devour everything she could find online about him and study it like it was homework. She was a couple of years older than he was, but so what? She’d taken Intro to Latin in college because of his song “Omnia Vincit!” She’d stopped wearing makeup because of his song “My Girlfriend Wakes Up Pretty.” She’d decided it’d be okay to drop out of college because of his song “Fuck College.” They’d both had their kids before they’d gotten married. Who’d have thought he’d send his kid to the very Brooklyn public school where she now worked as a nurse? Thank goodness her husband and parents had encouraged/forced her to stop pretending to write a short-story collection or play, take the required courses at Adelphi University, get her nursing degree, and seek out this fulfilling, practical job.
Nurse Peaches was wearing one of those old-fashioned long underwear tops—light blue, with big white snowflakes printed on it. It was tight, pulled over the softness of her upper arms and stomach. The open circle of her belly button was heartbreakingly visible beneath the shirt. She didn’t seem to mind. Stuart definitely didn’t mind.
He released his tattooed hand from his pocket and ran it through his hair again. “I don’t know how to handle the whole lice thing,” he began. “My son brought home your letter and I checked him. But I just can’t get it out of my head, so to speak. I feel like they’re all over me.”
“Would you like me to check you?” Peaches offered in the same indifferent, professional tone she’d used before.
“Could you?” Stuart asked, resisting the urge to hug her. “That would be great.”
Peaches pulled a LiceMeister comb out of her drawer and stood up. She pointed at her chair. “Have a seat.”
Stuart unzipped his gray hoodie, bundling it into his lap as he sat down. “I took a shower last night. Not that it makes any difference.”
“It’s easier with conditioner,” Peaches explained, placing a tentative hand on top of his head. His hair was soft. Strands of silvery gray were interspersed with the reds and browns. Thank you Mom and Dad, my dear husband Greg, and my son Liam, she thought as she combed, admiring the sinewy ridges of Stuart’s shoulders beneath his worn black T-shirt. Thank you for cheering me on through those impossibly humbling hours of nursing school.
Stuart reached behind him and lifted up the shaggy hair on the back of his neck. “Under here’s where it itches most,” he explained. “I can’t sleep. I can’t sit still. I just keep scratching. And the more I scratch, the more it itches.”
Rhymes with bitches, he thought to himself. Sandwiches.
Back in the day, the Blind Mice used to get in trouble all the time for using the word bitches in their lyrics. They heard the scoldings of their critics and agreed that perhaps bitches was insulting and degrading to women, but they kept on using it anyway because there really was no better word, except for chicks, which rhymed with dicks, which opened up doors way worse.
Peaches inhaled indulgently and dug in with the lice comb. His hair was so fine and wavy it was hard to part. He smelled vaguely of smoked meat. Of course he did. He and his kid’s mom—whose name was Mandy, Peaches remembered, and who’d once been a teen model—probably went out to those hip new barbecue bars every night and had a rockin’ roll of a time, doing shots and snorting lines in their leather jackets and perfectly worn jeans, while she and Greg and Liam stayed home and ate penne with jarred red sauce for the ten thousandth time and binge-watched whole seasons of long-forgotten TV shows like Fawlty Towers and Mork & Mindy.
“See anything?” Stuart asked with his eyes closed. Even when he’d been kind of a celebrity he hadn’t done any pampering, like getting a massage or a cuticle treatment or having the pores on his nose expunged. He took a hot shower once a day and went to the barber for a haircut a couple of times a year. Peaches’ comb-through felt awesome.
“So far so good,” Peaches said vaguely. “You have so much hair though. This could take hours.”
Stuart kept his eyes shut. “I tried to do the conditioner thing on myself, but I couldn’t really see what I was doing.”
Peaches pulled the top of his right ear out of the way so she could check behind it. There were half-closed holes all the way up his earlobes.