I saw a nail salon. I needed a pedicure, but was in no mood to sit for one. I would be doing too much to circle back to one of the dollar stores to buy flip-flops or sandals to keep my toes uncovered. I could go for an eyebrow wax instead. I had let them go so fuzzy. I’d let myself go in general. Running was time-consuming.
The soft acidic smell of the salon soothed my sensation of an inner dismantling. I knew it well. A boy stopped applying acrylic silk wrap to a little girl’s fingertips. Her mother sat nearby with toes inside the quick-dry lamp. He walked over to find me examining the poster of prices near the door, and its blessed Mastercard label at the bottom with other credit card insignias—for a minimum of $20.
“What you getting?”
Eight-dollar brow wax. Five-dollar lip wax. It would add up to enough for whoever took care of me to get a better tip than most left. An unoccupied older lady in a blue smock came smiling up behind the man, her arms outstretched to me. She beamed.
“Hi, no see you long time . . . Come!”
She glided me to the “wax room,” a curtained spare closet with boxes stacked at its edges, and a cracked rubber spa bed covered in wrinkled tissue paper she did not replace. She only smoothed it out and pulled up to where my head would rest. She gave me a tissue and held a hand mirror in front of me. Plum-colored lipstick smudged one corner of my mouth.
“Lie down,” she said.
I pressed the tissue into my lip and saw it turn pink. “Can I use the bathroom first?”
“Oh. Yes, yes.”
The woman pointed past the curtain to a door with the last of its former brown paint still evident in hanging peels. My knees touched the toilet seat soon as I walked into a bowl of backed-up toilet paper and red rust stains. A box of Kleenex sat on the tank. I latched the hook into a nail stuck in the doorway, dropped my jeans, and sat down without wiping the seat first. Pee flushed out in a large burst. I felt the sting of more in my bladder, mashed my elbows into my thighs and squeezed my stomach slowly in and out until two more streams came down. When I wiped myself, I saw blood on the tissue. I checked my purse. I did not have my usual stash of liners in my pocketbook. I curled half the tissues together and bunched the creation into my panties. Someone knocked before I could debate the risk of flooding if I flushed. I did not. Women were used to seeing these things and the men would just have to deal.
“Wait a moment.”
I wiped my fingers with tissue, not wanting to walk to the main sink where the workers poured out noodle broth and filled hot pots for tea, customers washed fingertips free of oil before their nails were polished, and everyone washed their hands for the bathroom. When I unhooked the door, the mother was before me. She stood on the edges of her feet with cotton balls still stuck between her toes in her paper-thin pink sandals.
“Sorry,” I told her.
“No worries,” she said. “I been holding out until my polish got hard. They charge you now when you smudge on your way out, even if you tip. They want to do the whole nail over. Can’t even give you a decent bathroom for—”
“Would you happen to have a pad or tampon on you?” I asked.
“Geez Louise, I don’t think I do.” She put her hand on her forehead.
“It’s okay. I’ll just have to stop at the store. And, uh, it’s clogged.”
“Gotcha. That’s the hood for you. Excuse me.”
My brow stylist leaned on the spa bed smoothing her smock. She had no look on her face until she saw me. Then she clinched into what seemed to be the same automatic smile, no in-between space for her lips to part or cheeks to work.
I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes, listening to the pitter-patter of wooden sticks in a pot of warm wax. Normally, I stopped workers in these joints and asked them to open a new applicator for me. But I trusted she was clean enough. A sense of something swirled, serenity for me to zone out as I had on the train. She came close to my face with warm breath in even sighs. My head slipped to the side.
“Oh, no, no,” she said, her dark eyes squinched on me when I opened my eyes. “No move, or wax come down. It burn you bad. You should know.”
“Okay,” I said, and she giggled at me.
She pat on the paper strips and rubbed me right where I needed it, each gentle mash at my temple and atop my eyelids releasing a knot in my head, clearing it up. She removed the strips on one eye quickly and adequately, with no smarting. When she came back with more wax on the wooden strip and a new paper applicator in her hand, my eyes opened briefly and then fluttered back down.
