Amanda Hartzell earned her MFA from Emerson College in Boston. Her work appears in New Letters, Petrichor Journal, Kestrel, and The Knicknackery, among others.
Otis was tedious to talk to but it wasn’t really his fault. He was by nature focused and practical, the most reliably invisible person I’d ever met. He was neither late nor early, over- or underdressed. He got his hair trimmed every other Wednesday. He rarely drank, remembered everyone’s name, and thought both pets and no pets signalled good people. He was the human equivalent of white noise, I told Yara shortly before their wedding, and that was the first stretch of time we stopped speaking.
Even after a decade he was rarely aware of our fights, Yara having some otherworldly ability to hide exactly what parts of her life she wanted to and from whom. She was ten years younger than me and this gave her some edge. So Otis kept his hair appointments with me and when he came into the salon we’d chat like nothing was wrong. I enjoyed slipping in advice, tweaked to just the right pitch to needle with Yara, knowing that my comments would loyally sift through Otis to her. He trusted me and had little personality of his own to warp anything I said.
The last we spoke with any sort of civility, Yara was drafting a personal project. She’d been an accomplished architect responsible for the sole building downtown worth any tourist photo, and though she’d been fired last month after a meltdown at the firm’s event (I’d been there, an unofficial date, so embarrassed I dumped my lanyard in cocktail shrimp and pretended to be lost), she still had talent to vouch for her. When she was ready. Until then she abandoned CAD and worked entirely by hand, resurrecting her old drawing table and bins of T-squares, compasses, protractors, and pencils she treated with more deference than most people.
“She’s working hard,” said Otis, “so I know she’s depressed.”
“What a luxury.”
“How are things here?”
“Steady.” Our lease was up at the end of the year, we’d had to fire half the staff, and our receptionist was definitely on something.
“Very good. Good to hear.” He had the voice of a parking attendant, reassuring and unmemorable. “So I was thinking about cheering Yara up. I was hoping you could help, as her best friend.”
The phrase still gave me some shock. At least half our friendship we hadn’t much liked each other.
“It’s been weeks since we had you over,” said Otis. “How about dinner. Friday?”
But just last week I’d been there. Yara was examining a survey of her porch in a square of window light. She invited me knowing Otis was out getting the windshield wipers replaced. She worked in her north-facing bedroom, the bed always unmade and her hair extensions laid out on the bureau. I’d thought we were going to debrief the firm’s event where she blew up but she had other news.
“I’m going to leave him. You were right from the start. I’m so bored.”
“Hold on.”
“He can’t have the house. I need the light but he’ll understand. He’s got his pension and I’ll give him whatever else he needs. Plus the cats. They’re a distraction anyway.”
“I don’t understand. What happened?”
“Nothing. That’s the problem. Can you just take a compliment? You were right.”
Picturing Yara single was unsettling, like seeing a tooth on the ground. She had money but money wasn’t enough to stabilize someone like her. And I wasn’t prepared to do it on my own. I went to list the charming and unique qualities Otis possessed but nothing came to mind.
“You need to rethink this. What would you even do?”
“I don’t know.” She taped tracing paper over the survey and drew a hard straight line. “Isn’t it exciting?”
We talked a bit more, I yelled like my marriage was ending, she threw a protractor at me. She had surprisingly good aim for someone who could afford to avoid any physical labor.
“Don’t put this on me,” I said from the stairs.
“She would love dinner,” I said now to Otis, my fingers covered with his thin gray hairs. In my heart of hearts, I am a fatalist. I slowed my razor to really let him imagine. “Nothing too fancy.”
“You’ve said she likes edgy.”
“Champagne and french fries.”
“True. She’s never been—well, you know. Much of a girl.”
You idiot, I thought. Right before the firm’s event—I went since she couldn’t take Otis, he was too one-note for the networking circuit—we got day-drunk at my apartment and practiced strutting in heels. On my dare she stripped to her lingerie. I almost broke every bone in my body. Who are we doing this for? She was laughing, sprinting from wall to wall. I feel glorious!
“Right. I’ll handle the food. You: well you can do edgy with flowers, too.”
“A big bouquet you think?”
