The Nail Salon

She was there, complaining about her husband.

“When he gets sick…” she sighs, rolling her lovely, blue eyes. “He lies beneath the blankets, and moans,” she continues, as she waits for her nails to dry. Her hair is dark and long and bouncy. She is in her Saturday casuals – slim jeans, a perfect cashmere sweater, one of those puffy winter jackets.

“I said to him the other night, ‘Listen, honey. I think we need to go on a dinner date, because I need to start feeling better about you. It’s a good thing I didn’t see you sick very much when we were dating, because I don’t know if I would have continued.’”

“And did he take you out?” one of the other clients inquires.

“No, he was too sick. But he said he would.”

“What’s wrong with him?” a woman at one of the other manicure stations asks.

“Oh, he’s just got a bad cold,” The Wife explains, rolling her eyes again. “And he’ll ask me to take his temperature,” she adds with annoyance. “What do we all do when we have a cold?” she says, turning to her now-rapt audience of women (all four of us) in the small nail boutique.

“We just carry on,” we all say, almost in unison.

“Exactly,” the Perfectly Polished Wife affirms, nodding her head with a perky bounce.

Life in a nail salon is a mini soap opera. Somehow, men and “Midnight Passion” – the name of the best dark red nail polish – go together.

“I have so many clients who are divorced,” my manicurist, Josey, explains, as she carefully buffs my nails. “But dating is a problem, because all they do is complain about their exes. I tell them, ‘Read the newspaper before you go on a date. Have something interesting to talk about, rather than your kids and your lousy ex-husband.’

“They meet men online or at parties, but I don’t know,” she carries on, shaking her pretty head. “It’s hard out there. I tell them – look, there are a lot of attractive women of a certain age on the dating market, you have to make yourself stand out!”

One woman she knows, she told me, posted a cheeky online profile that said something to the effect of “Let’s meet for coffee or a drink and see if there’s a spark, and if not, well, let’s just go home, have sex, and call it a night.”

“She was inundated with dating requests, from men who are 29 to those who are 55,” Josey explains.

“And how old is she?” I ask.

“Fifty. She just decided to have fun with it, you know?” she says, surveying her handiwork on my nails.

“And now? Did she meet anyone nice?”

“Oh yes. She went out with a ton of men for months on end, just to see what was out there. And now she is settling down into a solid relationship with a guy she really likes.”

The Perfect Wife was now listening to our conversation, agog.

All I can say is that it’s a good thing men don’t go to nail salons because a) they might be horrified to hear what women say about them and, most important, b) they would spoil our Saturday morning fun.

Look, you guys have Home Hardware. We have manicures. You have wrenches. We have Midnight Passion.

You have your nails, those little metal things.  And, well, we have ours, too.

And, it’s also a good thing that manicures take a little bit of time. It’s such a sisterly thing to do. Someone is essentially holding your hands, rubbing them, cleaning the nails, making them look pretty. There is so much time to talk, to share, to complain, to giggle.

Let’s see, last week we covered a range of topics, including:

1. The interview Diane Sawyer had with Ashley Dupre, the escort who brought down Elliot Spitzer, the former New York Governor, in a sex scandal earlier this year. She was demure, by all accounts; a regular all American girl, who vows never again to get into hooking. ‘I doubt it,” scoffed the other manicurist, Lucy. “It’s not as if she came from a bad family. She was just too lazy to get a good job, and it’s a fast way to make a buck.”

“Well, to get $4,500 for one night?” Josey rejoins from her table. “I don’t know. Sounds pretty tempting. I could get that Versace suit I saw in Vogue.”

2. Madonna and Guy Ritchie’s quickie divorce.  “She was apparently horrible,” one woman says. “Wrapped herself in plastic every night.”

3. Christmas presents. “I’m getting my husband a wood box,” says the Perfect Wife. “It was meant to be part of a whole wall unit. But I can’t afford the other parts, so for this year, it’s just the wood box. We’re at the point in our relationship where we can give each other household things as presents. It’s great.”

“And you? What do you expect from him?” asks Josey.

“Oh, jewelry, of course,” Perfect Wife laughs with a snort from her corner. All of us turn to look.

Of course, we always talk about the important business of fingernails.  The colour. The shape. The length. I think of good manicures as something akin to curb appeal. I am a house, and you’re not sure what’s inside. You, being a man or a woman. I want to project my best marketability – a calm, sure front. As one of my girlfriends says, “I need a good manicure. Bitten nails show how anxious I am. This way, no one will know. They will see how competent I am.”

But it’s more than that, too. At the nail salon, they have those trash magazines, Star and Us and People. Which is like taking a bath in trivia. Very relaxing.

And the conversation, well, as you can see, a girl comes away from the salon with nice hands, dating tips, insight into marriage and a certain girl power that is priceless.

It is why, even when the economy slows and panic is running in the streets, with her hair wild, you should always take time out for a little, inexpensive luxury. There are just some things a girl should not cut back on. She might be able to do without a new dress or fancy new shoes. But she cannot do without her perfect nails, her online dates, and her trash magazines.