“Max was much more effective at the funeral than you were. I won’t even bother asking what you’ve accomplished to fix the situation, but the clock is ticking. Tick-tock.” Alla tapped her Rolex, a gesture she’d learned from Lambert.
Marion’s eyes itched. Maybe it was pollen. Or the dreams that had been destroyed because of Anita’s death. A day before their return to Finland, they had sat at a Bangkok rooftop bar and chosen cocktails named Sweet Dreams. They’d toasted the future, and everything had seemed so clear. Marion had thought she might go visit Helena after all, with Anita, someday.
Marion looked through the display window to the street. That day would never come now. The parking lot was empty. That was where she had last seen Anita. Anita had been sitting in the car, back straight, eyes forward, chin up. When Marion finally built up the courage to go outside, she was already gone.
At ten to eight, her mother had rushed to the metro station even though she should have been on her way to the salon, which was just down the street. According to eyewitnesses, she had nearly been running, but in the morning a lot of people were in a hurry, so no one took any particular notice. Norma breathed in the scent of the coffee roastery, the same smell that would have been here on her mother’s final morning, and crossed Vaasa Square, as her mother had. Quickly she passed the crowd waiting outside the market for beer sales to begin, trying to see anything that might have influenced her mother’s decision, something that could make it comprehensible. Norma had chosen some practical ballet flats, capris, and a collared cotton blouse, her normal work attire, the same sort of thing her mother had been wearing that morning too, and rushed down the escalator to the platform, as her mother had done, repeatedly begging pardon as she hurried past rubes who didn’t know to keep right and blocked the entire width, just as she and her mother had done after moving to Helsinki, too. Once at the platform, she sat on the bench that her mother had not sat on. No, the metro had careened into the station too soon. Her mother had simply tossed her shoes and handbag under the bench, and then she had been gone.
Norma set her bag in the same place her mother had put her own and dropped her shoes onto the gray stone paving. Her mother’s shoes and bag had been delivered to her without any message. She’d removed the lining of the bag in case something had slipped behind—but no, there was nothing, just old receipts, a grubby Band-Aid, the detritus found in any woman’s handbag. The smells of the salon. Hair particles. This was her mother’s work purse, not her vacation purse. A hair dye stain. A couple of hairs stuck in the zipper, one from an Indian extension, and one blond, presumably from a customer. Her mother had left her phone at home. When Norma’s aunt brought it to her, she’d been sure she would find a message from her mother concealed in its depths. Disappointment had made her throw the thing at the wall. The last calls were from the week before the Thailand trip, and the messages were about changes to appointments and graduation hairdos. All the messages and calls were connected to Shear Magic. Her mother had been the salon’s Facebook page administrator, and she’d written the latest post just a few hours before her departure: After she gets back from vacation, Anita will be available again to conjure up an unforgettable style for your special day! On sale now: genuine tape-in human hair extensions!
—
Currents of air brushed Norma’s ankles as train after train zipped past. Metro guards came and went. Clubs, bulletproof vests, combat boots. Open, close, in, out. Signals warning of shutting doors. The mandarin-colored sides of the cars. Sausage advertisements, smiling celebrity chefs, birch benches on the platform. The heavy velvet skirts of the Finnish Roma, hands carrying beer bottles, methadone teeth. People returning from vacation. People leaving on vacation. Roller bags, homeless people carrying bundles, faded plastic sacks. Efficient briefcases rushing to work, quick steps, skirts smelling detergent fresh. Jackets, nonslip summer panty hose new from the package, without toe reinforcements. New high-heel tips. Virgin hair weaves, Indian and Russian, a few Malaysian. Bonding glue, melatonin pills, hormone therapy, tenderloin, expensive hair nutrients. Her mother’s final scenery.
