He groaned, loud, and I caught Louie’s gaze. I winked at him and he winked back… with both eyes.
“I need my bodyguards, Joshy Poo,” I said, pushing the door open and waving my youngest one inside the house.
Said “Joshy Poo” blew out his own raspberry as he passed by me into the house, only slightly stomping his feet. He didn’t say anything else as we unpacked the things that needed to go into the refrigerator and left everything else on the counter for later. We crossed the street, with Josh dragging his feet behind him and Louie holding my hand, and found the door to the yellow house closed.
I tipped my head toward it. “Goo, knock.”
Louie didn’t need to be told twice. He did it and then took two steps over to stand by me. Josh was almost directly behind us. It took a minute, but the door swung slowly open, a poof of white hair appearing in the crack for a moment before it went wide. “You came,” the woman said, her milky blue eyes going from the boys to me and back again.
I smiled at her, my hand going to pet the dark blond head at my hip almost distractedly. “What can we help you with, ma’am?”
The woman took a step into the house, letting me get a good look at the pale pink dress she had on with snap buttons going down the middle. Those thin, very white hands seemed to shake at her sides, a tale of her age. Her lined mouth pulled up at the corners just a little. “You cut hair?”
I forgot I had given her my business card. “I do.”
“Would ya mind givin’ me a little snip? I was supposed to have an appointment, but my grandson has been too busy to take me,” she explained, swallowing, bringing attention to the wrinkled, loose skin at her throat. “I’m startin’ to look like a hippy.”
I usually got pretty annoyed with people when they first found out I was a hair stylist and wanted preferential treatment: a free haircut, some kind of at-home service, a discount—or worse, when they expected me to drop everything to take care of them. You didn’t ask a doctor to give you a free check-up. Why would someone think that my time wasn’t as valuable as anyone else’s?
But…
I didn’t need to look at the trembling, heavily veined hands at Miss Pearl’s sides or her cloud of thin white hair to know there was no way I could possibly tell this woman I wouldn’t do what she was asking of me, much less charge her. Not just because she was my neighbor, but because she was old and her grandkid was supposed to take her to get a haircut and hadn’t. I had loved the hell out of my grandparents when I was a kid, especially my grandmother. I had a soft spot for all of my older clients; I charged them less than I did everyone else.
Ginny had long ago stopped asking why I gave them discounts, but I’m sure she understood. Sure, it was unfair to give some people a discount, but the way I looked at it, life wasn’t fair sometimes, and if you were going to cry about an elderly person paying less than you, you needed to get a life.
And this elderly, judgmental lady… I gave Louie’s shoulder a squeeze. “Okay. I have time right now if you’d like me to do it.”
Josh muttered something behind me.
The old woman’s smile was so bright that I felt bad for groaning when I had realized she wanted me to cross the street to go talk to her. “I wouldn’t be putting you out?”
“No. It’s no problem. I have shears at home. Let me go grab them and come back,” I said.
* * *
“Don’t cut too much.”
“That’s too much.”
“Could you go a little shorter?”
“My beautician doesn’t usually do it like that. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
I should have known after her first comment that the haircut wasn’t going to go as easily as I would have liked. There were two different types of customers in my profession: the kind that let you do whatever the hell you wanted, and the kind that nitpicked every single strand of hair. I used up all of my patience on the boys most of the time, so I loved the customers that genuinely didn’t care. I felt like I had a good idea with what worked best for people’s faces, and I would never give someone a haircut that needed a lot of maintenance if they didn’t have time for it, unless they begged.
But I kept my mouth shut and a smile on my face as I listened to my elderly neighbor and tried to cut her hair the way she wanted.
“Where do you usually get your hair done?” I asked as I worked my way around her, being extra careful around her paper-thin skin with the super-sharp edges of the shears. The last thing I wanted or needed was to accidentally cut her.
“Molly’s,” she replied.
On the floor a few feet away, Louie was lying on his belly with a notebook he was drawing in while Miss Pearl’s ancient cat sniffed his shoes, and Josh had a handheld game system in front of his face. He’d asked me again if he could stay home, and I’d told him the same thing I had originally. I wasn’t sure why he was in such a grumpy mood today, but I wasn’t going to worry about it too much. He had his days. I couldn’t blame him; I did too.
“Do you know where that’s at?” Miss Pearl asked after she rattled off side streets that weren’t familiar.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Oh? You’re not from here?”