“Long day?” she asked softly. “Lot of work? You shouldn’t stress so.”
“I know,” I whispered.
After my brow stylist removed the last bits of paper, she mashed above the bridge of my nose where Asha did as well—to open my third eye, Asha would tell me. The woman kneaded the area with her thumb before she lifted the paper. She wiped around my mouth and nose with a tissue paper, before she set warm wax down above my lips. Her pull was gentler there. She patted at me to look at my reflection in a mirror she held for me. I saw my new face: bright, alert, and competent now.
“You like?” she asked me.
“Yes, I do,” I smiled. “Thank you. I really like it. I’ll have to leave your tip on my card. I don’t have any cash. I came all the way from Harlem, on a whim.”
“No, fine,” the brow stylist said. “Keep growing them in. Next time, it’ll be perfect.”
“Hey, chica,” I heard behind me.
I turned to see the mother. She took my hand and pushed a hard plastic wedge in it.
“Had one in my makeup bag,” she said. “The oddest places we find these things.”
“Well, you’re smarter than I am,” I told her. “Thank you so much.”
“It’ll hold you over.”
She looked at my stylist and gestured to her brows and above her lip. The stylist grinned that same automatic grin and led the woman to the old tissue paper and cracked bed. I waved good-bye to them.
“Go home to sleep now,” the stylist said. “See you next time. Don’t be so long.”
I went back to the bathroom and let the bundle of tissue slip away. I washed my hands in the communal sink. The entire front wall of the salon was glass, a familiar foreign land through it. The boy who had been on tampon lady’s daughter was now stationed at the door for the next ghetto princess to fall in line—a steady stream of customers all day long, morning or night, hot or cold, rain or shine.
“I must charge $20,” he said to my Mastercard. He did not even remove his blue face mask as he talked to me and punched in the numbers.
“Yes, and please make sure to give her the balance,” I told him. “She’s good.”
“Oh, sure, ma’am. You write it.”
He handed me my customer receipt and his to sign. I inspected both like I once did obsessively for all my receipts, when I was more forward-thinking and responsible.
Control.
Start now.
I saw my name on the receipts. Autumn Spencer. Of course. It demystified all that was escaping me since I first boarded the D train in Harlem. Cathy and her place. I laughed at myself for being as clumsy in transit as I had been when I first ditched my car in new Big Apple life.
A bright aperture emanated in the salon’s thumbtacked corkboard littered with takeout menus, Se Habla Español services, and amateur musician pluggers. I interpreted the light for the eye chart we read from the time we are young until we no longer see, an advertisement for an optician perhaps. As I moved to the door I did not see a huge E helming a tower of shrinking letters. This white paper included a picture, familiar telephone number, and directions: FIND SUMMER SPENCER.
My body seemed to spin around the smells, noise, chatter, and robotic workers of the salon. I failed to breathe for some time. I resumed my breath. I tore down the flyer. I crushed it into my sweaty palms. Then I pulled the glass door back, and the customer bells crashed to the floor. I was queasy but numb and in a fugue, at a loss to recall
when I had ever thought this remote region was hunting ground for Summer.
I reasoned with all the trending news of Bushwick: a burgeoning frontier for the underground galleries, affordable artist live-in studios, cheap cooperative loft spaces . . . It was my job to know these things, stay ahead of the curve, predict the cultural temperature. I would not have to be a sleuth to think Summer could be here. Of course I must have marked this territory at some point, to raise awareness of her.
Ahead I saw another elevated train platform. First, I needed to find a starchy, portable meal. To hold me over for tonight and the next two days. I would stay inside, with phones and computer off until at least the weekend. I would just work on more hot zones people like Summer burrowed in these days. I would plot out the rest of August, to my September birthday. I would redo my resume, and try not to tell anyone who burst through my safe quarantine to go to hell. I kept heading east down Myrtle and crossed Bushwick Avenue, with my arm tight and my head down.
“Miss Spencer! Hold up, girl!” The voice was male.