The clock moved past noon. Her mother hadn’t gotten to see the slower steps of the midday passengers on the platform or their less careful grooming. She hadn’t smelled the cheaper perfumes, the forgotten deodorant, the uncut hair, the sweaty smells of yesterday’s food and beer, cola drinks and mustard, Imovane and antidepressants. She didn’t notice the Somali girls and the glints of light on the pins in their carefully folded headscarves, the quick weaves the immigrants used, the stay-at-home dads with their strollers, the bearded ones with brand-new sneakers, rolled-up pants, and dandified baseball caps. She didn’t smell the wake of incense trailing the ones headed for Goa for the coming winter, the hot chilies, the sugary sweetness of the pot.
Norma still sat on the bench.
The spoons she stored in the freezer had calmed the swelling of her eyelids from crying, but the effect had worn off as the morning went on. The spoons were one of her mother’s beauty tips. She and Helena had also used them to curl their lashes when they were younger. Norma pressed her fingers to her eyes. All these people, all this bustling. As they returned to the platform and climbed back aboveground to look for a streetcar or a bus, everyone on the metro that morning had known before her that something had happened. At the moment when she was still spraying Elnett into her hair and hoping the labor negotiations would end, they had all known. Hundreds of people had cursed the change in their routine, their missed meetings, and had known before her.
A few years before, she and her mother had experienced the same thing together. They’d been traveling on the train toward Helsinki, and suddenly Norma’s hair began to curl. They had chosen seats in the allergy compartment, so there were no extra irritants. She was startled. Her mother suggested cognac, and then just at that moment the train stopped. The announcement didn’t mention a reason. Even so, everyone had known instinctively that soon officials would arrive to begin collecting body parts from the tracks. Everyone traveling on the train had known before the family of the person who walked in front of it. Norma’s mother had seen her reaction then and had still chosen such a brutal way—of all the metro stations, this platform was on Norma’s way to work.
The vibration of her phone snapped Norma back to reality. A guard who seemed to be watching her had appeared near the bench. Norma moved closer to the other people loitering on the platform. The call was from Shear Magic again, from Marion. Norma didn’t answer. She wouldn’t know how to be natural with Marion, and she didn’t want to talk to her, let alone see her, even though Marion would know what mood Norma’s mother had been in during her final days at work and might have an explanation for her own father’s strange behavior. Norma had run into Marion a couple of times when she and Norma’s mother had been leaving work at the same time. A cloud of salon scents had surrounded Marion, disgusting Norma, who avoided looking her in the eyes. That was why she had retreated from Marion at the funeral, hiding behind the other mourners. What Helena did had scarred her entire family for all eternity. People treated them with either unnatural empathy or irritating curiosity. Never like normal people. Her mother had hated that, but now Norma had acted exactly the same way.
Alvar turned the key in the lock. While Marion removed her sandals in the entryway, Alvar tromped right in, heedless of the rattan basket from which Marion grabbed a pair of Anita’s guest slippers. In the draft, the dust on the windowsill in the living room took flight. Marion wiped her cheek, and as she swallowed a sneeze, Alvar was already pulling open drawers in the dressing table, rummaging through their contents as if doing accounting, with the same exactness, the same alertness, ready to latch on to any clue. Alvar trusted his own eyes more than he did Lambert’s guard dogs, who had visited the apartment immediately after the accident and copied the contents of Anita’s laptop. They hadn’t found anything noteworthy on the machine, and Alvar had been waiting for this moment with the empty apartment. One of the boys watchin
g the building had called Alvar as soon as the coast was clear.
“Look for any address books, postcards, scribbled notes, credit card bills, plane tickets, hotel receipts, or rental car paperwork,” Alvar said. “Other phones, memory cards.”
Marion saw from Alvar’s expression what he was thinking: that he should have handled this whole job himself. Then mistakes like this wouldn’t have happened. They would know who had delivered the Ukrainian hair to Anita, Marion wouldn’t have to worry about what to replace it with, and Alvar would receive one more of his numerous bonuses. This episode, which had shocked the clan, would be wiped away, and they would be safe again.
