A History of Forgetting by Caroline Adderson Page B

sidelong, wondering if he was making fun of her. He was not above sarcasm. She had heard him tell Jamie that Chekhov was a defenceman for the Canucks and Rambo a poet. She’d taken French at school, but retained not a syllable beyond phrases already learned from pop songs. ‘How do I pronounce “I love you”?’ she asked now. ‘Correctly, I mean.’
    â€˜Je vous aime,’ he said.
    â€˜Je voo zem. Je voo zem.’
    â€˜Je vous déteste,’ Malcolm told her. ‘You’ll need to know how to say that, too.’
    Christian poked his head in the door. ‘Listen. Amanda just called. She’s on her way. I have a plan. We are going to revolt.’
    It was over the back room. They were going to work to rule. Alison’s part, as Christian explained, was quite simple: when Amanda arrived, she was to get her into the back room by any possible means.
    She found Thi shampooing a hulk of a man at the sink. ‘You don’t know what a kipper is?’ he was asking Thi in an incredulous Scottish accent.
    â€˜Did Christian tell you?’ Thi asked Alison.
    â€˜Yes.’
    Alison hurried up to the front to be there when Amanda walked in. Donna was on the phone. When she hung up, she asked Alison, ‘Did Christian tell you?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    It was a half-hour before Amanda appeared carrying a cardboard box in her arms. ‘A new product,’ she explained when Alison opened the door for her. ‘Hair mud. Isn’t that great?’ She headed for the back room. Alison was relieved it was so easy.
    Walking through the salon, Amanda did not seem to notice each stylist start a little to see her, then lean forward and whisper something to the client in each chair. She didn’t see how, as soon as she’d passed, they left their clients, clipped and dripping and blinking in the mirrors, while they trooped behind her. Into the back room the rowdy plebeians crowded.
    Except Malcolm, who went right on working. ‘Malcolm,’ Alison said. ‘Come on.’
    It was not his fight. He predated them all. He was of the ancien régime.
    â€˜He’ll be back in a minute,’ Alison told his client, taking him firmly by the arm.
    She squeezed into the room with the others, pushed her way back, then took a seat on the steps that descended to the alley parking lot. From there, Alison could see the perfect rounds of Amanda’s breasts, her uniform cutwork lace nostrils widening defensively. ‘These are, as you observe, intolerable conditions,’ said Christian. He was doing that nerve-racking thing with his eyes, staring her down with one, then switching. Amanda, who could not seem to adjust to a gaze so demanding and unpredictable, kept looking around at the rest of them.
    â€˜How about new cupboards?’ said Thi, clasping her ringed fingers together, entreating. ‘To clear up the clutter. Make more space.’
    â€˜Eventually, yes. Everything in good time. Rome, after all, wasn’t built in a day, ha ha.’
    Everyone groaned. Their clients were waiting. As they filed back out, Christian asked, ‘Has anyone seen Satyricon?’ and he lifted the scowling bust from his station onto a curler trolley and tore off its wig and glasses. ‘Here he is. All hail the Senator.’ He rolled it once around like an invalid in a bath chair.
    And so an idea was born, that they would re-enact Rome’s decline and fall.
    â€˜Weren’t they always having orgies?’ Jamie asked. Everyone cheered. Right there on the faux marble, they would do it. And heat larks’ tongues in the microwave, steal a lion from the zoo and have it prowl the premises. Robert mentioned slaves and Donna volunteered Alison to be theirs. All day Christian exhorted stylists and clients alike to remember the fate of the Christians.
    Malcolm did not participate in their fantasy. He listened and watched and, for the first time, noticed that the girl had