Plumage by Nancy Springer Page B

and Racquel wasn’t going to let it fly. “I can do your nails myself. Hell, Sass, I’ll do them right now.” He shoved books to one side. “Where’s a dish towel?” He grabbed one off a hook and laid it out. “Gimme your hands.”
    â€œRacquel—”
    â€œGive it a chance, Sassy.” He took one of her hands and started massaging her fingers.
    Sassy’s eyes widened. But the massage stopped her protests, as he knew it would. He knew it felt too good to pass up.
    â€œKick-ass little hands,” he told her, rubbing, ignoring her chapped skin for the time being. “Dainty. Sweet. I bet you got sweet little feet too. Stretch them out here.” She did, and he looked down past the edge of the table to study them, feeling genuine envy rising in his chest. “God, Sassy, your feet are perfect . Not a bunion on them, or a corn, or anything.” What a bite. She must have worn sensible shoes all her miserable life.
    â€œOh, that’s good,” said Sassy in dulcet tones. “I know what I’ll do. I’ll just walk on my hands and wave my feet in the air.”
    â€œI’m serious, woman.” Goofy little twit, she had no clue how sexy feet could be, but she was going to learn. Racquel went to the sink and ran water till he got just the right hot temperature, filled the dishpan and squirted some Dove in it, brought it over and set it on the floor by Sassy. “Soak.”
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œStick your feet in there.”
    While they were soaking, he found an emery board in his capacious handbag and shaped Sassy’s fingernails, stroking the tips, never sawing at them. His own nails were French-tipped gels this week, but he figured Sassy wasn’t ready for that, or for fiberglass or silks or all the rest of it. He stroked her natural nails into gently rounded ovals. These days most nails had shovel tips, but Racquel preferred the classic oval. Sassy’s nails came out almost the shape of her face. Racquel massaged her hands again, with lotion this time, put extra lotion on her cuticles to soften them, pushed them back with a Q-Tip, then cleaned the lotion off her nails with polish remover and brought out undercoat and several colors of polish from his purse. Even though he had his nails professionally done, he still bought polish and carried it around for touch-ups and because he liked the colors. He carried extra jewelry in his purse too. Feathered earbobs, mostly. Just because.
    â€œIced Teal,” he read the nail polish color names off to her, “Malachite, White Jazz, Mango, Road Flare, Lagoon, Tropical Butterfly.”
    â€œWhat ever happened to pink?” Sassy asked.
    They settled on Lagoon, which was a sort of sky-blue-water color with a silvery sheen. As Racquel was stroking on the second coat, Sassy asked, “Racquel. You got anybody?”
    â€œHuh?”
    She spelled it out. “Do-you-have-a-sweetheart?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œA significant other?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œA relationship, a partner, a lover, a husband, a wife?”
    â€œWhat are you, a thesaurus? No. None of the above.”
    Silence while he completed the job. Then she asked, “Are you looking?”
    â€œSure.”
    More silence. He moved his chair, laid the dish towel in his lap and said, “Put your feet up here.”
    She did so. She asked, “Which gender?”
    He looked her straight in the eye and told her the truth. “Any gender at all.”

SIX
    Sassy found herself being surprised by a tiny prickle of pleasure every time she caught sight of her own wetly gleaming fingertips and toes. The fact that she was pleased by something so frivolous as a manicure and pedicure surprised her doubly. She had tried to make Racquel take the feathered baseball hat away, but he had insisted on leaving it, and the sight of it nesting on her kitchen table pleased her in some secret way she could not understand. She