I did not turn. Was I followed? I could not have been, not all this way. I envisioned a swarm of white coats to overpower me into the back of a medivan, or officers to pull me into a squad car. But I had the flyer now. The business kept it up all this time. How long? I did not know. Still, it was proof many people wanted her found. The train was just a little further. It was a trick. I did not turn. I stepped up my pace. A full-fledged sprint would attract attention. I could not outrun a gang who found me, to tear me away into places with more men like the one I left in Harlem.
“Hey, lady! It’s me, Raymond.”
I didn’t know any Raymonds.
But the voice was right behind me. I could feel it closer than it should have been, right at my back. I needed to see how far it was. And it was already there.
“Hey, girl, what’s up?”
The light man with five o’clock shadow and curly brown hair pulled me into his arms. I leaned back from his try at kissing me on the cheek, to stare at his face. I knew the face. And yes, his name was Raymond. Or, Ramon. Raymond was his American name.
“Wow, haven’t seen you since . . . Well, a long time,” he said. “How you been?”
“I’m fine,” I said. I looked around, behind him, and at the train ahead.
He aimed for my cheek again. This time he didn’t miss. I mapped my brain for how I knew him. His face lay impressed somewhere, I just knew it. I met so many people, always, in New York. I had a tote bag’s worth of business cards I indexed in Outlook when I had motivation—by profession, neighborhood, claim to fame, and future use if any.
“So whatcha doing down here in Bushwick after all this time?” Raymond asked. He had the curl and turn of a native Romance language on his English.
“Nothing,” I told him. Then, “I don’t know. I’m headed back to Harlem now.”
“You know, I was just talking about you the other day. You remember Calvin and Stacy, right? They still have open gallery every Tuesday on Broadway.”
“Oh, I don’t go out much these days,” I said. “Manhattan’s gotten too expensive.”
“No, Broadway here in Bushwick. Remember? Free tequila and whiskey, all the chips and salsa and guac you can eat, other munchies on the patio . . . know what I mean?”
“No, I don’t remember.” I turned my head down and pulled at my puff of hair.
“You were there every week, back in the day. Stacy bought one of the paintings you were selling. I was at their place few weeks ago, looking at it. Your name came up.”
“Raymond, I’m sorry,” I interrupted and put my hands out. “But I’m really hungry and it’s gonna take me forever to get back uptown from here.”
“Well, let’s go grab some food, girl,” he said.
Now his arm was around my shoulder and he was walking me down the street.
“You know this is my hood,” he kept on. “I know everywhere there is to know. I take care of you, girl. Just tell me what you want. I got us there in no time.”
“Whatever I want?”
All he talked about drew a blank for me. I could not remember selling pictures to anyone down here. It was a mistake I was here now. I only fell asleep on the train.
But his smell went to my head and dropped it down into a scene of low blue lights, faces made of colors across an entire crayon box, chairs packed tight in a smoky room, and nice wind from an open door. His scent was a particular cologne, with sweat and doll-smelling hair I remembered close to me. I walked a whole block with him. I listened to him: how supposedly overjoyed he was to see me, how much I was so missed by people who had not missed me enough to reach out and find me, if this was so true. The more he talked, the more I recalled: Somewhere around here, with more salons and laundromats and takeout spots, I would see him. I smashed bummed cigarettes down to the sidewalk with giggles, my nights long, and my companions for the evening shifting each time.
I sat down on the only bench inside of a familiar Chinese counter-serve. The menu stood over me like the show time list at a movie theater, where sweet-and-sour chicken was still #28. My eyes went straight to it. The shrimp fried rice was still #16.
This was like déjà vu.
Raymond gripped the counter and yelled our order, several times, to the woman who finally showed up to scribble it down: six egg rolls, two shrimp fried rice, sweet-and-sour chicken, extra sweet-and-sour sauce, broccoli and chicken, egg foo young, and a lot of soy sauce. I heard him crunch bills.
He came to sit across from me at the bench, still and calmer now.