Yara hated scenes she did not create. And flowers—lilacs, she broke into hives. I picked up a towel and freshened his face. “The biggest. I can recommend a florist.”
“Wonderful. See you Friday then.”
The next day a potted begonia was waiting at the desk for me. The receptionist watched from beneath a layer of piercings I could not even begin to name.
“God I wish my boyfriend did that.”
I opened the note attached. Fuck Off. Love Yara.
“You’ll find the right one.” I carried the pot to my chair and tipped it over into the trash.
. . .
Yara had family money that buffered her from serious consequence and run-of-the-mill worry. One of the side effects of financial stability was her complete ignorance of baseline fact. She didn’t watch TV or read the news. Instead, she picked up obscure bits of information via conversation, personal and overheard. Her sense of the world was shoddy at best, papier-mâchéd together from baristas and cashiers and strangers on phones, but she navigated with a boundless confidence I envied even when I thought she was an idiot. On one occasion I learned she thought Agatha Christie was a famous serial killer. Unfair to me, I thought, how her miscomprehension could be endearing.
When I made references to trip her up, she breezed over them or called me, with a glare or laugh or both, a snob. To make it up to her I recounted what Otis had forced me to talk about during his trims: the line he’d waited in, his sleeve-rolling technique, if pennies were no longer viable currency. If I got a laugh out of her, especially when she was thin and stressed and overworked, I won a little.
The only thing she knew intimately were buildings. When I bought the condo (a mistake, I’d wished to feel successful but only felt poor) and one-off mentioned missing the open concept from my old apartment, she showed up a week later and rolled out plans. She’d ordered the original surveys from the county and pulled the permits. Otis helped demo. We gutted the entire kitchen—I was sick about it, nearly passed out—but both of them slept over until the job was done in under a week, leaving my side only to run to the hardware store or home to feed the cats.
. . .
Meanwhile California was on fire. The smoke blew north into Washington and settled over the city. Everyone navigated from behind face masks. The air quality was so bad on Thursday that all my appointments cancelled and after a few hours of reading style magazines, pretending not to stress about bills and giving myself bangs, I took off, giving the begonia one last look in the trash, figuring our receptionist would definitely take it. The backseat of my car was full of masks and a change of clothes.
I kept the windshield wipers on. The air looked full of gnats, but it was the ash from the fires three hundred miles away. Rainier on the south horizon floated above a dense smog.
“Post-apocalyptic,” I said when Yara met me for a beer. She’d needed little convincing so I was on edge. “Shades of Pompeii.”
“Did you see the sun this morning? Hot pink. Reminded me of popsicles.”
“Where’s your mask, Pliny? You really should be wearing a mask.”
“Nice hair. They pay you to cut your own?”
The bar was ours based on location, in the middle of the salon and her and Otis’s house. Mostly lagers on tap poured by university girls at summer jobs. They served pizza and one rotating cocktail that came from a slushie machine. There was no A/C and Yara moved her pint around the booth table creating wet interlocking circles.
“So I hear you’re coming over tomorrow.”
“Is it still on?”
“You mean did I tell him? No, I didn’t. Yes, it is.”
“Did you change your mind?”
“I have drawings for you.” She waved a napkin at me. “Ceasefire.”
“Are you going to tell him?” I did not consider her a nice enough person not to break this news during dinner, just so I had to suffer through the fallout and take part of the blame. She was very keen on shared misery. But, to her credit, shared happiness and success, too.
“It’s the fire. He told me today. He’s got family near Sacramento. An aunt or cousin, someone sort of old. He’s driving down to help them evacuate.”
“Isn’t he sort of old?” I was alarmed. From the news, the streets were ribboned with flame and the skies all smoke and helicopters. It was unclear whether Yara appreciated it was not one fire but several thousand fanning out across eight hundred miles.
“He’s planning on a month down there at least. Get them settled in an apartment. Store their stuff. Deal with insurance. You can cancel his appointments. I know he books out.” She saw my look. “He’s his own person. He’s the safest one I know.”
