Hair emergency–a catastrophic event at levels so high they could permanently scar a person for life if not immediately remedied. The occurrences could be self-induced or the result of a freak accident. Also referred to as “you ain’t getting lunch today” among hair professionals.
There were weeks I went without a single hair emergency walking into my salon and then there were days when several of them came rushing inside almost at once. I promised myself I would write a book after I retired because I was certain it would be a best seller and land me on Ellen’s show. Chaz pointed out that Ellen would be retired long before me when I mentioned my book idea to him. I told him to shut the fuck up because I couldn’t imagine a world without Ellen smiling, dancing, and doing amazing things every weekday.
That day, I had three hair emergencies run through my doors with their eyes bugging out of their heads and a forlorn expression on their faces. They looked at me with so much hope in their eyes, as if I was the Jesus of hair disaster fixes, that I couldn’t turn them away. It would mean working through lunch, but I didn’t have the heart to say no.
I was used to seeing kids cut their own hair and Mom or Dad rushing them in to see me, but the opposite happened to my first client–well, except the kid didn’t drive them to my salon. She looked to be around four years old and much too short to see over the steering wheel.
Wow, little Tabitha did a number on her mommy’s hair too. There was no fucking way we were avoiding short-as-fuck bangs. “I can’t believe I fell asleep,” Victoria said. Tears flowed down her face and little Tabitha, unaware of how much trauma she caused, sat in her mommy’s lap and lovingly caressed her mother’s face.
I worked Victoria in between routine maintenance appointments. By the time I was finished, those tears of horror were tears of happiness. “I look like that one actress in that one movie.” I had no fucking idea what she was talking about, but she totally rocked those motherfucking bangs.
“Um, might I make a tiny suggestion?” I asked. I hated to ruin the good mood she was in, but with the shorter bangs it was obvious as hell the woman had zero maintenance program for her brows. They looked like two sasquatches stretched across her forehead that were nearly holding hands above her nose to form one long brow.
“Okay,” she replied timidly when I suggested a brow wax. “Will it hurt?”
“Stings a little, but it’s totally worth it,” I replied.
She loved her new brows so much, Tabitha got a mani/pedi in the little kids’ chair, I got a huge tip, and Victoria bought several new products for her hair and skin. “Let’s go get a brownie and hot chocolate from The Brew,” I heard Victoria tell Tabitha as they left. I knew next to nothing about raising kids, but I thought it was completely possible that Victoria was giving Tabitha the wrong impression about actions and consequences.
Next through my door was a complete surprise. Nadine Beaumont, wife to the sleazy town mayor, entered my salon looking like a Hollywood A-lister trying to go incognito while drawing attention to themselves at the same time. I could see the floral print of the scarf she wore around her head beneath the hood of her red wool peacoat and her oversized sunglasses, on a cloudy day, was a nice finishing touch.
I’d banned Nadine from my salon when she broke the heart of my dear friend who happened to be her former boss and wife of the man she screwed behind her back. They had a soap opera style throw down in my salon that caused damage to my property and face. Nadine had tried to apologize to me since then and she looked truly sincere when she said that she wished she could take it all back and make things right with Georgia. Unfortunately for her, she came to that realizationafterGeorgia was murdered by her housekeeper.
I realized two things since I refused my services to her. Nadine’s marriage to that son of a bitch was a bigger punishment than anything I, or anyone else, could dole out to her and sometimes people truly were sorry about their misdeeds and perhaps deserved second chances. I might’ve been willing to extend the olive branch to Nadine but it would be a cold day in hell before I did the same thing for her loser husband. I had thought about calling Nadine and trying to make amends with her, but I wasn’t really sure how to approach the subject without looking desperate for business, which I definitely was not.
“Josh,” she said breathlessly. “Please take me back.” Again with her daytime soap opera theatrics. “I just can’t go on like this.”
She had the eye of everyone in the room. Her attempt to hide the disastrous effects of whatever was beneath the scarf told me she was tired of being the talk of the town. I led her into the kitchenette and closed the door so we could have some privacy.
“What have you done, Nadine?”
She burst into tears and I’m not talking about a few tears here. I mean full on body shaking sobs. “There’s so many things,” she managed to say in between sobs.
“Honey, I meant your hair. I’m just theHairJesus, not therealJesus.”
“I know,” she said pitifully. Then she lowered her hood and slowly unwound the long scarf from her head.
“Holy fuck!” I knew my exclamation was loud enough to be heard in the next county just as certain as I knew it didn’t help to dispel the curiosity of the clients in my salon. “Who did this to you, Nadine? There has to be laws against this type of treatment to your formerly beautiful hair.”
“It… was… the… new… salon…” She got her words out in between sobbing hiccups.
“What new salon?” Just how busy had I been with Gabe’s dick up my ass that I didn’t know a competitor had moved intomyterritory.
“Bargain Beauty Salon,” she whimpered. “I didn’t know what else to do since you kicked me out.”
Now look, I was all sympathetic about her hair up until that point.Shewas the one who said such horrible things to Georgia inmysalon. For all I knew,shewas the one who gave me a shiner. My mind reeled with what to do. I could send her on her un-merry way, and force her to deal with the disaster she presented me on her own, or I could be kind and help her out. If I decided to be kind, I then had to choose whether to take her out into the middle of the salon so she could be an example to anyone who thought about leaving me for a “bargain,” or I could be a kind human being and keep her away from prying eyes.
I really must’ve wanted to get on therealJesus’ good side because I said, “Stay here, Nadine. Let me go whip something up to try and remove that lemony-yellow-Jell-O look you’ve got going on there.”Hey, I at least got my digs in.
I didn’t think anyone could outdo Nadine in the hair disaster department, but I was so, so wrong. Laura Sampson won the title hands down. She stood timidly in my salon with her hair looking like it got caught in a motherfucking electric mixer, like cake mixing gone wild. There was even some kind of brown substance in her long locks.
“Girl, what the ever-loving-fuck happened to you?” I asked.
“Kids! Kids happened to me, Josh!”
“Honey, come sit down,” I said, gesturing to my chair.
I know that people who knew my story would think I had something against Laura, but the truth was I didn’t. Laura had always been kind to me in school and, as far as I was concerned, she was another one of Billy’s victims. Laura plopped down in my chair and I gingerly stuck my hands in the tangled mess to figure out what the hell she’d gotten into because she was crying too hard to help me.