“I still can’t believe I ran into you. Man, it’s like you just fell off the face of the Earth. Must be making all that good money in Manhattan. Too good for us now.”
“Hardly,” I told him. “I’m struggling like everybody else.”
“Man, no doubt. I’m still at the jewelry store, part-time though.”
Whether it was fate I ran back into Raymond, an old “friend,” remained to be seen. I know I ran to the train in Harlem thinking of one friend. I was out of breath when I arrived as the train did. It was a man, the detective, back there. He chased me. I wanted a friend. To help me. Why was I running? I couldn’t recall. I woke up at Myrtle, soon as it was announced, like it was my stop. A friend popped up, as I wished. I took it.
“My sister disappeared,” I said. “And, I thought to look for her down here.”
Raymond paused, as anyone would if I told them, to scramble for a distinct comeback not as trite or pedestrian as a simple “I’m sorry” or “How are you?”
“I didn’t know you had a sister,” was his.
“Well, you didn’t know me too well now, did you?”
“I thought I did. Wow. When did all this happen?”
“The end of last year. She’s the painter, not me. But I know people mix us up.”
“Ohh . . .” He frowned. “I don’t remember her. I only remember you.”
He had solved a gnawing paranoia I certainly never wished to put on anyone, no matter how small or insignificant I was to people. I knew, firsthand, disappearances hurt.
“Well, I feel bad for you, kiddo,” he sighed. “What are the police doing about it?”
“Raymond, thanks, but I don’t want to talk about it,” I snapped. I was too depleted for a spoken dissertation on women’s disposability and interchangeability in today’s class-divided urban landscapes, multiplied times five for women of color.
“Okay.” He stopped talking and rubbed his knuckles in my cheek, flashed his easy smile. But he did not bolt from the table.
Three men walked in and started shouting before the cook came to the order shelf. I caught the dull aroma of clothes marinated in weed and Newport smoke.
“Yo, lemme get the fried chicken, fries, chop suey, and . . . hurry up, man!”
“Uh lemme get that beef broccoli on brown rice,” another said. “Veggie egg rolls.”
“Seafood combo,” yelled the other, halfway in and out of the door. “And don’
t play me on the shrimp, yo. Y’all always play on the shrimp. Hold up, hold up . . .”
“You got that?” the first man said.
She hadn’t gotten it. He huffed and moved up to the counter, repeating until they debated what I gathered were his frequent orders and complaints to go along with them.
“You pay first or you go,” the woman said. Then she whisked back to the grills.
“Come on, ma, don’t play me like that.”
Raymond grabbed my hand and mixed his long fingers in with mine. The man who couldn’t make up his mind blew back through the door. Their voices carried on about how long it was going to take. In between all that, Raymond saw the cook motion him to the counter to jiggle our virtual buffet through to the rolling carousel for pick-up.
“I don’t wanna stay,” I told him.
“Understood,” he said.
A liquor store was up past the train station across the street. I was the one who said we should get wine to take to his nearby apartment in this urban pocket of service uniforms, misspelled signs, and crooked heels. A phone charger. I needed one. That justified my following him. Surely he would have one. I could call Cathy to say she’s right about Harlem. I wasn’t safe up there all by myself.
I’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE, instinct said.
I stepped over mop buckets and around an unanchored toilet on a tight stairwell. Beige doors on either side of us at each floor contained loud music and televisions. Once inside, I found clues to recollect Raymond a little. He was from the outskirts of Rome. We met at a non-credit live drawing course I paid too much money for at Parsons continuing education program. A few hours with one naked girl inspired male students to ask out any girl with her clothes on after class. Yes. I guess Summer convinced me to take that. It must have been another costly whim.
Raymond had coerced me to a few sets in Lower Manhattan, way back when. And I kept going out with him and new people. He was a DJ, acoustic guitarist, and backup for poets and singers who practiced in front of a nonpaying crowd at the small weekly set nearby. Though I meandered here on a wrong train it was a familiar route, tied to a fresh euphoria when my apartment was still a bachelorette pad, not a sick room.
Speaking of Summer Page 17