Isle of Palms (24 page)

“Jesus!” I said. It wasn’t a curse and it wasn’t exactly a prayer. It was more relief that she hadn’t been killed.

I looked around. The mirror behind the reception counter was shattered from gunfire. Hair gel, mousse, sprays and brushes were all over the floor. There were huge holes in the plaster ceiling and dust was falling in a storm, covering every surface.

Harriet looked up at me.

“Hey, are you all right?” I said.

“No, I’m not, and you’re fired,” she said.

“What?” I was stunned.

“You heard me!
Get out!
You tried to help your friend here run out on her bill and then I was nearly killed because of you! Get out!”

The whole place fell silent to listen. I was so shocked I didn’t know what to say, but I tried to explain anyway.

“Harriet! You couldn’t be more
wrong!
I was the one who
spotted
the man! I
tried
to signal you! I was the one who got the
police!”

“I’ve been
watching
you,” she said with the nastiest guttural voice I had ever heard used by a real person. “Now get out before I have you
thrown
out!”

Carla looked at me and rolled her eyes in silent agreement that Harriet was a raving madwoman. The customers began to move away, embarrassed for me, mumbling to themselves.
I can’t imagine . . . How could she say . . . I have known Anna since . . . It can’t be . . . What’s the matter with her? Harriet’s gone off the deep end this time. . . . Do you remember when she . . .

I didn’t know what to do next. It was clearly a waste of time to try and explain anything to her in her state. She needed twenty milligrams of something I didn’t have and wouldn’t share with her if I did. I decided to just leave.

“Carla, if my clients want to know where I am, tell them I went home sick, okay?”

For the second time that day, Lucy yanked my arm, and said as loud as she could, “Don’t you know a sign from God when you see one? Damn, girl! You’re as thick as a brick! Go get your stuff and let’s go get us a salon of our own.” She looked at Harriet lying on the couch and said, “Not only are you dead wrong, you’re lucky you ain’t dead! And you’re mean and stupid too!”

Carla giggled but I couldn’t. I was still flabbergasted. I hurried back to my chair as fast as I could and took my tote bag from the small closet, threw in my scissors, straightening iron, brushes, and the all-important address book with clients’ names and color references. I yanked Emily’s pictures from the mirror and several books I had there for clients to browse. On the way out, passing everyone, they offered condolences.
Let us know where you go. . . . I don’t blame you a bit, honey. . . . It’s not your fault, Anna . . . not in a million years!

Lucy and I walked out of the front door into the light of a perfect South Carolina afternoon. She followed me back to the beach in her car. I cried and cursed Harriet the whole way home. It was amazing that all those years of my life could fit into one tote bag. When I got out of my car, Lucy came walking across the yard toward me.

“What on earth is the matter with you?” she said.

“Are you serious?” I said. How could she be so insensitive?

“Listen, honey, that woman ain’t worth the sweat offa hog’s behind, much less your tears. And that job ain’t shit compared to how much money you’re gonna make on your own!”

“Lucy! Are you nuts? I can’t think about anything like that now,” I said.

“Who’s your broker?”

I pushed my front door open and she followed me inside.

“Marilyn Davey. Her card’s on the bulletin board in the kitchen closet on the door. But don’t call her. Wait for me to think this through. I gotta wash my face.”

I rinsed my face over and over with cold water. I was so depressed I wanted to go to bed and not get up for a week. I pulled my hair up in a rubber band and took two aspirins, thinking they couldn’t hurt and they might help.

Lucy was on my phone making arrangements to push me into bankruptcy. I decided to change my clothes so I put on shorts and sneakers, thinking it would be therapeutic to walk the beach and wondering at the same time how I had lived without a beach for so long. I’d take Lucy with me and tell her to back off. I’d had enough shit for one day.

That little voice inside my head was becoming a major pain in the rear.

“Get in the car,” Lucy said.

“What?”

She was writing something on the back of an envelope.

