MERMAID
In a Bottle
“Have you seen the hair conditioner?”
No one answered me. “Never mind. I found it.”
I couldn’t tell if everyone had left our motel room, or if I was finally on the receiving end of a well-deserved silent treatment. I was a bore and a bitch and all I did was lose things.
“I’ll be in the shower for the next hour, trying to get these dreads out.”
They left, I guess. I didn’t blame them. I would talk to myself in the bathroom, until I got those knots out, one by one.
I stepped into the stand-up motel shower and fiddled with the broken hot and cold knobs for a minute. Half the water came squirting out of a broken pipe in the corner, the rest through the shower head.
The big bottle of conditioner said it was “Gardenia” but I hoped it was slimy and filled with silicon goo as slick as a new rain puddle. I poured a full cup of it into my hands and massaged it into my fried blond thatch. Press, press, squish, squish.
The gardenia scent went right up my nose. Sweet. I closed my eyes. You don’t have to …