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It’s In the Details

by Marian Allen

“How did you know?” the bridesmaid asked, adjusting the bride’s hat so it sat straight and not at an inappropriately rakish angle.

Anita looked at herself in the full-length mirror on the back of her childhood bedroom’s door and nodded as she considered the question.

The bridesmaid was one of the groom’s cousins, since Anita had no close family and no female friends who hadn’t been bridesmaided out over the years. Even her Matron of Honor was a co-worker who hadn’t been a wedding since her own and had all but insisted on the role.

Anita was liked, but she wasn’t well liked.

She was too reserved for office hijinks, too trustworthy to be trusted to pass on gossip, too odd in her humor. Jokes that had the rest of the office in stitches didn’t strike her as funny, and, if she ever told what she considered a joke, nobody noticed.

Men attracted by her brunette curls and elfin face flirted with her, but moved on to other women who weren’t such cold bitches, meaning other women who realized they were flirting.

Then came Paul.

Paul was all business as he passed his paperwork across the counter. Never any chit-chat, never any small talk. He didn’t even ignore her after their first week of straightforward interactions, looking over her shoulder to say, “Hello, beautiful!” to any woman who met his eye. Just a statement of what the paperwork was, a friendly smile, and a habitual tap on the counter as he turned to leave.

After a month, she found herself sad if she heard that tap when she was in the file room and knew he had come in and passed his papers to somebody else.

After two months, she found herself irritated if somebody mentioned Paul in an offhandedly derogatory way. He was no fun. He dressed like a grandfather. He wouldn’t know flirting if it bit him on the ass.

A new woman joined the office. The other women called her a Social Director. At first, they called her that behind her back. Then one of them called her that when they knew she could hear, and she laughed and adopted that title and role. She organized birthday parties and Secret Santas. Anita participated, because she wasn’t clueless enough to think she could not.

One day, The Social Director bustled in with a “wonderful idea”: They would all go to a new nail salon that was opening in one of the malls and was offering a special on nail art, with an additional discount if you booked a group.

Anita had no intention of going, but someone said, “Anita won’t go,” so she said, “Why wouldn’t I go? I’m invited, aren’t I?” So she was, so she went.

The manicurist she sat down with started chatty but, after being unable to draw Anita out about the thrill of having her nails painted and being told, “I don’t care, just nothing flashy or cutesy” to every question she asked about color and pattern, she subsided and became refreshingly businesslike.

She held up a bottle of purple polish and said, “I’ve been wanting to try this. It’s thermal. Purple when it’s warm, black when it’s cold.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Anita. Black polish? Purple?

“It isn’t flashy, I promise,” said … Anita looked at the name tag pinned to the woman’s blouse … Dotty. “If you don’t like it, I’ll take it off and do something else. Pale pink. Clear. But I really, really want to try this. We aren’t allowed to have painted nails. It’s all about the customers, see?”

Anita couldn’t say no to that, so she agreed. The polish went on deep purple but lightened as her body heat warmed it. While it was drying, Dotty looked through a drawer behind her and turned back to Anita with a sheet of gold decals.

“How about these?” she asked, showing Anita the leaves and vines, the curls and swirls.

They compromised on one leaf for each nail and an almost solid gold sheet for what Dotty called “the accent nail”.

When it was done, Anita didn’t dislike it. The women who were done before she was looked over her shoulder and oooohed and aaaahed in an approval she had never felt from them before and liked, even as she rather resented liking it.

The next day, they happily fluttered their fingers at each other as they came in to work, and Anita was, for once, included. Anita suddenly saw them as needy children, and felt an indulgent affection for them, as she did actual children.

By the time Paul came in, they had all forgotten their finery and were working as usual. But Paul noticed her hands.

“What’s this?” he said.

“We all went to a nail salon,” Anita said, uncomfortably, feeling ridiculous.

The woman closest to them said, “We got our nails did,” and showed him her scarlet talons with Tweety Bird heads all over them. She nodded toward Anita. “Hers are special.”

“How so?”

“They’re thermal,” the woman said, then dropped the conversation to answer her phone.

“They’re black, now,” Anita explained, since he was clearly expressing interest, “because we keep it chilly in here.” (The office manager had hot flashes, but that was nobody’s business.) “They turn purple when I’m warm.”

“May I see?”

Paul held out his hand. Anita put her hand in his. Her nails turned pale purple.

And that was how they knew.

The End

#4 Daughter tells me I can make a page-turner out of people doing ordinary things. I hope she’s right, because this would be a prime example if it’s so.

MY PROMPT FOR TODAY: My nails. A thermal polish that shifts from black (cold) to purple (warm). I stamped in Heart of Gold because I don’t think decals are much fun.

MA