Toward the Sound of Chaos

by Carmen Jenner

  “No, ma’am. I don’t mind at all.”

  “Stop calling me ma’am,” I warn him.

  “My mamma’s kinda bossy,” Spencer whispers, and I chuckle to myself and head into the kitchen.

  “Can you keep a secret?” Jake asks, and my ears prick up. I may have even stopped rummaging through the pantry in order to hear him better. “That’s what I like about her.”

  I don’t catch my son’s response, because I’m too busy floating away on a cloud.

  Twenty minutes later, I wave to an especially grim Mr. Williams and buckle Spencer into his seat. I’m just about to open the driver’s side door when I’m intercepted by Jake. He muscles in, closer than I thought he’d be comfortable with, and holds his hand out.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Let me drive.”

  I frown. “It’s my car.”

  “Yes it is.” He leans closer. “But you drive like a crazy person.”

  “I do not.”

  “Yes, you do.” The corner of his mouth tips up in a grin, and it’s so hard to reconcile this playful and—if I’m not mistaken—flirty Jake with the tortured man who’d crawled through my door last night. I am glad to see him doin’ better though. “I’ve been hearin’ this clunk, clunk every time you start it up at the beach. I’d like to take a closer look at that, but first, I wanna get a feel for how she drives.”

  “Jake, I don’t need you to fix my car.”

  He leans closer to my ear and whispers, “Angel, just do as you’re told for once.”

  God, but he is good.

  I swallow hard. His gaze glued to my throat as it bobs and then travels up to my lips. Jake moves closer still, the toes of his boots meeting my ballet flats, his right side flush with mine from thigh to hip. I draw in a shallow breath and tilt my chin up as he leans in.

  “Eww, gross. Are you two gonna kiss?”

  And then my eight-year-old ruins it all.

  I exhale too loudly and drop the keys in Jake’s palm, his face gone hard and serious as he shifts back, giving me room to move away. I walk around to the passenger side of the car and climb in as Jake folds his large frame into the driver’s side and adjusts the seat.

  He slides the key into the ignition and the engine chokes to life. Jake cants his head, listening intently. He hits the gas pedal a few times and I hear it, the clunk, clunk he’d mentioned a moment ago.

  “I don’t know how I didn’t notice that before,” I say, amazed that he’s managed to hear it in the past. He gives me a tight smile. His previous playfulness is gone, and I’m beginning to wonder what I did wrong.

  “Can you bring this baby by my house later today? I want to take a look under the hood.” He peels out of the drive. He’s a very cautious driver, sticking to the speed limit, stopping when the light is amber and triple checking his side mirrors as he navigates the early morning traffic at the intersection.

  “I can’t. I have clients all day.”

  “Then I’ll come to you,” he says, as if that settles it.

  “Are you a mechanic?”

  “I helped Frankenstein our trucks in Afghanistan, and my granddaddy taught me how to restore old vehicles.” He never takes his eyes from the road as he tells me this. “We built a couple cars from the ground up. I know enough.”

  “Frankenstein?” I ask.

  “Yeah, we were pretty hard up for parts, so we’d pull them from Humvees that’d broken down and stitch ’em back together, so to speak.” His eyes glint with excitement as he talks, and I have to wonder if he hadn’t lived through the hell he did, whether he’d still be serving time in the Corps. Some men just live for war, even long after they’ve left it. I know that from Mr. Williams. “We had a couple of broke-down trucks get stranded on a goat track up in the mountains that our Sergeant Major had ordered us to go get. It’d been raining for days; the ground was just mud and slush, and that was the scariest firefight I ever found myself in. We couldn’t see a damn thing.”

  I shiver and goose pimples break out all over my body. As Jake tells us this I watch Spencer’s eyes grow wider and wider, and I can see he wants to hound him with questions, but he’s likely cataloguing the information away in his mind so he can order his thoughts properly and not get tongue-tied. I’ve seen him do this a number of times when Mr. Williams has talked about his time in the Marines.

  “It sounds terrifying.”

  “At the time it was.” He grins at me like a madman. “But nothin’ ever made me feel more alive than bein’ shot at.”

  “I’ll have to take your word for it,” I say.

  Jake’s face falls, and he turns his attention back to the road as he turns the corner onto Sea Cliff Drive.

