I’m sitting on the couch trying to focus on my laptop when Mrs. Jenkins’ voice comes booming through the wall from next door. I can’t make out every word, but she’s clearly having some kind of disagreement with her husband, and judging by the volume, Mr. Jenkins has either committed a serious offense or loaded the dishwasher incorrectly. John Mercer is sitting at the other end of the room staring at his phone, apparently capable of ignoring sounds that would interfere with commercial aircraft, while Mr. Whiskers is curled beside me, equally unconcerned. Then Pandora walks into the room, and suddenly Mrs. Jenkins isn’t the thing distracting me anymore. Pandora’s hair is pulled into a ponytail. That’s it. That’s the entire observation. Except it’s not her usual ponytail. It’s higher than normal, pulled tight at the sides, with a few strands deliberately arranged around the back of her neck. I’ve seen Pandora wear her hair up plenty of times, but something about this looks different. Intentional. Strategic. She catches me staring and raises an eyebrow. “What?” she asks. I immediately look back at my laptop and tell her nothing.
This is where a reasonable person would stop thinking about it. Unfortunately, I have never claimed to be that person. I try reading the sentence on my screen again, but my eyes keep drifting toward Pandora. Yesterday at the grocery store, her hair was down. Last night, it was down. This morning, suddenly, ponytail. People change hairstyles. Obviously. There are probably millions of ponytails happening around the world right now without anyone launching an investigation. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that this particular ponytail is performing a function beyond keeping hair out of Pandora’s face. Maybe she’s hiding something. I don’t know what someone could conceivably hide behind a ponytail, which admittedly weakens the theory considerably.
Mr. Whiskers climbs onto my lap and starts kneading my leg while I pretend to work. Pandora sits across from me and starts scrolling through her phone. I casually glance at the back of her neck whenever she looks away. Nothing obvious. No bandage. No mysterious tattoo. No evidence of clandestine surgery. Just hair. Then she reaches up and adjusts the ponytail. Interesting. Nobody adjusts something unless something needs adjusting. I realize immediately how stupid that sounds, but the thought has already entered the investigation. John looks up from his phone and asks why I keep staring at Pandora. I tell him I don’t. “You absolutely do,” he says. Pandora looks over, and I become extremely interested in my laptop. “I’m working,” I tell them. John stares at me for another second before returning to his phone. He knows. I don’t know what he knows, but the fact that he noticed me noticing Pandora means there is now another witness. This has officially become more complicated.
I start reconstructing yesterday. Pandora seemed normal at the grocery store. We argued briefly over whether we needed another bottle of olive oil, which I maintain was a reasonable purchase because you can never know exactly how much olive oil remains by looking at the bottle from the outside. Afterward, everything seemed fine. She didn’t disappear mysteriously. She didn’t receive any suspicious calls. She didn’t suddenly announce that she needed to “take care of something.” Nothing happened that would explain why she woke up today apparently needing a hairstyle capable of concealing evidence. Unless something happened this morning. I glance at her again. She catches me. “What?” she asks. “Nothing,” I say. “Hal.” I hesitate before admitting that I’m just looking at her hair. Pandora touches the ponytail and asks, “My hair?” There it is. She touched it immediately. Defensive gesture. Or possibly the normal human response when someone unexpectedly announces that he’s staring at your hair.
I ask whether she did something different with it. Pandora looks at me like the answer should be obvious and says, “I put it in a ponytail.” I tell her I can see that. “Congratulations,” she replies, and John laughs from the other end of the couch. Pandora goes back to her phone, but now I’m more suspicious because she answered too quickly. There was no hesitation whatsoever, almost as though she’d prepared the answer in advance. I decide not to pursue it because good investigators know when to back off. I manage to follow that principle for approximately forty-five seconds before asking, “What happened to your neck?” Pandora slowly lowers her phone. John stops scrolling. Even Mr. Whiskers looks up. “My neck?” she asks. I explain that I didn’t say something happened; I’m merely asking whether something happened. Pandora points out that those are basically the same question. I disagree. They are completely different questions.
Pandora gives me the look she uses when she’s deciding whether explaining something to me will make the situation better or somehow much worse. I’ve seen this look before. It usually means my theory is about to encounter reality. She finally turns around and lifts her ponytail, revealing a tiny red mark near the back of her neck. I knew it. For one glorious second, every irrational thought I’ve had over the last twenty minutes assembles itself into a magnificent tower of vindication. Then Pandora says, “Mosquito.” I stare at the mark and ask whether she means a mosquito bite. She tells me she got bitten while we were carrying groceries inside yesterday. John starts laughing, which I ignore because there is still one unresolved question. If the mark came from a mosquito, why the ponytail? Pandora turns around and stares at me. “Because it’s hot.”
That’s her explanation. It’s August. She’s hot. So she put her hair up. I sit there processing this disappointingly sensible chain of events while John continues enjoying himself far more than the situation warrants. Mr. Whiskers settles back onto my lap, apparently satisfied that the investigation has concluded. Pandora studies me for a moment before asking what exactly I thought she was hiding. That is an excellent question, and it occurs to me that I never actually got that far. “I hadn’t established that yet,” I tell her. Pandora stares at me. “So you thought I was hiding something, but you didn’t know what?” I explain that this is generally why people investigate things. John laughs even harder.
Pandora shakes her head and walks toward the kitchen. As she passes behind the couch, she flicks me lightly with the end of her ponytail. I watch her disappear around the corner and reconsider the evidence. Mosquito bite. Heat. Ponytail. Completely reasonable. Case closed. Probably. Then I notice John smiling at his phone, and suddenly I’m wondering what the hell that’s about.