Chapter One
The upstate New York village of Mudville, with a whopping population of just under one-thousand residents, had an official community center. The beautiful old building, a former Masonic Temple, was steeped in history and architectural detail.
But there was no doubt for anyone living there that the place designated for the purpose of gathering wasnotthe true center of the Mudville community.
That honor was shared by the local dive bar, the vintage diner and the hair salon.
These three gathering places also happened to be the only businesses within walking distance that were hiring. So when it became apparent that it was get a job or not make rent that month, Tessa Hawthorne chose the least frightening, and the least social, of the positions available.
Ruby’s Hair Salon.
There were a couple of reasons that led her to make that decision.
First and foremost, for an introvert like Tessa tending bar or waiting tables might as well have been Dante’s Seventh Circle ofHell. Not to mention she’d never done either, tend bar or wait tables.
Mensa-level IQ aside, she wasn’t sure she could learn those skills without doing damage, either mental or physical, to herself and the businesses’ patrons.
Sweeping up hair from the floor, laundering towels, and refilling supplies at the salon, though?Thatshe could do. And do it with her head down, mainly in silence with her own thoughts for company. Just the way she liked it.
It was very nearly the perfect mindless job every introspective person dreamed of. Low pressure. Requiring little to no thought. Giving her time during the day that her brain could rest or, more often, work out at its leisure the problems waiting for her back home in her thesis research.
And for all this, she was getting paid. It might only be minimum wage, but it provided much needed income. Enough she didn’t need to go through the embarrassment of asking her retired parents for financial help.
This morning the salon was bustling around her as she performed her duties.
It was early, at least for the youth of town who kept later hours than the old timers. But it was prime social time for the senior citizens of Mudville.
The men of the community congregated in the chairs along one wall, take-out coffee cups in hand while they waited for their turn in the single barber chair that serviced the males of the community. All the while they grumbled to one another about the state of the world, or today’s youth, or the price of gas. The subject changed but not the complaining or the complainers.
Meanwhile, in the chairs in front of each mirrored station two women in various stages of beautification chatted animatedly with each other and the hairstylists.
The two clients’ monthly root touch-ups seemed secondary to the gossip session, which was fine with Tessa. The more they talked with each other, the less anyone spoke to her.
But the longer she worked at the salon the more she was starting to wonder if she was missing some gene that the women patrons had and she didn’t. She’d never dyed, or highlighted, or done anything else to her boring brown hair except trim the ends a few times a year with the scissors she kept in her kitchen drawer.
She was just pondering her lack of beauty ritual when snippets of the conversation penetrated her own thoughts…
“I just don’t understand. Your son’s a handsome man. And he’s got a great job, which is more than I can say for some guys his age that I know.” Red, the local thrift shop owner, shook her head, sending the foil strips encasing her highlighted hair rustling.
“I know,” Susan Sinclair agreed. “Dean should have his choice of the cream of the crop. Yet that boy without fail gravitates to the worst women he can find. Always has. Even back in high school. Heck, junior high, now that I think about it. It’s like he’s a magnet attracting only the worst of the worst.”
Red let out a chuckle. “Maybe you need to find a good girl topretendto be his usual type of bad girl.”
Losing interest in Susan Sinclair’s son’s love life, Tessa tuned out the conversation.
Her mind turned to working through the various thoughts and challenges of her own existence. She had a dozen problems, but her lack of a love life wasnotone of them.
The position of shop girl at the salon had proven good for her. She was making slow but steady progress on her graduate thesis. And in the couple of months since she’d been working there, the time spent doing the rote chores had yielded anamazing epiphany or two when it came to her thesis. But she’d reached a stumbling block in her research.
Lately, even giving her brain a chance during her mindless chores to work on the problems didn’t yield any solutions.
Give it time. She could hear her undergrad psych professor’s words still. Like a pot set to slowly simmer on low on the back burner of a stove, the mind continued to work in the background.
Eventually, it all would work out. It had better. She’d devoted too much time, and accrued too much debt, for it not to.
Until it did work out, she’d be the best shop girl she could be… and ignore that she wasn’t using her degree to work in a field that was even close to what she’d studied.
Deftly, she swept the broom around the pedestal base of the chair, collecting most of the hair clippings with that single sweep, all while considering what angle she needed to make the focus for her thesis. But her mental block still remained. Her mind spun and churned to no avail.
