Ondine had waited the whole day for the telephone call and eventually she fell asleep, exhausted from the wait and still in her clothes. Halfway through the night, the phone rang at the same time she was waking up from feeling cold.
Before answering the call, she rushed downstairs into her hairdresser Salon. That’s where she always felt most comfortable dealing with difficult phone calls. She sat on one of the clients’ chairs and pressed the green key on the phone, while catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror and thinking how much she needed a haircut.
She didn’t say anything. She stared at the half-eaten kidney pie lying on the counter and , after a few seconds, the voice on the other side of the line asked, “So, how are you coping?” She took a large bite of the remaining pie and started to reply tentatively. “I feel cold,” she said.
“It’s done, it all ended at 1:05 a.m. Try to get some rest now,” the man on the phone said. “Did he have any last words?” she asked. “He said capital punishment is a crime. Nothing else, the bastard.” Ondine threw up briefly into a waste basket full of clients’ hair and stayed there the rest of the night staring at her own reflection.
(Contribuição para uma oficina do Global Writing & Storytelling Group do Internations em Março de 2022.)