“I said, Get in the car. Marilyn Davey, who is a sweet pea if I ever talked to one, says she has a space to show us for a salon. So, move it! She’s squeezing us in her day.”

“I’m not ready to do this, Lucy. This is insanity. I can’t afford it. I just bought this house.”

“Yes, you can afford it. We’re gonna figure it all out.”

Where did Lucy get her nerve?

I went along with her because I was too numb to resist.

The place we saw was just raw space in a relatively new shopping center and, unfortunately for my nerves, it was full of possibilities. With any luck at all, it could be a great salon. Where would I find the money to do it?

Against my own better judgment, that night I talked to Daddy and Jim and Frannie. Everyone wanted to help. I couldn’t think straight. Even though I hadn’t deserved it, getting fired had blown me out of the water. Lucy and I drank two entire bottles of wine and I fell asleep on my couch.

I heard the phone ringing and realized it was morning. I should’ve taken more aspirin. It was Harriet, semiapologetic, testing the waters of forgiveness. I told her I was tinkering with opening a salon on the Isle of Palms. She went so crazy that her yelling probably shook the foundations of the Customs House in Charleston.
If you take one single customer away from me I will see you in court! I’ll sue you from here to hell and back!

So much for a going-away party.

“Come on, Harriet, why don’t you just wish me well?”

She had slammed her phone down in my ear so hard that I jumped. Clearly, I wouldn’t miss
her.
In a way, I felt sorry for her. For years I had apologized to the faithful for her temper and suspicions. No more. Who would protect her now?

Who cared?

Over many cups of coffee, I made a budget. Every time I thought about Harriet, I said,
Screw you, baby.
I figured out that I needed somewhere around fifty thousand dollars for starters, to get the space fitted out and to stay alive for six months. Lucy wandered in with sausage biscuits from Burger King and announced she was writing the check. I broke out in a cold sweat.

“Here’s the deal, Anna: I get a job. I’m gonna be the receptionist. I make ten dollars an hour, okay? I gotta get out of the chat rooms, you know what I mean?”

“Lucy!”

“And I wanna buy gifts and things to sell, like those things that go on ponytails and pretty little baby barrettes and . . .”

“Lucy!”

“What?”

“I can’t take that kind of money from you!”

“And just why not? Shit, if I’d left my money in the stock market, I sure woulda lost that much in a week! I figure you’re a better investment than a company I can’t watch and don’t know what the hell they do anyway. What the hell is Enron anyhow?”

“Beats me.”

“Is that a yes?”

Do it!
the little voice said.

I took the plunge from the top of Mount Everest.

“Yes. It is a yes. But only as a loan.”
I’m gonna throw up, pass out, and die.

“Deal!”

I was a trembling and shaking sack of anxiety as I signed the lease. Lucy was perfectly collected, walking through the new space like a foreman, chatting away with Marilyn about the layout.

“I should have brought a darn pad of paper,” she said. “Next time.”

“Take mine,” Marilyn said.

All I could think was, What have I done? What the
hell
have I done?

Screw you, spook,
I said silently to my inner compulsive gambler.

Getting a grip meant that I had to start whipping the new space into shape. How long would it take? To my complete amazement, Lucy seemed to have that all under control. She might have looked like a cone of cotton candy, but let us not forget, O Danny Boy was a contractor. Still, it was surprising to listen to her spit out recommendations on amps and socket placement and on and on.

I was about to open a salon of my own? Was I completely off the wall? No. I wasn’t. Only partially. And I’d like to know since when a tough little nut like me started getting so sentimental, but I couldn’t help watching the movie in my head, the one from seventeen years ago. It could have been yesterday that I opened the door at the infamous House of Hair for the first time.

It was in the mid eighties. With my beauty school diploma in one hand and a want ad from the
Post & Courier
in the other, I pushed open the glass door to the House of Hair on King Street in Charleston. The blow dryers were deafening. “I Will Survive” was blaring full tilt through the stereo speakers. Another warning on my life unrecognized. I just wasn’t that smart. I was so insecure I could hardly keep my shoes on my feet.

