The woman says I want to dye my hair blonde. The second woman says dumbass your hair is blonde. The woman says no it isn’t. The other woman says look at it. The first woman’s hair is long down to her waist, really beautiful strawberry blonde. She looks at it and says, No I mean blonde blonde, like golden sunshine. The second woman says, you’ll look like a slut. The second woman has black hair and black eye brows. Russian black hair she likes to tell us and then explain that when she was young she had to go to church at the Orthodox cathedral for seven hours. Everything is sevens with her. She bartended seven years at the Rook social club. She helped her commercial fisherman father for seven years. No caseworker or therapist has been able to explain this. I ask her if she ever dyed her hair. She says at the Rook when I was a bartender. We all dyed our hair green for Saint Patrick’s day. This causes the first woman to yell Vodka. Saint Patrick’s day makes me want Vodka. The second woman says you always want Vodka. The first woman says, what’s wrong with Vodka? The second woman says, I hate Vodka, I’m not a drinker. Then she corrects herself. I forgot, I drank rum and cokes. The first woman says rum and cokes are good. And so they go on talking about alcohol for a while. This is a common conversation. Neither of them has had a drink in decades. Then I see a point to return to hair dye. I ask the first woman, do you really want to get your hair dyed. I can arrange that. We’ll send you out to a hair salon and do it all right. She says no I just want to do it with a box. The second woman says you really are a dumb ass. The first woman says, why. The second woman says, if you dye your hair from a box you won’t look like a slut, you’ll look like a really cheap slut. This makes the first woman laugh and laugh. I say, I’m going to set this up ok. We’re not leaving you to a box-dye hair-job. I’ll ask Kate where she goes to get her hair done. You know the head of transport with the great platinum blonde dyed hair. She’ll take you out and then—the first woman interjects, and then I’ll get Vodka! No, I say, no Vodka, but you’ll come back with great hair. The first woman says ok. I leave the two of them to talk and watch TV. I do my rounds, fill out some paperwork, make a note to set up the woman’s appointment before I leave in the morning. An hour later she says, I want to get my hair dyed. The second woman says. What color? The first woman says, black like yours. The second woman says, you’ll look so gorgeous with black hair. We’ll look like sisters. The first woman says, yes. Then they are quiet for a moment. I can hear the winds of autumn outside rising. Then the women stand, still not saying a word, and go out to have a smoke. They both walk slowly and as the first woman opens the door the second woman touches her gently on the back of her shoulder. And then the door is closed. I feel it follow them out of the room, out into the moonlit yard. Something just happened that I can’t name, the way things happen here that are more like notes. Not notes like in a report, but music notes that are part of a larger whole we cannot discern. The way one can hear a single instrument solo not knowing it is the opening to a symphony. The way there is something like a wind that is not a wind, or a breath that is not a breath that weaves bodies and lives that make it through these difficult days. Maybe it is the space of absence, of the injured brains speaking between pathways, the firing of electricity, neurons lighting and relighting inside the skull beneath the scars. As if the light is dyed. The way the women’s cigarette smoke moves through moonlight that shines across the lawn. The strands of light we can never fully measure, or a change of temperature against our skin: the nearly imperceptible weight of it, something bright and warm as if you reached your hand out to feel the texture of a new born child’s hair.