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The first time, she does it herself. She storms down to the nearest convenience store, snatches a box of dye off the shelf at random.
“Blue, really?” the young checkout clerk asks, turning the box over to read the label. “That’s a dramatic change.”
Franziska slams her money on the counter and gives him a look so murderous that his hand drifts toward the silent alarm.
She goes home and locks herself in the bathroom, the bottle of blue liquid shaking in her grip, barely able to read the directions, her vision blurred with rage. On the box, a smiling woman grins, mocking and mermaid-like.
Franziska’s natural hair color is the ideal undertone. White blonde, almost silvery. No need for bleach. She applies the dye all over her hair and lets it set.
The toxic, poisonous smell of chemicals fills the bathroom, making her eyes sting. You look so much like him, people always said. Her scalp burns, but she clenches her fists through it.
When she washes her hair and removes the towel, she can tell immediately that she has done a shoddy job. The color is too vibrant. It’s eye-searingly bright. Uneven in places.
But she looks into the mirror for the first time in weeks and she doesn’t see him looking back.
~~~
The next day, she has it corrected professionally at a high end, European salon. The color is perfect. Ice blue, the blue Franziska would expect to find in the cold depths of outer space. A color that sets her apart. She plays with a strand of her hair, twists it in the light, enamored.
“It will need regular maintenance,” the stylist says. “A touch up every month.”
Franziska agrees, sets up the next five appointments. She checks her reflection in the hallway looking glass when she gets home and she sees a stranger, nothing like herself. It is a nice change.
~~~
She means to keep it up, but she quickly grows preoccupied. Forced to spend more time in Los Angeles, cleaning up her foolish brother’s messes.
After one of her cases, losing--losing to that half-baked charlatan of an attorney—she finds herself in the bathroom at the courthouse, bending her head to see how badly her hair has grown out.
The unwanted pale roots force their way up at the crown of her head, like a physical manifestation of all the thoughts she denies herself. The blue dye ends in a dramatic, obvious line, a sharp demarcation, who you always were, what you always believed, that moment you learned everything was a lie.
Maya Fey comes into the bathroom. She sees what Franziska is doing. Her large, dark eyes take it in: the sloppy, fading dye job, the imperfection that Franziska would prefer to conceal.
There are seven sinks available, but she chooses the one directly beside Franziska, and washes her hands.
“I didn’t know that you dyed your hair,” Maya says, her voice cheery, conversational.
“Did you think that blue was my natural color?” Franziska asks.
Maya laughs, despite Franziska’s acid tone.
“I guess that’s a silly thing to say. I just never thought of you doing something so normal. Acting like the rest of us mortals.”
Franziska watches Maya dry her hands. All of Maya’s movements are deliberate, assured. She moves through the world with the sort of confidence that comes from being at ease with oneself.
“Obviously I dye my hair,” Franziska says, haughty. “But I have yet to find a salon in this pitiful country that meets my exacting standards.”
“Let me see,” says Maya. She comes closer, stands on her tiptoes to look at the top of Franziska’s head. Franziska refuses to bend in any way that makes it easier for her. “Looks easy to do at home.”
Franziska thinks of her own botched attempt. She sniffs.
“I do not do such things for myself.”
“I’ll do it for you,” Maya offers, with an offhand generosity that immediately invites Franziska’s suspicion.
“Why?”
Maya gestures to her own elaborate top knot, strung with beads. “I’m good at doing hair. I do this every day. And you seriously don’t need to waste a hundred bucks on something so simple.”
Franziska looks into Maya’s face, straining to catch the hidden motive. There is some hidden motive behind every crime, a rewritten will in an old clock, an affair with the nanny, a distant father. But she finds nothing. Maya’s face is open and friendly, her offer sincere.
Why should Franziska accept it though? It seems the height of foolishness--to trust her appearance to this amateur.
But then, it could take weeks to get an appointment at a decent salon, Franziska tells herself.
She just wants to get this over with, she tells herself.
Why waste ‘a hundred bucks’ as Maya so crudely put it?
“Very well,” Franziska says, “give me your address. I will be there at seven.”
Money is no object, to Franziska. But there is no need to examine her own motives too closely.
~~~
When she pulls up outside of Maya’s apartment hours later, it’s dark. Still warm in L.A., which is a desert wasteland, the endless pavement holding the heat of the day. The thin light of a waning moon is lost to the endless glow of headlights on the freeway.
