Split Ends and Changeups

Elena ran her fingers through the woman's graying hair, the scissors snipping rhythmically. Cable news played from the television mounted in the corner, but no one was watching. Her hands ached. At forty-two, she'd spent twenty years standing in this salon, watching women transform themselves, watching herself age in the mirror.

"You're pulling," the client said, sharp.

"Sorry. Long day."

Outside, the sky darkened. Elena thought about Mark at home, probably already settled on the couch with a beer, watching baseball on cable. It was always baseball with him—the sound of announcers' voices, the crack of the bat, his half-hearted explanations of changeups and sliders that she'd stopped trying to understand years ago.

She'd found a hair wrapped around his pillowcase last week. Long, blonde, not hers. Not theirs—they didn't have a daughter.

The client left without tipping. Elena locked the door and stood in the empty salon, catching her reflection. strands of gray at her temples that she'd been dyeing since thirty-five. Mark had never noticed when she stopped.

The cable guy had come last month—young, polite, with a thick head of hair that fell over his eyes. He'd fixed the connection Mark insisted was broken, though it worked fine for Elena. Mark just needed things to fix. Needed excuses to call someone to the house.

She got into her car and sat. The radio was off. She could go home. Could walk into that apartment, could hear the baseball game echoing from the television, could smell the beer, could see Mark's face when he realized she wasn't staying.

Instead she called her sister. "Can I crash at your place?"

"Everything okay?"

"No. But it will be."

Elena started the engine. For the first time in eighteen years, she didn't know where she'd sleep tonight, and the certainty of it—the absolute terrifying freedom of it—felt like the first clean breath she'd taken in a decade.