The company geologist, a woman, is wearing brand new fire resistant coveralls with the company logo embroidered on the chest. They’re stiff and starchy, sounding something like a bowl of Rice Crispies when she walks. Her hard hat, bearing the same stickers as mine, is unscathed by the untold number of tiny traumas inflicted on it at a drilling location. A fine taupe colored dust has settled on her otherwise pristine steel toes, and I fight the urge to wipe it off.
Ah, weddings. What is it about them that make girls do more things to their body than the Spanish Inquisition did to glean confessions from heretics? There is the dying of the skin to mimic a model worthy of a Gauguin. There is the administration of sparkly appliqués to unsuspecting toenails, items best left to the pages of a kid sister’s sticker book. There is the spray painting of the face with a Barbie-sized version of the Orkin Man’s toxic backpack, leaving the victim afraid to smile for fear of gouging permanent canals in the stuff.
Allen’s mother is on her hands and knees in front of my fridge, scouring something brown akin to shellac from the right angled recesses of the veggie drawer. It strikes me that I should feel some shame in this. Before I can mutter an apology, his dad asks me where the steel wool is, so he can scrub some flame hardened bits of carbon matter off the stove.