Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely - Gail Honeyman Page 0,44
name badge) bustled about distractedly and then perched opposite, having first set down a kidney bowl slopping with hot, soapy water. She swiveled the rack of polishes toward me.
“What color would you like?” she said. My eye was drawn to a bright green hue, the same shade as a poisonous Amazonian frog, the tiny, delightfully deadly ones. I handed it to her. She nodded. She wasn’t actually chewing gum, but her demeanor was very much that of a gum chewer.
She took my hands and placed the tips of all ten fingers into the warm water. I kept a watchful eye to ensure that no other flesh made contact with the unknown detergent substances, for fear of inflaming my eczema. I sat there for several minutes, feeling rather foolish, while she rummaged in a nearby drawer and returned with a variety of stainless steel tools, carefully laid out on a tray. Her catatonic companion had finally sprung to life and was chatting enthusiastically to a coworker at a different concession; I couldn’t discern the topic, but it seemed to prompt some eye-rolling and shrugging.
Casey deemed the moment apposite to remove my hands from the water, and she then laid them on a folded flannel. She carefully patted each fingertip dry. I wondered why she hadn’t simply asked me to remove my hands, using her voice, and passed me the towel, so I could dry them using my hands, since I was enjoying, at current point of reporting, full use and motor function in all limbs and extremities. Perhaps that was what pampering meant, though—literally, not having to lift a finger.
Casey set to work with the tools, pushing back my cuticles and trimming them where required. I essayed some chitchat, aware that this was the done thing in the circumstances.
“Have you worked here long?” I asked.
“Two years,” she said, to my astonishment—she appeared to be around fourteen years of age and, to the best of my knowledge, child labor was still outlawed in this country.
“And did you always want to be a . . .” I grappled for the word “. . . manicurist?”
“Nail technician,” she corrected me. She was intent on her task and did not look at me while she talked, which I approved of enormously. There is categorically no need for eye contact when the person concerned is wielding sharp implements.
“I wanted either to work with animals or to be a nail technician,” she continued. She had moved on to a hand massage now. More deluxe pampering, presumably, although I found it rather pointless and ineffectual, and was concerned for potential allergic reactions. Her hands were tiny, almost as small as mine (which are, unfortunately, abnormally small, like a dinosaur’s). I would have preferred a man’s hands: larger, stronger, firmer. Hairier.
“So yeah,” she said, “I couldn’t decide between animals or nails, so I asked my mum, and she said I should go for nail technician.” She picked up an emery board and began to shape my nails. It was an awkward process, one that would have definitely been easier to do oneself.
“Is your mother an economist or a qualified careers adviser?” I said. Casey stared at me. “Because, if not, then I’m not sure that her advice was necessarily informed by the latest data on earnings projections and labor market demand,” I said, quite concerned for her future prospects.
“She’s a travel agent,” Casey said firmly, as if that settled the matter. I let it drop—it was no concern of mine, after all, and she seemed happy enough at her work. The thought did strike me, as she painted on various coats of various varnishes, that she could have perhaps combined the two professions by becoming a dog groomer. However, I elected to keep my counsel on the matter. Sometimes, when you tried to help with suggestions, it could lead to misunderstandings, not all of them entirely pleasant.
She placed my hands into a small machine which was, I assumed, a hair dryer for nails, and a few minutes later the deluxe pampering was done. All in all, the experience had been rather underwhelming.
She advised me of the price—it was, frankly, extortionate. “I have a leaflet!” I said. She nodded, not even asking to check it, and deducted the requisite one-third, stating the revised amount, which still left me reeling. I reached for my shopper. She said “Stop!” in a very alarming fashion. I did.
“You’ll smudge them,” she said. She leaned forward. “I’ll get your purse out for you, if you