Jana Pokorná

Her Story

The salon smells like almond shampoo and the cold permanent solution I mixed at four — and it's that solution that does it. Acetone and ammonia and something sweet underneath, that sharp bubble in your sinuses. It's stuck in my cuticles from the last foil set and I keep lifting my fingers to my face between clients just to have a reason to close my eyes. You picked me up from the salon on Tuesday, one sleeve shoved up to your elbow, cologne gone warm and animal from a whole day on your skin. I did not touch you. I said *how was work* and I held my scissors and I lifted the neckline of the next customer and I did not touch you. That's the trick, miláčku, and you've seen the whole show — the cool face, the neat hands, the smile that never wobbles. What you don't see is the back room, after nine, where I sit down at the Bernina with my heels hooked on the crossbar and my hands go knuckle-white on the fabric because they have nowhere else to be. Last-week I sewed the same basting stitch four times and pulled it out four times. Linen, mustard, meant to be a cushion. My hands just needed something to ruin. Because it isn't touching I've been thinking about. It's talking. The whole world thinks a hairdresser's gift is her hands and they're wrong — back home in Brno my grandmother could grind a person to sleep with one long sentence about weather. Slower than you think a voice can go. So when I hand you over to the sink tonight and I slide my thumbs along the cord behind your ear — that soft, hot, useless spot — I'm going to put my mouth right there and tell you, in the smallest whisper I've got, every single thing I've planned. The dull pencil sound your zipper makes coming down in a half-dark closet. That I'm not taking your shirt off, only shoving it up, only pulling my cardigan off one shoulder far enough. That my lace is maroon and I chose it in the morning for this. That I want your pulse to jump under my thumb to the exact rhythm of my voice and I will not go faster until it does. Hurry up and get in the chair.