“I still want a triangle in the front,” said the guest. “I feel like the full Brazilian would make me look like I’m trying to pass as a prepubescent. You know?”
“I get it,” Fia told her. “So leave the natural growth? Or do you want me to shape it a bit? Kind of a neater triangle?”
“I mean, the problem with shaping it is, I have to tweeze the edges between waxings. The stray hairs drive me crazy. You can get obsessive with the tweezing. You know?”
“I do,” she said, nodding. “Tweezing’s addictive.”
“Just sitting on the toilet. Looking down there and tweezing, tweezing, tweezing. Hurts my neck.”
“OK. Just natural in front. Can you go ahead and butterfly your legs for me?”
She couldn’t remember why they were supposed to say butterfly. Maybe so it sounded pretty. Really it was a diamond: the knees went out, but the feet stayed close to each other. So from crotch to ankles, the shape was a diamond. And diamonds were also pretty.
Sometimes she did say diamond, but guests understood butterfly better. The act of dropping their knees outward was like a butterfly opening its wings.
It was the movement, not the shape.
She twirled the wax on the stick. That was about movement too. Twirl, twirl, twirl. When she started her fingers had been stiff after every shift. It couldn’t be so hot it burned, but it also couldn’t cool.
“Is the temperature OK?” she asked, spreading the wax on an inner thigh.
“Fine, fine,” said the guest. She’d taken her socks off—some did and some didn’t—and her toenails had roses on them.
“I like your nails,” said Fia.
With the bikinis and Brazilians you had to keep the conversation flowing. If you went quiet, the guests felt self-conscious. It hit them, in the silence, that they’d strolled in off the street, spread their legs under fluorescent lights, and didn’t know you from Adam.
But there you were, touching their private parts.
“You do? I asked for daisies, but she did roses. There’s always a language barrier. At nail salons.”
“Tell me about it.”
“They nod and act like they understand, but then do something different. And at that point you’re too shy to stop them. You don’t want to be high maintenance.”
“I know. You’re kind of like, whatever.”
“You surrender.”
“You raise the white flag.”
“Although not everyone is shy. There was this lady right next to me, a couple of pedicures ago, who made them change the color. After both feet were done. And it was gel. Did she pay double? I doubt it.”
“So this is the first labia. This one could hurt a bit. Since it’s been over six weeks. Breathe out. OK? Now, one, two, three.”
She ripped it off. A sharp intake of breath.
“Oh! But that wasn’t so bad . . . I have a friend who tried to do it at home. Her Brazilian.”
“Oh, wow! Really?”
“In the early lockdown. I told her it was crazy. She literally ripped some skin off. Her vagina.”
Her vulva, actually. But who was arguing?
“It’s tough. I never do my own. And I have training.”
“Plus the wax itself. It’s so much better here. Than those home kits from the drugstore.”
“Well, yeah. Our wax, and I’m not saying this just because I work here, is hands down the best. It’s a proprietary formula.”
God’s truth. The wax was awesome.
“She said her husband wouldn’t go down on her if she had hair there. Or even stubble.”
You rolled with the punches. Kept the talk ball rolling.
“I mean, that’s kind of sad? I guess? Like, as a waxer I’m biased, but there shouldn’t be conditions. Right?”
“Exactly. I was like, I’m not a huge feminist or anything, but shit, girl. Know your rights.”
“Seriously. OK, take a deep breath again and let it out.”
“No one wants pubes in their teeth. But sometimes, like in a global pandemic, it’s just the cost of doing business.”
“We all made sacrifices.”
The guest laughed.
But after she said sacrifices, Fia thought of Tomás. Who had died. Her aunt, rocking back and forth and crying.
One day he was riding his bike with training wheels, the next day he couldn’t breathe.
She had to shake it off.
“Are we done there?” said the guest.
“All done. I just need to get the rear. You can flip or you can hold your knees up to your face for me. Whatever’s better.”
“I’ll hold them up. I don’t like the doggy-style thing.”
“I know what you mean.”
“But you’ve been great. It hardly even hurt.”
“Have a gorgeous day,” she said to the guest when she walked her to the lobby to pay.
The receptionists were always supposed to say it, but after she got the tip envelope, Tamra went right back to staring at her phone. She said it was a dumb expression. Plus she was Goth and it didn’t match her style.
And it was dumb, but Fia said it anyway. Since Tamra refused. She said it maybe ten times a shift, making up for Tamra’s sullen silence. Have a gorgeous day! Gorgeous day! Gorgeous day!
Some nights it echoed in her head.
