Split Ends (28 page)

“Flora,” Scott says with authority. “My cousin is the best. She'll make you look like a superstar. You just have to trust me. Have I ever let you down? When you said you wanted Mischka, did I not get you Mischka?”

She sniffles, nodding her head with each pout of the lip as she looks up at my cousin, the biggest liar I know and love. “Do you promise?”

This is how women end up pregnant.

“I promise you,” Scott purrs.

“I'm a color-correction expert, and I've done this before. I'm going to cut your hair because I think you have such beautiful facial structure you can handle it short. Not many women can, so be grateful for that. Tomorrow night, you'll make a statement no one is expecting.”

Flora has massive green-blue eyes, and even though her face is puffy and swollen from hours of crying and fretting, when she blinks, it's still heart-stoppingly beautiful. Her cheekbones look as though Michelangelo formed them from marble to commemorate God's handiwork. She has a pert, straight nose and full, round lips. This girl's hair won't make a bit of difference, but I'm only too happy to fix it for her.

“Generally, this would take a few visits. I'd pull the product out, have you come back and put something in. I don't know if your hair is going to hold any color, so I want to treat that as well. We're going to have a long night. Are you ready for it?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Actually, no.”

I take the mirror away from her, but this being my cousin's house, there is no shortage of them. Dane comes walking out of his room, and Flora puts her elbows around her head. “Who's that?”

“It's just Lurch, my roommate. Don't worry; he has no idea who you are. He's only interested in people and things that have been dead for a few centuries.”

Not quite
, I think to myself with a smile.

Dane gives him a dirty look and takes his sideways haircut into the kitchen, grasping a glass. “You didn't cut his hair, did you?” Flora cries.

“No, she didn't,” Scott interjects.

“I'll get what product I have.” Luckily, I bought some, and it's not organic. Organic is what caused this disaster. In situations like these, a girl needs chemicals! Better living though toxicity.

“I have a ton in the master bathroom.”

“Of course you do.” I shake my head at Scott. “I have what I need. I brought it for the color codes to compare to Yoshi's products.”

“Oh, you cut for Yoshi.” Flora exhales loudly. “I thought you were just some chop-shop girl.”

I'll ignore that. “You're going to have to devote your week to this, I'm afraid. I'll get you set up for tomorrow, but it's going to take a few visits to get it right. I'm going to spray you tomorrow night with something to make sure you don't lose color, but you'll want to be careful the rest of that evening. Stay away from water, and don't put any product in your hair after I finish.”

“I promise. Whatever you say. Just fix it.”

“First, like I said, I'm going to lift the color and see what we have, just to make sure we need to cut it. If we can keep it, we will.”

I head into my bedroom and pull out all the product.

“You'll need to be at the showing?” my cousin asks me when I reenter.

My first thought is of clothes. As in I have none, and going to a Hollywood anything is not in my wardrobe vocabulary. But taking a look at Flora's hair and then my cousin's concern over his own career, I have my answer. “I just need to be outside of it. She'll be fine for a few hours.” It's not brain surgery, but this girl's hair obviously means way too much to both my cousin and, consequently, me. And Yoshi, if word gets out.

“I'm going to get you a ticket, just in case. This gal is my cash cow, Sarah Claire. You can't screw this up. She's got a percentage in this movie, unheard of at her level. If the buzz is good, I am set for a long time.”

“Thanks for keeping the pressure off.” I gather up the bottles and cradle them in my arms. “I'll keep your client gorgeous, but . . . I need to find my mother before I get started.”

Scott whips his head back and forth. “No.”

“What do you mean,
no
?”

“I'm putting my foot down here. She's sat in jail many a night, Sarah Claire; she's not going to mess this up for us. Not this time. It's not going to kill her to be there, and at least you know she's safe.”

What he says sounds completely reasonable. But I told myself I was going to do this. “It's just a phone call.”

“It's not, Sarah Claire, because after she's manipulated you on the phone, you'll want to go downtown and take my checkbook, and I'm saying ‘enough.' She's sat in jail before.”

