From Novel In Progress, Lady Of The Lake
When Grace first gave in to her curiosity, the body was nearby, lying beside a chain link fence near the grottiest part of Rock Harbor boat dock. It was covered in a canopy of pine trees and litter, almost completely hidden from the street. Grace walked right by it, not knowing that this was the whole reason she was near the dock and the quarry. She was almost sleepwalking anyway, obsessed with a picture of a color she had seen only in her imagination.
It was on a nail, a chipped blackened red, that Grace had seen in a flash as she flipped an egg that morning. It came like a vision. Or a hallucination. All noise and action around her slid away from consciousness, and this color covered her eyes as if she had dived into a pool of it. The richness of the color of red stood out to Grace, and then as the picture seemed to pull away a bit, to refocus. It was then that Grace was able to see what the color was smeared onto, that she knew even in that cursory glance of daydreams couldn’t be a wadded up Marlboro Red package, or the label of a bottle of Budweiser, or any of the other discarded possibilities the side of a road tends to collect. It was definitely a fingernail, two thirds of the way covered in dark reddish black polish.
A pale finger, she saw in this vision, was attached to it. And to that finger a knuckle. And to that knuckle a hand. But in that first blink of color and intuition that came over her, Grace didn’t get too far past the fingernail before the image in her mind disappeared. It was quickly replaced once again by the smell of burning butter and the sizzle and pop from the frying pan, egg browned and now burnt.
As she was running later that day, the color came to her again, the image somehow smothering the light around her, and she could think of nothing else. Her body jerked, as if it were being invaded by the vision of this red. Grace felt as if this might be what having a seizure was like, this complete loss of control, falling to the pavement and covering her eyes as if the image was in front of her, and not inside of her. When Grace was able once again to stand, she could no longer ignore whatever these attacks on reality were. She followed the tiny ideas they left behind, like hints for treasure. She thought only: Go that way.
And so Grace turned from her planned route and instead ran along the side of the rock quarry that was caddy corner from the dock. She ran up the street toward Robertson Road, in her faded black leggings, two year old All Terrain New Balance shoes, a paint spattered sweatshirt, and an old cassette player in her hands. The headphones had fallen when she had stopped in her tracks and fallen, and were now dangling from her neck.
Grace had been running that late afternoon for the purpose of filling up some empty space of her day, and to escape the confines of the suffocating vinyl sided two bedroom post World War II square of a house she temporarily lived in, with her father. Before the hallucination hit again, she had been running with conviction. She ran like she used to, when she had brand new workout clothes, when she belonged to a gym, when it was a treadmill she put miles on. When she lived alone but full of purpose and ambition in an exclusive condo development downtown that had two pools, retail space, a concierge. Despite the difference in scenery, Grace was running for a similar reason: To work thoughts out, and then to try and forget where they might lead.
But after her run had been interrupted and she began to follow only this most thin grip of intuition, Grace ran past the chest of treasure those hints had tried to steer her toward, that girl lying lifelessly nearby. And Grace passed her, instead running far away, getting cold, cold, colder from that redness and that nail.
Instead, that vision of color lead Grace to follow her own reason, never the solution for something that has very little of its own. And so on that day after Valentine’s, she ended up at a beauty supply store off of Charlotte Avenue, about a half a mile from where the whole thing began.
An array of polish colors were on display at Sally Beauty Supply, the shocking pinks, metallic blues, dull nudes and scarlet reds. Her aim was to find the shade she could not get out of her head, neither completely black, nor completely red. A mixture. Grace was on a frantic search for the exact name.
She quickly found Brandywine, and Ruby Fire, in a brand of nail polish she had never heard of, painting them on each thumbnail and blowing quickly. They came close, but then Grace would notice the metallic hues that danced in the light, and her search continued. The nail in that dreamlike thought didn’t sparkle. It was almost matte. Full of pigment but devoid of playfulness. The color was hard. Cold. Dead. Much like the girl who wore it, that Grace still had no idea whatsoever about.
After scouring the racks for another fifteen minutes and coming up empty, Grace could still see the color perfectly, and realized that Sally Beauty definitely didn’t have it. It wasn’t a professional manicure that nail was wearing, Grace had decided. It was a homemade manicure. Unless it was from the beauty school down the street off Annex. And unless the beautician in training got a D. Maybe an F.
Grace wiped the still wet colors off of her thumbs on her black leggings, and edged past a grey haired man with a long mustache that curled at the ends, buying Clubman aftershave and ponytail holders. She didn’t look the cashier in the eye, but half-whispered, “Thank you” as the bell tied to the handle of the door rang twice as it closed behind her.
