Count My Lies

Chapter 3

3

I get to work late on Monday morning. I snoozed my alarm three too many times, then ran out the door as I struggled with the zipper on my hoodie. Luckily, no one cares what time I show up at the spa, as long as I’m there by my first appointment, which, today, happens to be at ten thirty.

Mondays are typically our quietest days, and this Monday is no different. The spa is practically empty. Chloe, one of our three rotating receptionists, is behind the desk. Out of the group, I like her the most. She’s a nineteen-year-old sophomore at Brooklyn College, cooler than I’ll ever be. Her jet-black hair is bleached platinum—her Korean parents almost disowned her when they saw it, she told me gleefully—cut into a sleek bob, short bangs. She wears oversized plastic tortoiseshell glasses, wide-legged jeans, and crop tops. If it’s slow, I’ll do her nails, usually a neon color, bright yellow or orange, like a highlighter.

Behind Chloe, a lone woman is getting a pedicure in one of the four spa chairs that line the left wall. Only one of the six small treatment rooms is occupied, its door shut, sign flipped to In Session . It will pick up a bit in the afternoon, but not by much. Lena takes Monday mornings off, so a lot of the girls stroll in closer to ten than nine, when the shift officially starts, with the exception of the opener, who arrives at eight in case of a walk-in.

A thick bloom of eucalyptus and lemongrass wafts over me as I walk through the spa. Under it, the acidic smell of polish and acetone. It used to bother me when I first started, the heady fumes making my eyes water, but I’ve acclimated. I hardly notice it anymore, except for the days I work a double, when it seeps into my clothes, clings to the fibers of my scrubs, my hair, my skin, the chemicals following me home, into my bed, into my dreams.

I deposit my purse and coat into the break room in the back and make myself a cup of coffee before my first client arrives. Last year, Lena purchased a Keurig for employee use as a Christmas present. She keeps the cupboard stocked with espresso pods and French vanilla–flavored creamer. She beams when she sees someone using it, still impressed by the ingenuity of her own gift-giving.

I take a sip of coffee and peek my head out into the nail bay. It’s empty, the woman in the pedicure chair now at reception, handing Chloe her credit card. Even though the tips are less on these slow Mondays, I prefer this pace to the end-of-week rush, the manic, caffeine-fueled women staring impatiently at the clock as we churn through client after client. It gives me a chance to catch up with the other nail techs, gossip between appointments.

As if on cue, Natasha, my co–nail tech, walks into the break room. She smiles when she sees me.

Natasha is a few years younger than me, a half-Vietnamese Jersey girl—her mom from Ho Chi Minh City, her dad a second-generation Sicilian from East Hanover—with pink-streaked black hair that she pulls into a high ponytail at the crown of her head. She wears her scrubs skintight over a push-up bra, always a pair of gold hoop earrings the size of a bangle bracelet. It’s a pain-in-the-ass commute from Jersey City, but she makes three times the money here as she would across the river; the Hoboken housewives are a tad less generous with their wallets.

“Morning, Slo,” she says, popping a coffee pod into the machine. Her acrylics clack against the plastic buttons. “Have a good weekend?”

I nod. “It was great.” I offer her a creamer from the glass canister. “I met someone,” I say, smiling, thinking about Jay. “At the park on Friday. And he took me to dinner last night.”

In reality, I spent the afternoon making Alton Brown’s root vegetable panzanella for my mom, and we both fell asleep in front of the TV watching Seinfeld . Jay, I’m sure, was with his wife and Harper, the three of them cuddled together in Harper’s bed, Harper in the middle, reading bedtime stories. Later that night, when I moved from the couch to my bed, I googled him in the dark, under my covers, his LinkedIn profile the first hit. I studied his list of jobs, then searched for his socials, disappointed to find they were all set to private.

“Oh yeah?” Natasha says. Her microbladed brows shoot up with interest. Then, “Tell me everything .”

I grin. “Well, for starters, he’s super handsome. And great in bed. Like, really, really great,” I add for emphasis.

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 , or no, not like that, more rounded! , an ouch! 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-aged woman. 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 see Funny Girl if 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.