“With the Sable sheriff and Al, her personal bail
bondsman. It's not like she's in her element at the LA
county jail. They'll eat her alive.”

He taps his foot. “They'll eat your mother alive?”

“All right, maybe they won't, but she'll still want out.”

“Then she should have thought of that before she snuck past LAX security.”

“How do you know what she did?”

“She already called here, looking for bail.”

“And you hung up on her? She gets one phone call, Scott!”

Dane comes up, holding a glass of water in his hand. I clamp my mouth shut about my mother. It's one thing that he's a
have
, it's another altogether to reiterate my
have-not
status complete with police action.

“I'm sorry I was rude earlier, Sarah,” he says without preamble.

“No, that's okay. It's me that owes you the apology. I was agitated. I'll finish your hair when I'm done with Fawn.”

“Flora!”

“Whatever.”

Dane looks over at the once-blonde bombshell, and his eyes linger a bit too long for my liking. “I'm not in a hurry.” He takes a long, slow drink from his water and wanders off.

“Do you have any mineral oil, Scott?”

“Mineral oil?”

“Like baby oil. Do you have any?”

“I think so.” He runs toward his
Sephora
bedroom.

“And sterile cotton balls!” I yell after him.

Dane is standing in the kitchen, and I'm ready to usher him right back into his bedroom. “So you'll let me finish that?” I look at his head.

“I like it this way,” he says dryly and goes into his room, slamming the door.

Men.

My cousin returns, and I fan my hair cape around the crying beauty. I coat Flora's hair with rubbing alcohol. “This is just the first step. I'm sorry it smells, but beauty is hard work. Why did you do this, anyway?”

“Scott told me I could benefit from brighter highlights. When I couldn't get into my salon, I thought I'd try henna at home.”

I purse my lips at Scott, and he just shrugs and mouths the words,
“I wanted her to come to you.”
Then he turns toward Flora. “Homemade highlights the night before an opening? You had to know I wasn't suggesting that!”

Three hair disasters in two days and I'm to blame for all of them. Hairstylist to the stars, my foot.

I coat her hair with mineral oil and follow with a lifting product, hoping her hair will feel soft and shine again, but no luck. She still looks like a bleach-bottle blonde with stringy, lifeless locks. “I'm going to have to cut it.”

I let Flora go into the bathroom and have a good cry. When she comes out, she nods as if being led down the gangplank in the middle of the Pacific. “Let's just do it.”

“I have some hair vitamins from Yoshi. They won't help instantly, but they will provide you with the right nutrients to help your hair grow back healthier than ever.”

“Thanks . . . I just realized—” She bats her big eyes at me. “—I don't even know your name.”

“Sarah Winston. I'm Scott's cousin.” I finger her fried hair and change my opinion. “I think I could color it blonde again, but I still recommend you go darker because it has the oddest green tint to it that I don't think the blonde will cover. I've never seen this color green with henna. It's not a good sign for how your hair might react.”

“Just do what you need to.” She clasps her eyes shut as if I'm going to inflict bodily harm. Being in Hollywood and “cutting her crown,” I imagine I am.

It pains me to do it. Pains me even more to know I can't use these long, formerly gorgeous locks for Locks of Love. But the hair is gone, and there's no sense crying over spilled milk. I take my first cut and Flora wails at seeing it land on Scott's kitchen floor.

“You're going to be gorgeous. Your cheekbones were made for short hair.”

Another snip. Another wail. Another compliment. “Tis the cycle of these things.

Dane has returned to get himself a new glass of water and meets my gaze. Must he walk around like this? Does Flora really need an audience at the moment? She doesn't need to know he's walking around with his haphazard haircut courtesy of me. Of course, he's the one who walked off in a huff like a big baby.

“I like it better short,” Dane tells Flora, looking directly at her with his dimples.
My dimples!

Flora looks up at him and smiles coyly. A surge of jealously rushes through my system, and I steady my hand to keep from chopping off the rest of it and giving the two of them matching haircuts.

