“Even up the ears,” said another.
“I do leave the house.”
“Aileen said.”
Franny had one close friend while she was alive, a coworker. Aileen was a nice woman but strange, and she held what David felt was an excessive interest in the salon.
“These toes,” said the one on the floor.
“She said I never leave the house?”
“I don’t like this spot on his neck.”
Another leaned in and began plucking the hair between his eyebrows. “Frances said he likes things to be a certain way.”
“Who doesn’t like things to be a certain way?”
They looked at one another and shrugged, a wave of shifting tank top straps.
“She said that a man can make himself busy around his home,” one said.
“Frances said that,” said another.
“She was so beautiful,” added another.
“Too busy,” said the first.
“Thank you,” he said, and “I am,” and “It’s true,” in an order that made the girls briefly cease their instrument movement and look at him with small smiles. One of them scratched her belly with the side of her shears, wincing in pleasure. “We all like things to be a certain way,” she said.
“He’s been through a lot lately,” said another, tugging the first girl’s shirt down to cover her midriff.
One of the girls said nothing the whole time, but instead hummed a song that was familiar to David. He thought of his mother cutting his hair while he sat on a wooden chair wedged into the bathtub.
The girl who had been scratching her belly advanced on David with floss strung between her fingers. “Open up,” she said cheerfully, and David obligingly leaned back and opened his mouth. The girl plunged her small hands inside and tucked the floss around his teeth. He heard the popping noise of glutinous bits emerging between his second and third molars. The girl rotated her fingers and dipped the floss between his teeth more expertly than the hygienists David had known. As part of his interview process at the dental office, he had set it up so that they would floss him. He could get a better sense of how they handled floss and teeth and various pressure. He could tell a set of hands fumbling with nervousness from a pair that had been undereducated or were simply clumsy, pressing farther when they caught gingival sulcus, causing blood to well up from David’s taut gums. With the woman from the salon, he felt his gums plucked and loved.
“You’re good,” he said, running his tongue over his teeth when she removed her hands. There was no slick of blood on the floss.
She unwrapped the string from her fingers and dropped it in the garbage pail. “I used to have to floss my brother,” she said, patting his knee.
“We figured a man who didn’t leave the house before would really never leave now,” said the one on the floor. “After everything happened.”
When they were done, the women removed the cape and paper collar and gave him a handheld mirror to look at. They packed their scissors and products into black canvas bags and folded the plastic tarp with his hair inside. One tucked the chair back under the table. They hugged him one by one, and he gave them each a book that he picked from his library. This transaction occurred by the door. One of the girls reached for the doorknob and drew her hand back, wincing. “Damn shock,” she said.
“Winter,” said another.
The girls waved as their car pulled out of the driveway. David waved back and thought again about the hygienists he had known. There was one he had liked while he was in dental school who made him quiz her when she studied for her tests. Another, who must have been that girl’s friend, put her hand on David’s thigh at a party and asked if he knew of any eligible bachelors in school. They made him nervous, these girls. The ones he hired at his office were all intelligent and professional and good with teeth. They were all girls to him, fresh-faced, out of trade school at twenty, worrying about how their underage bridesmaids might drink at their weddings.
He was by no means attracted to the girls, who, with their unmarked faces, shared more features with ambulatory fetuses than with women. Franny teased him anyway, asking him where he had been when he arrived late, noting how comfortable his reclining examination-room chairs were, speculating on the smell of bergamot on his body, a scent David wouldn’t be able to identify even if he knew what it meant. It sounded like a flower. Still, Franny would tease him as he sat at the table or lay down in bed, naming scents, claiming to smell lavender or brown sugar, touching his hand at dinner and bringing it to her face, recognition narrowing her eyes. Her scent changed when she began working at the salon, but, she said, that was different.
10
WHEN THE OFFICERS ARRIVED at his front door, David found himself mentally unable to touch the doorknob.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I never use this door.”
“Is there a problem?” one of the officers asked from the other side.
The door’s lock was a mystery. Its silver dead bolt gleamed, barely visible through the crack in the jamb. David wondered if the bolt was electrified and immediately became convinced that it was. If the bolt itself was laced with energy, how much would travel through the actuator? How much force would have to be employed to push the engaged device horizontally through the jamb? At that moment, was he safe? David did not feel safe.
One of the men outside straddled a bush and knocked on the window. The glass rattled in the frame and the frame strained on its tracks. David urinated silently down his left leg. He shifted sideways from the window, covering his thigh with his hand. “I’m sorry,” he called out.
“We want to ask you some questions,” the officer said. “Please, David. Open the door.”
There were so many ways anyone could learn his name. David thought of how easy it would be to take a piece of his mail from the mailbox.
He pressed his cheek to the doorjamb. Air whistled out or in. “How did you know?” he asked. His slipper was wet, his leg, his hand. He held his breath to listen.
“We want to talk to you,” said the officer at the window. “What are you doing?”
David removed his pants and underwear and slippers and slid them into a far corner. The scent of urine coated both hands. “I’m sorry,” he said. He sat on the floor by the window. “I’ve had a difficult day.”
From his spot, he could see the officer on the front porch as well as the one standing at the window. The lawn was graded so that David and the officer were at eye level, though David was seated and the officer stood. “You have removed your pants,” the officer said. The radio on his shoulder buzzed with activity.
David pointed. “They’re over there.”
“The man urinated,” the officer at the window, whose name badge read CHICO, said to the officer on the porch. The window was an old single-pane variety, which made it easier to talk and listen.
David sat cross-legged on the floor. “I’m sorry, Officer Chico.”
“We don’t require an apology,” said Chico. He was an older man, maybe ten years older than David, but he possessed an energy in his eyes that David did not. “You are a man in your own home. You have the freedom to act within the confines of the law.”
“That’s a refreshing opinion from a member of law enforcement.”
Chico turned down the volume control on his radio. “Also, I am a detective.”
“You sound like a smart guy,” said the man on the porch.
“Pay no mind to my partner,” said Chico. “Justice holds the progressive close to her breast. Anyway, we see it all the time.”