The Body Shop

The rain has been falling since five, the same minute your spreadsheets started lying to you. You took the long way home on purpose, hoping something would happen — a lottery ticket, a mugger, anything — and instead you find a door. Green paint, gold leaf gone shabby, wedged between the laundromat and a place that's been 'OPEN SOON' for two years. THE BODY SHOP. You step in out of the rain mostly because your shoes are ruined anyway, you tell yourself.

It is not a beauty shop. Jars line the walls, lit from below like aquariums: a pair of hands with slender fingers and nails that look almost aggressively red, folded patient as a sleeping cat; lips suspended in amber, full as ripe fruit; pairs of breasts, one large but far from huge, that looks like they are going sag ever so slightly once they leave the jar; another one heavy and pendulous; the next one huge and unnaturally round; a pixie-like nose that looks almost like the opposite of hers, too small to fit an adult face; and many others. A hand-lettered sign reads ONLY ONE ITEM AT A TIME. Behind the counter, a woman with one glass eye looks up from a ledger and says, without preamble, 'First visit goes small. Anything too drastic and you'll be sick on the bus home. So — what's wrong with you?'

Nothing is wrong with you. That's the whole problem, and she seems to read it off your face, because her pen is already hovering over the ledger, waiting.