Simmer Down

Sarka wanted done with her hair, Adrianna and I unloaded all of her bags again, went up the brick walkway, and rang the bell.
    The door opened, and there was Barry, dressed in an expensive navy suit, clearly ready for a workday. “You must be Adrianna. Thank you for coming on such short notice.” He reached out and shook Ade’s hand and then realized that I was standing there, too. “ Chloe? What are you doing here?” My cover had been blown. “Adrianna is a good friend of mine, and I’m just tagging along with her today to get a feel for the business. I’m writing a paper,” I said vaguely. “On, you know, self-employed women who... work.” I’m not always quick on my feet.
    Barry, however, apparently accepted my feeble explanation. “Oh, well, great. Ladies, please come in out of the cold. It is finally starting to feel more like winter around here, don’t you think?”
    We stepped into the warm house and hung our coats in the entryway. The look and the ambiance here were completely different from what I’d noticed at Dora’s. The living room walls were a rich red; the trim, a warm ivory. Everything was cozy and comfortable and totally livable, as if the Extreme Makeover team had just left. There were two big, soft couches and a matching chair and a half (one of those oversized, cushiony armchairs I’d been wanting and for which I lacked the funds and the space). The rest of the furniture was, I guessed, from Restoration Hardware or Pottery Barn. A fuzzy rug covered the center of the room. A real wood fire burned in the fireplace, and the mantel held lighted tapers in a natural honey color. In a corner of the room a Christmas tree was smothered in ribbons, bows, vintage-looking ornaments, and string after string of lights. I sighed. I’d have given anything for a living room like this. These people had somehow leaped into my brain, extracted my fantasy house, and set it up for themselves.
    As if reading my thoughts, Barry said, “Make yourself at home.” He gestured to the comfy couches, and I somehow controlled the urge to hurl myself onto the overstuffed pillows. “I’ll go find Sarka. I’ve got to go do some work today, and she didn’t have any plans, so I thought it might be nice for her to do something for herself while I’m gone. I hope it wasn’t inconvenient for you to come over today?”
    “Not at all,” Adrianna said. “Dora is a regular client of mine, and I’m more than happy to see one of her friends.”
    “That’s great. Thank you. I’ll be upstairs on the computer, and I’ve got tons of phone calls to make. There are still so many people who haven’t heard about Oliver, and Dora is really not up to making those calls.”
    When Barry left the living room, I was tempted to trail behind him to sneak a look at the rest of the house.
    Adrianna was as awestruck as I was by the beautiful room. “Well, this definitely looks nothing like Dora’s house, that’s for sure.”
    “You’re not kidding. There isn’t one smidge of bad taste in here, is there?”
    Sarka appeared a few minutes later, her hair wet from the shower, her face bare of makeup. If she hadn’t been so scrawny, she’d have been stunning. She wore a matching white zip-up sweatshirt and pants that mercifully covered what must have been visible bones.
    “Hello, I’m Sarka. It’s nice to meet you. Dora says wonderful things about you.” She smiled softly at Ade. “And you must be Chloe? Barry says we met briefly the other night at the gallery. I’m so sorry I don’t remember.”
    My memory of Sarka that night was that she’d looked exceedingly bored, so I wasn’t surprised that she’d forgotten our introduction. “That’s okay,” I said. “There was a lot going on that night.”
    Adrianna lifted up her bag. “Where would you like me to set up?”
    Sarka waved her hand around the room. “We can stay in here if you like. I’ll just pull a smaller chair in from the dining room, and we can sit by the fire.”
    The suggestion astounded me. My graduate-student living room was nothing by comparison with Sarka’s, but when Adrianna did my hair, we used my bathroom or kitchen. The chemicals she used for color were, by definition, designed to tint what they touched, and I didn’t want a hennaed couch or highlight-splotched pillows. Furthermore, there was already more than enough of Gato’s fur everywhere without the addition of the trimmed-off ends of my own hair. Even though Sarka could clearly