Page 6 of Count My Lies

Natasha hangs on to my every word, tickled by my fabricated tryst. She wants to hear more, I can tell. Like me, she’s single, scouring dating apps between clients, agreeing to dates with men who show her the least bit of interest. Most Monday shifts are spent commiserating about our shared lack of success, comparing the worst messages we received over the weekend, the lurid pickup lines, the grainy photos that linger in your mind long after you’ve deleted them.

“Where’d he take you for dinner?” she asks.

“La Vara,” I say, not missing a beat. It’s where Laura mentioned her son had taken her last week, said they served the best sangria she’d had in years. “The cocktails were amazing.”

“And you went home with him? You bad girl, you!”

I nod. “You would have, too, if you saw how good-looking he was. But he was a total gentleman. He made me breakfast this morning before I left.” I smile modestly. Natasha looks green with jealousy. “Buttermilk pancakes,” I add. I can’t help it.

“Are you going to see him again?” she asks.

Before I can answer, the front door rattles, and I hear Chloe offer a sunny greeting. I peek out, see two women at the front of the spa. Quickly, Natasha and I down the rest of our coffees and wheel our nail carts to our stations, where we settle onto stools, turn on the faucets.

In front of me sits a college-aged girl in an Aviator Nation sweatshirt and oversized Celine sunglasses pushed up like a headband, her pant legs pulled up to midcalf, feet in the tub as it fills. The color she’s picked out is sitting on the armrest next to her—an electric blue. She has earbuds in both ears, sighing every so often, as if the person on the other end of the line is giving her a headache. She doesn’t seem to notice my existence, or if she does, doesn’t acknowledge it.

Her attitude is commonplace. Most of the women whose nails we do rarely look at us as we work, our bodies hunched over their feet and hands. There are a few regulars who remember our names, engage in real conversations, but the majority of clients only speak to us when barking instructions—not too short, now, orno, not like that, more rounded!, anouch!and a glare every once in a while if we yank a cuticle too hard—but we’re otherwise invisible to them.

Next to me, in Natasha’s chair, is a nondescript middle-agedwoman. She’s flipping idly through a magazine, her Hermès bangles jangling with every page turn.

“Too hot?” I ask my client, motioning to the water in the basin. She looks at me blankly, then gestures to her ear and mouths,I’m on the phone. She means to say,Don’t talk to me, peasant. I nod as a confirmation. Fine by me. If she doesn’t care about whether the water scalds her, then neither do I. I turn the water slightly to the left, a few degrees warmer.

“Mine’s too hot,” the woman in front of Natasha announces loudly, overhearing my question. “Too hot,” she repeats slowly and deliberately, staring intently at Natasha. Then she looks to me. “Can you let her know it’s too hot, please?”

I smile tightly as Natasha adjusts the faucet. An embarrassing number of women assume an Asian girl in a nail spa has little to no grasp of the English language, never mind that Natasha was born less than twenty miles from here, both of her parents college professors. We’ve long stopped wasting our breath correcting them, but it still rankles me, makes me want to crank the water as hot as it will go, turn their white skin red, watch it blister.

“So,” Natasha says, once the pedicures are underway, turning slightly toward me. She keeps her voice low and neutral. “I’m dying over here—are you going to see this guy again or what?”

I nod, grinning. “Definitely. He has a business trip later this week, but said he wants to see me as soon as he gets back. He said he’d take me to seeFunny Girlif I wanted, with Lea Michele.” I’d heard several of my clients talking about the show, how hard it was to get tickets.

I wonder if Jay takes his wife to the theater and decide that he probably does. He’s probably taken her to La Vara, too. I picture them at a table for two, flutes of champagne sparkling, faces aglow in candlelight,their cheeks flushed, smiles wide, fingers interlaced across the table. I feel a surprising, hot flash of jealousy.

The smile I stretch across my face is as stiff as plastic. “This one?” I ask my client, reaching for the blue nail polish on the tray next to her. She stares at me a moment, eyes blinking slowly, before pursing her lips and nodding.You’re bothering me again, she’s telling me.And it’s not even worth my breath to say it out loud.

