“Now Jordan, I know this is way more than you’re used to handling,” he had told me at our last planning session, picking pieces of lint from the oversize sweater he wore. These Bill Cosby throwbacks were Miles’s trademark, an odd choice given the fact that his salons were so ultra-chic. The joke around town was that he did it to reinforce the image that he was straight because no gay man would ever allow himself to be seen looking so unstylish. Maybe so, but the things were dust and dirt catchers, picking up more stuff than a Swiffer.
“I’m on top of it,” I said. “I’ve got Cathy Hughes’s local radio stations on board and you’re going to be on Larry Young’s talk show on 1010.”
“You’re doing fine
Half-and-half is a good analogy for hair shows-you didn’t have to grow up in a black neighborhood to get it, but it sure helped. Black hair care is big time, a billion-dollar-ayear business these days. But a hair show is more three-ring circus than sedate gathering of professionals, with every stylist scheming to steal the show. Demure chignons and sleek pageboy cuts were not the norm at Hair Dynasty. You’d be more likely to see a woman with the Statue of Liberty rising from her hairline, woven from suitably patriotic red, white, and blue hairpieces. Or a model strutting the catwalk in an haute couture “hair dress” that started at her temples, crisscrossed around her neck, and extended down her body to form a sweeping floor-length gown. The overall effect made the wearer look like a slightly less hairy version of Cousin Itt.
Wefts of hair were sewn or glued in, blow-dried, sprayed, teased, and pinned. There were perms and curls, braids and weaves, and more dyed-color combinations than they have at Sherwin-Williams. People still talked about the year a Chicago stylist sent out a model with a weave designed to look like a satellite dish and a television. The thing actually worked and got pretty good reception. We never figured out how he pulled it off without showing any wires or electrocuting the girl who had to balance it.
And now the whole circus had come to Baltimore, whose motto could be:
It was late morning on the first day of the convention and I felt I looked like quite the young professional in my cream-colored linen suit. Sure, almost everyone else would be in basic black, the calling card of the beauty business, but I wasn’t working any heads that day so I thought I could afford to dress up. Besides, as publicity chair, I needed to be camera-ready. Just because I was barely 5’4” and about wenty pounds overweight didn’t mean I couldn’t be fly.
I walked the exhibition floor with pride, enjoying the happy buzz of a convention in full swing-flamboyant demonstrations of new styling techniques, salespeople hawking the latest shampoos and conditioners absolutely guaranteed to give the user thick, glossy, long hair in two days. Loud was good, a sign of people enjoying themselves. Unfortunately, the happy din of the convention center wasn’t loud enough to drown out the screams of the unfortunate young woman who found Miles.
His impromptu shroud of fake hair was behind some dividers that had been used to create a storage area and her screams bounced off the convention center’s concrete walls. The acoustics made it hard to figure out exactly where the ruckus was. By the time I got there, security was cordoning off the area with those elastic stands usually used in banks and airports. The ones where if you lift the top portion, the band snaps right back into the pole like a hyper rubber band. Several people had surrounded the woman and were trying to quiet her hysterics.
It was looking more and more likely that I would be on television, but not in the celebratory manner I had envisioned.
“Let me through,” I said, as I attempted to squeeze by what looked like a crowd trying to make it into a hot nightspot. “I’m with the organizing committee and I need to know what’s going on.”
Luckily, my best friend and business partner Jennifer was close by. She waved me over as she tried to dispense tissues in the general direction of the weeping.
“Listen up,” she said loudly, trying to be heard over the now gulping sobs of the crying girl. “This is Jordan Rivers and she is going to escort this poor child to a quiet area where she can relax and prepare herself to speak with the authorities.”
The girl was wearing the standard stylist uniform of black T-shirt and black slacks, and she looked up from the center of the group with red-rimmed eyes, which were set off nicely by the black lines of mascara streaking her face. “Authorities,” she moaned. “I have to talk to the cops?”
“That’s usually what happens when you find a dead body,” I told her, trying to reach through the others to grasp hold of her arm. “You have had quite a shock. Let’s find you someplace to sit down and relax.”
“Suppose she don’t want to go with you.” A glowering young man whom I hadn’t noticed had his arm firmly wrapped around her waist. “Do you have some identification or something?”
“I’m not the police. I’m Jordan Rivers and I’m in charge of publicity here. I’m not going to take your friend far, just to an office on the next floor to get her away from the crowd. Security is having enough trouble keeping people away from the body, and in a minute they are going to figure that getting the details from the person who found the body might be the next best thing. Now, sweetie, what’s your name?”
“It’s okay, Chris,” she hiccupped in the direction of her protector, before turning to address me. “I’m Diana. I’m a wash girl at Divas Salon and I had just went to get some hair for my boss when-”
“No need to explain it all right now,” I said, aware of how gossip would sweep through this crowd. “Let’s go find you a chair and get you a glass of water or maybe some tea.”
Like a child trying not to lose a parent in a crowd, she reached out and grabbed hold of the back of my suit jacket. I guess I was about to find out how “wrinkle-free” my linen suit actually was. I guided her through the maze of people to the elevator and up to the third-floor meeting room used as our nerve center for the event. Along the way, I stopped to ask a security guard to send the police up as soon as they arrived. Several of my colleagues tried to catch my eye and some even called out my name but I kept moving, concentrating on trying to radiate serenity to Diana who had the back of my jacket balled up in a death grip. I shooed a few people from the room and grabbed a bottle of water for Diana out of the mini fridge in the corner as she dropped limply onto the beige couch that dominated one wall. I pulled a rolling chair from the conference table in the center of the room and turned it so I sat facing her.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “Is there anyone I should call for you?”
“I should call my mom and tell her what happened,” she said. “Shoot! I left my purse downstairs, and my cell phone and everything is in it.”
“Don’t worry about it. Your friends will watch out for your stuff, I am sure. And in a minute this place will be crawling with Baltimore’s finest and I doubt that thieves will be making off with much today. So why don’t you tell me what happened.”
“I was washing hair for Cindy. I’m in cosmetology school and I work for her at Divas. A lot of us like to work the hair shows because you can make extra money and pick up some tips. I want to have my own salon someday. Anyway, Cindy had run out of hair and asked me to go get some more. I couldn’t find the color she needed in the top of the box and so I kept digging, and that’s when I felt something hard. I pulled my hand out and it was sticky. I realized that it was blood and I started pulling hair out of the box, and that’s when I saw him. I just started screaming and I couldn’t even talk. It was awful.”
“How was he laying?”
“He was on his stomach,” she said, before covering her hands with her face as if trying to blot out the memory. “He had a pair of scissors sticking out of his back.” She wrapped her arms around herself as if to warm her body. I sympathized with her, having found my beloved Aunt Tilly’s body. And while her death hadn’t been a violent one, I knew the shock which accompanied seeing the shell of a person after the spirit had fled. It was a sight that could chill you.