Safe and too nice. I was unsure whether it was even possible for him to drive down, the highways shut down and towns in states of emergency. It was harder for me to picture this family he was off to help—a person so basic didn’t come from anyone, but I had to believe he had a slew of someones if from nothing more than the wedding pictures I saw on the mantle in their living room. There were white seats of faces with shared hair and eye color, well-dressed and happy. I hadn’t met any of them. I had not attended.
“And when he gets back?”
She finished her beer and peered at the tap across the aisle. “Do you want to see the drawings or what.”
I closed my eyes. “Details.”
“I want to gut the porch and remodel. I thought you might be interested in it as a studio.” She plowed ahead before I could stop her. “For yourself. You could use it as a private salon. You’ve got your clientele and I’d like to see you quit and do something great for once.”
“Wow. You really are that embarrassed of me.”
“Humiliated.” She ordered us another round, which meant I was going to have to listen to her. “Aren’t you sick of working with less talent? And half your age? That place is a disaster and you have to stop holding it together. Look at my plans. We’ve already run the plumbing. Tons of light. Room and storage. Pine, ceramic, steel. You could fill it with plants and serve drinks. I’m thinking: your thing meets night market.”
I double-checked my wallet, a quick exit creeping on. Working a doorway beyond her house. An independent salon. Women-run. Booked out months ahead. A space just mine to nurture and orchestrate, smelling of dye and conditioner and isopropyl.
“I can cover expenses until we clear red,” said Yara. “Get the business license and let’s go.”
“Let me think about it.”
“Look at the plans.”
“Don’t you have enough going on?”
She bared her teeth into something that looked like, if you didn’t know her, a smile.
“You’re so very welcome.”
“See you tomorrow.”
“Bring a date.”
On the table I left my drink and cash and a mask, too, and when I got home I pulled up all the blinds and turned on every light. It was three in the afternoon but I was beginning to doubt it. I texted Quinn. Outside shapes hovered in a timeless dusk.
. . .
I hadn’t been in close proximity to both of them in their house for over a year. Last time the cats had escaped through the bathroom window. I’d dyed my hair earlier in the day and was airing out the fumes. I’d asked Otis if I could stay over for a few days to help out—Yara was going through one of her rough spells, sustaining herself only on work and oyster crackers and blackberries, and walking between parked cars to see what narrowness she could fit between. Otis was at a loss and agreed.
He took the fall for me about the cats, and when she was done screaming, Yara closed herself off in her bedroom studio, filling the house with a clatter of rulers and the thump of rolled prints.
Otis and I tracked the cats down in under an hour. They had an obsession with shrubs and were right next door in the laurels, crouched with eyes on lights reflecting off a porch swing. They were not pleased to be returned.
I told Otis he didn’t have to do it.
“She works better angry,” Otis said. “And she’ll forgive me. You, I don’t know.”
I almost liked him for coming around to this.
When we returned, Yara cooed to the cats—she loved them, never touched them—and, an olive branch, revealed to Otis the latest storefront for the firm she’d sketched in her rage.
. . .
On Friday I left the salon early again. I was nervous and burnt out. I drove I-90 above the waterfront, cranes and shipping boxes to my left and the city on my right. Behind me Rainier fought a way out of the smoke. I had to pick up some food for dinner and then get Quinn, and then prep her for Yara and Otis. I had not warned her I was picking her up. She had a bad streak of no-shows.
She taught at the university and freelanced local news. She often cancelled our plans because she had a student with an existential crisis in her office or a township meeting regarding legislation that would never pass. The brunt of our relationship took place over the phone. This was new to me, having dated foodies and alcoholics and performers and beauties, the need-to-be-seens, but lately I suspected attraction had nothing to do with a physical presence at all, but in the generous mistranslation of conversation.
“Expectation is delusion and we’re all doomed,” Quinn said when I picked up her call in the car.
“Missed you, too.”
“It’s a quote from Remi Gainesville.”
I scoured my mental list of broke authors and socio-political nutcases.
“She’s a junior and just quit the nursing program. Her world is ending. She just left my office.”
Sometimes I had sick fantasies where Yara dies and in her will bequeaths me a shit-ton of money, and I and whoever I am dating at the time buy a houseboat and float out to the middle of nowhere and live on canned vegetables and ice cream and protein bars.