  There I go putting my foot in my mouth again.

  ***

  Thursdays are what I like to call Belle days, that’s when any woman who ever held the title Southern Belle likes to visit Big Bama Hair. My Thursdays are filled with the saccharine scent of hairspray and Chanel No.5, which really is a nice change from Cheerios, playdough, and poop.

  Miss Maggie, one of my regulars who’s always up to no good, sits at the basin with solution on her head as her perm processes and her best friend, Miss Chelle, sits under the dryer, having her hair set. Virginia—one of my least favorite clients whom I just can’t seem to shake—sits in my chair, her hair damp fresh from washing and ready to be cut. I’m midway through fixin’ her a glass of sweet tea when Jake shows up at the salon door wearing a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows and a pair of faded Levis that fit snugly in all the places that count. Nuke is beside him, clearly having forgiven his owner for locking him in the house last night.

  I swear every pair of panties in the room just disintegrates when he opens the salon door and says, “Mornin’.”

  He’s met with a chorus of, “Good morning” from the women in my salon, including Chelle, who’s eighty-two in the shade and almost completely deaf on a good day when she’s not under a dryer. I guess she’s real good at lip readin’.

  He nods to the women, looking all nervous and adorable, though that seems an odd term for a man so hard and so big. Oh my, I’m gonna need to turn up the AC to full tilt.

  “Elle, you mind if I take a look at that car now?”

  “Knock yourself out,” I reply, almost dreamily.

  He stands there a moment longer, expectantly. “The keys?”

  “Oh right, sorry,” I mumble, and set my comb and scissors down on the countertop, then wipe my hands on my apron to a tune of tittering women. “Just a second and I’ll grab them for you.” I turn to my clients, singling out Chelle and Maggie. “Y’all behave.”

  “Can’t hear you, dear,” Miss Chelle replies, cupping her hand to the outside of the dryer as if it were her ear.

  “Hers is selective hearing,” Miss Maggie tells Jake. I roll my eyes and leave the room, grab the keys from the hall table, and bring them back to Jake. He holds his hand out, but I snatch them away at the last minute. “You take good care of my baby, Jake Tucker. She’s the only one I got, and God knows I can’t afford a new one.”

  “I’ll be gentle. I promise,” he whispers, leaning in toward me so that I can smell the cologne on his skin. Memories of cutting his hair, and the tender way he’d touched me just a few nights ago make my head swim, and I swear I get slapped upside the head with the stupid stick. I literally have no words for this man. I think it’s safe to say that everyone in my salon knows I was thinking of doing a lot more than cutting Jake’s hair. Which is just embarrassing.

  He heads out of the room and closes the door behind him. Nuke, who’d waited patiently on the front porch, follows him to the truck where he retrieves a set of tools from the back. I’m so thankful for the fact I work at home, and that glass paned door I had installed was really a good idea. I just love the view of my driveway.

  “Ooh that boy has got it bad,” Miss Maggie says.

  “Never mind the boy. Our little Ellie is smitten as a kitten,” Mi
ss Chelle says.

  “What? No. it isn’t like that with us. We’re friends,” I assure them as I pick up my scissors and comb. Another round of titters ensues.

  “Oh honey, who are you foolin’?” Virginia says, meeting my gaze in the mirror. Her polished fingernails shine like bloody talons against the pages of the Southern Living magazine propped on her lap. “Friends don’t sleep over at one another’s houses only to leave at the crack of dawn.”

  I still with the comb in Virginia’s hair. Her smile is rapturous but her eyes are cunning.

  “Ellie Mason, have you been holding out on us?” Miss Maggie crows.

  I shake my head and section off Virginia’s shoulder-length bob. Combing it through, I begin cutting. “Wherever did you hear that?”

  “I stopped by Josephine’s for coffee on the way here. She said that Emma Jean had spotted the two of you this morning leaving this very house. Olivia Anders just so happened to be picking up coffee at the same time, and she told us how close y’all are becoming.”

  “Jake and I are friends, nothing more,” I say matter-of-factly, hoping like hell to shut this conversation down before it goes any further. I am going to kill my best friend. Right after I get done ogling the hot Marine in my driveway. Everyone knows you don’t tell Josephine and Emma Jean nothing. Neither one of them have a lick of sense between them, and they can’t keep their mouths shut if their lives depend on it. I do not need to be the talk of any more speculation.

