“What do you mean he’s off?” she asked.

Her usual stylist wasn’t in, day off or something. She didn’t really listen to the explanation, just asked for whoever was available next. In the waiting area, she chose to sit next to the wall of windows. The other lady waiting in the lobby moved to escapes her smell.  

A stank accumulated in one long week alone in her half-empty apartment. Roger finished moving the last of his stuff out Thursday night. Friday, she called in sick. She didn’t shower. She didn’t wash her hands. Hell, she didn’t even use a napkin. She shut the blinds, ate black licorice, and sucked on corn nuts while she watched Doris Day films in the dark.  

No one complained about the smell of the snacks or mind-numbing plot lines. She cried, not at the sappy endings, but because Roger hadn’t taken the rug.  

It was his rug. She hated the matted pile of shag with the venom of a thousand bee stings. She had tried to suggest he leave it in his old place before he moved in, but his roommate insisted he would get a new one. By default, Roger got his way and kept the rug. 

She had started to lay it out so that the majority of the butter color would be under her own elegant leather sofa, custom coffee table, and his surprisingly sophisticated and functional entertainment center.  

“What are you doing?” 

“What does it look like?”  She didn’t look up from the task of laying down the atrocity.  

“You don’t have to snap.” 

“Well, it’s pretty obvious what I am doing.” 

“Well, then state the obvious. Don’t yell at me. Then I know to ask differently.” 

“Rolling out the rug, dear.”  She said with the best Donna Reed voice she could muster.  

“You don’t have to be that-” He stopped himself and let out a breath. His hands went onto his hips as he looked down. She wondered if he was actually counting to ten. “I mean why roll it out that way?” 

He had already gotten his way bringing that thing. It wasn’t going to sprawl out onto her dining room floor as well. “Why wouldn’t I roll it this way?”  

“Because it covers more tiles if you put it the other way, you don’t have to mop as much. That’s what rugs are for, right?” 

“Silly boy,” She patted his back and finished laying out the rug. “Rugs are like scarves. They’re accessories that add a pop of color where you need it.” 

“Don’t be so condescending; I think they can be functional too. You know,” He started to help, “like how a scarf keeps you warm.”  He stopped, looked around the room. “We don’t have anything else that’s yellow.”  

“Yeah, well another reason to hide it under stuff.” 

“You don’t like the rug?” 

“I didn’t say that.” 

“Then it should go this way.”  His voice changed into deep, stern octave. He began to pull his end towards the kitchen and dining room.  

“Is this how it’s going to be?  You just come in like some big caveman.”  She started pounding her fists against her chest. She deepened her own voice. “Things go my way.” 

He was almost smiling. “Fine, do what you want.”  He dropped his end.  

“No, then you’re gonna always bring up the rug.” 

He would forever be one point ahead. He walked over towards her, grabbed her waist, and then kissed her more passionately than he ever had in the past.  

“But we need to unpack the boxes befo-” she started to say. He kissed her again.  

“We’ve got plenty of time,” he said. He never cared about schedules. He never followed through on plans. Never washed a dish. Never picked up his towel. Never flushed the damn toilet. She stopped complaining when she realized his answer was always going to be a weak rendition of that kiss.  

It was their first argument, but the rest followed that structure. They had found a compromise as they made love on the diagonal rug the way it would lay all five years of their domesticity. This was the process every time there was a decision to be made. He went left. She went right. Meeting in the middle became harder as time went on.  

In the beginning, their differences only fueled the passion. That opposite pull created a friction that was addictive. That addiction was powerful enough to convince her she was in love.  

In the end, she had just wasted six years. What was one useless weekend?  She didn’t change her clothes. She didn’t brush her teeth. She didn’t even brush her hair.  

Late Sunday afternoon she looked in the mirror. A layer of funk had accumulated on her skin. It was about as thick as the grit on her teeth, but her hair was the worst, a hopeless knot. She picked up the brush. The last time her hair had been this bad was the summer she turned ten. She had screamed for hours while her mother pulled and picked at the tangled mass. She thought of doing it again.  

“Fuck that,” she had said aloud. She went to the kitchen and wiped down her pits with hand sanitizer, doused her neck with perfume, grabbed some gum, and was out the door. She didn’t care that the lady didn’t want to sit next to her in the small salon lobby. She stared at the florescent twitching of the lights reflecting on the checkered black and white stone floor. 

A woman with over-processed blonde hair and a heavy southern accent called her name and ushered her to a station in the back. She introduced herself as Irma, with a smile faker than her hair color. 

The black robe encircled her neck tightly squeezing against the lump that had present since she told Roger it was over. The flowing plastic was one of the better parts of the haircut. She wouldn’t have to suck in her gut. Yet another unwanted souvenir from the relationship she would have to get rid of.  

“Heavens, what have you done to your hair?” Irma asked.

She rolled her eyes and wondered if Irma thought it was intentional. “Just cut it all out.”

“You sure, honey? That’s a lot of length,” Irma said.  