“Is dinner still on?” she asked. “Your friend Oliver texted me.”
I had never met anyone who remembered Otis’s name, and never anyone who Otis did not get their number. Otis has seen Quinn once, when we ran into each other at a gas station.
“Did they cancel?”
“No, he asked me if you were still going.”
I had two missed calls from Otis and had been too anxious to answer.
“Actually, I’m coming by to pick you up now.” I had not yet seen her place (and to be fair, she had not seen mine either) but this was better. I liked her office. It was cluttered with books I didn’t know and a little Byzantine icon that made me uncomfortable and vials of bergamot oil she massaged beneath her ears for impending headaches.
But she said she’d meet me. Otis had given her the address and she would stop to get wine.
“A really robust red if you can,” I said. Yara hated wine, having somehow picked up something about bacchanalia and, at the core, she was a purist and a prude. Monastic, I called her once, but she thought it was a sour comment referring to how much money she had. I glanced at my makeup in the rearview mirror. “Maybe a sauv blanc, too.”
. . .
I’d done extensions for a local theater group but it had been years. Achieving the right color and thickness and curl, especially for everyday use of high maintenance clients, took hours, but commissioned work paid well so was worth the effort. I stayed late at the salon and worked from the back room where we mixed dyes. There was a sink and single burner, and on the burner I brought tetrachloride to a rolling boil. Each extension I wrapped around a foil rod and dropped in the pot. I ate a bag of chips in the break room and did some finances until I started feeling depressed. I changed the formatting of my resume to look severe and imposing. While removing one of the extensions hours later a noise outside startled me—a car backfiring or worse, I didn’t work in the safest area, although it would gentrify in the next few years—and I splashed tetrachloride across my shirt. It hissed through and the burn left a scar across my stomach I told varying stories about to whoever saw me naked, based on what would resonate most to the person doing the undressing.
. . .
I brought a not insignificant amount of food—the last dinner like this Otis offered to make salmon, and Yara and I watched in horror as he drowned it in teriyaki sauce and popped it in the microwave—and Yara greeted me at the door with a kiss on the cheek and helped carry the bags upstairs to the kitchen.
“Your lady is somewhere in the house,” Yara said, “getting the tour from Otis.”
“Thoughts?”
“You’re a god. Otis only bought champagne.” Yara transferred the beer to the fridge. “She’s too smart for me but you like what you like. Nice shoes though.”
“You need help?” She was touching her hair a lot.
“Just a quick readjustment if you can.” We stepped into the bathroom off the dining room so she could oversee as I unclipped the extensions and settled them back in. “I really should have you do new ones.”
They were pretty beaten up. And only clip-ins. I’d offered more than once to do permanent ones, but she was convinced one day she’d wake up with double the hair. I no longer asked. “They aren’t so bad. But I can take them at the end of the night and have them back to you next week if you want.”
“You’re amazing. You also don’t charge enough.”
“I don’t need you to pay me.”
“Oh well.”
“How about these on me,” I said, “and save your money for this salon you won’t shut up about.”
I dipped my eyes away from hers in the mirror. I had surprised myself. My energy to put up a fight evaporated and it felt good, embracing a particular fear rather than debating which one to take on.
“Now this is why sometimes I love you. Yes. Let’s do it.” Her smile faded and she half turned to lift the hem of my shirt, which had drifted up as I reached towards her hair. “What’s that?”
“Dog bite,” I said of the scar.
“I hate dogs.”
I smiled, protective—what an impulsive fragile thing she could be.
“Maybe he was just hungry.”
Skepticism made Yara uncomfortable and she was quick to move on. “Otis leaves for California after dinner,” she said. “He wants to make up some time overnight, get there first thing in the morning.”
“Just tell me before you do anything.”
“Should I?”
“Let’s get drunk,” I said, “and not think about it.”
“Worked so well before.”
We stood there looking at ourselves. I often forgot I was no longer young.
Yara wound her hair around her hand. “If I feel alone, what’s the difference?”
“There is one. It’s a different type of alone.”
“Am I making a mistake?”
“You should talk to him.”
Her eyes cut to me. “Oh. Not Otis. I mean you. Is it a mistake to bring you in like this?”
