15: did you dye your hair

Something's changed and I want to describe the change before I describe the thing, because the change is the scarier part and I know nobody's going to believe that until they get to the thing.

The weather stopped.

Not stopped. Cleared. Since the comment, since Saturday, it's been... nice out. Four days. I've been walking the floor with the subtraction gone and the sticky eyes at full scale, day thirteen, when by every entry I've got I should be seeing hangers and hinges and pulleys in the sky, and there's nothing. The barcodes are barcodes. The mannequins have the hands they're supposed to have. The back is sixty feet and a left. The countdown at the bus stop goes 12, 11, 10 like it's being graded. I did a full walk this morning, every fixture, and I have never in three years seen the floor so completely and totally correct. Pristine, in every way. Heaven.

Or Hell. It’s all wrong. That's the part I don't think I can get anyone to understand, it's wrong in the same way the sign was wrong when it turned red, it's too right. Retail is never this right. There's always a hanger backwards, there's always a size run out of order, that's why I exist. And for four days there hasn't been one. Not one. Like somebody's been through ahead of me every morning and fixed the whole store to the planogram before I could get to it.

I've been calling it pressure in my head. The Front is being held up. Somebody's got both hands on it. In it.

Cost me a look, though. Deb. Monday, I was standing at fixture 22 looking at a perfectly normal barcode for too long, and I felt it, and looked up, and Deb from loss prevention was at the end of the run. Just standing. Hands at her sides. Looking at my hands. I said hey Deb, and she said hey, and she didn't move, and she didn't blink that I saw, and when I walked away I could feel her on my back all the way to the fitting rooms. Deb's known me for three years. Deb's never once looked at me like anything.

So that's the four days. Perfect store. Held looks. Three views on the counter, still. Nobody new.

I got home at 5:40 like always. Kate was at the counter cutting something, her back to me, I unloaded my work bag and began to settle in and said hey, and she said hey, and she turned around. I looked up to meet her gaze.

Her hair is red.

I need and am going to be very careful and clear. Red. Not auburn. Not tinted, not a rinse, not a warm brown in a certain light. Red. Deep, dark, dyed red, the kind that takes two boxes or a salon and three hours. Down past her shoulders, same length, same part, same everything, red.

Kate has blonde hair. Long blonde hair. I've lived with her for two years and every single description of her in this blog, every one, says blonde, and I can go back and check that and so can you. It's blonde in 01 when she'd be kind about it. It's up in a blonde knot in 08 when she looked like a person who lives in my apartment. This morning at 6:46 am in the kitchen when she asked if I'd taken it, for the twelfth day in a row, one beat early, it was blonde.

And I asked, because what else do you do, "did you dye your hair?"

She looked at me.

I want to give you the look exactly because I've been practicing them. It wasn't the ping pong. It wasn't the held one either, not quite, it was somewhere I don't have a word for yet. She looked at me for about half a second too long. Long enough that I noticed it was long. Her face didn't do anything. And in that half second I had the very clear feeling that she was deciding something. Not what to say. Whether to say. Like a person at a sales counter deciding whether to correct the incorrect total or let the few cents go.

And then she said "yes."

That's it. Yes. Not "oh my god finally you noticed," not "do you like it," not "I've been wanting to try it for ages." Yes. And she turned back around and kept cutting.

I said "when?" and she replied with "last week," without turning around or skipping a beat.

I said "it looks good." Because I'm a person who says that. It's a reflex, it's the thing you say, I'd have said it to a customer.

She turned around, quickly…

…and the whole room let go. I don't know how else to say it. Her shoulders came down. Her face did a thing it hadn't done in the half second before, it opened, and she said "really? oh my god, thank you, I was so nervous," and she put the knife down and touched it, ran her hand down the side of it, and she said the salon had talked her into going darker than she'd planned and she'd almost cried in the chair and she'd been waiting all week for somebody to say something and nobody at work had said a word, not one person, and she laughed, and she said "I thought maybe it was bad," and she looked at me like a person who'd been holding her breath.

