He had to circle around the town square twice before he found Franny’s salon. Inside, the place was softly lit. Its building had previously housed a pool hall in one large room. The new owner built thick walls that stretched up eight feet before terminating in open space. It gave the whole thing the look of a television studio. As he approached the reception desk, David thought he caught a glimpse of boom mic rigging over the far wall.
The girl behind the desk had her black hair pulled up in the same wrapped style that Franny had always worn to work. A tattoo of a bear on its hind legs dominated the center of her chest, its haunches nestled in the cleavage of her tank top.
“Do you have an appointment?” she asked her computer. The computer did not respond, and she looked at David. “Sir?”
“Sorry,” he said. “Yes, I don’t have an appointment. I’m sorry. No.” He saw that she was looking at him hard, and he realized he was still carrying the bundle of junk mail. He tried to compress it in his arms.
“You don’t have an appointment?”
“I’m here to see my wife,” he said. He thought of Franny applying liniments to a face behind one of the half walls. “She’s not here, I mean. I’m here to see about her.”
The tattooed girl frowned. “Does your wife have an appointment?”
“My wife, Franny.”
The girl squinted at David in a confused way that still managed to suggest that he was an idiot. She leaned forward, observing his armful of mail. “You mean Frances?” she asked. She smelled clean and chemical, like a plastic bag.
David leaned in as well. “Did you come to my house the other day?” he asked.
The girl reared back and the bear reared with her. David gripped the reception desk, concerned that one or the other might strike.
“Let me get my manager,” the girl said. She tossed the phone toward its charging base, and David could still hear the beep-beep of a disconnect alert as she walked into the back room. With a tentative finger, he corrected the phone in its dock. It was a harmless phone, of course. The phone was harmless.
Franny had moved through the rooms and doors of their home for years, but David felt something special standing there in this new place. It was a place he had never entered but one she knew well, and this gave everything a glowing outline of magic. Perhaps she had touched that very phone, gripped that doorknob, swept that floor. Surely she wore one of the shared black aprons to match the rest of the staff. Maybe, over the course of many years, she had worn all of the aprons. David felt like a tourist in the salon, standing in awe of each invisible attraction. He had just walked behind the reception desk when a short woman with shocking blonded hair emerged from the back room and put her hand on his arm. She looked the same, though he hadn’t seen her in years. “Aileen,” he said.
“I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Closer up, David saw that Aileen wore the same poreless mask that Franny had layered on every morning. He placed these two women in the same tribe, not old yet but older than the tattooed girls working around them. Aileen and Franny spent all day performing chemical peels on the curled rinds of aging skin, ministering to younger women just starting to understand the weakness and betrayal of the skin organ and seeking a solution in a burning enzyme. Franny had given him a chemical peel once, and he was aware of his skin screaming at the intrusion.
“It’s been so long,” Aileen said. She was holding two cups of water and offered David one. He accepted it, tucking the junk mail into his pocket, and she placed the other cup on the reception counter. “Frances was one of my closest friends,” she said.
“Then I’m sorry for your loss as well,” he said.
“Please, have some water.”
He brought the cup to his lips. A pond smell in the liquid stopped him from drinking. He imagined hidden microbes. “I’m not too thirsty,” he said. He put the cup on the counter. “Thank you, though.”
She picked the cup up and handed it to him again. “Thirst is your body warning you of dehydration.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Thank you. I just drank some water at my home.”
“It’s important to drink when you’re not thirsty.” She touched his hand with her hands. They held the cup together. She lifted her hands up slightly, guiding the liquid toward his mouth.
“I’ve really had a lot of water already,” he said. “Thank you, though.”
Aileen regarded him with a smiling kind of distrust and released his hand. She turned and gestured toward the reception area with two open arms. “I’ve been throwing myself into updates,” she said. “I’ll give you the tour.”
He followed Aileen down the hall. The owner was a largely absent businessman from out of town who mostly franchised fast-food chains but had a soft spot for the beauty trade. He turned the daily hassles of running the place over to his senior attendants, which meant that in addition to their aesthetician duties, Franny had managed the stylists and Aileen enjoyed the privileges of decor and arrangement.
The salon waiting room was cluttered with useless delicate things. An ornate bar, ridiculously mirrored, held a full tea service, cookies and jams, a sleek black pitcher of lukewarm coffee. The tinkling beads of a miniature crystal chandelier caressed David’s forehead. The room seemed to be three feet too small from all sides, giving it the feeling of progressing in an orderly collapse toward the center. He imagined Franny’s head grazing the low ceiling. She would have to stoop to exit the room, and he thought of her emerging on the other side, smiling.
Aileen picked up the pitcher and shook it before placing it back on its tray. “The girls should refill this,” she said. “I decorated this whole room with pieces I found from estate sales. Frances loved it.”
David hummed a low response, and Aileen led the way to the salon area, equally appointed. Before he left the room, he placed the cup of water on the mirrored bar.
Stylists picked their tools from painted vintage tables as clients regarded themselves in a trio of heavy gilt mirrors installed over each station. The walls and concrete floor were stained a mahogany red. David watched the clients receiving scalp massages. Their bodies were wrapped in thin black robes. They smiled fatuously under the stroking of expert fingers.
He saw that one of these smiling women was Marie Walls, the woman who had sat at his table and completed a portion of his crossword puzzle while telling him about how he should feel. A girl was massaging her hands with a thick cream.
“Marie,” David said. “How are you?”
At the first sign of a third-party conversation, Aileen turned without further remark and made a circle of the salon floor, observing the stylists with her hands on her hips.
“Hang on, I can’t see you too well,” Marie said. “Come closer.”
He approached her chair, leaned in. “Hello, David. I’m perfect at the moment. There’s nothing like a rub, you know?”
“It looks nice.”
Marie narrowed her eyes to look at Aileen, who was plucking at a foil wrap. “Are you here for a haircut?” she asked David.
“I’m getting the tour. My wife worked here.”
“And how are you feeling?” she asked, examining her hand.
David tried to focus on the history of his emotions. All he remembered was the feeling of standing in the other room, the chandelier’s crystals against his forehead. “Fancy,” he said.
“You should come to my office and have a talk with me sometime. I’d be willing to meet with you free of charge. That’s a rare privilege I’ve extended to you.”