Compliment or insult, I accepted both.
. . .
“Your shoes are approved,” I told Quinn when she and Otis joined us around the table. We had a cold spread ready and a buzz going and Otis checked the oven for my pre-made purchases, simmering and bubbling. I pyrrhically did everything I could to keep Otis and Yara from speaking to each other, primarily by flinging every random talking point at Yara. I must have seemed frantic. Quinn asked if I was feeling alright.
I went quiet when we sat. On the table was a monstrous bouquet of lilacs. I glanced between it and Yara, who glanced at Otis then back at me and mouthed I know that was you.
“You are the best conversationalist I’ve met,” Otis said as we ate. I wondered if this was a hint because I had not yet directed a single word to him. “Must be your profession.”
“I just trick people into talking about themselves.”
Yara said, “Do they need to be tricked?” She turned to Quinn, who was a calculated observer and also had not said much. “And your students? Do they need to be, too?”
“Not at all. They enjoy an argument. Most of them have no real ideas but lots of opinions.”
“Isn’t that where ideas come from, from opinions?”
I leaned back to watch this match between my women. Yara had no clue she was about to get obliterated. But Quinn, unfortunately for both of them, quoted a little Latin aphorism about disregarding what is not understood, and I thought Yara was about to set the room on fire. Otis redirected.
“You must have some fantastic chats with your clients,” he said to me.
“Just fantastic.” Actually, most I could steer into silence. It was a sort of gift of mine. I threw Yara, still fuming over a show of pretension, a lifeline. “I have to say no one ever has a better story than Yara, although most are entirely untrue or stolen from other people.”
“Because I’m a great listener. Why are you smiling?”
“Tell us a story about an architect,” said Quinn. “Does anyone want more wine?”
“Beer, please. I have a good one tonight. It’s about an architect who gets kicked out of Harvard.”
I’d eaten next to nothing and drank everything. “Oh no. Where did you pick this up?”
“Break room at the firm. A tech repairman was trying to charm one of our designers. So this architect blew his whole year’s allowance in one night: He bought a ticket to the year’s premiere musical. Better yet he smuggled in his sister’s white Russian wolfhound to impress the chorus girls.”
“Expensive musical,” said Otis.
“It wasn’t. But dinner was. He took out all thirty girls.”
I laughed. “With or without the wolfhound?”
“Now here,” said Yara, “is where I get to improvise.”
. . .
Dinner might have lasted longer, but the cats reappeared from hiding to besiege the lilacs. Otis ushered them out. Yara started coffee. Quinn and I were helping clear the table when the walls and lights began flipping and I realized I was going to be sick. The empty bottles in the sink were not reassuring. I focused on not tripping on my way to the bathroom.
After I washed my mouth I took slow intentional steps down the hall. I redirected myself to the kitchen to rummage for some ibuprofen. Everyone had gone and for a moment the heart of the house was my own. The window was open, it was a warm smokeless night, and below on the porch I could see Quinn and Yara seated in wicker chairs, their voices drifting up to me.
“Which firm is it?” Quinn was asking.
“Currently unemployed actually. No prospects, if I’m honest.”
No Otis. I tipped closer to the window. Yara was very drunk if she was not resisting this line of questioning.
“Your husband showed me your work. You’re talented. You’ll land somewhere.”
“I think I blew up all my landing spots, thank you.”
“No, that can’t be true?”
“It was a day,” said Yara.
It was a hot day, the last clear one before the smoke rolled in. Her firm, to celebrate an expansion, rented out a few conference rooms at the hotel near the piers. The waterfront stretching toward the bay was bright in sun, the mountains out, and round tables were arranged with appetizers and drinks and to-scale models of the award-winning work, including Yara’s. She had her name on a plaque in front of her building. She was one of the presenters, the only woman speaking and the youngest, and she’d asked me to join her instead of Otis. We had a little pregame at my place—a terrible idea in retrospect, but I’d never seen her nervous and it made me want to stamp it out as quickly as I could—and she gave me some of her rings, a mix of silver and bronze, to lend me further credibility.
Do I look cheap or something?
