Eye of the Beholder

by Shari Shattuck

  “Because they are in one of three various stages of beautification.” She held up a single forefinger with a long acrylic nail finished with a lightning bolt. “One: There’s the previsit look, chipped nail polish, dull, rodentlike hair, and a distinct lack of confidence.” A second, equally decorated digit shot up to stand beside the first one. “Group two would be the ones who have to have me take the money out of their wallet because their nail polish isn’t dry, have enough foil in their hair to get cell phone service, and they are somewhat conspicuous because they’re wearing a black plastic bib.”

  Greer laughed.

  “And then there’s stage three”—Jenny leaned against the counter as she spoke—“the finished, polished, shiny-haired, lip-glossed, born again beauties who come to give me first approval.”

  “Maybe they’re just women who always look that way who dropped in for a coffee.”

  Jenny shook her head. “Uh-uh,” she said, “because they keep on patting their hair and looking at me hopefully until I tell them how gorgeous they look.” Jenny winked. “Which I do. Completely unsolicited, of course.”

  “Of course,” Greer agreed. “Sounds like we should be giving you a kickback for making us look good.”

  “Girl, I’m getting it!” She slapped her thigh as she spoke. “Speaking of which, what can I get you?”

  Greer looked around. The menu was up on a chalkboard. She ordered a flavored coffee and a vegetarian sandwich. When Jenny turned to make them, Greer resumed the conversation.

  “I’m so glad to hear that your business is picking up. Our mailman had me worried.”

  Jenny, knife in hand as she sliced a tomato, turned and threw a worried look over her shoulder. “Pistol.” The way she said it made it sound more like toxic waste than a person. She sighed. “Yes, Pistol is our bearer of news. I’ve heard all about you and your forwarded mail from Old Town Pasadena, and the fact that your husband’s name is Joshua.”

  Greer laughed again. “Joshua is my seventeen-year-old son. I don’t have a husband.”

  Jenny sighed deeply. “Lucky you,” she said.

  Greer cocked her head to one side and asked, “Husband troubles?”

  “No, yes, no, yes, no.” Jenny swayed her shapely hips from side to side with each contradiction. “I’ve only been married for six months—”

  “Congratulations!” Greer cut in.

  “Thank you. But we lived together for five years before that. Some days Lewis is the most wonderful, mature grown-up, and some days . . .”

  “He’s twelve?” Greer asked knowingly. There was a reason she wasn’t in a relationship. Sometimes it was just plain more trouble than it was worth.

  “No, not twelve,” Jenny said dismissively. “More like seven. You know, when you play, ‘Nuh-uh, I’m not stupid; you are!’ on the playground. That’s about seven, right?”

  “Or eight.” Greer nodded. “Today’s one of those days?”

  “Today,” Jenny said, placing a slice of whole grain bread on the top of layers of fresh vegetables and sprouts and slicing the whole thing diagonally with a flourish, “I want to take his head and push it into a gallon vat of mayonnaise and then agitate it up and down until he admits he’s wrong.” She turned and placed the sandwich on the counter, next to a huge, steaming mug of vanilla coffee.

  Greer suggested gently, “They say it doesn’t really matter who’s right or wrong.”

  “And as long as that’s true,” Jenny retorted emphatically, “then why can’t I be right and Lewis be wrong?”

  “Well, maybe we should ask Pistol,” Greer teased, pulling some cash out of her pocket. “I’m sure he’d have an opinion.”

  Jenny’s face clouded a little. “Let’s not. He’s not my favorite person in the neighborhood. Do you ever just get a feeling about somebody?”

  Greer looked at Jenny and experienced an overwhelming sensation of warmth and affection completely inappropriate for the connection created by a five-minute conversation. She nodded slowly. “Yeah,” she said, “sometimes I do.”

  Chapter 5

  Tuesday

  From Leah’s desk at State National Bank, she could see all the tellers and the door to the manager’s office. Behind that door lay the den of a snake, the despised, arrogant bastard of a bank manager: her ex-husband, Vince.

