Tulane Review Spring 2014

what she has increasingly thought of as his habit.

But now, This man, she thinks.

Faire stares into her reflection. “Will you clean my neck up?” she asks Owen. The sink is cluttered with single-serving soaps, toothpaste, shampoo and aloe. She’s surprised that men can keep their bathrooms so clean. “I can’t see without another mirror, but my neck…” She shakes both her hands, like the word has slipped out between her fingers.

“Sure,” he says. “Let me get my bag.”

The bathroom is as cramped as you might think. Faire’s brown hair is short, a little severe, and tapers at the back. Owen, naked from having stepped out from his towel, sharpens her hair with his clippers. He moves around her in awkward, angled movements. His elbows and knees jerk in opposite directions. Owen takes Faire’s towel, wipes away the light hair that has fallen at the small of her neck.

“Was it good before?” she asks. “Was it good like that?”

He chuckles. “Like sex?”

“Like slow, like that. It wasn’t like that the first time.”

“Yeah,” he says. “It was good. I thought both were really good to tell you the truth.”

He buzzes her neck slowly.

“Are you okay?” Faire asks. “You’re not saying much. And, honestly, it makes me nervous.”

He puts his hand on her shoulder and gives her a smile. “I’m just really sore. That’s all, but it’s, like, all the time,” Owen says while rifling his travel bag. “I don’t know what it is, either. It’s so bad I can’t sleep. I don’t even want to try.”

“Here,” he says, and pulls out a small mirror.

Faire keeps her face straight ahead, her neck locked. “Well, maybe you’re anxious about something. I get like that a lot. Anxious about work, about Chris. Anxious about what I had for breakfast. ” She laughs at this last bit.

Owen sits on the edge of the tub, behind her. In the mirror’s reflection, she sees his shoulders drop and he rubs at his face. “I don’t want to lose this. I really don’t want that.” He opens his eyes, places a hand between her shoulder blades and lets his fingers slide slowly down her back. “I don’t want all we are to be this… little room.”

Owen stops the clippers, adjusts the safety guard and considers the top of her head. Faire angles her neck so that she can see him in the mirror’s reflection. Her eyes are soft and she gives him what she hopes is a kind smile.

She says, “I want to remember this exactly as it is.”

She doesn’t move, doesn’t say a word, make a noise when he runs the clippers up her neck and rounds her skull, thick black hair falling in clumps 69