“Margit lived here for more than a week, and plenty of other people have probably been here, too,” Marion said, even though she knew the surveillance had begun immediately after Anita’s death. The clan’s mongrels already knew everyone who lived in the stairwell, their families, their pets, their daily rituals. Any strangers would be recognized instantly, and Lambert had probably also sent to the funeral one of the boys who stood guard outside Anita’s building. Otherwise her brother wouldn’t be so sure that Margit was the only one of the funeral guests who had visited the apartment. No one slipped through Lambert’s network of thugs, ever.
“Tell me one more time what you saw at the funeral.”
“How many times do I have to repeat this?” Marion said. “Ask your men why they didn’t find anything here.” She glanced at the clock. Norma was at work, and Margit was away, so Alvar had the whole day. He didn’t need Marion here, and she didn’t want to be here. She shouldn’t be here. She felt like crying and wiped her cheeks again, mumbling something about allergies. The clan just wanted to torment her. That was why she had to come along. Alvar was still tossing the dressing table, lifting bottles and jars, opening boxes. In one drawer, he found a picture of Anita and Helena in long flowery skirts from sometime long ago. Marion turned her head away.
“Think more carefully,” Alvar demanded as he shoved the picture into his pocket. “Maybe you forgot something.”
“Margit could have taken anything.”
“I understand she didn’t take much. All she put in her car was a small roller suitcase, a garment bag, some plastic sacks, a few houseplants, and an old tube radio,” Alvar rattled off. “Norma helped her carry it all, and then they hugged. Margit hung on Norma, who only looked bored. You knew Anita best. If anyone can find a clue, it’s you.”
Marion glanced at the shelves: art books, hair books, medical books, genetics books. Three English biographies of Elizabeth Siddal, two of the Sutherland sisters, one of Martha Harper, and three guides on doing extensions. No wonder Anita had been so good at her job—she had read practically everything about the hair industry.
Alvar grabbed a book off the shelf titled The Belle Époque, flipped through it from cover to cover, and put it back.
“The last bundle went for five thousand dollars per kilo.”
“I know!”
“Lambert can send someone to search Margit’s apartment. We should’ve come here ourselves after the accident.”
Alvar’s complaining was pointless. Anita’s actions had put everyone on edge, and before making any moves, they’d had to make sure no one else was watching the apartment. They didn’t want another ambush; the leaders of the clan had to be able to keep an appropriate distance. But by the time the building had been declared clear, Margit had already ensconced herself in Anita’s home. The lights had shined through the night, and apparently her wailing had been audible all the way down the stairwell. According to Lambert’s dogs, the woman hadn’t gone out at all other than to visit a funeral parlor and then only briefly. Norma had stayed home with no sign of guests.
—
Alvar stopped in front of a camera on a shelf. It was new and expensive. The memory card was missing. Alvar placed the camera back on the shelf and returned to Anita’s dressing table. The edges of the mirror were crammed full of postcards and photographs from Tenerife, Rhodes, Stockholm, Tallinn, Athens, Rome, and Antalya. The Canary Islands. Costa del Sol.
“If Anita had been traveling to Kiev for years and had distant relatives in Ukraine, why aren’t there any cards from there?” Alvar said. “What if the hair is really coming from somewhere else? No one at the funeral had heard of any Ukrainian relatives, not even a Ukrainian girlfriend or wife.”
“Where else could it have come from?”
“Anita must have been getting it through a go-between. We need to find that intermediary.”
Marion glanced at her watch. She had to get back to the salon. Her next customer was coming in half an hour. She grabbed Anita’s spare keys from Alvar in case the girl came to get some of Anita’s things. Keys to the attic and cellar hung from hooks by the door. Alvar could handle those.
Two
By August we’ll be able to laugh at all the old stories and the will we made out for you. You won’t need to be afraid of accidents, and I won’t need to lose sleep wondering if you’ll be run down by a car just when I’m unreachable by phone or I’m too far away to get to you at the hospital, or worse, at the morgue. You can forget the cremation.
