Part 9 (1/2)

He said, ”Poor sugar. What do you want?”

That stopped me, because I hadn't a clue. I only knew what I did not want.

”I can't look like this,” I said.

”No. It isn't good for America,” he agreed, so overly grave that it made me laugh. He led me over to the sink and settled me in the chair. I leaned back and rested my head in the sink while Peter washed what was left on my head. His fingers moved in a vigorous, painful rumple across my sore scalp.

”So, you want to look 'not like this.' That's not terribly specific, is it?” Peter said, rinsing the shampoo and reaching for a bottle of conditioner. ”Why don't you tell me how you think you look, and I'll go the other way.”

”Skinless,” I said.

He laughed out loud. ”I meant your hair, sugar.”

”Ruined. It looks like angry hair.”

”It does look a little... fraught,” he said, smiling down at me, then he shrugged and said with perfect confidence, ”Whatever you did, I can fix it.”

I believed him. With his low-down, slinky voice, he could say anything and most people would believe him. I let my eyes drift closed as he worked a thick cream that smelled like gardenias through my hair.

My mother was in California. I thought of it as her place now, like she'd walked all the way around the state, peeing endlessly to seal the borders so that nothing from the life she'd left could follow. She couldn't have gone all the way back to Fruiton to track me. Coming halfway, just to Amarillo, must have nearly killed her. No. She would have called folks in Fruiton who were her kind. This would be both the admittedly spa.r.s.e ranks of southern Catholics and s.h.i.+tty mothers, of which there was no shortage.

One of them must have tattled, told her I'd gone to the bus station. I'd had a c.r.a.p waitress job near the bus station in every town I'd paused in. She'd simply tracked me from Greyhound to Greyhound across the country, all the way to Amarillo, without ever leaving her new territory.

This was how I could find Jim. I could call the kids I had gone to high school with, and they would talk to me, because I'd been one of them. They would tell me, their peer, more than they would have told the cops or their parents back then. Telling cops or parents would have been ratting him out; it was obvious Jim had not wanted to be found.

”Let's promenade,” Peter said, and I started, my eyes popping open. I stood up and let him drape me in towels and a slick black poncho. As he led me across the room, I hung my braid over one arm and rummaged in my purse for a pen and a piece of sc.r.a.p paper. I needed a list of people back in Fruiton who were my kind, who would talk and tattle to me.

Peter took me straight to the chair and sat me down. The leather was b.u.t.ter soft and the seat gave under my weight, cupping my a.s.s like a lover and supporting my sore back better than my own bed at home. Charlotte Grandee was used to sinking her pointy back end into chairs like this. Artisan was giving me a taste of the life she took for granted. I settled myself down in the seat, acting like it was rightfully mine, as if my mother had given birth to me while sitting comfy in this very chair and I'd never yet moved off it.

Peter picked up a pair of slim silver scissors and then paused, considering me. He walked around me, looking at me from every angle.

I braced my paper on my purse and wrote, ”THE LAST PARTY,” at the top. I wrote Missy Carver's name first, because the party had been at her house. Missy had a divorced mother who went on lots of dates, so the party had almost always been at her house.

”I'm ready. Are you ready?” Peter asked. He made it sound the right kind of dirty. Like I was beautiful enough to tempt him, but he was much too gay to be a real threat.

”h.e.l.l, yeah,” I said. This was part of what rich wives like Charlotte and the blonde outside paid for, this safe, flirty a.s.surance that they still had it.

”No input? I'm taking blades to your head, sugar-pie. Are you comfortable saying, 'Go mad, Peter, and make me a G.o.ddess'?”

”That sounds great,” I agreed. ”Let's go with that G.o.ddess thing.”

Peter went to work with the scissors, the blades rubbing up against each other like cricket legs. I didn't watch him cut. I didn't look at him at all, and he seemed to feel me being finished with the conversation, because he dropped the flirt and went quiet.

Under Missy's name, I wrote down all the varsity football players that had been in our grade. They would have been at that party, certain. Those names came easy: Rob Shay. Chuck Presley. Benny Garrison. Car Kaylor. Lawly Price. Back then, we always called the football boys by their first and last names, as if they were rock stars instead of boys we'd known since grade school.

I looked up, thinking, and accidentally met Peter's eyes in the mirror.

”Prospectives?” he asked instantly, like I'd hit his on switch. He glanced down over my shoulder at my list.

”Guest list,” I said. ”For a party.”

”Lots of boy names. Looks like my kind of s.h.i.+ndig.” He waggled his eyebrows at me.

