Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend by Alan Cumyn Page B

metal. Was that the soap?
    Cautiously she wet the bar and rubbed, rubbed. The purple wasn’t oily at all. It wasn’t thick. It felt . . . like her skin.
    Like the skin of her nose had simply turned purple.
    The pigment wasn’t coming off. She closed her eyes, breathed through her mouth, waited for this stupid nightmare to pass.
    Blink. Blink.
    Purple.
    â€œSheldon!” She screamed his name into the phone, but he wasn’t picking up. He was probably still having breakfast with his sunny-morning parents. He was probably punishing her.
    She longed to face-rake him that instant. She wanted to . . .
    â€œIs everything all right, miss?” the man called from outside the door.
    â€œNo!” she yelled. “My nose has turned purple!”
    He didn’t seem to have an answer to that. He waited forever, and then he said, “Just take your time.”
    She stared at her face. She looked fierce, somehow, her purple nose beak-like. Dipped in ink. The pores on her nose were larger than those on her pale cheeks. She scrubbed and scrubbed, with her hands, with a rough cloth she found by the moldy garbage pail, then with a brush that she demanded the old man bring to her. The harder she worked, the more tender the skin became, until fresh-rubbed blood oozed like cherry sauce on sick chocolate.
    â€œIs it coming off?” the old man asked through the door.
    She had to hold herself against the crusty sink to keep from falling over.
    â€œHow did it get all purple anyway?” the old man asked.
    â€œGo away. I’m sorry. Just . . . go away.” She could still hear him breathing outside the door. “It’s all right. I’m not going to kill myself.” There must be a solution, she thought. Don’t people get tattoos removed?
    Maybe she could get her nose removed.
    And replaced, of course. A nose replacement . . . Her parents would know the right specialist. They knew all the right—
    â€œIt’s just . . . this is the only bathroom,” the old man said finally.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    In a crisis Shiels had learned, through her years in leadership, to turn to the closest thing at hand. Do that task. Focus, focus. Give your brain time to unglue.
    She tackled the mess in the storeroom. Quietly, efficiently, with all the concentration she could summon. Did it make sense to sort the boxes by style and make or by size? Size made sense. Style and make might change regularly, but size is eternal, maybe. Size is orderly and predictable. Small at the bottom. Largest on top. But broken into manageable clumps so that the shelves were used to full advantage. And midsizes, presumably the ones most often in demand, would be at chest to eye level. Easy. Predictable. A touch of organization.
    She was an organized person. An energetic and intelligent and disciplined person who dismantled the entire storeroom’s structure—if near chaos could be called a structure—and rebuilt it along reasonable and practical and even scientific lines.
    She swept and dusted, threw out more than twenty empty boxes that had been taking up space, pretending to hold shoes. She found three single shoes without mates. There were no more yellow ones—she was wearing the last pair.
    She kept the door shut and did not look out. The old man came in twice, looking for a particular size and brand, and both times Shiels was able to retrieve the box within seconds and send him on his way.
    She could organize a storeroom. If she didn’t get an interview with Lorraine Miens, she thought, if her nose stayed purple and she lost all hope and couldn’t even get into medical school, she could always organize storerooms.
    Who knew how long she stayed in there? Her phone was off. She began to feel vaguely hungry, but that could be ignored until every last box was checked and stacked in its appropriate place in the universe.
    In the end, when she