I would never let you. She closed her hands around mine and the jewelry. Really. Keep them. Thanks for coming with me.
“And we were not the most sober,” Yara told Quinn. “But I’d already given my speech and an interview and who cares, people were drinking and handing out cards and talking next projects. It was a beautiful day. Your girlfriend looked especially beautiful. She doesn’t try hard enough or work hard enough. But I’m going to change that. Or maybe you will. Anyway.” Quinn said something I couldn’t make out. Yara laughed. “Anyway. We went back to the open bar and one of the principals of my firm—what used to be my firm—is standing in line ahead of us.”
He was tall and sweating in his button-up and his glasses had perspiration on them as well. I’d seen him earlier swinging one of his young kids around. I hated that I’d smiled and said a few clever things. He laughed. Yara. I was expecting your husband but this is an upgrade. Tell me, is she something you two share? His hand was on my ass for only a split second before Yara whipped her empty glass at him. It shattered. Blood rose across his face. Someone nearby yelled. There was a scuffle and a scene. I had bruises on my arm from Yara as I pulled her away.
“The cut was deep enough for the emergency room. I cleared out my office the next day. I was very hungover.” She paused. “I will be very hungover tomorrow, too.”
“Don’t tell my husband,” she added. “He thinks I just got drunk and ranted at some people about how much better I am.” She rolled her mug between her hands which were a good deal bonier with early arthritis than when we’d first met. “He’s a good guy. He’ll feel guilty somehow and I’d like to spare him that.”
A little beeping in my head instructed me that this night had expired. Whatever would happen between them, I didn’t want to be part of it. The beeping whirled into a headache. I backtracked to the stairs to get my things. Otis, a poltergeist whirling through my evening, was coming up from the garage with a pump.
“Checking tire pressure,” he said. “Glad I replaced the wipers last week. Have you done that for yours? Can’t be too sure. Well. Grabbing the water and then I’m afraid I have to leave you all. Nice night though. Yara told me you said yes to the salon. We’re happy to have you. Oh. Are you not well?”
“The bottled water’s in the car.” Yara came in from the porch followed by Quinn. “I bought you some extra. You didn’t have food so I put the leftovers in the cooler. It’s all in the trunk. Extra batteries and charger, too.” She leaned in and kissed him, from my experience a rare thing.
“Ready?” I said to Quinn.
We went to Yara’s bedroom—Otis often slept on the couch if the stairs were bothering him—to gather our jackets. We didn’t need them. The night was balmy and, in depth of summer equinox, a strip of light still hovered on the horizon. The lack of smoke made me feel as if I were floating in a cathedral. A dozen new fires ate through California. Over dinner Yara had said she’d heard trees were exploding, their sap boiling on the inside.
Yara had unclipped her extensions and left them on the bureau for me. They struck me as little sad animals. I left them there. I knew I’d be back sometime.
“You’re lucky she did that for you,” said Quinn.
I agreed. I hated her for it and all the debt. I’d pawned the jewelry she gave me and put the not insignificant money towards my mortgage, then wished I had booked a trip somewhere bright and cold.
Quinn wore a face mask around her neck and offered me mine. We hovered in the hall. Quinn asked if I had everything. She had a linen blouse that reminded me of mosquito netting I rubbed between my fingers while we kissed in the doorframe. She had a certain quality that made me want to be subversive.
Her hands were deep in my hair. “Well, you’re right, your friends are a mess. Can I drive you home? Do you want to come over?”
“I think we need a break.”
Quinn stepped away from me. She ran her palms against her pants and laughed with no humor. “Sure. From what?”
She left. Yara, perched on the kitchen counter with a glass of water, gave me a look that meant I’d given up another good thing. Otis walked me out. Quinn’s car was gone and mine a few bleary smudges and he wouldn’t let me get in it. He was apologetic, as if he was the one hammered, and he called me a car.
We stood on the edge of the courtyard waiting for it. Alcohol conjured my own private infinity. The yard teemed with milkweed and a sullen birch tree that dipped flat to the mulch in the wind, and I’d sat on the bench beneath it several times debating whether to ring when I was past welcome. Sometimes Yara beat me to it. She’d open the door. She’d hug me. She’d ask me to go home, she couldn’t stand to see me now, maybe later?
