Excerpt from Pick a Color by Souvankham Thammavongsa, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

3

I let her in.

The new girl didn't knock, or do anything to call attention to herself. Probably thinks knocking on glass is being too loud. Probably thinks when she breathes she's making too much noise. She's just standing there now, smiling at me, waving her right hand. The way she waves her hand tells me everything about her. Quick, eager to please. She's dressed as I told her to dress. Black pants, black shirt, black running shoes. Her hair is black and shoulder-length.

I motion for her to follow me. We take a few steps past the front desk and walk down a short hallway, to the back. I point, tell her to put her phone and bag in the back room. "No one goes in there but us," I say. She goes in there alone.

When she comes back, I start right away. I don't like to chitchat, no how-are-yous, no coddling. No tell-me-about-yourself-now. Just get to it.

I wave the new girl over to our wall of nail polish, close to our one big window. I ask her, testing, "Are they all full?" Pointing to the four rows. They are at just the right height. Not too high or too low, otherwise no one will pick those colors. We have so many colors. Eighty-three to be exact. Oranges, reds, pinks, purples, and everything in between. It all makes me think of food, and I want to grab them all and stuff them into my mouth.

She squints. Takes her time to answer. I spot a few, but I don't say anything. "This one," she says, bringing her hand up to the bottle. "This one's not full."

I then notice that her fingernails are painted red. I point at them, and say, "What is that?" She looks at what I'm looking at, and doesn't know what I am talking about.

I yell, "Your nails!"

"Oh. Sorry?"

She apologizes, but she doesn't know what for. "They're red!" I say, my eyes bulging. She has to have bare nails!

"What do you mean?" She folds all her fingers at the knuckle to get a look at the color, and asks, "What's wrong with just red?"

"There's no such thing as just red."

She stares at me blankly, like we are not speaking the same language.

"There's apple red," I insist, "cherry red, pen red, sexy red, demure red, pale red, lipstick red, shy red, hot red, blood red, car-brake red, swimsuit red, New Year's red, strawberry red, wet-paint red, gummy red, rose red, flower red — now rose is a flower but it's not flower red, it's its own red, rose red. Then there are other shades of red, like orange-red, purple-red, blue-red, yellow-red ..."

"Okay," Noi finally says. "I got it."

"Do you? Do you got it? You better know these reds because if you don't, you're not going to make it here. You better know your reds when you're out here on the floor and it's go time."

She doesn't say anything.

It is a waste for us to wear nail polish ourselves. We wash our hands so often it gets chipped away. And red is the worst color for us to wear. What happens when we use nail polish removal? We use it on every client. If our own polish rubs off it stains the client's hands and goes into the grooves of the palm print and it's so hard to remove once it goes in there. The skin there is rough.

And worse, what if they want to see a nail polish color and ask us to paint ours to show them?

We can't simply paint on top of our own nail polish. It wouldn't be exact. And what's going to happen when they choose that color thinking it's the same shade and then it isn't because it's been layered on top of a red? We'd have to remove it on all ten fingernails. Waste.

I bring over nail polish remover and she knows what to do. I have to keep it moving, so we get back to it, and I tell her first thing we do each morning is make sure each nail polish bottle is full. And if it isn't, we fill it with nail polish thinner.

There's nothing more embarrassing for us than using nail polish from a bottle that is almost empty. Shaking and turning the bottle upside down, tapping its bottom for it to burp out a color. Worse is when the dry air gets sealed in there and dries out the nail polish into one hard clump so it cannot be used at all.

Excerpted from Pick a Color by Souvankham Thammavongsa. Copyright © 2025 by Souvankham Thammavongsa. Excerpted by permission of Little Brown & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.