Chapter 13 #2
The coconut-argan conditioner stayed on his shelf.
By that evening, there was a new note on the fridge.
The conditioner is acceptable. This is not a concession. This is an observation.
— P
I wrote back.
Observation accepted. Next week I’m coming for your moisturizer situation, which is nonexistent and which constitutes neglect.
— B
One sparkle emoji.
I found his reply on the fridge the next morning.
I don’t have a moisturizer situation.
— P
I told the whole saga to the bar the next day, because the bar was my audience and my audience deserved content.
“He organized my shelf,” I announced while Jacks prepped garnishes and Finn did inventory and Rod assembled his mise en place in the kitchen with Ruthie asleep at his feet, her gray muzzle resting on her paws in the posture of a dog who had found her person and was not moving until her person moved.
“He touched every single product. He read the labels. He created categories, Jacks. Hair, face, body. In the correct order of application.”
“That sounds helpful,” Jacks said.
“It’s unhinged! The man is unhinged. It was the most aggressively thoughtful thing anyone has ever done to my toiletries. I can’t tell if he was trying to help me or assert dominance. Maybe it’s both. Can something be both?”
“With Peter, probably,” Jacks answered without looking up from the limes.
“So I replaced his soap and his conditioner. He came out of the bathroom holding the bottle like it was a piece of evidence and said, ‘It smells like a vacation,’ in this voice, Jacks, this completely deadpan Texas drawl like he was filing a police report about his own conditioner, and I almost died right there.”
From the kitchen pass-through, Rod asked, “What did you replace it with?”
“Coconut-argan, the good stuff. It’s twelve dollars an ounce.”
Rod whistled. “You spent twelve dollars an ounce on another man’s conditioner? What’s he softening, the hair on his balls?”
Jacks dropped his knife.
Finn snorted.
Even Ruthie lifted her head and panted.
“I spent twelve dollars an ounce on an intervention. His hair was a disaster, Rod. His hair was a war zone. His hair was—”
“His hair was fine,” Finn said with his Irish pleasantfuckingness. “I’ve met the man. His hair is fine.”
“His hair is better now. That’s my whole point. I made it better. I improved his life through the medium of hair care products, and he acknowledged it, Rod. He wrote ‘the conditioner is acceptable’ on a Post-it note, which in Peter Loupier language is basically a marriage proposal.”
The bar went dead still.
Ruthie lowered her head and closed her eyes.
It wasn’t the comfortable quiet of a slow afternoon.
Oh no, it was the specific, pointed quiet that happens when someone says something revealing, and everyone in the room hears it, and the person who said it hasn’t caught up yet.
I rewound and replayed my sentence.
“Oh, come on, guys. That was hyperbole, obvi,” I said quickly.
“That was comedic exaggeration for narrative effect. I was using ‘marriage proposal’ as a metaphor for ‘mild approval.’ It’s a scale.
At one end of the scale is ‘Peter hates it’ and at the other end is ‘marriage proposal,’ and ‘the conditioner is acceptable’ lands somewhere in the middle.
It’s a spectrum . . . filled with colors . . . like a rainbow.”
Jacks had retrieved his knife and was cutting a lime with extreme, preternatural focus, as though the lime required his undivided attention, and he could not possibly spare any of that attention for my unraveling.
Rod retreated fully behind the pass-through window, though I could see his shoulders shaking.
Finn, who had stopped counting bottles and was leaning against the shelf with his arms crossed, said, “Benji.”
“What.”
“You bought him conditioner.”
“An intervention, Finn. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
“Twelve-dollar-an-ounce conditioner. That’s aged whiskey for hair.”
“His hair was sad and mopey, Finn.”
“And you’ve been timing his showers.”
“I have not been timing his—” I stopped.
I had, at some point during the shelf narrative, mentioned the twelve-minute shower duration.
I had mentioned it casually, as background detail, the way a person mentions the weather or the time of day.
I had not considered until that exact moment that knowing the precise length of one’s roommate’s shower routine was not, in fact, normal background information.
“The bathroom shares a wall with the foster room,” I said. “The water is very audible. It’s loud water, an acoustic situation.”
Thank God, Mia walked in before Finn could recite some limerick or sing some stupid hobbit song about water and love and whiskey-conditioner, which I was sure Tolkien had written because that man had way too much time on his hands for too many decades, hence the whole elf language thing.
Mia didn’t work Tuesdays, but she’d developed a sixth sense for moments of maximum Benj-tastrophe.
