Isle of Palms (23 page)

And another good case to illustrate my laziness was that about the same minute I signed my mortgage, as I was still slinging hair for crazy Harriet, I realized that my days with her did have a number. Great, Anna, just great. I just hoped I would have the presence of mind to recognize which actual day would be most auspicious to tell her to take my pillared position at the House of Hair and insert it in the region of the Great Never Tanned.

Dragging myself back home to dress for work, I decided that I should probably give my career much more thought. There had to be a solution.

I wrestled with the choices before me while driving to Charleston—stay with Harriet and go slowly insane or go slowly insane in another salon. Given the choice of lunatics, Harriet almost seemed preferable. At least I knew what caliber of nut she was. There was an old Gullah saying I remembered about changing partners—
keep the evil that you know
. I had escaped Daddy’s house by the skin of my teeth. The thought of another uprooting change made my stomach ache.

Working for any other salon would have been worse than a lateral move. Crazy though she may have been, Harriet had the best salon in Charleston. We had more walk-in traffic, more stylists and a larger product and accessory selection. Most importantly, just because I had a robust dislike for her, it didn’t mean I wanted to disengage at any cost. I absolutely needed to know where my next paycheck was coming from. Still, what was the answer?

If I were to go out and buy a new car (which I wouldn’t be doing for at least five years), I’d probably visit several dealers and see what kind of deal I could get. But as long as I was ever so gently kicking around a career change, I decided to take a discreet poll of my trusted clients to see if they would follow me to a new salon. Maybe that would satisfy my urge to bolt for a while so that I could stand Harriet a little longer. Yes, that was what I would do.

I walked in the door and picked up my appointment list from Carla, our receptionist of almost six months—a longevity of mind-boggling proportion in House of Hair history. She ran the front desk and the scheduling, and was a wizard.

Carla Egbert was tall and lanky like a runway model, had a flawless face, and operated the front of our salon like the head of strategic planning for the armed forces. All with good humor and ribald wit. To say she was loved and feared was an understatement. If you crossed her, she overbooked you with new clients and you could be frazzled to death. If you gave her the correct regard, she was your secret weapon against Harriet and the hairy hordes desperate for a holiday makeover or prom night teens with acne-pocked T-zones who wanted to look like Jennifer Aniston. If you
really
aggravated her, she stuck you with wedding parties.

“Hey, Carla,” I said, taking the paper from her, “how was your weekend?”

“Good, good,” she said, smiling, “you’ve got a new victim on your hit parade.”

“Yeah? Who’s that?”

“Somebody named Lucy. I tried to give her to Nicole, but she said, no, it had to be you. I booked her in for an hour. Sorry.”

“No sweat,” I said, “she’s my new neighbor. At least I think that’s probably her.”

“Oh! Right! You moved! How did it go?”

“Well, I got me a little noose, that’s all. Not a big one, but I was a virgin in the noose department until I signed my mortgage. You need to book me up the wazoo, okay? It’s only been two weeks and I’m still jittering.”

“No problem.”

“Thanks.”

I walked to the back and poured a cup of coffee into “my mug,” the one with an endorsement for the Piggly Wiggly on the side. GOTTA LOVE THE PIG it read, with a smiling porker on the other side. While I loved a comfortable gutter as much as the next person, I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life drinking watered-down coffee from a chipped five-dollar mug.

I earned a decent living because I’d outlasted Harriet’s psycho explosions and because Harriet would grudgingly mumble the fact that I was her most reliable employee. She knew I would open the salon early or close it up tight if she was going out of town or didn’t feel well.

That’s not to say that I had keys. No. If Harriet was ill, I had to stop by her house on Beaufain Street and pick them up. Periodically, she would change the salon locks, probably thinking I had copied them. That made me laugh because what did she think? That I would sneak in during the night and rip off the frigging shelf of shampoo and conditioner and then sell them on the street? She was crazy as hell.

We managed to get along by staying out of each other’s path. She paid me one-half of all my service charges when most of the other stylists were on low salaries or receiving a lesser percentage. So although she was a certifiable nut job, she would be difficult to replace. Maybe.

