Tippytoe
It’s always the young girls. The new hires. They are the ones who haven’t learned yet that filing a complaint doesn’t do anything. They think their voices matter. That just because they speak, people will listen. No one is listening.
I place a plastic container of storebought oatmeal raisin cookies on the counter in the breakroom. The clamshell crinkles like it might crumple in my hands. Grace comes in, always a little late, smelling of freesia and powder and hair that has been heated and sprayed and twisted into pleasing shapes, all smooth curves. I always make sure I am early for work, the first car in the lot in the first parking spot, even if I am a little rumpled. I turn to her and offer her a cookie. Her nose twitches in distaste, which she tries to mask with politeness.
“Oh! No thank you, Martha. I don’t like raisins.” She pulls back from me, recoiling. I look down at my outstretched hand holding a cookie out to her. My fingers look gray and grubby next to her skin, nails cracked with something brown caked under the longest one. To my horror, I realize it’s blood. I’d awakened with a bloody nose this morning in the dry air of my house, cat hair heating to a kindling in the furnace vents. I thought I had cleaned my hands properly, scrubbing until the skin practically cracked under scalding water, and yet there was the blood. I withdrew my hand, tossing the cookie in the garbage and tucking the tips of my fingers into the back of my waistband out of sight. I reflexively looked at Liv’s nails. Smooth. Peach. Feminine. Like a doll. I almost reached out with my other hand to touch hers, to twist her skin roughly beneath mine, but with a startle I remembered to stop myself. Grace seems to be holding her breath, letting out a long sigh as she turns towards her cubicle. She has this way of walking on her tippy toes like a mean little cat or a shitty child.
It seems no matter what I try, it is never right. Never the right cookie. Never the right clothes. Never the right thing to say. Always with the blood under the nails and not the peach nail polish. I try to imagine peach paint on my fingernails clashing against my ruddy skin. No one wants to see peach nail polish on a woman with clotted pouches of flesh under her eyes and knuckles cracked to bleeding.
That afternoon we have a team meeting. All the employees go to the conference room and sit around the big oval table with the dinged-up edges surrounded by swivel chairs, and we drink Tim Horton’s coffee out of a box and paper cups. My younger colleagues think it’s funny to call it Timmy Ho’s, which I find classless. The screen at the front of the room reads “Third Quarter Strategic Planning.” Our boss, Charles, a stiff man in a stiff blazer stands at the head of the table flipping through a folder with spreadsheets to hand out to all of us. He dims the lights and starts the presentation.
Grace sits a few seats down from me, and as the presentation gets on, I stand up and make my way out like I am going to the bathroom. I have been waiting for weeks for an opportunity like this. It’s like it is meant to happen. I pull my scissors from my cardigan pocket. Grace’s hair is draped perfectly over the back of her seat, and with one smooth movement, I snip a long, coiled curl and cup it in my fist. She darts her eyes up at me when I go past, but she hadn’t heard the snipping sound. I can tell. Brody cocks a smirk at her. They hate me, but they don’t know what I’ve done.
In one of the bathroom stalls. I unfurl my fingers to look at the soft dark hair in my hand. The lights are so bright in here and everything so white that orbs of light pulse at the periphery of my vision, the floaters in my eyes set off like star shine. The neat little whorl looks like a rodent pet in my palm. It had started to stick to the sweat in my first, but that’s okay. I touch my nose to it and breath in. My own hair smells like old cooking oil. I have never understood how girls get their hair to smell this fresh. It’s almost as if they weren’t even living things, incapable of decay.
I don’t know where else to put her hair until I get home, so I shove the pretty lock down in my underwear. I just tuck it in the front there. I want all the hairs to stay together, and my pocket is too big and loose. At least here it will be out of sight and kept tight.
As I wash my hands and straighten my sweater in the mirror, I imagine how Grace’s face will look when she realizes a chunk of hair is missing. The way her mouth will fall open. The way her hands will claw at her hair, checking to see if anymore is missing. A stupid, “What the fuck?” will come out of her mouth. Such a dumb phrase from the plump little lips of very dumb girls. I can’t help but smile back at myself in the mirror. I might be ugly, but at least I’m smart.
