Until the End of Time

by Schuster, Melanie

  “Nope. Unless you really don’t want to tell me. You don’t have to, of course, I was just curious,” Bennie said disarmingly.

  Renee sighed and told her the story of Edwin’s engagement and her subsequent behavior at the front door. “For the life of me I don’t understand why I’m the least concerned over Edwin’s middle-aged frolics. It’s not my business, why should I care what he does and with whom? And why I decided to turn into a hot hoochie at the very door of our home is beyond me. There must’ve been MSG in some of that food tonight,” she said moodily.

  Bennie looked carefully at her friend but didn’t say anything right away. “Well, we can always blame it on spring,” she said neutrally. “A drastic change of seasons makes us all go a little mad,” was all she would say on the matter.

  They chatted for a while and Renee reminded Bennie that someone was coming to Urban Oasis in the morning for a preliminary interview. “We might be featured on television,” Renee mused. “Or at least get a nice write up in a national magazine. This reporter is Beth Thomas’s sister-in-law and she’s this big-time free-lancer with all kinds of connections. Beth just raved about the spa so now she wants to come check it out,” she said sleepily.

  “Well, that’s wonderful news, Renee. I’m going to turn in so that you can get up early and knock her socks off.” Suiting action to words, Bennie bid Renee goodnight and left with the tea tray.

  Aretha remained behind as if to tuck Renee in. Renee yawned and looked at the fluffy black mass. “It was probably the full moon that did it,” she murmured. Aretha didn’t answer; she merely stared at Renee with the feline equivalent of a knowing look. Renee settled in bed, fluffing her pillows and smoothing out her goose down duvet. Looking at Aretha, she sighed.

  “I’m sure that I’m gonna to have to pay for what I did tonight. If no good deed goes unpunished, there’s no telling what a scandalous move like that one will get me,” she said ruefully.

  Aretha walked over to her and butted her head affectionately before departing for the lower floor to join Bennie. Renee turned off the light and waited for sleep to arrive. She was sure it would be a long time coming; she never could sleep when things weren’t settled in her mind, and she was far from settled right then. Despite her conversation with Bennie, she was still in turmoil over the events of the evening. Why had she given poor Edwin that big ol’ slutty kiss? She knew very well that she didn’t want the man, but the idea of someone else having him was somehow galling to her. And why couldn’t she seem to generate feelings, normal feelings for Edwin or anyone else? Where had she gotten the idea that she was like the Queen of Everything? Her face burned while she tried to forget her actions that night, or at least justify them.

  Maybe it was the fact that Edwin had finally found her resistible that was so annoying. Who did he think he was, anyway? She had to admit that at almost twenty years her senior, Edwin was rather old for her. So he would rather remarry his first wife, who was roughly his age, than to continue to pursue her, a fine figure of a woman barely in her early thirties. Well there you have it; the man was obviously getting senile. He just didn’t know; he should have asked somebody. I Am the Prize, she reminded herself. And she fell asleep before she realized that a tiny tear was trickling down her cheek.

  ***

  The next day, Renee was quite willing to chalk the whole incident up to PMS or indigestion. Her behavior on the previous night had been completely uncharacteristic, and so had the feelings that occasioned them. And since her actions had been so completely out of character she obviously wasn’t responsible for them. The whole thing had been a fluke of a very weird kind; a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. There must have been a full moon, she decided. And having successfully purged herself of any culpability in the matter, she put it out of her head entirely.

  When she arrived at Urban Oasis, she was back to her normal self. She arrived extra early in deference to her guest. Although Urban Oasis was always immaculate, she wanted to have a few minutes to herself to make sure that everything was in order for the woman who was to interview her. And a few minutes was all she got, as Beth Thomas arrived not long after Renee. Beth was one of Renee’s newest employees and the catalyst behind the interview.

