Fingernails

Featuring a salon-goer

coming up next…

---

Yve walked into the nail salon as she always did, strutting through the glass doorway at precisely two o’clock on Sunday. She hid her cracked fuschia acrylics in the depths of her coat sleeve, in fear of not only the February cold but also the slight chance that one of her girl-friends might see her in such an untidy state. Inside, a long, French tip fingernail greeted her at the counter.

“What can I do for you, mademoiselle?” asked the fine French tip.

“Clarice messed up my acrylics last week,” Yve said, trying to make a scene without making a scene. “They broke within a day.”

“Let me see these acrylics you speak of.” Ceremoniously, Yve displayed her hand, cracked fuschia bits dangling off where her fingernails were. After a moment, the French tip leaned back in her chair.

“So?” Yve said.

The French tip was smug. “Your nails are falling off because you’re not taking care of yourself, my dear!”

“Taking care of myself how?”

The French tip gestured toward a full-length mirror next to the counter. It was then that Yve turned toward the mirror and saw she had become a small, underdeveloped fingernail. Her acrylics dangled next to her, slowly peeling off the parts of her body that were once hands, but now too were made of nail. Yve was a fingernail, although an unpretty and wholly unpolished one.

“Nail!” Yve yelled, and her mangled fuschia acrylics fell to the floor. Back at the counter, Yve noticed the French tip had also transformed, but instead of a fingernail she was now a beautiful woman. In a French accent, the woman spoke:

“Nail nail nail nail, nail nail nail? Nail nail nail nail nail.”

Yve tried to think something to herself, but the only thoughts she could process were that of fingernail-related things. Everything surrounding her was completely usual and routine: the counter, the French woman at the front desk, her Audi outside the salon. Yet, in her current state, Yve was entirely absorbed with her appearance as a grotesquely unkempt nail. She kept trying to speak, kept trying to think, but the only thing that appeared to her was fingernails, nails, nail. Maddened, Yve slammed on the counter, startling the French woman.

“Nail nail nail nail nail nail. Nail nail NAILS,” Yve said.

Sensing her demand like she had always done for customers, the French woman decided not to respond and instead brought Yve immediately to an empty chair in the back of the salon. Customers gawked at Yve as she passed them, fully in nail form. Just as Yve sat back in the chair, the French woman scurried off to somewhere else in the salon.

“Fingernail,” Yve muttered with a tinge of sorrow.