When I get back to the meeting room, the presentation is wrapping up. The lights come on, and Brent is looking at the back of Grace’s hair, his forehead bubbling up in guttered lines of confusion, his beady predator eyes squinting behind his cheap, ironically large glasses. My face goes hot, and I look around for something to do to look busy. I start cleaning off the napkins and paper cups from the conference table. A small group is gathering around Grace to inspect her hair. Heads are shaking back and forth. I head back to my desk and bury my face in my computer screen, busy, busy.
When the end of the workday comes, I slowly pack up my things, making sure to head by the break room to throw away the cookie container. To my surprise, it is still full. A stab of shame passes through my chest. I tried to do something nice and not one person cares or notices. Walking through the office holding my rejected cookies, I see Grace in Charles’s office, her hands gesturing like my own marionette. She points to the spot on the back of her head where a large chunk is missing. I bury a smile. Our manager looks bored, his eyes drifting to the clock on the wall. Time to go home. Time for a drink.
In my car, I pretend to look busy, like I am looking at my phone. I wait there as Grace tippytoe-walks to her perfect little car. New. Clean. The trick when following someone is to let them follow you first. I back out of my spot, timing things just right so she will be the car directly behind mine. I drive slowly out of the parking lot, nice and normal. Not too fast, not too slow. She’s in my rearview mirror, safe in her box. When I see her turn off, I do a U-turn in the darkening streets. Again, it seems fortuitous that there are no other cars around, and I proceed down the road where she had turned. Soon enough, there she is in front of me on the little two-lane road. Her head bobs along to something poppy on the radio, her shoulders doing a little shimmy. I pull up close behind her and turn on my brights so she can’t see me. Her speed slows. I bet her road rage is prickling at the nape of her neck where her hair is missing. It has been a bad day for Grace. She sits up straighter in her seat. She is trying to make me angry by going too slow, but she doesn’t know I like this kind of game. I don’t care if she brings her car all the way to a stop, just me and her out here on this road after dark.
I am reaching that point though. The one where I must decide if I am going to go through with this or not. Right now, she doesn’t know it’s me behind her. Nothing has happened. Yet. Sure, she slandered my name to our boss today. I might get called into his office in the morning for a chat, though I am good at playing dumb. Wouldn’t be the first time. But right now, I have a choice to make. I can pull over and let her continue down the road to her safe little apartment with her pet cat, her roommate, and her Tuesday night television. Or I continue this game just a little bit longer. I need to commit. Because when I do, she will have to see me. I think of the way she looks at me every day like I am vile, the way she whispers and giggles with Brody like I don’t understand I am the butt of all their jokes, the way she tattled on me to Charles.
I imagine the road unfurling in front of her headlights. I imagine just about how far she can see. I know all the roads in this town, and Grace couldn’t have chosen to drive down a more perfect one to get home. Again. Fortuitous. I begin to edge my little Honda hatchback over the double yellow line to start to pass Grace. I press the gas pedal hard with my sneaker, my car lurching forward, my grip tight on the wheel. I want to get right beside her so I can look over and make eye contact one last time. I’m there. This is the moment. I look over at her. She looks back. That expression on her face tells me everything I need to know. Her face shifts from anxious and angry to pure hot disgust.
I give a little wave and then slowly start to edge my car closer to hers. I move over a little bit. She moves over a little bit. There is a big curve coming up. It is risky for me because I can’t see if there are any oncoming cars to smash into me head-on. The way the day has gone though, I know that isn’t possible. This is supposed to happen. Something out there other than me wants it just as much as I do. I move closer, just inches away from her driver’s side door. She doesn’t have much room to move. I am almost entirely in her lane now. One more little shift closer. Two of her tires find the edge of the pavement. The ravine isn’t directly at the edge of the road, but there is enough of a slant to the shoulder that once she starts to lose control it is all in my hands. She holds the steering wheel with both hands as her tires start to pull off the pavement. Gravel shoots from her tires like buckshot. I easily follow the curve in the road and keep my eyes on the white line. It is tempting to watch. I want to. But I hear her car rip through the guardrail and then silence as it dives through the air.
Should I go back and check? Make sure she is dead? It seems risky. Only a matter of time before another car comes along and notices the hole in the guardrail, the fresh skid marks. Someone will call it in soon enough. Maybe that someone is me.
Horror Sleaze Trash 