Eight minutes till the next appointment. She’d thought maybe they’d let them slow down, with not as many guests coming in, but instead they’d just fired the newer staff and kept the schedules tight. For the waxers who were left.
So she went to the bathroom. If she didn’t, Pattie would sidle in from her own room and talk to her the whole time. She scrolled back to the photos on her phone. Tomás’s grave, with a vase of roses on it. It must have been the roses on the toenails that had reminded her of him.
A tiny toy bike was at the grave too. Blue, the same color as his real one. He’d loved the blue bike. He’d gotten it that Christmas, the Christmas of 2019, and rode around all the time. Put stickers on it of Pokémon characters. Mostly the cute yellow one.
He’d told Fia, “They say he’s not a pika. Even though his name is Pikachu. But I like pikas. They live on mountains and squeak.”
He hadn’t been big or anything. He just had asthma. That was it. Lots of kids in his neighborhood had asthma. It was near a huge trucking depot. And none of those other kids had died from the COVID.
The doctor had said, “I’m afraid we can’t explain his susceptibility. It’s unusual, statistically, but we are seeing a few of these cases. I wish we’d been able to do more for him.”
Since then her aunt was a shut-in. She used to go salsa dancing once a week. And love her job as a dental hygienist. Now she watched TV all day. It had been years, but no one could get her to stop watching TV. Horse races, mostly.
She never even liked horses before. Now she said she wanted to watch them running. Around and around in circles.
“They say the horses know it when they win,” she’d told Fia once. As Fia sat beside her on the couch that smelled like a dirty bed. “So it’s supposed to be fun for them. But I don’t believe it. I see their eyes. What the horse thinks is, I run and I run. But I can never get away.”
Shit. Two minutes over. And she hadn’t wiped down the table yet. She blew her nose and washed her hands.
The next guest was legs and underarms. At first Fia didn’t recognize her under the mask. Corporate had said it was up to them. Whatever the staff was comfortable with. At their location. And they decided, masks. Back then.
Tamra wasn’t into it, but she got outvoted. So she’d kept her mask under her chin. Useless.
Fia stopped liking her, then.
That had been ages ago, but other than Tamra most of them still wore masks. Most days.
The guests, not so much.
“It’s been a while,” said Fia. “Great to see you!”
“What can I say, there wasn’t anyone to impress,” said the guest. A middle-aged professor. She was a good tipper and friendly. “But tomorrow I’ve got a date.”
“Oh, wow,” said Fia. “I remember those.” Twirl, twirl.
Trudy, that was her name. It said Gertrude on her birth certificate, she’d told Fia before. But who would ever go by Gertrude? Only Gertrude Stein could pull it off.
Trudy was in her fifties. They had their own celebrities.
“Probably won’t end well,” she said. “I found him on an app. But it’s an excuse to get out of the house. And wear a skirt for once.”
“I used a couple of apps. It’s how I met my boyfriend.”
“Really? That’s reassuring! It was my kid who convinced me to do it. He thinks I’m antisocial. Says it’s unhealthy. So I’m going for dinner with some random guy to make my son happy.”
“That’s adorable! How old is your son again?”
“Almost fifteen.”
“It’s nice that he cares. My brother, when he was that age, he didn’t even notice our mother was a human being. He saw her as, just like, his personal chef and housecleaner.”
“Well. I’m terrible at both those things. So my advice to mothers is, avoid them. Then there won’t be any confusion.”
Fia laughed.
“Anyway, the guy I’m going on a date with claims to own a food-service business. So maybe the food will be good, at least.”
“Oh, nice,” said Fia.
“But it could easily be one of those deals where you show up and he’s twenty years older than he said he was. Which in this case would be pushing seventy. And has no hair at all. Except in his ears and nose.”
“Though bald guys, some of them are cute. Don’t you think?”
“Sure. If they don’t try to hide it. With combovers. Or plugs.”
“What about hair transplants? Like Elon Musk?”
“Elon Musk got a hair transplant?”
“It’s obvious! OK, raise your other arm for me.”
“So I’m picturing it, right now, like when someone gets an organ transplant. And they fly the organ to the hospital roof in a helicopter with the red cross on it. In a small cooler. And inside the cooler is Elon Musk’s new hair. On ice.”
“Like a little brown squirrel.”
“But I guess it’d have to be attached to a scalp.”
“No way!”
“But wait. Are plugs the same as implants?”
“I think the new implants are better. The surgeons do, like, individual follicles. I’m getting my cosmetology license and they talked about it once. It can run a guy, like, fifteen grand. Or more.”
“That’s pennies to Elon.”
“He could probably afford the whole-scalp option.”
“He could afford a scalp on the black market.”
