letter from the editor: April 05.(nail salon as sanctuary)(Editorial)

Special Treatment

6[currency]6Every Sunday, I travel a few blocks from my apartment to a place of sublime comfort.

As I walk out the door, I tell my husband I [macron]ll be back in an hour.

Let me say right away that I [macron]m never back in an hour, and sometimes I [macron]m gone more than three. I don [macron]t mean to lie. In fact, the only way I permit this self-indulgence is by pretending it [macron]s no more than a quick, mundane errand, like grocery shopping. The price of my indulgence is also elastic, $12 in my mind but easily

eight times that in actual fact. It [macron]s as if I dashed out to the market for milk and paper towels and returned instead with champagne and Pratesi sheets.

My neighborhood nail salon is my sanctuary. When any one of the capable manicurists at Carnegie Nail takes my hand and strokes it just once, I melt. Without a word, another woman starts kneading my neck. She finds the exact place that [macron]s been knotted for the last decade, and asks if I [macron]d like the ten-minute massage. How could I refuse? She sets the kitchen timer.

It goes on like this for the next 90 minutes or so: Would I like the special spa pedicure? The special French wax? The special nail strengthener? Yes, yes, and yes.