  Nervously, Leah tried to focus on the loan application in front of her, but she kept glancing compulsively at Vince’s door. He was in there with the regional supervisor, and part of the meeting was to go over a new practice policy that had been written by Leah. She had thrown herself into it, invested it with her hopes, and—driven by her venom for Vince—she had honed it till it was perfect. Leah was a woman who drove herself hard and was seldom satisfied with her work, but this report was really good. She sat staring at the entrance to the den with what she wished were X-ray eyes. If the regional manager was smart enough to see how good, it could mean a promotion. Maybe a promotion out of this office, away from “the Rattler,” as she called him, and just possibly help her achieve the revenge she wanted so badly: to outrank the Rattler.

  The floor was quiet this morning. Three tellers tried to look busy at their stations, chatting with the occasional customer to prolong the exchange. The nine-o’clock weekday rush was past, and there would be the regular midmorning lull until lunchtime. Normally Leah enjoyed this part of the day—got herself a third cup of coffee and buckled down to do twice as much paperwork as any other loan officer—but not today. Her hand was shaking slightly as she reached for the coffee mug, and the taste in her mouth was bitter.

  “Focus,” she commanded, taking a deep breath and willing herself to read and understand the words on the paper in front of her. Leah managed half a paragraph before the sound of an opening door pulled her head up with a snap. But it was the street entrance, not the office, and the woman who had come in paused just inside to look around, as though she were unfamiliar with the place.

  Some mom who wants to start a twenty dollar savings account for her kid, Leah thought, scowling. Not wanting to be bothered, she buried her head quickly in her work again. But from the corner of her eye she could see the woman coming toward her desk. “Shit,” she cursed under her breath, and turned deliberately away, swiveling her chair and pretending to search through some papers on a counter behind her.

  “Hi!” The woman had reached her.

  Leah sighed and put on her professionally helpful face before turning back, patting her styled hair to discipline any forbidden strays. She looked up at the woman and squinted against the glare from the glass front of the bank behind her. It was impossible for Leah to make out more than a silhouette. Straining the sinews of her professional patience, Leah managed to ask politely, “May I help you?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Leah,” said Greer, realizing that Leah was at a disadvantage, and moved to sit in the chair across from her. “Yes, I hope you can. I want to establish a payroll account. It’s nice to see you. How are you?” Greer looked unguardedly at Leah.

  The woman seemed to know her. A panicked moment of impending ineptitude throttled Leah, but she maintained the slightly aloof smile, while her brain swung around desperately searching for a face/name connection. She was somewhat hampered by her inner voice berating her for being so stupid. It was almost two full seconds before she could connect the woman to the reflexology treatment she’d had at the new salon last Thursday. The voice in her head cursed her slow, preoccupied brain. “I’m, uh, fine. Nice to see you again.” She was searching her mind for the woman’s name—it was something very different—while at the same time trying to sort out the request and re-evaluating the value of the woman whose hand she was now shaking. Payroll account? A therapist? She covered her confusion by turning to rummage in a drawer for the forms. “Have a seat,” she invited.

  “My partner and I decided to move our banking for this salon to a local bank, and I remembered that you said you worked here, and you’re local. Right down the street!”

  Leah could
handle this part. “Well, you came to the right place. Where do you have your business loan?” she fished.

  “We don’t have a loan on this salon; we were fortunate enough to be able to turn our profits from our other salon in Pasadena. But we were banking with National City there.”

  “No loan?” Leah stopped being busy to be unabashedly surprised. It was expensive to set up a new business, and having an intimate knowledge of the local real estate market, she knew that they had bought the space and spent a considerable sum fixing it up. She felt impressed—and belittled. This woman was more successful than she was, and Leah both admired and despised that.

  “We’ve been very lucky. And my partner, Dario, whom I think you met, is kind of a celebrity in hairstyling circles; that helps quite a bit. We’re not exactly starting from scratch, if you know what I mean.”

  “That’s true. I’d heard of his—that is, your—other salon. That’s why I called to book the appointment with you.”