  Renee was in her small, immaculate private office when Beth tapped on the door and stuck her head in after Renee’s greeting. Beth was tall, slim and a natural redhead, with the creamy complexion and green eyes which displayed her Irish heritage to advantage. She was a top-notch stylist and had brought a good clientele with her, as well as earning new clients with her considerable skill. Their admiration was mutual as Renee felt lucky to have her and Beth felt lucky to work in one of the best salons in Detroit.

  “Hi, Renee! We’re a little bit early, but I thought I would get the coffee going and everything turned on while you and Sasha talked,” she said by way of explanation.

  Renee smiled in return. “No problem. Where is your sister-in-law?”

  “She had to run to the ladies room. She’s pregnant again and she goes about every five minutes, I swear,” said Beth, laughing.

  “Oh, it’s really funny, hunh? Just wait until it happens to you,” intoned a cheerful voice. A fashionably attired, exquisitely beautiful woman who was, by her very pregnant appearance, Beth’s sister-in-law, Sasha Thomas, joined Beth in the doorway. Renee had to blink a couple of times to keep her surprise from flitting across her face. This woman was not only gorgeous, she was quite African-American, something Beth had neglected to mention.

  “Well, I’m going to get things rolling out here and I’ll see you ladies later,” Beth threw over her shoulder as she left the two women to chat.

  Sasha’s eyes brimmed with merriment as she made herself comfortable on the loveseat that was situated in the office. “Don’t tell me, let me guess; Beth didn’t mention the ethnic disparity of her brother’s wife, did she?”

  Disarmed by the woman’s honesty, Renee was equally candid. “Nope, she didn’t. And I’ve seen pictures of her niece and nephew and just assumed, wrongly, that her sister was married to a black man. Oops.” Smiling, she added “My bad.”

  Sasha took no offense; she waved her hand airily as if to say it was a common mistake. “Beth is that rare kind of person who accepts people as they are. She and I are best friends as well as in-laws and she just forgets that our ancestors are from opposite sides of the world.” She accepted the cup of herbal tea Renee offered her and adroitly changed the subject.

  “Tell me about you and Urban Oasis. Beth tells me that you did this all on your own. I have to say I’m impressed. How did you get started?”

  Renee was always happy to talk about Urban Oasis. “Well, first of all, I didn’t do this by myself,” she emphasized. “My best friend and roommate from college, Benita Cochran, is a partner in Urban Oasis. She was with me when I got the germ of the idea, and she has been by my side ever since, even though she doesn’t participate in the day-to-day operations.”

  Sasha was intrigued. “When did you come up with the plan?” she asked, her eyes alit with curiosity.

  “Well, it was a Saturday and Bennie and I were waiting, and waiting, and waiting to get our hair blown dry and curled. Our hairdresser at the time had perfected the art of shampooing you as soon as you walked in the door, slapping a deep conditioner on you and then letting you wait until Hell froze to get styled because she had overbooked,” Renee said with a sigh.

  “Ooh, girl, say no more! They do it because they know we’ll sit there like sheep and wait for hours to get done, especially on the weekends! Who’s going to go tearing out into the street with wet hair on a Saturday?” Sasha agreed animatedly.

  Renee laughed softly and said, “I almost did that day. I was about fit to be tied, and then I started looking around the shop and seeing all the people who were waiting, plus the people who were in styling chairs and trying to figure up how much money they were spending. I thought about how much money Bennie and I spent over the course of a month in just getting our hair
done. And I realized that there was a lot of money to be made in this business. So I nudged Bennie, who was calmly doing a crossword puzzle, and I started talking money to her. And by the time we went to bed that night, we had made our plan.”

  “We decided to draw up a business plan for a spa/salon and go to beauty school in order to learn how to do it right. Since Bennie has an MBA as well as having grown up in a family business, it wasn’t anything for us to figure how the most profitable way to do it. It just took a lot of research into what potential customers were looking for in a spa experience. So in a very short time, et voila, Urban Oasis opened its doors and we haven’t looked back.”

