(Pauses)
Fuck it, yeah.
MILAN disappears into the bathroom, returning with a pile of old towels she spreads on the floor. A black stylist’s cape flutters as it falls over CAT’s chest.
MILAN
(Running her fingers through CAT’s hair)
You need a trim, babe.
CAT
Yeah, I know.
(Leaning back into Milan’s chest, looking up at her)
Something happened last week. But you can’t tell anyone.
MILAN
(Gently parting CAT’s hair with the tail of a comb)
You can tell me anything. You know that.
FADE OUT.
Chapter 37
An email from Janine arrived the second week of January:
You can come to class…
—J. Ford
I checked the class schedule online. It started at 10:00 a.m. Today. In thirty minutes.
I showered before sprinting to the Metro. Each time I glimpsed myself in the train window, I was startled by the waterfall of blond beneath my baseball cap. I smiled, recalling Milan’s gloved hands slathering dye over my hair. Since then I’d felt a desperate, rattled joy, like a toddler separated from her mother in the grocery store spotting the back of her head in the checkout line, but every parcel of joy was stained with Jay’s silence.
In class, the seats were arranged in a circle. I sat near the chalkboard while students trickled in. A little past ten, Nia turned up wearing a beret and leather trench and sat beside me. Stupidly, I hadn’t thought about what I’d do when I saw her. Tristan licking the cross out of my mouth tormented me while Nia removed her laptop from her bag and placed it beside a giant coffee tumbler. I stared at the carpet, pretending I was working through a dire problem like how to time travel.
“Hey,” angling her face under mine, laughing. “Oh my God, your hair!”
“Oh, yeah. It’s different.”
“It’s cute. I tried blond once but my hair started falling out.” She took a quick sip of her coffee. “How was your break? Were you here the whole time?”
I swallowed the metallic vomit taste in my mouth. “I went to LA.” I almost asked her about New York, then remembered I wasn’t supposed to know about that. “You?”
“Oh, I was all over.” She didn’t go into detail. “I’ve been thinking about your portrait. Oh!” Gripping my arm with painful delight, “Thanks for that book. It was SO good. Stop by my studio after class and I’ll give it back to you? I can’t believe you’re a blonde now. It looks so hot on you.”
I was sweating like a glass of Blue Moon now, but not because of Tristan. Her compliment played in my mind. She didn’t mean it like that. Friends called each other hot. But the way she’d said it, “so HOT on YOU.” Or was it: “sooo hot on you”? I was wrecked suddenly by the fact that I’d failed to register her tone, failed to be fully present for it. I searched the annals of my brain, hoping to retrieve the sound of those words delivered in her silky voice.
Janine strolled in with a fat tabby trailing behind her. Nia apparently knew the cat because she gathered it in her arms, touching its nose with her own. It appraised her, hissing.
“Leave her, Nia. She’s in a bad mood,” Janine said.
Nia dropped the cat on the floor. It immediately started scratching the shit out of the carpet. The guy sitting across from me sneezed twice in quick succession.