The sweat of the previous victim lingered on the beige chair, and fingerprints were visible on the armrests in the grease each employee had left while awaiting his or her fate. Norma moved her hands to her lap. Words flew past about challenging times and unavoidable course corrections. Apparently the decision about Norma Ross had been made ages ago. Those words were repeated several times as if in an attempt to emphasize that the recent tragedy had nothing to do with the termination of her employment. Crisis hotline cards were offered once again. The thought of a therapist trying to handle her problems was laughable, but Norma swallowed the giggle that tickled her throat. She had to act normal.
What had made this job exceptional was the large number of sight-impaired people among the clientele, so she rarely had to worry about sidelong glances. The guide dogs were well trained and didn’t pay her special attention the way animals usually did. The ventilation in the building was good, recently renovated. She’d thought she would be able to hold on to her secretarial position because previous firings had helped her learn to avoid the worst pitfalls: workplace romances and excessive sociability, involvement in internal power struggles and criticizing management. She knew how to create relationships wrapped in friendship-like gestures, and she had attended the theater and other workplace outings in order to seem normal. I could stay here, she had told her mother. A series of positions lost at short intervals encumbered her résumé—not an advantage during a downturn. Landing a job at the Central Association for the Visually Impaired had been a stroke of luck.
Her boss carefully ticked off the reasons for her termination. Then his voice rose when he noticed Norma’s dry eyes. Her pink slip was her own fault, a testimony to her obstinacy and slackening morale, to her rebellious influence at a time when an entirely different attitude was required. Norma Ross was frequently late for work despite repeated reprimands, and her defiant behavior had clearly increased of late. That Norma could not deny. She could only secretly blame her hair, which had become increasingly difficult during the labor negotiations as it absorbed the anxiety of everyone around her. At times it had become nearly impossible to cut, like barbed wire or hemp rope, which made her late in the morning and dragged out her lunch hours. Its weight had grown as if preparing to defend her in a war. Her wrists hurt, and she decided to complain of repetitive stress injury from using a mouse. And then her mother’s death had come.
Her boss clearly expected anger and unhinged behavior that would confirm the grounds for her release and ease his conscience. Norma felt the cuticles of her hair opening as if she were in a hot shower, but she refused to fulfill the man’s desires. His forehead and temples were so damp that a spoon would have stuck to them. His sebaceous glands had worked hard all day without the table fan appearing to have helped much. Norma stood to leave, took a pen from her boss’s desk, and on a compa
ny notepad wrote the words “Ducray Sabal.”
“This will help with your scalp. I doubt the management considers careless hygiene among their hirelings particularly good for the association’s image.”
—
She didn’t stop until she reached the doors of the office complex and realized she was shaking. Her mother would have mourned Norma’s lost job more than she did, seeing a replay of all her daughter’s failed attempts to find her place in the working world, all the times Norma had been forced to leave. They used to joke afterward about all the situations she ended up in because of her hair. Once a colleague had seen her hair the wrong length. Another time someone had made it curl. Sometimes a workplace just hadn’t given her anywhere to cut it during the day. There would be no more jokes now.
Norma heard her name being yelled just as she was turning out of the store toward home. Reflexively she stopped but immediately regretted it. Max Lambert’s teeth shone under the faded awning of the Golden Palm—his suntan made them look whitened like an American’s. Norma didn’t have any reason to stay even out of politeness. She didn’t know this man, so she tried to walk away, but Lambert fell into step nimbly alongside her.
“This is quite a coincidence,” Lambert said. “I’ve been waiting for you to call.” Even though the paper towel package hanging from Norma’s fingers indicated she must be on her way home, opening the door a few meters ahead felt impossible in this man’s company. Norma passed her stairwell and continued walking. The terrace of the Straw Hat Pub approached, and Lambert took a few running strides to catch up with her again.
“Could I offer you a beer or some other summer refreshment?”