I saw my first client of the day waiting in my chair and hurried over to greet her. Susan Hayes, one of my regulars and favorites. My assistant was combing out her freshly shampooed hair and offering her coffee.

“No cream, just black. Thanks,” she said. “Well, hello there, Miss Abbot. How have you been?”

“Oh, I’m fine, thanks. You?”

“I imagine I’m holding together all right, all things considered.”

“Well, that’s good to hear. You married to that Simon yet?”

“No, but we’re thinking we should probably go ahead and get it over with. Now that my ex-husband is married to his concubine and living happily ever after in Vermont, following the teachings of his new guru, taking coffee colonics, and representing a co-op of organic farmers, maybe it’s time. I dunno. What do you think? Serial spouse? Should I do this?”

Smiling, I stood behind her and ran a comb through her hair, checking the condition of her ends and roots. “Marry him,” I said, “before he gets picked off by some little nurse.”

Her eyebrows narrowed and she looked at herself in the mirror. “Think I need to lipo my chin? The thing’s sagging like a baggie of yogurt!”

“No way. You look great. Little color, little trim?” I said. “Little freshen-up?”

“Please! I have that Medical University dinner party this weekend. The annual gathering of cadavers and donors. I don’t need to look like my own mother! How are my roots?”

“What roots? And, honey, nobody wants to look like their mother, with the possible exception of Catherine Deneuve’s daughter.”

“You said it! Oh! Does she have a daughter?”

“I couldn’t tell you!” We laughed and then I said, “I’ll just go mix up some magic in a bowl and I’ll be back in a flash. You ain’t gonna look like yo momma when I’m finished with you!”

Within the hour she was planting a folded twenty-dollar bill in my hand and about to sail out the door feeling like a new woman.

“God, Anna, you’re the best! Thanks.”

“Susan?” I drew her back, looking around to see if anyone else was listening. “If I left here would you still be my client?”

“Are you crazy?” She whispered, “I’ve been with you since Kim left Charleston! Shoot, I’d follow you to Columbia! Maybe even Greenville! You’re my ultimate secret weapon! Thinking of leaving old Harriet the Hellhound? Good! Never liked her anyhow.”

“I’ll let you know.”

“It would cripple that mean old bitch but good.” She laughed and said, “Sweet justice!”

“You’re terrible,” I said in a whisper, tightening my lips around my teeth so I wouldn’t burst out laughing.

Score! One client in my pocket. I only needed about another two hundred or so and I’d be fine. I went up front to check my schedule again with Carla. Lucy was coming in the door. She was wearing tight cropped jeans, mules, and a big cotton shirt with about two tons of papier-mâché jewelry. I had never been to Coney Island but I imagined that she looked like a refugee from such a place.

“I wanted to see how your salon was, so I . . .”

“Lucy! What a wonderful surprise! I heard you were coming!” I took her by the arm.

“Oh, my God! This place is fabulous!”

“Thanks. Come on back!” I led her as far as my chair and said, “You want a Coke or some coffee?”

“No, but ice water? Y’all have that?”

I handed her a folded smock and told her to put it on. My assistant, Ivy (who indeed had all the talent and intellectual horsepower of a houseplant), moved away in a slow glide to get her drink. If that child pierced one more place she would look like a chain-link fence. I quietly thanked the Lord that my Emily wasn’t into self-mutilation.

I had actually been thinking about Lucy’s hair ever since I had met her. Other people’s hair was a fixation of mine. Hers was particularly disturbing. I was about to launch a rescue mission on her fried fluff.

“Okay, Lucy, I’m gonna take ten years off your face.”

“Be my guest,” she said.

Hot oil treatment, clear glaze on top of highlights and lowlights, and three inches minimum of her downy ends all over the floor later, Lucy’s head was looking remarkably promising. Her hair moved and was as shiny as though I had paste waxed and buffed every strand. She actually looked, if you can believe this, classy.

“Damn, Anna. You’re good. I mean, damn.” She grinned from ear to ear and was about to reapply that Whorehouse Red lip gloss when I stopped her.

