Salon de Belleza

Lily pauses from sweeping. “Look at the bright side. She has improved. I have known
Carla since she was eighteen years old. She was worse when she was younger. M-u-ch
worse.” Jordan loves Lily’s melodic lilt. Her capacity to perpetually view life in a
positive light reminds Jordan why she likes Estevan’s Salon de Belleza. The
conversations she has with the older Hispanic woman remind her of the calming talks she
had with her Mom when the loneliness of living on the opposite side of the country got
her down. Lily makes Jordan feel like a daughter again.
The Sandias’ catch the July morning light. The radio towers at the crest glint and
glimmer against a thick blue sky, the most beautiful she’s ever seen. Expansive, an
endless ocean that makes her yearn for something more, something she doesn’t fully
understand.
She’s named Carla’s casualness about time ‘The New Mexico Factor,’ the state where
time refuses to be hurried. It’s been three years since Jordan and Mike left their home and
her family in Philly. Even now she has to stop herself from growing tense if she’s not
rushing to arrive ahead of schedule. She’ll be sitting at P. G. Chan’s ten minutes early for
a lunch date only to wait another twenty-five minutes for a girlfriend who’s invariably
had some minor catastrophe with the kids on her way out the door.
Lily leans on the broom handle to answer the phone. “Carla! Where you been? Your
nine-o’clock’s waiting. I washed her already.”
Lily wedges the phone in her shoulder, holds up ten fingers to Jordan. “Ten minutes,”
she mouths.
Jordan sighs and leafs through the pages of a fashion magazine designed for bulimic
eighteen-year-olds. Carla’s a trip. How would Charles Crissman like it if Jordan phoned
him at his office now, hair dryers and nail grinders whirring in the background: “Hey,
Doc’, my hairdresser’s running late. I’ll be late for our eleven-thirty. You won’t mind
waiting, will you?” How would that kind of patient-doctor initiative fly with Dr.
Crissman? Beneath the cape she slides her hand over the curve of her belly. Her forearm
brushes the under curve of her aching breasts. Jordan gives a deep sigh. Until ten weeks
ago she’d never been late in her life.