“Thanks, even if it isn't the truth.” She runs her hand through her cropped hair. I hate that she looks darling without hair. Granted, that's my job, but at the moment, I'm not feeling it. “Do you really like it?”

Oh shut up
.
Really now. Why don't you ask her about
dead president, Dane? See if she knows he was our president,
or if she just knows him from a five-dollar bill.
I can hear her giggling now: “Oooh, it's Abe Lincoln. I just love that he
didn't cut down the cherry tree.”

And Dane with his dry laughter: “Now, honey, that was George Washington and there's no proof he ever did that.”

Gag.

I keep snipping away, using my razor scissors to cut some jagged edges and give Flora a harder, more contemporary look.

“You're known for being the ‘girl next door' in your movies?” I ask, and sure, I don't exactly feel Christian asking it because she doesn't exactly exude girl-next-door qualities. Although at the moment, I could say my life doesn't look much different from someone who professes to be an atheist, so who I am I to talk?

But why Dane? Why does she have to flirt with Dane? Why do I have to watch it?
Ask me how generous I feel at the
moment.

There are, after all, two men in the room. So my cousin's done his idle best to perpetuate the gay myth; he can't act macho for a minute? But I suppose you
want
a man to be gay when he's stuffing rubber cutlets in your bra.

I'm sure when he and Alexa broke up, the Hollywood who knew Scott confirmed their suspicions. But I thought women liked the challenge of a gay man anyway. Didn't Elizabeth Taylor pine after Montgomery Clift for years?

“Would you like something to drink?” Dane asks her, lifting his glass of water.

I smack my tongue a bit to show I myself am parched, but Dane doesn't offer
me
anything.

“I'd love a water. Do you have any Evian?”

French water. They tell me the entire city of Paris smells like urine, and people want to import their water.
Come to Wyoming, people! I'll give you water.

“I import French antiques. I spend a lot of time there, so no, we don't have any Evian.” He laughs. “We some Pellingrino.”

We have some Pellingrino
, I mimic soundlessly.

“Did you say something, Sarah?” Dane asks me.

“Just humming.” This razor is feeling itchy. What was that about the
Barber of Seville
?

Why I feel any ownership of a man I've known for a few short weeks is beyond me, but if I could brand him with a big “S” I probably would. It probably has something to do with the wild PDA on Rodeo Drive, but I'm thinking it was that first moment he came out of the elevator. I need an hour of confession just for the last five minutes alone. Out of fellowship. Out of resources.

It takes me a long time to get the razor though all the strands and shape Flora's hair. It's thick and the straw consistency is not making the razor cut any easier. I've made scarecrows easier than this. After I clip my last piece and watch it flutter to the floor, I look at Flora to ensure the cut is even. This is the part Dane walked out on, and if he doesn't let me get back to it, I doubt anyone is going to buy antiques from his crooked-headed self.

Next up is the dye for Flora's hair, and I paint it on generously and wrap her head up in plastic and foils. Not because she needs them, but it makes me feel better to see her looking not quite as perfect. She's looking anything but the Hollywood starlet, and still Dane hasn't noticed. He's milling about, bringing sparkling water and ignoring that dead president altogether.

“Don't you have a little history to bone up on, Dane?”

“Me?” he asks. “No, why?”

I shrug. “Just thought you had some reading to do.”

“I can read it on the plane.”

Yes, I'm sure you can, but I really wasn't concerned about
you finishing your biography.

He's leaning over the counter, with Flora carrying on a conversation as though I'm merely the hired help, not anyone to include in the discussion. I try to avoid eye contact with either of them and just focus on the work, but I'm afraid he's going to ask her out right in front of me, and I just don't think I can take that. I've withstood a lot in my day, but my prayer is God won't make me endure that. Not today.

Twenty minutes later it's time to rinse Flora and see how this all turned out, but I don't want Dane to witness the “after”—not that the “before” wasn't pretty good to start with—so I keep waiting for him to leave.