from her and her girls, and sent them off to be tested. And in the end, he found his holy grail – not just one mutation but two. The instinct that had made him turn around and knock at her door had proven correct. Now he was getting impatient. Sylvia said anh? like a child, yes, but not an obedient one. She was the kind of child that says no just to say no, to suck on the word like a lemon drop.
* * *
Sylvia wanted to say yes, but she delayed. Holding it over Lee, out of reach, stirred a swarm of power in her. Despite his obvious desire for her, that sprung arrow thrusting towards her, Lee was not just another customer. He was a fancy, rich doctor. A real prize. And not easy to win. His marriage seemed unhappy but unassailable. He loved his children at home so much he even brought one of them to the salon sometimes, a sallow boy of about nine. Joseph always sat in a corner, as far away as possible from Jacob. The two boys were cagey around one another, as if each begged the question of the other.
Things had slipped many times during Sylvia’s career – her resolve, her guard, the condom. Ten years ago, the police had again started cracking down on ‘unaccompanied women’ in the hotels. Loveness had fled east to work at a cousin’s bar in Chipata. Alone in Lusaka, Sylvia had neglected herself, working only when she felt like it, and in a haze of alcohol. She remembered Lee, though. He’d been with a bunch of coloured med students at a bachelors’ party at the Ridgeway – a sloppy night, everyone drunk and handsy.
There had been other men that night, that week. It didn’t matter. Sylvia knew she just had to plant the seed of possibility in Lee’s mind and see what sprouted. Clients had made propositions to her before, all with that temporary, almost impersonal passion that possesses men when they’re fucking. But it would take a snare of a less obvious kind to capture Lee. So Sylvia stalled, holding just out of his reach something he believed he’d already had.
She knew he was hooked when, one day at the Hi-Fly, he confessed something seemingly insignificant to her, a trivial thing really. Sylvia was washing a customer’s hair. Lee was sitting in a chair tipped back against the wall, smoking, his legs stretched out so that she had to step over them whenever she reached for the hose. Every time she passed, he grabbed at her with his free hand, and she flung droplets in his face. The customer kept sighing and complaining that the rim of the bucket of water was digging into the back of her neck. Sylvia didn’t care. Her thighs were wet, her cheeks sore with smiling. She felt like a young girl again.
‘You know, Silly,’ Lee said, ‘I have to tell you this story about my wife—’
‘Heysh!’ Sylvia glared at him.
The customer raised her head, her look somewhere between mortified and mortifying. Sylvia murmured a reassurance and pushed her head gently back over the edge of the bucket.
‘A couple years ago,’ Lee went on, ‘my wife had this rotten tooth. It was bad. You could smell it on her breath.’ He shuddered and took a drag of his cigarette. ‘She had it pulled—’ Here Lee became so overcome with laughter he couldn’t speak, spurts of smoke puffing from his nostrils, ash raining over everything. ‘So now,’ Lee chuckled and wheezed, ‘now all her other teeth are starting to shift! And she has a gap in the front.’ He dissolved again into laughter, tears bejewelling his lashes. The customer shook her head subtly.
‘Ah-ah, that’s your story?’ Sylvia snapped. ‘Rubbish, that’s not even funny.’
‘But you, my dahrring,’ he swiped at her bum and she swivelled her hips out of reach, ‘you have beautiful straight teeth. Shiny and white. No gaps!’
Sylvia sprang water at him with her manicured nails. ‘Ach, stupit,’ she said softly.
But that evening, as she closed up the salon while Lee waited outside in his pickup, Sylvia caught a glimpse of her face. It was dark inside but for scattered glints across the room from the pickup’s headlights. She stepped towards the mirrored wall into a sliver of light and gingerly lifted her upper lip. It was neither a smile nor a grimace. She looked coolly at her perfect teeth. Lee honked the horn and started a round of