Maya lets her in. The apartment is nicer than Franziska expects. The decor is polished and mature.
“My sister’s old place,” says Maya, answering the unasked question. “I stay here when I'm in town.”
Franziska nods. Maya leads her into the bathroom, where she has towels laid down. Franziska pulls the touch-up kit from the salon out of her bag. Maya indicates that she should sit down in a chair by the sink, wraps a towel around Franziska’s shoulders.
Maya chats away about trivialities as she mixes the dye. Her manner is friendly.
They are not friends, Franziska thinks. If anything, they are adversarial acquaintances.
Franziska has never particularly enjoyed socializing. Things like friendship are impossible when every peer is a competitor, when every weakness must be hidden. Idle conversation makes Franziska uneasy. It is an opportunity to reveal too much.
But as Maya chatters away, Franziska finds herself becoming calmer, instead of more on edge. It’s strange. Maya is cheerful. Perky. These are not usually qualities that Franziska enjoys in people. And yet, there is something about her, perhaps that unwavering confidence, an immunity to Franziska’s glares and sharp retorts, that makes her easy to be around.
Maya sets the mixed bowl of dye on the counter. She removes her purple acolyte’s robe, hanging it on a peg by the door, revealing the short, white shift she is wearing underneath. Franziska, startled, takes in Maya’s bare, rounded shoulders, the way the sash at her waist accentuates her figure in a graceful hourglass.
Maya moves behind her--before Franziska has a chance to look too long, or to stop herself from doing so--and runs evaluating fingers through Franziska’s hair. She starts to paint in the dye unceremoniously. Franziska holds very still.
After Maya is finished, she leans against the bathroom counter opposite Franziska’s chair. The tips of two of her fingers are stained lightly with blue.
“We have thirty minutes,” Maya says. “While it sets. I thought we could talk.”
“What about?” Franziska asks.
Maya pushes her bangs out of her eyes with a slim, pale wrist.
“Well,” she says. “I know we haven’t gotten along so well, in the past. But I would like it if instead of all this fighting we could—we could understand each other. I just wish we could be, you know, friendly.”
“Friendly,” says Franziska.
Maya makes a wry face. “You know what I mean, we don’t have to be friends. But we could be polite to each other.”
Franziska wonders why she feels stung, by the first half of that statement. Something in her face must show it.
“Or we could be friends if you want,” says Maya. She grins.
Franziska does not know what to say, which is rare for her. Her scalp is tingling. The chemical fumes must be making her lightheaded.
A few moments of silence echo, deafening, against the bathroom tiles.
“My sister, Mia,” Maya says abruptly, “liked to dye her hair. I helped her sometimes, that’s how I know how to do it. Her hair used to be as dark as mine, but she liked a lighter brown for a few years. The color of caramel. It was so pretty on her.”
Maya shifts, against the counter.
“You know, my sister was murdered.”
“Yes,” says Franziska. “I know. I read the case file. I am very sorry for your loss.” She means it deeply, despite the countless unnatural deaths she’s seen.
Maya nods. “She was everything to me. Growing up, I idolized her. Now she’s just...gone. She took up so much space and now there’s just this huge vacuum.”
Franziska looks at Maya sharply. She recognizes the words too well. The phrasing seems intentional.
“Why did you invite me here?” she asks. “Why are you doing this for me?”
“You seemed like you needed someone, who knows what it’s like,” says Maya.
“I don’t.”
Maya smiles, but not the bright smile that she gives to other people.
“Then maybe I needed someone,” she says, “who understands what it means to survive all this.”
“I see,” Franziska says.
And maybe that is why Franziska showed up here tonight after all. In a lonely city, a lonely country. To spend time with another lonely girl.
We could be friends if you want.
“I think it’s time to wash it out,” says Maya.
Franziska moves her chair, leaning back so that her head rests against the sink. Maya shampoos and conditions. The color pours down the drain. Maya’s small, delicate hands, cradling Franziska’s neck, are unexpectedly strong.
When her hair is finished, Franziska is brand new again. She looks at herself in the mirror. A different person looks back.
~~~
And so Franziska enters into an unspoken understanding with Maya Fey.
They are not often in the same city at the same time. Maya is mostly in Kurain. Franziska travels the world for her work with Interpol. But when they are both in Los Angeles, they meet, and Maya helps Franziska dye her hair.
At first, this interaction is simple. Almost transactional. But there are always those thirty minutes, while the dye sets, so they talk.