  “But you just got a massage and reflexology.” Greer was thinking about her session with Leah and the sense of impending danger that she’d been left with. “Did it help with the stress?”

  “Oh, yes, it was wonderful!” Leah said enthusiastically, before embarrassment washed over her. “I have to apologize again for getting so emotional,” she said tightly.

  It was Greer’s turn to look surprised. “Apologize? Oh, you mean for crying. For God’s sake, a little releasing is the healthiest thing you can do in that situation.” She smiled at Leah as though it had been a real treat for her. “It’s like this: You put so much stress in a container, more than it can hold, so you pack it down hard and put the lid on it. What I do is make a tiny hole in the side of the container, just a little opening so that the compacted stress can start to leak out. That’s what you were reacting to. It’s scary at first—it just seems like so much—but it gets easier as the pressure in the container goes down.”

  Leah felt the truth of what the woman—what was her name?—was saying, but at the same time she was ashamed for having shown weakness. She asked sarcastically, “Why don’t you just turn the container over and dump it out?”

  If she expected a laugh, she didn’t get it. Instead of looking amused, Greer looked sadly resigned. “Because that would probably kill you.”

  Feeling very unstable that this woman knew something both intensely personal and unflattering about her, Leah tried to get the upper hand back by being dubious and slightly superior. “Why would getting rid of my stress kill me?”

  “Because it’s all that’s holding you up right now.”

  This was so true that Leah felt a lump form in her throat like a saturated sponge that might leak tears if she squeezed it. With a quick little exhale to relieve the unwelcome pressure of emotion rearing its ugly head in her carefully controlled environment, she looked questioningly at the woman across from her.

  As Greer explained, Leah watched the plump lips and noticed the way they seemed slightly behind the words that were spoken, as though they were too comfortably full of a good dinner and couldn’t really rouse the energy to get up off the sofa. And her eyes. Leah had never seen anything so green except for sunlight on new grass.

  “Of course, we all want to get rid of our stress, but since we’ve practiced it so diligently, and we believe that we can’t live our lives without it, then if we don’t have something to replace it with we’d just deflate and collapse. You know, it’s not real, the stress. You just believe it is, so you make it true for you.”

  “Oh, isn’t it?” Leah snorted in disbelief, her handsome face twisting slightly with disdain. “I don’t know about you, but my life is just a tiny bit stressful.” Leah glanced at the door to the manager’s office. “Believe me.”

  But Greer’s eyes glinted as she leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “It’s what he wants, you know—for you to be afraid.”

  Leah stiffened. The conversation had crossed uncomfortably out of her limited realm of normality. “I’m sorry; I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said in an attempt to regain control by implying that she was the sane one sitting across from a wacko. Why could she not remember the woman’s name?

  But she was foiled once again. Greer shrugged and said, “Don’t worry; you’ll get it eventually. You do really want to replace those beliefs, you know. And it would be much easier to just ask me my name, like everybody else, instead of beating yourself up for forgetting it. It’s Greer. Unusual, but you’ll get that too. We’re going to be friends.”

  Leah’s mouth hung open. Was this woman nuts? They were going to be friends? She couldn’t have been less like any of Leah’s friends, who were all very anxiety-ridden, type-A, uptight yuppies with exclusive gym memberships and big-ass car-lease payments who made deals on their cell phones as they were reviewing contracts while fixing gourmet dinners for chic, mandatory dinner parties. This woman, in spite of running more than one highly profitable business, was disconcertingly, to Leah, at ease.

  But before Leah could assimilate the swirl of her feelings and decide whether to dismiss Greer as a hippie relic or pursue her as a potential ally, the door to the snake’s den opened. Two men appeared in the doorway: one was the Rattler. Tall and far too perfect, he was holding a large, thick manila envelope in one hand and resting the other on the shoulder of a shorter, balding man. This was Steve Kenner, the bank chain’s regional manager, whom Leah’s friend Towler had once described as a beach ball that was losing air.

