Should Have Known Better

“Excuse me?” Sasha said, and she’d already pulled her fancy pen from her purse to sign an autograph.

“Phil Landon? You know him, right?”

“I know Phil,” Sasha answered. “Are you a friend?”

“No, bitch. I’m his wife.”

The nail tech stopped scrubbing Sasha’s feet immediately, got up from her little stool, and walked farther back in the salon, saying something in what sounded like Mandarin.

“You’re the black whore who’s been fucking him,” the woman said.

“Is there a problem?” I asked.

“No, Dawn, I have this,” Sasha said coolly.

“Can you get the manager?” I said to the nail tech helping me.

“First,” Sasha started, “I don’t think my race has anything to do with this. And second, no, I haven’t quite had the opportunity to sleep with your husband. Does he still have my number?”

“You think I believe that? I have all of the receipts from the hotel last week. When I get finished with you, you’ll wish you never gave him your number.”

People started getting up and walking toward the debacle.

“Oh please, honey,” Sasha said. “The only wish I have is that you’d stop talking to me.”

“Excuse me, miss.” A woman I supposed was the manager tried coming between Sasha and the woman. “We can’t have this here.”

“Yes,” Sasha said. “We can’t have this here.”

“Can you please leave?” the manager said to the woman. “We can’t have problems with customers.”

The woman angrily flicked her hand up at the manager but kept her deadly stare on Sasha.

“You’re going to get what’s coming to you.”

“Miss, I need you to step outside,” the manager tried again, getting a hold of the woman’s arm.

“You get your hands off me,” she said. “Do you know who my husband is?” The woman jerked away and hustled out of the door with all eyes following her.

“Pure foolery,” Sasha said, dismissing the standoff by waving her hand at the woman’s back. She leaned back in her seat.

“Foolery? What was that?” I asked, stunned.

The woman who’d been working on Sasha’s feet was standing a few feet away, looking on nervously.

“You can come back,” Sasha called to her. “Apparently, I’m not the violent one here. And this water is getting cold.”

Sasha giggled and waved at a woman who was giving her a nasty eye from the massage chair beside her.

“What was she talking about?” I asked Sasha again.

“I want triple massage time,” Sasha said to the newly returned nail tech. “And take off those plastic gloves. It feels like I’m being massaged by a garbage bag.”

Sasha sounded haughty, superior in a way that I’d never witnessed. She was rolling her eyes at the nail tech and poking her feet out in the woman’s face.

“Sasha, what’s going on?”

“What is it?” Sasha asked. She rolled her resting head toward me.