Can Opener

“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 open your eyes to get tangles out; you can sit in the dark with a wide-tooth comb for an hour.

My fingertips were so tender, separating each snarl, that it occurred to me I’d never touched my head this gently.