My manicurist is a Costa Rican native named Rosie, who reminds me a little bit of my great-aunt Molly, though I think it’s just the way she purses her lips when she’s concentrating, and the way she wears a classic hair-do, and never changes the length or style (though she’s gone sort of blondish of late.)

She speaks in this thick accent, and tries to convince me that even women with small hands should paint their fingernails. I generally do just my toes, and leave my hands buffed and shiny, but not tinted. Today, she won, and I’m now sporting OPI’s “Don’t Know, Beets Me” pink on my fingers and toes.

As she worked on my fingers today, holding my hand gently but firmly, thunder rumbled overhead, and she mentioned that her last client before me was a man about to go on a cruise. “He’s leaving from Galveston,” she said, “And going to the Caymans, where the hurricane is.”

I suggested that he might not be leaving til after Hurricane Dean had blown itself out.

She told me he’s leaving tomorrow.

She helped me practice Spanish for a while, as she continued to use brushes and emery boards and clippers to make my hands look pretty, and our conversation involved my fantasy about living on a house boat, and theories about what happens when cruises are affected by hurricanes.

I quipped, “Well they give you a discount if you’re blown overboard.”

It was funnier in the soft light of the salon, with thunder rumbling ominously overhead, and punctuating my words.