“Thanks. Wait. I have something else besides that. It’s newer.” I went over to the makeup counter and selected a beige lip liner, pale pink lipstick, and a rosy sheer gloss. “Let me show you.”

She was fidgeting but she humored me. After all, all she had to do was wipe it all off if she hated it. When she looked in the mirror, she was very surprised and apparently pleased.

“Light lips make my eyes look bigger,” she said.

“Exactly,” I said.

“I always thought my lips were my best feature.”

“They’re good, but always make up from the eyes out. Come on, I’ll walk you to the door.”

“Can you sell me the liner and the lipstick?”

“Absolutely!”

She picked up her things, checked herself again in the mirror, and we started toward the front counter.

Not that it was unusual, but Harriet had been milling around the salon all morning wearing a sour face. Now she was stalking us for some unfathomable reason. This woman needed hormone replacement therapy in the worst way.

At the same moment we all converged at the reception desk, a man came in the front door, not that that was odd, because we had lots of male clients. It was in his eyes, darting from the back of the salon to the front and all around the faces of our other clients, taking inventory of their jewelry, as though he was about to pull out a gun and rob the place. I told myself to get over it. Suddenly I could pick out a criminal walking in the door? The Miss Marple of the hair world?

Well, I should’ve listened to my instincts. I looked at him from the side and his forehead was covered with perspiration. He
was
going to rob the salon,
and
our clients, and I knew it as sure as I knew my name. I didn’t want Lucy to open her purse. Carla was on the phone taking an appointment and didn’t take notice of him. Frau Harriet stepped behind the counter and with great storm-trooping flourish, began to review the total charges for Lucy’s visit.

“You had a glaze application too, didn’t you? It’s not on here. Why isn’t . . .”

Her voice was an accusation more than a question. For once, I wasn’t going to subject myself and my client to another of Harriet’s episodes.

“Lucy?” I interrupted Harriet, the urgency of personal safety eclipsing normal protocol. “Why don’t you pay this later? Come on, I’ll just walk you to your car.”

“But I didn’t get my lipstick and—”

“Move it, Lucy!”

I had grabbed Lucy’s arm and started moving around toward the door, past the strange man, trying to send a signal to Harriet that this fellow was risky and to watch out.

“What do you think you’re
doing?
Your client
cannot
leave without paying,” Harriet said, calling out and looking up into the man’s face at the same time.

I saw him pull a pistol from his jacket.

“Open the cash register and then get on the floor,” I heard him say. “Gimme your wallet, lady.”

God in heaven! I pushed Lucy out the door and we started running. There was a patrol car on King Street about two blocks from us and we flagged him down, screaming and frantic.

“Our salon’s being robbed! He’s got a gun! Harriet’s House of Hair!”

“Stay here!” one police officer said to us while the other one stomped on the gas. They raced down the street and double-parked in front. Both officers jumped out, pulled out their guns and hurried inside.

“Great God!” Lucy said. “You saved my life, Anna!”

“No, but maybe your watch. God, what’s going on? Come on!”

I started moving back toward the salon just to see if I could see something, even from across the street. That was when I heard the gunshot. A single shot. Pop! Then another. My heart was in my throat and I was frozen to the glass windows of the Olde Colony Bakery. Lucy grabbed my arm.

“Damn it, Anna! Move!”

She yanked me from my stupor and pulled me inside the store-front. I felt like I was going to faint. A gun! Somebody put me in a chair and handed me a glass of water. Maybe ten minutes passed, each one dragging with anticipation. I heard the police cars, first a loud kind of horn blast and then a trail of sirens.

“I’ve got to go back,” I said. “God, what if Harriet got shot?”

“Don’t even think it! I’ve got to pay my bill,” Lucy said.

Shaking, we ran back down the street. When we pushed the glass door open, the salon was in chaos. Clients were crowded around Harriet, who was lying on the reception couch wailing, holding ice on her jaw. Carla was fanning her with a magazine. Others were on their cell phones, calling their husbands to report the incident.

“She tried to take his gun,” Carla said, “and he socked her one in the jaw.”