  The two women left the office so that Renee could give her an extensive tour of the salon. They started in the main reception area with the soothing jazz playing and the abundance of green plants that complimented the soothing green and cappuccino color scheme. Renee had selected the colors carefully to be evocative of a place of nurturing and inner growth. Warmth and relaxation seemed to beckon from the very walls, as well as the calming scent of the aromatics used in aromatherapy.

  From there they went into the larger lounge area that had a big screen television and juice bar as well as comfortable chairs and sofas. Everything about Urban Oasis said comfort, style and elegance, from the cool green marble counters in the retail area, to the chic smocks worn by the employees and the snazzy green shampoo bowls in the salon area. There were other places to get one’s hair done in Detroit, and other places for manicures, pedicures and the various kinds of massages and body wraps, but no day spa had the kind of panache that Renee’s Urban Oasis boasted.

  Sasha was more than impressed. “Renee, I’m amazed that you have done so much in a relatively short period. Believe me, I’ve been to day spas all over the country and it takes years to establish what you have here in Detroit. You’re quite the businesswoman,” she praised.

  “Considering the fact that I never intended to work in the beauty business I think I came up with a concept that’s working quite well,” Renee acknowledged modestly. “It’s actually kind of ironic, when I think about it.”

  By now the two women were back in Renee’s office. Sasha leaned toward Renee with curiosity all over her face. “Well, dish, girl! Don’t keep me in the dark here. Tell me the whole story,” she demanded.

  “Well,” Renee said slowly, “I always wanted to be in television. My degree is in Radio and Television Broadcasting with a minor in French. I envisioned myself as a foreign correspondent and I think would have been very good indeed. I really loved what I was being trained to do and I would have done everything I could to rise to the top,” she admitted. Renee sighed, as she was getting to the sticky part of the story. Even on such short acquaintance she felt comfortable enough with Sasha to tell her about a rather painful part of her past.

  “A couple of my college professors had tried to warn me before I got too entrenched in my major that I would find it difficult to work in television because of the fact that I’m a minority female. That bit of negativity only made me dig in my heels and try harder to be the best, which I was. I’m not bragging, but I graduated number one in my major and very near the head of my class. Summa Cum Laude, all of that. I did really well in my externships and internships; I got great evaluations. But I didn’t get jobs,” she said flatly. “Oh, I managed to secure a couple of reporting jobs in podunk stations in Ohio, but they led nowhere fast. I had the tools and the talent, but I was lacking the right color skin,” she said without a trace of bitterness.

  “When I graduated there were lots of brothers and sisters being employed by stations of all sizes, whether large, small or in-between. For a while, the combination of a white male anchor and a black female anchor was the height of fashion. If you didn’t have a black chick on the six o’clock, you were just dead in the water! But the females had to be of the fair-skinned, longhaired variety or they’d never make it onto the airwaves. No one was hiring the chocolate sisters to grace their news desk, regardless of their talent. And after a while, I said to hell with it,” Renee said quietly.

  Sasha nodded and gave her a sardonic smile. “I feel you, girl. With me it was the weight. I’ve never been rail-thin, never wanted to be. And despite the fact that I could out-report and out-write half of the people on staff, my weight was always an issue.” Sasha took a final swallow of her now tepid tea and set her cup down before continuing. “Well, my motto became ‘Living well is the best revenge’. Life is too short to let people bully you over superficialities. I moved out to Seattle, hooked up with a college friend who had a friend who was starting a computer company. A few years later we were all millionaires, including my college friend who is now my husband. Now I write for fun and enjoy my family tremendously. And who knows, if I had succeeded in TV, I might not be where I am,” she said happily.

  Renee returned Sasha’s smile with one of her own. There were a lot of similarities in their stories. Except for one critical difference, but that was something Renee never discussed with anyone, including Bennie. After a devastating and humiliating episode in Pittsburgh, Renee had made a couple of decisions. One was that no one would ever hurt her again. The other was that she would find a way of making an excellent living where she was the boss; she was never dancing to anyone’s tune again. And Urban Oasis was proof that she could do it.