It becomes something of a ritual. They meet at Mia’s old apartment. The apartment remains untouched, grows dustier over the months and then years of Franziska’s visits.
They usually talk about their work. Maya explains the world of spirit channeling, the politics of the small village where she spends most of her time. Franziska discusses her cases, the criminals she chases across Europe.
“Apologies for droning on,” Franziska says, one time. Her anecdote about a money launderer has gone on for at least five uninterrupted minutes. The adventure sounds fanciful, embellished.
“Your accent is so lovely,” Maya replies, which seems unrelated. “I like the way you talk. I like listening to you.”
In the beginning, Franziska leaves immediately after her hair is rinsed. But after a while, she begins to stay, forgetting the blow dryer, deep in conversation with Maya until her hair dries naturally, curling in the crisp California air.
Sometimes Franziska stays late into the night. Sometimes Maya puts on music, and they just sit in the living room, on the dusty, old couch beside each other, listening. They have a drink, now and then.
They get takeout, once, at Maya’s suggestion. Then that becomes part of their ritual too. They have dinner together. It always feels strangely intimate in the empty, rarely used apartment, the clatter of utensils seems too loud, only the low hum of their voices keeping any ghosts at bay.
Maya washes Franziska’s hair after dinner, and sometimes her fingers smell of plum sauce, or garlic lingers on her breath. Normally Franziska would abhor this and find it intolerable. But she allows it to go on.
Sometimes Franziska arrives incredibly stressed, jetlagged. Maya’s gentle fingers feel relaxing. The stress melts away as the water pours over her hair. Maya gives a little scalp massage, light scritches with her nails, and Franziska falls asleep, more than once. Maya never mentions it or wakes her until it’s over.
Maya’s coloring job is always impeccable. The shade of blue is always just right. Over the years, Franziska grows used to that shade, the pale blue that fades to silver with time. She is rarely surprised, when she looks in the mirror anymore.
But one time, after a nice dinner and a few drinks and a long conversation, Maya runs fingers through Franziska’s finished hair, looking into the mirror at their intertwined reflections.
“Beautiful,” Maya says, and Franziska is surprised, again, because Maya has never said that before.
~~~
On one of Franziska’s trips to L.A., she has just had her hair done at the salon, but she calls Maya anyway. Maya invites her out to dinner.
“The whole agency is going out to celebrate a big win,” she says. “You should come!”
At Franziska’s dubious silence, she urges, “I’d love to see you!”
And so Franziska finds herself spending a warm, spring evening sitting at a table with a group of defense attorneys, in front of a plate of greasy diner food that she already deeply regrets ordering, celebrating a “big win” that she disagrees with on principle.
Franziska is seated next to Phoenix Wright, but she feels strangely tolerant about it. His foolish comments should inspire nothing but scorn, yet somehow she cannot find any scorn within herself as she watches Maya laughing across the table.
She catches a glimpse of herself, reflected in the restaurant window. She is smiling, surrounded by people. The strange, mirror world version of her smiles back.
She drives Maya home, afterwards. The rented luxury sedan purrs along the freeway, and Maya leans her head against the window, humming to herself.
When they arrive at Mia’s old apartment, it’s dark. The flickering street lamp on the corner has finally gone out, the moon is clouded over, the air thick with Los Angeles smog.
“I shall walk you to the door,” says Franziska.
A distance of 1.5 meters, if that. A foolish gesture. But Maya does not seem to mind.
“Do you want to come in?” Maya asks, hesitating on the threshold, her palm flat against the doorframe.
Do I? Franziska wonders.
Light from the building lobby spills across half of Maya’s face. Her lips are curved in a hopeful smile, her eyes dark and inviting. Everything about her is inviting.
“I have an early flight,” Franziska offers. A non-answer.
“Okay,” Maya says. “Maybe next time.”
~~~
But before Franziska knows it, months have passed. It’s winter again. Maya calls, while Franziska pulls her coat tighter around her on a snowy street in Prague.
“Hey,” Maya says.
“Hello,” Franziska says.
“I just wanted to let you know, I’m finally selling Mia’s old place. I don’t suppose you’ll be in L.A. anytime in the next few weeks?”
“Yes,” says Franziska, too fast. “I will be there in a few days, as it happens.”