“I’m not very happy. I guess you know.” It occurred to me Otis had been speaking and I tuned in somewhere in the middle. “It’s not always a good thing, being comfortable. But you finish what you start.”
We watched crows lift from bench to birch. I kept very still.
He hesitated. “Maybe now isn’t the time to leave.”
“You should.” I can fix this. Give me time. Come back welcomed. “You should absolutely go.”
“You’ll make sure she’s all right.”
It was hard to read him in the dark. I did not know him to be an insincere person. He was better than either me or Yara for that. But I did not know him that well.
The car came up the gravel path. He helped me into the backseat. “I’ll let Quinn know you got home.”
. . .
I went back for my car the next day beneath a layer of drugs and sunglasses. Yara poured us ginger beer over ice and we sat on the porch, the plans spread on the floor at our bare feet. After Otis drove off, she’d spent the night marking the walls with blue painter’s tape and chalk. She said Otis was excited to help demo after things calmed down in California. He had a steady predictability for these things. She was ready to appreciate it again, for now.
We talked with easy drowsy silence between us. The sun on the angles of the room made the paint varying colors. We dozed in chairs for a little. My phone buzzed. Quinn. I winced and reluctantly moved to the hall to answer and say I hadn’t changed my mind.
“It’s about Otis. I guess they called me because I was his last outgoing call.”
She went on. I didn’t recognize what her voice was doing.
“Wait,” I said. “What does that mean, they found his car?”
“Are you with Yara? I told them to call her. She’s going to get a call.”
I went back out to the porch.
“My phone’s dead,” I said. “Can I see yours?”
“What? Why?”
“Nothing. You just look nice. I want to take your picture.” Yara was not modest. She gave me her phone. I held it up and turned it off. “Great light. Don’t look at me so much. Pretend you’re looking out there at something nice.”
“I see it. I see it and it’s beautiful.”
“Perfect. One more. Hold on.”
. . .
Our new hire was a no-show so her first appointment of the day fell to me. Otis was ten years younger sitting down in my chair. Unmarried, heavier, with an expression so mid-level agreeable I had to squint to see him at all.
I had devised a graceful pattern of conversation directed to steer my client into relative silence while I worked. It was not dissimilar from interrogation techniques, but instead of resulting in a confession, my client would sit still and satisfied, having arrived—seemingly at their own choosing—at a comfortable quiet. But all my tricks failed on Otis. By the end of his buzz cut—a buzz cut! How did he cram so much in?—I learned he grew up in a small town near Mt. Shasta, stamped out his Californian accent for a job in broadcasting that didn’t pan out, moved to Seattle before it was grunge or tech, had worked as a hotel concierge, a bus driver, in the postal service and had a pension, once owned five dogs simultaneously but now none, thought religion useful to individuals but not society, disliked ketchup, and lived in an apartment complex originally built as a hotel for the World’s Fair. It overlooked Elliott Bay and the crows woke him every morning.
He was fifty-two with a girlfriend half his age, an accomplished architect recently promoted to the Wesson Shah & Steckel project downtown (Did I know it? I did, the construction made for nightmarish traffic). She’d won some awards and was deadpan hilarious and sang Nina Simone (all the wrong lyrics) when she thought he couldn’t hear her and he was going to propose today, hence the haircut, did I want to see the ring.
I was, by the end, exhausted. He tipped neither cheap nor generous and made an appointment with me two weeks out. The front bell rang and his girlfriend came in wondering what was taking so long, she was illegally parked and going to get a ticket. I was sweeping up beneath the chair and she stood behind me, lifting her hair at herself in the mirror.
“It’s definitely thinning. I can see it. Don’t be nice, Otis. It is. I have an aunt? Completely bald.”
“Maybe ask her about it.”
Yara’s eyes landed on me. “Tell me the truth. I’m not ready for this.”
She was not pretty but startling, all length and angle. Her hair was fried into curls.
“If you’re really worried about it, I do custom extensions.”
These were extremely expensive and would cover a month’s rent. She smiled. She thanked me. She ordered them on the spot with a trust I had only seen between the oldest of friends.
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