'It's your shop?' I asked for lack of something better to say.
'Yes, it is. You've already seen that I'm acquainted with the problem. Oh, sure, half the wigs I sell are to dizzy dames interested in seeing if a color change will add an inch to their boyfriends' muscle, but it's a challenge like yours that I try to do right by.' She strolled over to me and studied my features. She had a rolling gait like a sailor's. 'What people who need prosthetic hairpieces don't realize is that makeup is just as important as the hair,' she went on.
'Makeup?'
'Exactly. I teach you how to use television makeup so that you can blend your face with your new hair so that only a makeup expert can tell it's not your own.'
I had used up the supply of healing cream I had smuggled from the hospital during my first month at Blind Tom's. The healing had been well along by then, but I was still conscious of the visibility of the scars. 'How long would it take you to teach me?'
'Half an hour. The practice necessary to do it correctly takes longer, of course.' She moved away from me, behind the counter, and began rummaging in drawers. 'Was your hair brown?'
'Before it turned gray.'
She looked up at me. 'You want gray again?' There was a definite twinkle in her saucy-looking eyes. 'You don't need it.'
'Thanks. I'll leave it up to you.'
'That's the boy,' she approved. 'I'm glad you're not the type who comes in here sniveling because his face was burned. 'Why, man you've got it made,' I always tell them. 'Your face isn't going to change. You'll look exactly the same twenty years from now when every woman you know is envying the hell out of you.' ' She removed a hairpiece from a drawer. 'Come sit over here.'
I moved behind the counter and sat down on a three-legged stool placed before a mirror with angled wings that showed the sides of the head as well as the front. The well-endowed proprietress sat on another stool slightly behind mine after enveloping me in a barber's apron.
' 'Course most men who come in here are afraid they're never going to make it with a woman again,' she continued in her free-wheeling fashion. 'And I can understand that. When I lost my hair, the first thing I thought was that I'd never get to do the split on my back again.' In the mirror I could see her bright smile over my shoulder. 'It didn't work that way. I even experimented. A few times I took the wig off just to see what would happen. Some guys just shriveled, but it turned on a few Johns like you wouldn't believe.'
While talking, she had arranged a makeup tray beside me. Stubby tubes numbered from one to eleven rested in troughs along with three different kinds of powder in jars. 'First the clippers on the back of the neck to blend the hairline,' she said. I flinched at the cold touch of the steel, but she clip-clipped away, unheeding. 'I recommend not wearing a hat,' she went on. 'Ninety percent of the trouble in wig wearing comes from hats and the complications they cause.'
Finished with the clipping, her cool fingers trailed lightly across the back of my neck several times. I knew she was doing it on purpose, but I couldn't restrain the shiver that rippled through me. 'Suppose it rains?' I addressed myself to her last remark.
'Unless you're with a gal you're trying to impress, take the hairpiece off and put it in your pocket. Otherwise, carry an umbrella. She'll think you're British and very gallant.' I said nothing. 'You see the numbers on the tubes? The range of color in them will take care of most facial gradations. The lower numbers are from light pastel pink to beige. The higher numbers are tan, brown, and dark brown. From the skin on your arms, you look as though you should be number six or number seven.'
She picked up the number six tube, squirted a gob of the creamy material onto her palm, then worked it onto her fingertips. 'Now watch this,' she said, and began rubbing it into her cheeks with a rapid, circular motion of her fingers. Her white skin darkened. 'This foundation not only supplies the basic color you need but it also covers the scars.' She picked up a tissue and wiped off her face. 'You try it.'
I directed the tube at my palm and squeezed it awkwardly. 'Too much,' she said at once, leaning over my shoulder and halving the dose. I could smell her heady perfume. 'There, try that.'
I began spreading it lightly on my face, watching the mirror to make sure there were no gaps in the coverage. It was almost miraculous the way the seams and craters disappeared. In the midst of my efforts, she reached up casually and placed the hairpiece on my head. She attached two tabs in the lace-like foundation just above my ears but underneath the netting. I couldn't believe the difference it made. 'How about
'I think well of it,' I said fervently.
'I knew you would. It's not cheap, but it's the most natural-looking hairpiece I have in the shop.' She reached around me for a jar on the tray, opened it, studied my face in the mirror for a moment, then closed the jar and opened another. 'These different shades of powder permit natural blending with your own skin at the jawline and throat-line,' she explained, showing me how to use it.
I examined the completed job in the mirror. The hair looked natural, but the face didn't. It still looked stiff, but it was a huge improvement over the shiny gloss that had called attention to itself before. 'Each application is good for twenty-four hours unless you run into a cloudburst or something,' she advised me. 'Even then it won't run, but it might spot.'
'How much for the works plus an extra makeup kit?' I asked.
She reached into a partly opened drawer and took out a wig identical to the one on my head except that its color was a deep coppery red. 'Wouldn't you like a change-off?' she asked. 'Six eighty would cover everything.'
More than most men I could use a change-off. I stared at the burnished bronze of the second hairpiece.
'You haven't asked me the question usually asked by my men customers,' the proprietress said.
'No? What's the question?'
'Whether everything will stay put while they're enjoying a roll in the hay.'
'I can see how it would be embarrassing if it didn't. What do you tell them?'
She smiled sweetly. 'I tell them that if they're worried about it we'll lock the front door and go into the back room and try it out.'
'I'll bet you sell more wigs that way.'
'Hairpieces,' she corrected me with another smile. 'Well? I'll bet you haven't had a piece since the explosion.'
'You're right, but it's that fact that makes me gun-shy about the back room.'
'Nonsense,' she said briskly. 'You've come to the right place for retraining.' She rose from her stool, went to the front of the shop, inserted an 'Out to lunch' sign in the window, and locked the door. She came back and took me by the hand. 'Come on. You need a little hairpiece therapy.'
'Just a minute.' I freed my hand from hers and counted out six hundred and eighty dollars. 'You've made a sale regardless.'
She put it in the pocket of her uniform, then took my hand again. She led the way into a back room, which was comfortably fitted out as a bed-sitting room. I was curious, but I was also apprehensive. 'This could be a disaster,' I warned her as she disappeared behind a screen.
'Hang your clothes in the closet and relax,' her voice floated out to me. 'Just leave everything to me.'
I was startled by a full-length view of myself in a pier-glass mirror attached to the closet door. Almost literally, I didn't recognize a single thing about myself. I was still staring when another figure moved into view beside me in the mirror. She wore a single sheer garment, which for lack of a better term might be labeled a short shirt. It half contained the jutting thrust of milky white breasts above while it flirted at mid-thigh with hinted-at shadowy depths beneath. I felt a long-dormant stirring.
'Relax,' she repeated, and took charge of my undressing. She led me to the bed. She was self-assured, bold, eager, and skillful. I had never been physically seduced before. My response was as gratifying to me as I hoped it was to her. For a moment, with what seemed acres of sleek female flesh in my hands, my mind drifted to Hazel
Andrews and her cabin just outside Hudson. But only for a moment.
'It didn't hurt a bit, did it?' my companion inquired when I rolled, exhausted, to one side of the bed. She patted my shoulder. I got up finally and went to the mirror. The hairpiece was firmly in place. When I turned, she was smiling at me from the bed. 'If you're not completely satisfied, come back anytime for an additional
