Little Star

away.

Not much to write home about.

He looked like a superannuated teenager. He had made a special effort for the occasion and combed his hair back and up into some kind of rockabilly style, and with the bushy sideburns he could never quite bring himself to shave off, he looked like an Elvis well past his prime. His puffy face, the dark circles under his eyes, the nose that seemed to get bigger every year. The fact that someone had given this face a smile was a major event.

He saw a flash of silver in the mirror, then everything happened very quickly. The make-up girl had obviously decided that Theres’ face didn’t need any major input, and instead had turned her attention to her hair. It was long, blonde, and slightly wavy.

When Jerry saw the flash of silver, the make-up girl had already grabbed hold of Theres’ hair with one hand, and in the other she was holding a pair of scissors that flashed for a second before she moved them down towards the girl’s neck. If Jerry had seen what was going to happen, he could have prevented it. But his attention had wavered for a short while, and now it was too late.

Theres growled and hurled herself to one side, which made the chair spin around with some speed. The footrest hit the make-up girl’s shins. She gasped with pain and fell backwards. In a second Theres was out of the chair and on her, snatching the scissors out of her hand.

It all happened so fast. Jerry had barely got out of his chair by the time Theres raised the scissors in order to stab the make-up girl in the face. Fortunately there was someone quicker than him. As Theres raised her arm, a dark hand grabbed hold of her wrist. With a single movement the cleaner lifted Theres and plonked her back in the chair as she said, ‘Hey girl! You mad or something?’

She took the scissors off Theres and threw them back on the make-up table. Then she stood there with her hands on Theres’ shoulders as Jerry hurried over. The expression on Theres’ face was something completely new. There was fear, but also sheer amazement. Her jaw had dropped and her blue eyes were wide open.

‘Thanks,’ Jerry said to the cleaner. ‘I mean…thank you very much.’

‘That’s OK,’ the cleaner said with a strong American accent. ‘What’s the girl’s problem?’ She squeezed Theres’ shoulders. ‘Hey there! What’s your problem? You seem pretty nervous!’ Theres didn’t move; she simply stared in the mirror at the creature towering behind her.

The make-up girl got up from the floor, her legs trembling.

‘What the fuck…’ she said. ‘This is crazy, I don’t have to put up with this.’ She had started to cry, and the streaky mascara gave her a ghost-like appearance. She pointed at Theres and sobbed, ‘She’s off her head, she shouldn’t be here, she shouldn’t be anywhere, she needs locking up…’

She staggered out, presumably to report to a higher authority. The cleaner spun the chair around so that Theres was facing her, and tried without success to catch her eye.

‘Hey girl,’ said the cleaner. ‘You’re so pretty. You shouldn’t be so angry. Come on, let’s get you looking even better.’

She lifted up Theres’ hair, and Theres allowed it to happen. She plugged in the curling tongs and started to wind strands of hair around it; Theres simply kept on staring. After a couple of minutes Theres turned her head in Jerry’s direction and asked the question that explained her incomprehensible acceptance of the fact that someone was touching her. She asked, ‘Is that a human being?’

Jerry blushed and started stammering out an answer, but the cleaner just laughed and said, ‘Where have you been for the last hundred years, girl?’ as she carried on doing Theres’ hair.

‘I’m really sorry,’ said Jerry. ‘She’s not really used to…being out like this.’

‘You must live in a weird place-where do you live?’

‘Err, Svedmyra.’

‘Svedmyra? Is that the name of the place? Don’t you have any black folk in Svedmyra?’

‘I think it’s mostly…old Swedes.’

The cleaner shook her head and started rubbing mousse into Theres’ scalp. Jerry was inexpressibly grateful for her intervention and would have liked to inform Theres that yes, this was a human being, and probably a good one. But if the prerequisite for her tolerance was that she regarded the cleaner as something else, then it would be best if things continued as they were.

Naturally Theres had seen black people before, but Jerry hadn’t realised how she regarded them, because she had never asked. Perhaps the cleaner’s strong accent also contributed to the fact that Theres saw her as some kind of alien creature.

‘Excuse me,’ said Jerry, ‘but what’s your name?’

The cleaner wiped the mousse on her overall and held out her hand. ‘Paris.’ She pronounced it perris. ‘And you?’

‘Jerry. Is that…perris as in the city?’

‘Yes. My sister’s called Venice.’

Jerry tried to come up with some witticism about whether they had a brother called London, but it just sounded stupid, and before he managed to think of something else to say, the make-up girl was back with a man trailing behind her.

The man had a pass on a cord around his neck. He was in his thirties, and looked as if he hadn’t slept for a week. When the girl started going on about what had happened, his eyebrows went up and the outer corners of his eyes went down in an expression that said: Here we go again. Presumably a complaint from the make-up girl wasn’t a unique occurrence.

He listened without interest for thirty seconds, then glanced over at Paris who was busy making Theres’ eyebrows a little darker in order to bring out her blue eyes. He shrugged and said, ‘Yeah, yeah. But everything seems to be back on track now,’ at which point he turned and walked out.

The make-up girl followed him, and Jerry heard her say, ‘That’s actually my job!’ to which the reply was, ‘Evidently not.’

Paris gently swept a powder brush over Theres’ face, and once again Jerry was amazed when Theres closed her eyes, as if she was enjoying it. Paris lowered her voice, ‘In America we have a saying: Go fuck yourself.’ She nodded in the direction of the door. ‘That woman. The number of times I’ve wanted to…how would you say it in Swedish?’

Jerry thought for a moment, then said, ‘Stick och brinn.’

‘Stick och brinn. Like…fuck off and burn?’

‘Yeah,’ said Jerry. ‘Fuck off and burn. Stick och brinn.’

Paris undid the cape and removed it. She said, ‘Stick och brinn,’ gave Theres a big smile and said, ‘Not you, honey. You did good. Maybe next time you should just relax a little.’

She picked up the broom which she had dropped in the midst of all the tumult, and carried on with her work. Theres stood there looking at herself in the mirror. In her silver dress she looked like something from a sci-fi film, a wondrously beautiful creature sent to Earth to ensnare and seduce mankind. Or to be ensnared and seduced.

Jerry cleared his throat, went over to Paris and held out his hand. ‘Thank you very much,’ he said. ‘I don’t really know what to say.’

Paris looked at his hand without taking it. ‘You could do something instead.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Dinner would be nice,’ said Paris, her concentration fixed on the movement of the brush across the floor.

‘Dinner?’ Jerry understood each individual word she said, but what they implied was so unimaginable that his brain couldn’t make a sentence out of them.

Paris sighed and stopped brushing. ‘Yes, dinner. You take me out to dinner. Sometime. Someplace. Don’t you do that in Sweden?’

‘Oh yes, absolutely. Yes,’ said Jerry. ‘Absolutely. I’d be delighted. Any time. Or anywhere. Or…shall I…have you got a phone number?’

With a kohl pencil Paris wrote her phone number on a tissue, and Jerry tucked it in his wallet as if it were a claim certificate for a share in a goldmine. Then he backed out of the room with Theres, waved and slid around the corner.

For the rest of the day he might as well have been on the moon. Or Mars, if you prefer. Gravity had lost its power over him; he weighed twenty kilos at the most. Several times he took out the tissue with Paris’ number on