“What did I miss?” she asked, settling onto a stool with her phone already out.
“Benji bought Peter conditioner and timed his showers,” Jacks said without looking up from his lime. “We think he wants his roomie to soften his ball hair.”
“JACKS!” My voice echoed throughout the bar.
So did Rod’s laughter.
“Oh, this is better than I hoped,” Mia said. “Give me a sec to start recording, then I want all the details.”
“I’m not telling you the conditioner story,” I said. “And no one is recording anything.”
“You don’t have to. I’ll get the highlights from Jacks later. Tell me about the extension instead.”
This, at least, was safe ground . . . sort of.
I told everyone about Terri’s call, about the subfloor damage, and about the revised ten-to-twelve-week timeline.
I told them about Peter’s Post-it response, which had been characteristically measured and practical and which had included the line, “If you’d prefer to stay, that’s fine, too,” and which I was not going to analyze further because “fine” was a perfectly neutral word that did not require interpretation.
“He said it was fine?” Mia asked.
“He said it was fine.”
“How did he write ‘fine’?” she asked, as though it mattered.
“How did he write it? What do you mean how did he write it? He wrote it with a pen, Mia, on paper and in the manner of a human being communicating through written language.”
“Was there a period after it? Was it underlined? Was there anything else on the note?” she asked.
“Why does the punctuation matter?”
“Punctuation always matters, Benj. A man who writes, ‘That’s fine.’ with a period is a different man than one who writes, ‘That’s fine,’ without a period. Both are light-years from a man who writes, ‘That’s fine!’ with an exclamation point.”
“Fine! There was a period,” I said without specifically detailing my verbal punctuation.
“Okay.”
Reluctantly, I asked, “What does the period mean?”
“It means he thought about it before he wrote it. An exclamation point is impulsive, a period is deliberate, but he chose ‘fine’ and he chose the period. That means he sat at his kitchen island and considered his response and decided that ‘fine’ was the exact word he wanted, which means it’s not filler. It’s precise.”
“You’re reading an entire psychological profile into a punctuation mark.”
“I’m reading a man who uses Post-it notes as his primary emotional vocabulary. Every mark means something. This is my area of expertise.”
“Your area of expertise is dental hygiene. Your patients’ words are unintelligible!”
“My area of expertise is communication. Teeth are simply one channel.”
I looked to Jacks for support. He was still focused on his lime and refused to acknowledge my presence.
Rod’s shoulders were still shaking behind the pass-through.
Finn had gone back to counting bottles, but he was smiling.
“I need new friends,” I said.
“You need to buy that man a moisturizer,” Mia said. “And then report back.”
I did, in fact, buy him a moisturizer.
I knew I should not have bought him a moisturizer, yet I did so anyway.
The conditioner had been a tactical strike in the context of an ongoing bathroom battle, and it could be justified as a proportional response to the shelf reorganization; but the moisturizer was a standalone act.
The moisturizer was premeditated. The moisturizer was a forty-five-dollar tube of SPF 30 daily protection that I purchased at Sephora after spending twenty minutes asking the sales associate which product would be best for “a man in his early thirties who refuses to acknowledge that skin care exists and who has been relying on genetics and bar soap and possibly divine intervention to maintain a face that—”
I stopped myself before the end of that sentence, but the sales associate, whose name tag said Kenji and whose smile said he knew exactly what was happening, simply nodded, handed me a moisturizer, and said, “This one. Trust me.”
“It’s for a friend,” I said.
“Of course it is.”
“He’s a roommate, a temporary roommate. I’m helping, you know, with his skin.”
“Absolutely,” Kenji said. “The SPF is great. His skin will look amazing. Your friend’s skin, I mean, your temporary roommate friend’s skin.”
“You’re enjoying this.”
“I’m a professional. I don’t enjoy things.”
“You’re smiling.”
“I smile at all our customers. It’s policy.” He winked and retreated behind the counter to ring me up.
I bought the moisturizer. And put it on Peter’s shelf with a Post-it.
Phase Two of the Intervention. Apply after showering. Your face will thank me. Instructions on the back, but honestly you just rub it on. Even you can handle that without reading a doctoral dissertation.
— B
Just one sparkle.
His response came the next morning—on the fridge, not in the bathroom.
I don’t need a moisturizer.
Below that, twelve hours later, when he thought I wouldn’t notice the time gap.
It’s not terrible.
Below that, I replied.
You’re WELCOME.
Four sparkle emojis.
A new record.
A historic moment in the Post-it correspondence.
I should have framed it.