Greying
"Look!" Katherine almost races out of her office, skidding to an abrupt halt in her blue high heels and staring at Nick a metre or so away from his office desk as she gestures to her head with both hands.
"What am I – supposed to be looking at, exactly?" Nick wonders aloud, glancing up from the blueprint that he's sketching out with a well-used pencil.
"Look!" Katherine repeats, not incredibly helpfully. "It's awful!"
Nick is dimly aware that he's not keeping up with this exchange. "Um –" he tries, wishing he could read minds. Even one mind in particular would do; he might get into less office altercations that way.
His superior gives an exaggerated roll of her eyes. "Are you blind?" she demands, moving closer to him and pushing her hair forward, pointing with a purple-polished nail into the midst of it. "Look - a grey hair! I saw it in the mirror."
Nick frowns, studying Katherine's scalp. "I don't see anything," he informs her. "Just dark brown, Katherine. Your usual hair colour."
"It's there!" Katherine pulls out one tiny strand of hair from where it nestles within the rest of her dark locks, and Nick can finally see that it is indeed a light silvery colour.
"One grey hair. Wow," he comments drily, turning his attention back to his work and picking up the tiny stub of pencil again to continue drawing.
"I'm thirty-seven! I'm not supposed to be going grey!" laments Katherine.
"Lucky you. I got my first grey hair at twenty-two," Nick informs her. "It's only one grey hair, Katherine, it's hardly a big deal."
"Well, it's the start of it all, isn't it?" Katherine even looks vaguely panicked. "You have one grey hair one day, then you wake up the next and you have two! It's just a steady decline from here on in. My life is officially on the path downhill."
"It was bound to happen eventually. You don't even have kids – that speeds the greying up tenfold," Nick says wisely. "Try having to deal with Eve's shenanigans on a daily basis. Not to mention now having two teenagers in the house, as well as keeping up with my career. And you think you get stressed."
"It's this career. It's driven me to this!" Katherine announces dramatically, not listening to Nick's woes. "Being nearly killed in my own office twice in the last year or so has aged me by years!"
"Grey hairs aren't a sign of aging. Just call it – maturing," Nick advises hopefully, hoping she will leave him alone if he can reassure her enough. So far it's not working incredibly well.
"Oh God, I'm an old woman. I'm going grey," Katherine repeats empathetically. "Soon I'll be white-haired, sitting in my comfy armchair knitting endless cosies for things that don't need to be cosy and watching reruns of Deal or No Deal."
Nick coughs. "I watch that sometimes," he admits.
Katherine throws a hand out in his direction, an accusing finger. "See? This is what I mean! I'm slowly turning into you!"
Her co-worker chuckles, somewhat affronted. "And is that such a bad thing, I wonder?"
"Yes," Katherine decides, not a trace of doubt in her tone. "I'm off to get the hair dye."
"Bye," Nick tries as his boss races off again, a scandalised look on her face.