stuart’s neck, over the slope of his bare shoulder blades, and onto the floor.
She frowned as she combed through another section. “I’m not finding anything. Maybe they’re all hiding in one spot, or maybe you only had the one. Or maybe I was just seeing things before and you never had any at all.”
“Keep going,” Stuart murmured. “It actually feels good.”
Peaches smiled and shook her head. Why had she not thought to prop her iPhone in the corner and video this? Not that she wanted to post it on social media or anything, but for her own personal use.
“You know what’s going to happen, don’t you?” she said. “Some kid is going to come down here with a fever, wanting to go home, and I’m going to be up to my elbows in conditioner.” And you with your shirt off, she almost added, but didn’t, because it had just occurred to her that maybe what they were doing was against school policy. It was very possible that she was breaking some code of staff conduct listed in a booklet she’d been given on her first day of work but had never read.
“It smells great.” Stuart rocked the swivel chair gently from side to side. He felt like he was on vacation.
The first sign of Mandy’s condition was back in late June. They were watching Saturday Night Live and she said, “My legs have felt weird all day, like my feet aren’t connected right. They keep falling asleep.” Stuart forgot all about it until the next weekend, when he’d planned to bike around Governors Island with Teddy on his new BMX bike. Mandy said she couldn’t because she was tired. Then on Monday she said she couldn’t walk Teddy to his first day at Little Mushrooms day camp. She went back to bed and stayed there. A week later she went to the doctor, and after that it was like she had a new job, but her job was taking vitamins and sleeping. Even when she was awake, she rarely got out of bed.
Realistically, though, it wasn’t that much of a change. Mandy had always been beautiful, but lazy. She had always preferred watching television in sweatpants to getting dressed and going out. Now she had the perfect excuse not to go anywhere or do anything. She was sick.
Back when they were in middle school, Mandy Marzulli had been the first one to develop. In tenth grade, her braces came off and she started modeling. At sixteen she made the cover of the “School’s Out” issue of Seventeen magazine, wearing a white bikini on a beach in Montauk. Mandy was a junior and Stuart was a senior. Getting together had seemed sort of obvious. Mandy just hung around after one of his concerts and handed him a beer. Stuart took the beer and kissed her, and from then on, they were a couple. They walked out of school every day holding hands. Mandy didn’t even finish high school. She went on the road with the Blind Mice, traveling everywhere, drinking a lot and not getting much sleep, taking exotic vacations. It was a whirlwind. Then, at twenty-five she got pregnant. A year after Teddy was born they got married and the band broke up. They were both Brooklyn-born, he from Windsor Terrace and she from Bay Ridge, but they’d bought a place in Cobble Hill because the elementary school was supposed to be good and it looked like a nice place to grow up. Stuart started the same job he had now, and Mandy hung out with Teddy and watched TV.
A photograph was taped messily to the wall behind Nurse Peaches’ desk. It was a picture of her playing the drums, her reddish-blond hair pulled up in a 1960s beehive hairdo, a giant grin on her red-lipsticked lips. She looked awesome.