It was the most I've ever heard her say about herself at once.

And I stood there and I noticed the whole thing happen. I noticed it the way I'd notice a fixture that had been out of planogram for a week suddenly get fixed while I was looking at it. Because the look she gave me first, the half second, the deciding, that was one thing. And this was a completely different thing. Loose. Warm. Grateful. And the door between them was three words, and the three words were “it looks good”, and I'd said them without meaning anything by them, and she'd taken them like a password. Open Sesame.

Like I'd passed a test I didn’t know I was taking.

I said "no, it really does," and I meant it, actually, it does, and she said "thanks," softer, and picked the knife back up, and the kitchen was a kitchen again, and I don't know if I'd just made my roommate's week or if I'd just told somebody the correction took.

I have been in this kitchen every morning and every night for the last week. I have eaten a plate across from that hair every night for the last week. I wrote about her breathing in the dark on Saturday, no more than 15 feet from that hair.

Okay. Both versions. I promised.

Version one. She dyed her hair last week and I didn't notice because I'm off my meds and dysregulated and I've been so far inside my own head for thirteen days that I missed a person I live with turning a completely different color. That happens. That's a thing that happens to people like me. Ask anyone who's ever loved someone with a brain like mine, they'll tell you about the time they got a haircut and we didn't see it for a month. She gave me a look because she was hurt, because it's been a week and I didn't notice, and she said yes in the flat way because what do you say to your roommate who's been staring at hangers instead of at you.

That's a good version. That version is kind to both of us.

Version two. Kate's hair was blonde this morning and it's red tonight and she looked at me for half a second to decide whether I was somebody who'd get the correction or somebody who'd get the truth, and she picked, and she said yes, and the yes was the correction.

I don't know which. I'm not going to pretend I know which. I ate the plate and it was a good plate and she asked how work was and I said perfect, and she said "good," and did the pause.

But here's what I did when she went to bed, and I'm not proud of it, and it goes in the log.

I went to the fridge. We have a photo on the fridge, the two of us, from a work thing of hers last summer, some rooftop, she's got a drink and I've got a face like I'd rather be at the store. It's been there for nine months. I look at it every time I get milk.

Her hair's red in it.

Red. On a rooftop. Last summer. Under a magnet shaped like a lemon that I bought at a farmers market.

I stood there with the fridge door open and the light on me and I thought about the sign. Bright red in eighteen photos, back to the first one. I thought about the corner of the basket. I thought about a tail curling around an arm.

I know what this is now. I don't mean I know what's happening. I mean I know what it's called, I've been calling it weather and voting and correcting and it's simpler than any of that. It's the same thing that happened to the logo. It's the same thing that happened to the monkey. Something changed, and then it had always been that way, and the only things left over are the people who remember, and the people who remember are the mistake.

Kate has always had red hair. The fridge says so. Her mail says so, probably, I didn't check, I'm not going to check. Everybody at the store would say so if I asked, and I'm not going to ask, because I know what "it never had that" sounds like now and I don't want to hear it in a voice I care about.

I've been doing the math on the four perfect days, the cleared weather, the held looks, the three views, and I'll say it as a question because I don't get to say it as anything else.

Does someone know?

Not the thing that makes the hallways. I mean people. Is there somebody who knows the weather happens, and where, and to who, and puts both hands on the Front when one of us gets too close?

I don't have an answer. I have a roommate with red hair and a photo that agrees with her.

Corridor tomorrow. I'll take the picture. Nineteen.

(morning. 7:41. adding this from the break room before I lose it)

The crack moved.

Not like 05. Not for a second. I stood in the corridor and it ran seven to one, low-left to high-right, I looked back and it ran seven to one, I looked at my phone and I looked back and it ran seven to one, and I took the photo and it's in the photo, and I'm looking at the photo right now and it runs seven to one.

It didn't correct.

Deb walked past me while I was standing there and she said "morning," and she looked at the clock, and she looked at me, and she went into loss prevention and shut the door.