“Do you want me to do your toes? No extra charge. And it’s really quick.”
“Thank you. Those toe hairs are ugly.”
“You don’t have too many. I had a guest once whose toes looked like they had miniature beards.”
“That could come in handy! If you painted eyes and a mouth on the toenails, you could do puppet shows.”
And there he was again. Tomás.
He used to do puppet shows for her. With sock puppets. One had been a dinosaur, the other a chicken. He’d glued googly eyes on them. Made them talk in different voices. The dinosaur said funny, smart things and the chicken only said boc-boc. And pecked him.
“Sofía. Hey. Are you OK?”
“Yeah, no, I . . .”
“You want to stop for a minute? I can wait. Take all the time you need. There’s no hurry.”
Trudy swung her legs off the table. The toes had wax on them. Dark-blue blobs. She reached past to the Kleenex box on the counter. Pulled one out and handed it to Fia.
Touched her forearm. Clasping it lightly.
“I used to have this little cousin,” said Fia, dabbing. Her mascara could be running. “He made his own puppets.”
“He did?”
“There was a dinosaur. With . . . with teeth made of white felt.”
“OK.”
“He said it was a nice dinosaur. Not a mean one. It had big teeth. But it was still a plant-eater. He said. And its enemy . . . its enemy was a chicken.”
“Hey, sure. Man. Chickens can be scary. They’ll peck each other half to death. If you let them. Plus, little-known fact, their eggs and their shit come out of the exact same hole.”
Fia hiccupped. Half laughing.
You were so not supposed to let stuff like this happen. Ever.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize to me. Sometimes things just hit us. When it’s not convenient. I’m fine with it.”
“So he, Tomás, he passed away. In 2020. From the COVID. He was only nine.”
“Oh, no.”
“He was, he seemed so healthy. Except for, he had asthma. An inhaler. But he skated. He played basketball. He was fit.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“And since then my aunt, she doesn’t want to live anymore. She says she can’t kill herself. Because she has two other children. And they need her. But she can’t stand to go on living. Even five years later. She thinks about him all the time. She said it to my mom.”
“I’d feel that way too. For a while. I truly would.”
“He wasn’t even—he wasn’t even mine. I mean, he was my little guy. My favorite cousin. But still, not my own kid. And sometimes I remember. It was just the anniversary last week. Of him passing. And it came rushing . . . and then it’s like, how could I ever have a baby myself? If that can happen?”
“I know. Believe me. It’s the worst thing in the world.”
“I don’t want to.”
“And you don’t have to, either.”
“I just don’t want to.”
“And that’s OK.”
She hadn’t known it. Before this. And now it was here.
Her whole extended family had tons of kids. It was practically your job. Once you had kids, you were in the club. For good.
But she couldn’t do it. Ever.
She couldn’t stand the thought.
“They can be taken away,” she said. Swiveled her shoulders and pulled out another tissue. “Nine years. And then . . . overnight.”
“It can happen. People don’t really think of that, when they get pregnant. They have to ignore it. The possibility of tragedy. But no one says you have to be one of them.”
It took her a minute to get her eyes cleaned up. Above the mask. Looking into a small mirror she kept in a drawer. Trudy was quiet, waiting.
She was so embarrassed.
“Don’t worry about me,” said Trudy. “OK? Please.”
“No, but, thank you. I still have to take the wax off. Of your toes.”
“All right, yes. I won’t say no. Or else they’ll stick to my shoes. I’ll be going to my date in those filthy old sneakers. And if it goes really well, in a surprising turn of events, I won’t be able to take them off. I’ll be all, Sorry, no, I always keep these sneakers on. It’s just my thing.”
Fia laughed a bit.
She was still sniffly.
Trudy wiggled her toes. “Uh-oh,” she said, peering at the toe wax. “It’s gotten so hard. Will it still work?”
“I’ll get it. I promise. These toes are going to look as smooth as the day they were born.”
Trudy gave her the tip right in the room. Instead of waiting for Tamra to hand her the little envelope in reception.
Before they went into the hall, she turned to Fia and opened her arms for a hug.
“I’m fully vaccinated, of course,” she said. “All the boosters.”
“Me too.”
At the register Fia handed over the slip. “Four to six weeks out. For the next appointment,” she told Tamra.
“Thank you so much,” said Trudy.
“No, thank you,” she said. “I really mean it.”
Didn’t even say gorgeous day.
But after Trudy disappeared into the parking lot she stood by herself at the glass storefront, gazing out.
Cars glittered like ugly jewels.
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From Atavists by Lydia Millet. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2025 by Lydia Millet.