  “Excuse me a minute,” Leah said without a glance at Greer, and, rising from her chair, she crossed over to one of the tellers with a form in her hand, so that she could eavesdrop on what the two men were saying.

  Towler, a slight young man with a nervous smile and a perpetually crooked tie, greeted her casually. “Hey, Leah, what’s up?”

  “Do me a favor, Towler. Just pretend I’m showing you something for a minute. Okay?” Her eyes darted to Vince and the regional manager and then back to him.

  “Got it.” Towler nodded intelligently. He pulled the blank form she was offering across the counter, and, taking up a pen, pretended to be reviewing the sheet, occasionally making a meaningless mark. Leah pointed her face toward the paper too, but both of them were entirely focused on the conversation taking place behind Towler.

  Steve Kenner was speaking in a low growl to Vince, and though Vince’s smile was plastered in place, Leah was pleased to sense a nervous twitch at the edge of it.

  “We’ll be keeping an eye on this branch,” Kenner was telling Vince.

  Vince’s smarmy, pseudo-sincere voice jarred Leah’s ears. She’d heard it lying to her far too many times, and she’d bought it once too often. “Thank you, Steve. I can’t tell you how much help you’ve been.”

  Leah could see him behind Towler, but even if she hadn’t she would have known exactly what he was doing. It was his I’m-overcome-with-gratitude routine.

  He’d put the hand holding the envelope down by his side while the other reached up to scratch his head, and then he let it rest, open palmed, on his chest. His voice sounded solid and confident, but just on the edge of being overcome with emotion, as he said, “Without you, I don’t think I would be where I am.”

  “Mmm,” Kenner grunted dismissively. “Listen, the truth is, your performance is off, and you need to show some improvement to stay where you are. Understand?”

  Vince nodded his head. “I’m on it,” he said definitively. “And having your support means everything to me.”

  Leah glanced up at Towler, who pretended to gag. She suppressed a smile by grimacing as though at a difficult part of their important work.

  “Come on.” Vince made the transition back to Perfect Confident Man. “I’ll walk you to the door. How’s the beautiful Susan?” he asked, his voice overflowing with intense and sincere-sounding interest as the two men started for the exit. The reply was lost when Vince pressed a button to buzz them out onto the floor.

  Vince held the front door open fo
r Kenner, and the two shook hands as a preamble to saying good-bye.

  But Vince wasn’t finished. “Did you see my new toy?” he asked, pointing to a bright yellow Ducati motorcycle in the parking space marked BANK MANAGER.

  But instead of looking impressed, Kenner frowned, and it seemed all Vince could do to keep his facade up as the shorter man turned a narrowed eye back at him. Leah strained to hear what he said to Vince, but all she caught was something that sounded derogatory about hours and Vince’s commitment to work instead of fun.

  Just then Pistol came into the bank carrying a white plastic laundry-basket-size box marked U.S. POSTAL SERVICE, which was full with the day’s correspondence. Vince held the door open for him and he nodded his thanks without looking up. Leah had to stand to one side as he walked to the counter and handed the box over to Towler, who took it and traded him for an exact replica of the mail crate with the outgoing mail. For a moment she lost her view of the drama in the doorway.

  When Pistol moved away, she could see that Vince had opened the glass door for Kenner, who exited without looking back. “Tell little Bobby he owes me a game of catch!” Vince called after the retreating regional manager. He let the door close and his smile disappeared as a look of disgusted anger swept across his face. With an impatient gesture he stopped Pistol, who was just exiting. “Hold on; this is going out too.” He put the thick envelope into the crate and started across the floor for his office, but Leah intercepted him.

  “Well?” she asked, angry with herself for seeming too eager, for feeling afraid of him.

  “Well what?” he asked mockingly, tilting his head to one side as though he just couldn’t think of what it was she might want to know, and giving her body an insulting up-and-down sliding look.

  She could have stamped her foot and snorted, she hated him so much. She allowed herself the pleasant visual of running him through with something sharp before she smiled with a fake sweetness to make fun of his own. “Why, the report. You know the one, Vince—the one I just couldn’t have done without you.”