I looked around. In the salon area, there were about a dozen stylists in black pants and white shirts. Their arms and round brushes seemed to be everywhere at once. In the reception space there were two couches, some chairs, and a coffee table stacked with well-worn current magazines and women flipping their pages, not reading a word.

I tried to stand straight against the counter and appear poised. First impressions lasted forever and I wanted mine to be good. I waited for the harried receptionist to hang up the phone. She looked exactly like the front office person at a hip salon should. Great haircut, short and blunt, so gelled you could see your face in it. Well, almost. Dramatic makeup, tight clothes, great body. Too much jewelry. No gum. Very cool.

“Nope, sorry, nothing until next Thursday, Mrs. Akers. I know, I know. It’s
terrible.
No, it’s been
wild
here! Yes, I know! You’re
right!”

She looked at me and rolled her eyes. “How about Stacy? No, I promise, she’s very gentle.”
Just a minute,
she mouthed to me. “Okay, I have you booked for a manicure with Stacy at four o’clock this afternoon. Sure. I will. Bye-bye!” She hung up the telephone and took a deep breath.

“Jeesch! You’d think her cuticles were like the queen mother’s or something! Okay! Sorry for the wait. Do you have an appointment?” she said, as though she asked that all night long in her sleep.

“No, I’m here for an interview?” I said.

“What are you—desperate?” She looked at me as though
I
was the one with the eighteen coats of blue mascara cemented to my lashes. “I’m
just
kidding!”

“With Harriet? For the assistant’s position?”

“She’s probably in the back sharpening her teeth.”

While I wanted to giggle I thought it better to keep my place. I just nodded my head and started to go to the rear of the salon to look for Harriet.

“Hold on a second! Come back here.”

I thought I had done something wrong, like maybe she had to announce me or something. I was instantly washed with embarrassment.

“What?” I said.

“What’s your name?”

“Anna,” I said.

“I’m Kelly. Listen to me, I’m gonna tell you something. Harriet’s gonna hire you on the spot. Don’t worry about that. I know her. She goes through assistants faster than I go through boyfriends. Know why?”

“Because she’s demanding?”

“Because she’s got a worse personality than anybody I ever met. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Thanks,” I said, and meant it.

That interview and career path came after Jim and I filed separation papers and I’d finally moved back to Daddy’s house. Trixie had closed the wallet when Jim told her we were breaking up. I mean, if shortly after the death of your husband, your son announced he was gay and his marriage was over, would you pay all the bills for his wife?

But there weren’t a million options for me. Bartender? Hostess? Waitress? Salesperson? When I found out that it only took six months to complete the required course of study in South Carolina, there wasn’t another alternative that made sense to me. Cutting hair was something I actually liked. Daddy wasn’t thrilled about me becoming a hair stylist. I think he thought I should go to a liberal arts college and maybe teach school or something. But I was stubborn about it, deciding that I was going to do something I enjoyed. Gardening had taught me that you shouldn’t spend too many hours a day doing something that would make you miserable.

That’s how and why I eventually found myself standing in Harriet’s House of Hair looking for Harriet the Beast. Great. Have a nice life.

After asking two people who gave me sorrowful faces in sympathy, I remember I saw Harriet for the first time sorting permanent rods in a rolling cart. She was about forty, rail thin, dyed red hair, no fingernails to brag about. I remember thinking that her heels were too high for a woman her age. Frankly, she was slightly tacky.

“Harriet? I’m Anna Abbot and I was hoping I could talk to you about the assistant’s job?”

She looked me up and down and without a trace of any sort of pleasantry she said, “The broom’s over there. Sweep up this hair and we can talk while you work.”

“Sure,” I said.

“You ever been arrested?”

“Heavens, no!”

“You’re hired. Minimum wage, don’t hustle tips, hours are ten to six, Tuesday through Saturday. You gotta work late before all holidays, understood?”

I nodded my head.

“If I catch you stealing products, you go to jail. Got it?”