Briefly, I imagine uncapping the bottle and ruining her two-hundred-dollar sweatshirt. If I didn’t have bills to pay, if I didn’t desperately need this job, I might. I let my smile grow even wider, part my lips to show her my teeth, then bend forward over her feet. I imagine hell isn’t much different than this.

Natasha leans toward me. “Ask your new boyfriend if he has a friend. The last place a guy offered to take me was Subway. Which wouldn’t have been terrible, except he followed it up with asking if I wanted to see his foot-long.” She looks disgusted.

I nod. “I’ll ask him,” I say to Natasha. “Maybe we can double-date.”

We turn back to our clients, both smiling. This time, my smile is real.Your boyfriend, she called him. I like how it sounds.This is Jay, I imagine myself saying,my boyfriend. If Natasha asks about double-dating again, I’ll tell her that most of his friends are already married. I’m sure that part’s true, at least.

4

At one thirty, I take my afternoon break and start toward Quailwood Park. It’s only two blocks away, just over a five-minute walk. I feel anticipation mounting as I near, even though Jay said he was going back to work this week. I can’t help but hope that he’s taken an extra day of vacation or gotten off early, picked up Harper on his way home because he’d enjoyed our conversation as much as I had. What’s more likely, though, is that he spent the weekend with his beautiful wife and darling child, never giving me a second thought. But a girl can dream, right?

It’s a bright, warm day, perfect late spring weather. The little park is swarming, filled with kids and their moms and nannies, screeching and laughing, arms and legs bare. I take two slow laps around the play structure. No Jay. No Harper. I let out a sigh. I stop, then scan the park a third time. Still no sign of either of them. It’s unsurprising, but that doesn’t keep me from being disappointed, which is stupid, I know.

When I’m sure, really sure, they’re not here, I spread my flannel shirt on a little grassy patch under a full-branched tree and sit down cross-legged, take a book out of my bag. It’s a dog-eared copy ofRebeccathat I’ve read a hundred times. I open it to a bookmarked page, but I can’t concentrate. I stare at the same paragraph for several minutes before I give up. All I can think about is Jay. The dimple in his right cheek. The electricity I’d felt when his fingers grazed mine. I wonder what he’s doing right now. In a meeting? Sitting in front of his computer, chin resting on his hand? I groan and close the book, returning it to my bag, then pull out my earbuds and tap the Spotify icon on my phone.

I scroll, finding the song I’m looking for, the one I’ve had on repeat lately. The noise of laughing children fades. I mouth along as Taylor Swift sings about how everyone agrees: it’s her that’s the problem. Same girl, same. Sighing, I close my eyes. Every few minutes, I open them, glancing up at the playground. Just in case. After ten minutes, just when I’m about to pack up and head back to the spa, I catch sight of a familiar face. I freeze. It’s Harper. And she’s looking my way. My heart skips a beat like a tiny hiccup in my chest. I’d think my eyes were playing tricks on me, but I’m sure it’s her because she’s wearing the same purple shirt she had on last week, the one with a white sequined unicorn on the front.

She has her arm outstretched, and I realize she’s pointing—at me. At least, I think she is. Eagerly, I look for Jay, but instead I see a woman next to her.

She looks like she’s in her late twenties or early thirties, dark hair, sunglasses, a wide-brimmed hat tilted back on her head, also looking in my direction. She turns to Harper, then takes off her sunglasses and looks back toward me, squinting. She says something I can’t make out, and Harper nods.

Then a smile spreads across the woman’s face. She begins to wave.Oh shit.I look behind me, just to make sure, but there’s no one there.I’m sure now; she’s waving at me. Tentatively, I raise my hand and wave back.

The woman takes Harper by the hand and the two start toward me, crossing the rubber playground mats onto the grass. Slowly, I uncross my legs and stand awkwardly as they approach, then take out my earbuds, one by one, slipping them into my pocket. My phone drops to my side.

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