“I mean,” she adds, staring at my arm, “sure, we have some problems. Who doesn’t?”
“Right. Of course.”
I look at her and smile until her gaze goes sideways and lowers to my sugar-ravaged hands.
“Why?” she says. “Why are you asking?”
“No reason. Look, do you mind if we do another color today? Sort of had my fill of Amuse Bouche.”
We go back to contemplating the space just past our respective left ears.
She continues to rub the brown sugar into my already raw arms with excruciating vigor, making her breast flesh ripple way more than it really needs to, I think. After she rinses it off roughly with a scalding hot cloth, she scoops cold white yogurt from the coconut shell. I watch her slather it onto my scaly forearm, work it between my slender fingers with her warm, plump hands. Even when my hands were plump like Cassie’s, they never gave off such warmth.
“I just don’t get it,” I say.
“What don’t you get?” There’s a new coolness in her voice. The shock of it makes my heart skip. For a second I’m speechless.
I look at the red coil of hair that has slipped from her messy bun onto her broad freckled shoulder, her thin sky blue strap and the thick flesh-colored bra strap beneath. I feel the tightness of my own dress buttons down my back.
“What don’t you get?” she prompts.
“Why they call this the Caribbean. Because there’s nothing really ‘Caribbean’ about it, is there? I mean, ingredient-wise?” It’s true. The yogurt’s not even Greek.
Cassie says nothing.
“Must make you hungry, though, this combination,” I say. “Does it?”
She looks at me until I lower my eyes.
“At first it did,” she says. “Yeah. Although,” she adds, “rubbing it on people’s hands and feet enough times can make you pretty sick of it after a while.”
She puts the polish and topcoat on quickly. She’s sloppy administering the serum from the eyedropper, so the clear liquid bleeds out of my nail beds in rivulets. She doesn’t enlist me to stay and wait those ten minutes that she always says would make all the difference in the world. She just takes the bowl and dumps the cooled salt water into the sink.
“You want this?” She asks as an afterthought, dangling the emery board over the trash bin, holding it between her thumb and index finger like it’s the tail of roadkill.
“I’m good.”
She doesn’t carry my purse to the register, so that I pretty much destroy my nails fishing out my keys and wallet. But I still leave her an absurd cash tip. I write “For Cammie” on the little gratuity envelope. Then I cross it out and write “Cassie.”
? ? ?
These days I wake to the smell of whatever she’s been baking since before dawn—that is, if I’m really sleeping. Seven-layer coconut cakes. Lattice-crust pies full of cherries she hand pits. Often I’ll have a slice or two while she watches from the other end of the dining room table. Just until I find my own place, I tell Eve each morning when I join her in the kitchen. Stay as long as you like, she says, watching me fork into her dessert, pouring us both more coffee. Not like I don’t have the room.