  Entering the salon always gave Renee a sense of peace that she seldom found anywhere else. This was her world, her creation and she was the queen of all she surveyed. Despite all the unpleasant things she’d had to face in the past, she was making an extremely good living with her own creation for which she was profoundly grateful. She and Sasha spent another hour firming up plans for Sasha to return with her camera crew and also penciled in a lunch date. Surprisingly, it was still quite early when Sasha left. The morning crew was still coming in as she bade Renee farewell.

  Valerie, her day manager, arrived accompanied by two of her best stylists, Charlotte and Eva. The three women greeted her and immediately had to catch her up with the latest news—Charlotte was getting married. Charlotte happily displayed a modest diamond in a modern setting and was blushing all over as she described the proposal. “It was so sweet,” she said dreamily. “We were at Lafayette Coney Island, the place we first met. And I was having my usual Boston Cooler and Lamont asked me to pretty please get him some more ketchup and when I came back from the counter, there was my ring, on the straw sticking out of my cooler.” Charlotte looked lovingly at her ring and sighed, “Wasn’t that romantic? I just love that man to death.”

  Everyone ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ over the ring except Renee. She wasn’t about to hurt Charlotte’s feelings, but in her estimation, that thing on her finger was an ‘i-mond’: it wanted to be a diamond when it grew up. And she wished some man would propose to her in a hotdog stand…the very thought of her putting her foot into such a place was ludicrous! Yet there was no denying that Charlotte looked completely beatific. Well, to each her own, Renee thought, and hoped that no one picked up on her less than positive vibes. She really did want Charlotte to be happy.

  But Valerie, who had the kind of perception that amounted to second sight in these matters, caught sight of the carefully controlled expression on Renee’s face and knew the reason for it. She said nothing until the two women were alone, however.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Valerie said confidently. She was inspecting her Autumn Haze tinted hair in a mirror as she spoke. The very light auburn color was actually quite flattering to Valerie’s sienna complexion, as well as showing off the colorist’s skill. Renee ignored her, pretending to study the previous day’s balance sheet, but Valerie would not be denied. Leaning closer to Renee she repeated her statement. “I know what you were thinking while you were watching Charlotte,” she insisted. Renee closed an eye as if to dare Valerie to continue.

  “You wouldn’t wear a small diamond like that even as a pinkie ring. And a man couldn’t get you into a Coney island joint and best no
t dare ask you to be his wife while on the premises, that’s what you were thinking,” Valerie said triumphantly. Before Renee could answer, she went right on. “But Charlotte’s not like you, Renee. She wants a home and a family and a whole lot of children. She couldn’t care less about the size of the ring; she loves Lamont so much he could have put a Ring-Pop on her finger and she’d be just as happy as she is now. That’s romance for you,” she added sagely.

  Renee shrugged and pretended to go on perusing the computer generated ledger sheets in front of her. “You can call it romance if you like; I call it something else entirely. But if Charlotte is happy, there really isn’t anything to discuss, now is there,” she said dryly.

  Valerie looked at Renee curiously before exiting her private office to finish preparing for the day ahead. “Don’t you want romance in your life? I mean, the real hot, sexy, passionate stuff?” Valerie didn’t stand on ceremony with Renee—they had worked together for some years and were as close as Renee allowed herself to be with her employees. Which is why Renee really didn’t mind answering her queries--in her slightly intrusive way, Valerie had Renee’s best interests at heart. Now she looked at Valerie almost coyly.

  “And what makes you think that I don’t have some hot, steamy passion going?” she asked archly.

  Valerie snorted as she turned to leave the office. “Oh, please. That kind of stuff shows all over a woman’s face. If you had it, we’d all know it. And you don’t have it ‘cause you don’t want it, not ‘cause you can’t get it,” she finished with a wink.

  Renee was taken slightly aback. Valerie’s syntax may have been slightly garbled, but her meaning was quite clear. Renee was leading a rather dry existence despite her assortment of beaux, and it showed. Renee immediately shook off Valerie’s observation. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. ‘ Shows’, indeed.