I looked deliberately away. The girls' names were harder to recall. I hadn't been the kind to have close girlfriends. h.e.l.l, I still wasn't. I never got in the habit. This was partly because most of my wardrobe came from Fruiton Baptist's annual clothes drive. The popular girls, with their pom-poms and sleek ponytails, recognized my outfits, and some were cra.s.s enough to greet the pieces in public like old friends. If I hadn't been the quarterback's girl, they wouldn't have talked to me at all. I wouldn't get much from the girls, anyway. Pretty had bought me an in with the fellas, but I had never been their their kind. kind.

Peter watched as I added the name of every girl Jim Beverly had taken out during the couple, three times a year that we'd been broken up. I wrote quickly. My hand could barely stand to shape the letters. I remembered all seven effortlessly, because for the short time each had been with him, I'd chanted their names under my breath all day long. I hope you get run over, Dawna Sutton. I hope bears eat you, Louisa Graham. I hope you get run over and I hope you get run over, Dawna Sutton. I hope bears eat you, Louisa Graham. I hope you get run over and then then bears eat you, Clarice Lukey. bears eat you, Clarice Lukey.

”It's still a mister-heavy list,” Peter said. ”And why not? A good mister-ing will do more for your pores than any product I have here.” He c.o.c.ked his eyebrow to a rakish angle, so charming, but I wasn't as easily seduced as his regular Sheilas and Charlottes.

I said as kindly as I could, ”Stop.”

”I'm sorry. I'm a horror,” he said, sounding more pleased than apologetic. He gathered the front of my hair and clipped to the top of my head. ”Your lips say stop, but your eyes say you're half in love with me already. You're the kind who likes bad boys, I can tell.”

Bad boys, he'd said, and our eyes met in the mirror again. I found myself staring at him as if I were looking down a deer gun barrel, like I saw his handsome face framed in sights. I wasn't Charlotte's kind, and in that moment, he knew it.

”Sugar,” I said, grinding the word into him, ”you have no idea.”

I saw whatever lived under his hypercharming ease flash recognition, and then he drew back like he'd been bitten. His gaze dropped. He coughed and shook his shoulders, then his hands got busy in my hair again. I finished my list in silence, but not an angry one. I was more comfortable than I had been since I'd walked in and Sheila had given me that b.i.t.c.hy once-over.

When he finally spoke again, his voice had lost its indulgent purr. He sounded less Hollywood gay, less flirty, but somehow warmer. ”What are you going to do with that long braid of your ex-hair?”

”I'm not sure.” I packed my list and pen back in my bag. ”Maybe I'll make a lanyard.”

”Is it virgin?”

”Virgin?” I asked. I found myself smiling at him as I said, ”I was married five years, so it's certainly seen a few things.”

He chuckled and said, ”All at once, I'm glad my own hair can't talk. I meant, do you use any kind of chemical on it, to straighten or curl it? Or do you dye it?”

”No,” I said. ”That's the color I was born with.”

He set down his scissors and said, ”May I?” I handed over the cable of hair. He lifted the braid and smelled it and said, ”No one in your house smokes, and I would know. You can't get that smell out of hair. This has got to be five inches around. And so healthy. You must take vitamins. Do you drink? Do drugs?”

”You mean other than my pet heroin addiction?” I said, a little put off, and he laughed.

”I'm not asking these questions to be nosy. Hair this thick and long, gorgeous color, virgin, this can be worth a lot of money.”

I sat up straighter and asked, ”How much is a lot?”

”Hundreds.” He handed the cable of hair back to me and let my front hair down out of its clip. ”So you lost your husband quite recently?”

I nodded, thinking, Very recently. In fact, any day now. Very recently. In fact, any day now.

”Is it safe to a.s.sume your finances have changed?” he said. I looked away. ”I ask because, among my many hair-related talents, wig making s.h.i.+nes. I do custom jobs. Local but very high end. I could sell one made out of this hair for a couple thousand. I'd give you six hundred for the raw material. Now. Today.”

I turned my head to look up at him, directly. ”Six hundred? Is that a fair price?”

He nodded. ”I went to Catholic school. The first thing they taught me was that people who cheat teeny, big-eyed widows go straight to h.e.l.l. It's quite fair, for what's essentially my clay. What makes the finished wig worth more is the work I'll put in. It will be head art by the time I'm done, and some poor balding-and wealthy-Amarillo brunette would be thrilled to have what I could make out of that perched on her head.”

”Six hundred,” I repeated. That would buy a lot of long-distance phone calls to my kind in Fruiton. Once I had a bead on Jim, it would cover a bus or plane ticket to get me to him.