Kroger was the next stop, and it had only had Covergirl and Sally Hansen, mostly pinks and whites, French Manicure colors all of them. So before she hit Walgreens, Grace ended up in the cosmetic section of CVS pharmacy because it was on the same side of the road as Kroger. And there it was. She instantly knew the Revlon color Crushed Crimson was the one she had seen, the one she had been searching for, the minute her eyes met the color painted on the plastic sample nail in front of her.
She picked up the bottle, painted it on all the fingernails of her right hand, marveling at my perfect match under the bluish white buzz of fluorescent lights. It was just dark enough to seem black, until she moved her fingers to play with the overhead glare, back and forth, where she saw the red accents appear. This was the color. This was it. And it really was the same color, actually. Grace had a very good sense memory for things like this, it turns out. It also just happened to be the very same CVS the owner of those Crushed Crimson nails had bought it at.
Grace picked her cassette player and headphones off the ground and slipped the polish up through the sleeve of her sweatshirt. She poked her head up and craned it to the right, spotting the surveillance camera on the next aisle. Grace felt bad for stealing, but she hadn’t brought any money with her, and the urgency of this find was too great. She would risk a trip downtown to be booked for a petty theft for Crushed Crimson.
Grace ran across the parking lot, letting the bottle slip out of her sleeve and holding it tightly in her right hand. She clipped the cassette player on the elastic waistband of her pants, placing the headphones back around her neck, while watching the dark nails of her right hand, tightly clenched, moving forward and back in opposite motion of her legs.
She ran all the way back home, breathing in painfully cold air as the sun set. She realized with the darkness that she had gone on a wild goose chase for a simple color on a fingernail she saw in a dream that might actually be some sort of acid flashback or sudden onset of mental illness. But the fact that Grace now had proof that the color actually existed was what convinced her that it all couldn’t totally be imaginary. Something seemed very real about that image, that color, that fingernail. And although she had no explanation for the source, Grace satisfied her self doubt with the find somewhat. She settled on the idea that she had seen the color in a magazine, maybe on a mannequin’s hand, and that recent events of high stress must have mixed her up and convinced her that she must find this color. Maybe that was the end of it. So that night, as Grace made her way home, that girl lying nearby and her own Crushed Crimson nails would lie in wait.
When Grace first gave in to her curiosity, the body was nearby, lying beside a chain link fence near the grottiest part of Rock Harbor boat dock. It was covered in a canopy of pine trees and litter, almost completely hidden from the street. Grace walked right by it, not knowing that this was the whole reason she was near the dock and the quarry. She was almost sleepwalking anyway, obsessed with a picture of a color she had seen only in her imagination.
It was on a nail, a chipped blackened red, that Grace had seen in a flash as she flipped an egg that morning. It came like a vision. Or a hallucination. All noise and action around her slid away from consciousness, and this color covered her eyes as if she had dived into a pool of it. The richness of the color of red stood out to Grace, and then as the picture seemed to pull away a bit, to refocus. It was then that Grace was able to see what the color was smeared onto, that she knew even in that cursory glance of daydreams couldn’t be a wadded up Marlboro Red package, or the label of a bottle of Budweiser, or any of the other discarded possibilities the side of a road tends to collect. It was definitely a fingernail, two thirds of the way covered in dark reddish black polish.
A pale finger, she saw in this vision, was attached to it. And to that finger a knuckle. And to that knuckle a hand. But in that first blink of color and intuition that came over her, Grace didn’t get too far past the fingernail before the image in her mind disappeared. It was quickly replaced once again by the smell of burning butter and the sizzle and pop from the frying pan, egg browned and now burnt.
As she was running later that day, the color came to her again, the image somehow smothering the light around her, and she could think of nothing else. Her body jerked, as if it were being invaded by the vision of this red. Grace felt as if this might be what having a seizure was like, this complete loss of control, falling to the pavement and covering her eyes as if the image was in front of her, and not inside of her. When Grace was able once again to stand, she could no longer ignore whatever these attacks on reality were. She followed the tiny ideas they left behind, like hints for treasure. She thought only: Go that way.
And so Grace turned from her planned route and instead ran along the side of the rock quarry that was caddy corner from the dock. She ran up the street toward Robertson Road, in her faded black leggings, two year old All Terrain New Balance shoes, a paint spattered sweatshirt, and an old cassette player in her hands. The headphones had fallen when she had stopped in her tracks and fallen, and were now dangling from her neck.