She stared at her reflection. She’d had been growing out her hair since she’d gotten the bright idea that a pixie cut would be ultra-sexy. It took nine years to grow out. Roger had seen one of her pixie pictures soon after the big move-in day. “Promise me you won’t ever cut it again,” he said.  

“Why, wouldn’t you love me with short hair?”  She did her best fake pout.   

“No, that’s not it,” he said. “I just can’t imagine not being able to push that stray piece of hair away from your lips before kissing you. I’d miss it.”  

In the mirror, she saw it now. The florescent glow glistened off the one strand that always curled in front of her face kissing her jawbone. “Do it. I’m sick of fighting with knots all the time.” 

“Okay” Irma said. She could tell Irma wasn’t too sure about doing it. It was the way okay was drawn out with slight flip up an octave at the end.

Irma fluffed the giant ball of twisted tension. “What style do you want, Sugar?  A bob, a crop?” 

“Surprise me.” Her famous last words.  

Irma prepared her scissors, comb, and duckbill clips, dropping items several times before turning the chair away from the mirror.  

“You sure you want me to cut it?  I could get some detangler and - ” 

“Would you just cut my hair? That is your job, isn’t it?”  

The first cut was at the base of the knot, inches from the scalp. She felt the pressure of the scissors severing the strands. It wasn’t painful. Even the normal emotional pang from a major cut wasn’t present.  

Irma held up the nest of tangles and asked, “Wanna keep this, Sweetie?”  

“Yes!”  The idea of sending it to Roger suddenly popped into her head. She could send a little note, something about giving him back the only thing he ever loved. 

“So, darlin,’ you lived in the city long?”  Snip, snip.  

“Yes.”  The dreaded small talk. Her replies needed to be short, as few words as possible.  

“How do you like it?”  Irma asked. She was persistent. Snip.  

“I like it fine.”  She began to miss her regular guy. He knew she hated talking and would let her gaze into empty space, alone in her own thoughts, while he concerned himself with the matter at hand, her hair.  

“I love it, only it’s so crowded, you know?”  Snip, snip. She wondered what Irma expected moving from the country. More space? 

“I guess,” She muttered. She reached for the nearest magazine. There was silence, but only long enough for her to think of another question. 

“Seen any good movies lately?”  Snip, snip, snip. Roger had taken her to see a movie two weeks earlier, one last shot at saving the dead relationship. Mutual silence and separate tubs of greasy popcorn were all he had left to give her. It was so vastly different from their first date at the local carnival. A night filled with stuffed prizes and laughter. They had done whatever she wanted. He followed her around, smiling at each little whim that led them in a jagged stroll down the midway. He was so attentive. She needed that back.   

She broke it off three days after the movie.  

“No.”  She pretended to read an article on How to Please Him in Ways He Won’t Ask For. Irma got the hint. The cadence of the snips was the only sound as the rest of the hair fell on the stone floor. A part of her would be swept up and thrown in the trash. Parts that Roger had caressed, pulled, drooled on would be swept up and thrown in the trash. She watched it fall around her in a gentle storm. The new hairstyle wouldn’t ever know that.  

Her head began to feel lighter and suddenly she felt panic about the final product. She was the one that would have to live with it. Roger wouldn’t have to, nor would Irma. Only she would.  Alone.

Finally, Irma put down the scissors, pulled out the blow dryer and some hair putty. Irma fussed, tousled, and tweaked for a minute before turning her around.  

She stared at her reflection. There was no wayward strand. Her hair was much shorter. It had layers and bounce. It was modern and stylish. It was almost the same pixie from all those years ago, just with longer layers on top. She looked as is if the last nine years had never happened.  

It would take years to grow out.  

“Darlin’, I know it’s a shock, but you did ask for it.”  Irma said.  

“I asked for it?” 

“Yes honey, you said-” 

“For fuck’s sake, stop calling me honey and sugar and darlin.”  She added a bit of sarcastic twang to the last word. “I asked you to cut my hair, not butcher it.” 

“You don’t like it?  I could maybe shorten-” 

“You’re nuts if you think I am letting you touch my hair, you twisted bitch.”  She ripped the snaps on the black cape around her neck and threw it at Irma. “I asked for it?  How dare you?”   

She knew she was the one that broke up with Roger, but did that mean it was supposed to hurt less?  Did she not get to cry just because she was the first one to see they had failed?  Was it her fault Irma couldn’t understand that?  It was, after all, her job.  

She threw money at the counter to pay the tab. She slammed the door. She didn’t tip. She didn’t take the hair. She ran outside. The sun had gone down long ago, leaving the late Spring air chilled. She walked quickly, stopping only long enough to pull the hood of her jacket over her head before going home.  

Kristi Daune-Edwards Rabe received her MFA from UCR Palm Desert’s low-residency program in 2014. Her work has appeared in HerStry, Bank-Heavy Press, and Verdad magazine as well as Manifest-Station and Coachella Valley Storytellers events. Most recently, her personal essay, “What You Really Need to Know,” was featured on the Writers Resist literary website. She is also the multimedia editor of The Coachella Review.