turned to me. All I could do was measure his head and go buy a hairpiece for him. It was about four thousand bucks, and she deducted it from his pay.”
“What made him shave his head?”
“It was really hot earlier this summer, and he said it made him feel better. But then he had to wear the wig, and it was worse than his own hair. Another one got a tattoo this spring. Him she didn’t even bother with. She made Nicky pay him off and fire him. Come over to the sink. Bring the chair.”
She wrapped towels around Varney’s neck, leaned his head back against the sink, and washed his hair. He listened to her words, but only so he could keep responding and prevent her from falling silent. He liked the sound of her voice. He liked even better the feel of her fingers massaging his scalp and the smell of her perfume.
He was aware that a long period of time was passing, but he liked it. He was only half aware of what she was doing to his hair, but was always aware of her person—when a hip brushed against his shoulder as she moved to the counter to get something, or a thigh touched his when she leaned close to snip his hair. Finally, she looked at him sharply, stepping around him to see him from every angle. Then she turned him around in the chair and let him look into the mirror.
He was shocked. His hair was light brown and short, but the brown was not uniform, like a dye job. It had some lighter highlights and some darker parts, like the real hair of a man who spent some time outdoors. “That’s something,” he said. “I really look different.” He had seen men who looked like him. He had seen hundreds of them. It was like looking into the mirror and finding that he was invisible.
“Do you like it?” she asked, trying to seem indifferent.
“It’s . . . perfect,” he said, looking at her in the mirror.
She was behind him, and their eyes met in reflection, but hers lowered to avoid his. She put both hands on his shoulders and began to turn him around. “Oooh,” she breathed.
“What?”
“You’re so tense. I guess I kept you in the chair too long. We’d better take a break before we go on with this.”
“I’m okay,” he said.
She began to knead his shoulders and the cord of muscle on each side of his neck. “You just sit back and relax for a minute, and let me take care of you. Close your eyes.” She worked on his shoulders and upper back. It felt soothing, the small hands moving tirelessly on him.
He felt awkward. After a short time, he said, “Thanks,” to end it. “That’s fine.”
She said, “We have to wait for an hour or so while your color sets.” She pointed to a high, narrow table across the room that he had not noticed. It had a thick mat on it. “Why don’t you get up on the massage table? I’ll give you the full treatment. Take off your shirt.”
He went to the table, took off his shirt, and sat on the edge. She removed her lab coat and laid it across a desk. She was wearing a halter top and a pair of blue jeans. He began to wish . . . he didn’t allow himself to form a specific image. She walked to the table and immediately began to unbuckle his belt, her eyes on his to gauge his reaction. “I said I’d give you the full treatment.”
Two hours later, when Tracy returned, she knocked on the door to the outer office. Mae went and turned the knob to unlock it, then went back to the sink. Tracy stepped inside and said to Mae, “Did you two make good use of your time?” Mae stopped putting away bottles and cleaning the sink long enough to nod slightly. She began putting things back into her traveling bag.
Tracy looked at Varney. “Why, sugar! Look at you! I thought it was my boy Nicky for a minute. Come out here with me!” She had her arm around his shoulder, and she pulled him quickly through the doorway to her office. Varney had only a second to look back at Mae and try to smile, but she was looking in the other direction, as though he had already gone.
Tracy closed the door on her and kept him moving toward her desk. “You look great, like a different man, and a good-looking man, too. That’s the tricky part. Most disguises make you look uglier, not better. That Mae really is an artist, isn’t she?”
He nodded. It seemed that she had said everything that was necessary.
“Did you like her?”
He supposed that he had to say it. “Yes. Like you said, she’s really good at hairstyling.”
“No,” she said, and pinched the back of his arm. “Did you like her?”
Varney hesitated, but the look on Tracy’s face was almost a leer, the half-averted eyes bright and knowing, the coy smile making the cheeks wrinkle like the skins of overripe tomatoes.
“Yes,” he said. “I liked her a lot.”
“Good,” said Tracy. “Good. Then you can keep her for a while. It’ll make it easier for her to get the rest of your changes done—take you shopping and so on. Whoever this person is that’s after you, he isn’t looking for a couple.”
“You mean, she’ll stay with me?”
“Isn’t that what I just said?”
“Is she a hooker?”
Tracy stopped and put her hands on her hips, her head tilted. “How could you say such a thing? Of course not!” She pulled him, leaning close to him. “Don’t think that way. It would hurt her feelings. A girl can’t get by on cutting a little hair and doing makeup consultations. Once in a while she does little favors for close friends, and maybe they’ll give her a few extra dollars, that’s all. Nothing that’s not perfectly tasteful and refined. I could tell she liked you and would be willing to make you one of those close friends.”
“How could you tell that?”
“Women have ways of communicating without cupping our hands around our mouths and shouting like hog callers, you know. You don’t have to engage in any embarrassing discussion about this. If you’d like, she’ll just go home with you now. You’ll pay me, not her.”
His curiosity easily overwhelmed his revulsion at Tracy.
“What’s her fee?”
“Give me five hundred for each day that you keep her, and I pass it on. And don’t worry about extras. No big tip or something later. I have to be careful with Mae. If she had that much all at once, she’d go right out and buy enough cocaine to kill herself. You’d be trying to do her a favor, and in about three days, they’d be pulling a sheet over her head in the emergency room. So as a favor and a mercy, I just dole money out to her. It stretches the money for her, so she always has plenty to get by, even when she’s not working at all. And she never has enough to hurt herself.”
Varney thought for a moment. “All right.”
“Good,” said Tracy. She hesitated, to show there was something else on her mind.
“Something else?”
She looked at the closed door across the room in mock concern, then leaned closer to him. He could feel her breath on his cheek. “She’s . . . a little short right now. She didn’t say it, but I called her only about an hour before you were supposed to be here, and she wasn’t doing anything. Rushed right over, just to get some hairstyling work. And the . . . extras, they weren’t my idea, I can assure you. She saw you and asked me if it was okay if she went a little further in being nice to you. So I think we should try to give her a little advance, don’t you?” When Varney stared at her without answering, she prompted, “It’ll put her in a much better mood, I promise.”
Varney was aware that he was being fleeced, but he remembered the sight of Mae after the clothes were gone. In spite of himself, he wondered what a better mood would be like.
“How much?”
Tracy shrugged apologetically. “Let’s see. I already paid for the makeover she just did. That was eight hundred, but I’ll just make that my present to you. Let’s give her a week’s worth on account. Thirty-five hundred. I’ll give her some in advance, and show her I’ve got the rest in hand for her.”
Varney took the roll of bills he had brought out of his pocket and counted thirty-five of them. He was being robbed, but he decided for the moment not to care. Tracy took the money, disappeared into the other room for a couple of minutes, then came back in and shut the door, and waved good-bye to him.
When Varney stepped out into the hallway, he found Mae standing near the other door, leaning against the wall with the strap of her travel bag over her shoulder. When he came to within a few feet of her, she wordlessly pushed off, turned, and began to walk with him. When they were out of sight in the stairwell, she put her hand