She gets a lot of shit from Lang about rearranging their schedule, but she doesn’t mind. In a few short days, she is on an airplane circling Los Angeles, preparing to touch down. It is late at night. The crowded roads are full of cars, pulsing arteries threading their way into the city’s heart. So many cars, so many tiny lights, rushing to their destinations. Everyone hurrying towards something, or towards someone. Franziska’s face is reflected in the airplane window, another anxious traveler. She is rushing too.
~~~
After Maya touches up Franziska’s hair, they have one last dinner in the apartment.
“I’ve only kept this place as a base for when I visit,” Maya says, stabbing her chopsticks into a carton of Lo Mein. “I should have gotten rid of it years ago, I guess.”
Franziska sits beside her on the sofa, her own food untouched and growing cold. They’ve been eating a lot. Drinking a lot. Cheap American beer. Maya can eat and drink in truly astonishing amounts.
It’s true that Maya rarely uses this place, from what Franziska can tell. Almost nothing about it has changed over the years. There are still traces of Mia Fey everywhere. Her makeup sitting on the bathroom counter, long expired. Her power suits, hanging empty in the closet for so long, more poignant for the outdated styles.
Franziska thinks of her father’s suits, the way she used to admire them as a child.
“I sold the Von Karma manor without ever looking at it again. I will never go back there,” she says.
Maya laughs without humor. “I guess you’re a lot stronger than me.”
“No,” says Franziska. “No one is stronger than you.”
She thinks that Maya must understand what she means. Sometimes anger and solitude are the easier things. Maya is the kind of person who knows herself, and who lets herself be known.
Maya blushes and takes a sip of her drink, tilting the bottle back, exposing the pale column of her throat. She sets the bottle down on the coffee table with a soft clink.
“Look at this,” she says, changing the subject. She gestures to one of the packed boxes near Franziska’s feet. “People were always giving Mia spirit medium stuff as a joke.”
Franziska kneels to open the box. She looks through it. There’s a crystal ball. She blows the dust off an old ouija board, finds a loose pack of tarot cards.
Franziska gathers the cards, splits the deck, flips one card over. It’s a picture of a pale crescent, two wolves howling. The moon.
“Illusion. Or a misunderstanding?” Maya interprets. “Or a truth that you can’t admit to yourself?”
“Interesting,” says Franziska, and files the cards neatly away.
“Speaking of fortune telling, I’ve been having this recurring dream,” says Maya.
“Oh?”
“In the dream, you come to visit me in Kurain and you bring me a present.”
Franziska smiles. “Do I?”
“Yeah and it’s,” Maya scrunches up her nose. “It’s a pair of socks. Wrapped up with a bow. And there’s—like some animal there, I don’t know, a leopard? Do you think that means anything?”
“You had better stick to channeling the dead, Maya Fey. Fortune telling is not your forte.”
Maya laughs.
“Ugh I think I drank too much. My head hurts,” she says.
She reaches up and undoes the band holding her top knot in place. Her hair spills down her shoulders in a dark waterfall, and Franziska finds it hard to catch her breath.
They never turned on the lights. It’s getting dark outside. The room has that electric blue glow of early evening.
Some things are easier to say, in the dark.
“This feels like it has become our place,” Franziska says.
“I know,” says Maya. “I hope that you’ll still visit me. When you’re around.”
“Of course,” Franziska says, but it has a ring of finality. A chapter closed.
When Franziska leaves for the night, Maya hugs her in the doorway, and Franziska commits to memory the feeling of her warm embrace, the way she smells, the way her long hair falls around them both when they’re so close.
“Bye,” says Maya. “I’ll miss seeing you like this.”
Franziska thinks that she will miss seeing herself like this, too.
~~~
The next time, Franziska visits Kurain. She brings a small bundle, a pair of thick woolen socks from Europe, wrapped up with a red bow.
It’s evening. The stars are visible, their light streams through the thin mountain air. An acolyte tells Franziska that the master is meditating in the woods.
Franziska follows a small trail until she comes to a clearing with a large, still pond, where Maya sits motionless.
Franziska sits down beside her. Maya opens her eyes, they are bright and clear, when she looks at Franziska.
“Is this a dream?” she asks.
“You were right, all those years ago,” Franziska says. “I do need someone.”
Maya gives her a cheeky smile. “Is it me?” she asks.
“Of course it is, you fool.”
Maya laughs, delighted.
Franziska kisses Maya. It feels familiar, even though it is the first time. It feels like something she remembers. Maya’s lips are soft and full. The moon waxes above. When Franziska pulls back, she catches their reflections, in the still water, and she recognizes herself.