How to Pronounce Knife - Souvankham Thammavongsa Page 0,17

sister sure didn’t have the best nails. They were too long and yellowed at the tips, and her skin was dry and flaking. “Watch your fucking face! I know what you’re thinking about these nails. If I paint them, the polish remover I use on clients will just fuck them up. And I ain’t going to use that gel shit on myself. It’s fucking expensive.” He had started to cut her nails when she added, “Talk to me like I’m a client. Go on. Ask about my day, the weather, say something nice about me, try to make conversation.” Raymond tried to think of what he could say, but before he could open his mouth his sister reassured him, “Don’t you worry too much about this part. Most of the time they won’t talk to you because they think you don’t know how to speak English, which is fine because it’s exhausting to make conversation. I don’t care about their kids or husbands or boyfriends or what the fuck they’re doing this weekend. If you don’t want to talk to a client because you’re tired or not interested, just turn to me and speak Lao. They’ll think we’re talking about them and that’ll shut them right the fuck up.”

For cheap nails, Raymond thought, he had to do and remember so much.

RAYMOND MADE A LOT of mistakes on the job. He would forget to brush off the excess nail polish on the bottle’s mouth, so the polish went on too thick. He would check too soon to see if the paint was dry, pressing a finger on a client’s painted nail and leaving a fingerprint. He also didn’t leave enough room between the nail and the cuticle to draw out the shape of the nail. He had to start all over again each time, and what was supposed to be a twenty-minute job often took him an hour. But the clients his sister gave him were patient, and they didn’t say anything about the hearts he drew even though they did appear to be, like his sister said, blobs of shit. No one complained. When they left, his sister said, “You see that, Raymond? I woulda been cussed out if I did what you did. But you? It’s ‘Oh sweetie, take your time’ and ‘Don’t worry about it, honey. You’re doing fine.’” Whenever his sister pretended to speak in the voice of a client, it was high-pitched and annoying, and she’d stand with one hand on her waist and float her other arm around and swat at the air. He had to admit, it was fun to work with her. She always found a way to make him laugh.

Over time, the work got easier. There was a pattern to the day and he just had to follow it. His sister liked to brag that Raymond was a boxer, and the clients seemed to like that this big, burly former fighter was handling their small hands. He thought some might be uncomfortable with a man handling them this way, but his sister told him the clients thought it was wonderful to be touched by that kind of muscle so gently.

Raymond was good with the endless repetition and with assessing what needed to be done. It reminded him of sparring at the gym, having to think and act quickly, anticipate what was coming, and then respond. Every client wanted something different, but there were some basic things everyone needed. He removed polish, cut nails, applied cuticle oil, and pushed skin away from the nails to give them a clean look and shape. Some nails had no shape; they came out straight and flat on the nail bed and he had to round them with a file. He had to work the file at a forty-five-degree angle, deciding where the nail should begin to bend. It was very subtle, the bend. At first, he wore a mask over his nose and mouth and he wore gloves too, but he couldn’t get a proper grip and his clients couldn’t hear what he said. After a few days he stopped wearing them, exposing himself to those tiny shards of nail dust that now entered and scratched at his lungs.

There were many nail polish colours. He couldn’t remember them all so he just told his clients to pick a colour once they walked through the door: Shrimp Sunday Orange, Funny Cool Purple, Double Personality Blue, Alter Ego Pink. The names and colours went all along and around