Grace had been running that late afternoon for the purpose of filling up some empty space of her day, and to escape the confines of the suffocating vinyl sided two bedroom post World War II square of a house she temporarily lived in, with her father. Before the hallucination hit again, she had been running with conviction. She ran like she used to, when she had brand new workout clothes, when she belonged to a gym, when it was a treadmill she put miles on. When she lived alone but full of purpose and ambition in an exclusive condo development downtown that had two pools, retail space, a concierge. Despite the difference in scenery, Grace was running for a similar reason: To work thoughts out, and then to try and forget where they might lead.
But after her run had been interrupted and she began to follow only this most thin grip of intuition, Grace ran past the chest of treasure those hints had tried to steer her toward, that girl lying lifelessly nearby. And Grace passed her, instead running far away, getting cold, cold, colder from that redness and that nail.
Instead, that vision of color lead Grace to follow her own reason, never the solution for something that has very little of its own. And so on that day after Valentine’s, she ended up at a beauty supply store off of Charlotte Avenue, about a half a mile from where the whole thing began.
An array of polish colors were on display at Sally Beauty Supply, the shocking pinks, metallic blues, dull nudes and scarlet reds. Her aim was to find the shade she could not get out of her head, neither completely black, nor completely red. A mixture. Grace was on a frantic search for the exact name.
She quickly found Brandywine, and Ruby Fire, in a brand of nail polish she had never heard of, painting them on each thumbnail and blowing quickly. They came close, but then Grace would notice the metallic hues that danced in the light, and her search continued. The nail in that dreamlike thought didn’t sparkle. It was almost matte. Full of pigment but devoid of playfulness. The color was hard. Cold. Dead. Much like the girl who wore it, that Grace still had no idea whatsoever about.
After scouring the racks for another fifteen minutes and coming up empty, Grace could still see the color perfectly, and realized that Sally Beauty definitely didn’t have it. It wasn’t a professional manicure that nail was wearing, Grace had decided. It was a homemade manicure. Unless it was from the beauty school down the street off Annex. And unless the beautician in training got a D. Maybe an F.
Grace wiped the still wet colors off of her thumbs on her black leggings, and edged past a grey haired man with a long mustache that curled at the ends, buying Clubman aftershave and ponytail holders. She didn’t look the cashier in the eye, but half-whispered, “Thank you” as the bell tied to the handle of the door rang twice as it closed behind her.
Kroger was the next stop, and it had only had Covergirl and Sally Hansen, mostly pinks and whites, French Manicure colors all of them. So before she hit Walgreens, Grace ended up in the cosmetic section of CVS pharmacy because it was on the same side of the road as Kroger. And there it was. She instantly knew the Revlon color Crushed Crimson was the one she had seen, the one she had been searching for, the minute her eyes met the color painted on the plastic sample nail in front of her.
She picked up the bottle, painted it on all the fingernails of her right hand, marveling at my perfect match under the bluish white buzz of fluorescent lights. It was just dark enough to seem black, until she moved her fingers to play with the overhead glare, back and forth, where she saw the red accents appear. This was the color. This was it. And it really was the same color, actually. Grace had a very good sense memory for things like this, it turns out. It also just happened to be the very same CVS the owner of those Crushed Crimson nails had bought it at.
Grace picked her cassette player and headphones off the ground and slipped the polish up through the sleeve of her sweatshirt. She poked her head up and craned it to the right, spotting the surveillance camera on the next aisle. Grace felt bad for stealing, but she hadn’t brought any money with her, and the urgency of this find was too great. She would risk a trip downtown to be booked for a petty theft for Crushed Crimson.
Grace ran across the parking lot, letting the bottle slip out of her sleeve and holding it tightly in her right hand. She clipped the cassette player on the elastic waistband of her pants, placing the headphones back around her neck, while watching the dark nails of her right hand, tightly clenched, moving forward and back in opposite motion of her legs.
She ran all the way back home, breathing in painfully cold air as the sun set. She realized with the darkness that she had gone on a wild goose chase for a simple color on a fingernail she saw in a dream that might actually be some sort of acid flashback or sudden onset of mental illness. But the fact that Grace now had proof that the color actually existed was what convinced her that it all couldn’t totally be imaginary. Something seemed very real about that image, that color, that fingernail. And although she had no explanation for the source, Grace satisfied her self doubt with the find somewhat. She settled on the idea that she had seen the color in a magazine, maybe on a mannequin’s hand, and that recent events of high stress must have mixed her up and convinced her that she must find this color. Maybe that was the end of it. So that night, as Grace made her way home, that girl lying nearby and her own Crushed Crimson nails would lie in wait.
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