pretty sure Mandy would cheat, but right now he was kind of digging the hollow feeling in his gut.
Starve myself with fruits and veggies,
Pants hang large, don’t give me wedgies!
“Yours is a worthier soul than mine.” Peaches threw back another handful of Cheez-Its and tossed the box aside. “Okay.” She pushed her hair behind her ears, hoping the electric-orange Cheez-It residue stuck to her teeth wasn’t too unattractive. “This is going to be sort of messy.” She opened the door to the office closet. Mop. Bucket. Disposable thermometers. Tongue depressors. Ice packs. Paper towels. “I just wish I had some real towels.”
Stuart looked down at his T-shirt. He didn’t mind getting conditioner on it, but it might put the nurse at ease if he wasn’t wearing it. He pulled the shirt off over his head. “Does this help?”
Oh yes. Peaches tried not to stare, but it was useless. For someone with such a boyish face and skinny arms, Stuart Little had a very manly chest, with less hair on it than she would’ve thought, and no middle-aged paunch at all. His belly was concave.
“Good idea. So helpful. Thank you. That’s great. Let’s get started.”
Stuart swiveled around in the chair. Peaches retrieved a bottle of Suave Tropical Coconut conditioner and a stack of white paper towels. She tossed the paper towels on her desk and stood over him, holding the bottle of conditioner aloft.
“I’m going to squirt a whole bunch of this stuff onto your head and comb through it. I’ll wipe the excess off on a paper towel. Hopefully we’ll be able to see what we’re getting. And hopefully we’ll get them all.”
Stuart took a deep, shuddering breath. “Go for it.”
Peaches popped open the cap, turned the conditioner upside down, and squeezed, ignoring the embarrassing farting and sucking sounds the bottle made as the thick white stuff oozed all over Stuart Little’s head. She put the bottle down and began to rub the conditioner into his scalp with her fingertips.
“Run away, little fuckers,” she said as she picked up the lice comb. “Prepare to die.”
Stuart closed his eyes once more and shivered. “I just want them off me.”
Peaches dragged the comb through a section of hair. Conditioner piled up and oozed off the comb, dropping onto his shoulders in clumps, like wet snow. She swiped at them with a paper towel. “Sorry. Told you it was messy.”
“Probably should’ve gone with a professional lice lady,” Stuart joked.
Peaches snorted. Emboldened, she drew the comb through another section of hair, letting the excess conditioner ooze down the back of Stuart’s neck, over the slope of his bare shoulder blades, and onto the floor.
She frowned as she combed through another section. “I’m not finding anything. Maybe they’re all hiding in one spot, or maybe you only had the one. Or maybe I was just seeing things before and you never had any at all.”
“Keep going,” Stuart murmured. “It actually feels good.”
Peaches smiled and shook her head. Why had she not thought to prop her iPhone in the corner and video this? Not that she wanted to post it on social media or anything, but for her own personal use.
“You know what’s going to happen, don’t you?” she said. “Some kid is going to come down here with a fever, wanting to go home, and I’m going to be up to my elbows in conditioner.” And you with your shirt off, she almost added, but didn’t, because it had just occurred to her that maybe what they were doing was against school policy. It was very possible that she was breaking some code of staff conduct listed in a booklet she’d been given on her first day of work but had never read.
“It smells great.” Stuart rocked the swivel chair gently from side to side. He felt like he was on vacation.
The first sign of Mandy’s condition was back in late June. They were watching Saturday Night Live and she said, “My legs have felt weird all day, like my feet aren’t connected right. They keep falling asleep.” Stuart forgot all about it until the next weekend, when he’d planned to bike around Governors Island with Teddy on his new BMX bike. Mandy said she couldn’t because she was tired. Then on Monday she said she couldn’t walk Teddy to his first day at Little Mushrooms day camp. She went back to bed and stayed there. A week later she went to the doctor, and after that it was like she had a new job,