  There are single mothers enough in Fairhope—it isn’t like I’m the only one—but thanks to a few of Spencer’s ill-timed meltdowns, and a bunch of ignorance, I certainly am the most talked about. I’m not ashamed of my boy, and I’m not afraid of being seen leaving my house with Jake either. All those Belles can go kiss my little behind. I’d be proud to be the woman on Jake Tucker’s arm. Assuming he’d let me touch him, that is.

  I stare out at the man in question as he bends over the hood of my car. I can’t figure him out. How is it possible for one man to go from experiencing the kind of torment I saw reflected in his eyes last night to the easy way he was with me and Spence this morning and not get whiplash? My head is still reeling from the sexy smirk he gave when we were leaning against my car earlier.

  “Angel, just do as you’re told for once.”

  I shiver. Is it wrong to want to do whatever that man tells me to?

  “Oh honey, that hair ain’t gonna get much shorter,” Miss Chelle yells from beneath the blow-dryer and to my absolute horror I stare down at Virginia’s hair. All eight inches of it. Instead of giving her a little light shaping around her nape, I’ve given the woman a Kris Jenner pixie cut. It’s a great Kris Jenner pixie cut—apparently I can do it better than Kris Jenner’s own hairstylist can, and practically with my eyes closed—but it is definitely not a trim like she asked. I clasp my hand over my mouth to cover the gasp.

  When Virginia finally glances up from her magazine, she doesn’t bother to hide her alarm. “Oh my God. What have you done?”

  “Er . . . nothing that I can’t fix,” I say, but there is no fixing this. “Maybe with a wig, or some of those clip-in pieces?” In all my years, I’ve never messed up a client’s cut. “I am so sorry,” I say, and grab the razor comb just to ensure I’ve given her the very best shaping and enough texture in the back.

  “Don’t you dare,” she says, meeting my gaze in the mirror. I shrink back.

  “I am so sorry, Virginia.” I reach out and remove the cape from her, wincing when several long wisps of hair fall to the floor. “Obviously, I won’t be charging you for today.”

  Or ever again. What was that I’d said about not being able to get rid of her? Virginia is a notoriously fussy woman; she’s left eight different hairstylists in Baldwin County for not doing her do the way I do. Or the way I used to. I think I’m about to be number nine.

  “I should think not,” she says, snatching up her handbag, straightening her skirt and heading to the door in a huff. “Maybe if you spent a little less time staring at your sex toy out there and a little more time doing your job, this would never have happened.”

  “Virginia—”

  She holds up her hand to silence me. “You should know, I plan on telling everyone in town about this, so you can say goodbye to your clientele.”

  As if my humiliation couldn’t get any worse, Jake is standing on the front porch and the second Virginia strides through the door and down the steps, he enters the room. He caught the whole hissy fit. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I say, though I’m close to tears. I turn away to grab the broom and let out a shaky breath.

  “I thought it was a great cut. She looked ten years younger.”

  I smile half-heartedly and begin sweeping up the mess. “It is a great cut. But it wasn’t what she asked for. I was distracted.”

  He wipes the sweat from off his brow with the back of his hand. His shirt clings to him like a second skin, and I get a little lost tracing the planes of his muscled chest. Irritated, I say, “There something you need? I’ve gotta rinse Miss Maggie’s perm.”

  He frowns and glances down at the floor. “I won’t be too much longer; I’m gonna put her back together. I just came to see if you had any oil laying around. The dipstick’s not as wet as I’d like it to be.”

  “Er . . . maybe in the garden shed out back?” I head over to the basin, eager to check on Maggie’s hair. It’s bad enough that I ruined one client’s cut today; I don’t need another’s fallin’ out thanks to my preoccupation with Jake Tucker’s ass in those jeans.

  He nods. “Alright, well, I’ll be outta your hair real soon.”

  I let out a sigh as I gently unroll a rod. Maggie’s striking silver locks form the perfect S-shape so I make sure she’s comfortable and begin the rinsing. It takes a good three minutes to wash out the solution and as Chelle’s dryer shuts off and begins to cool down, I just know what’s coming.

  “You wanna talk about what happened there?” Miss Maggie asks.

  I’m not sure if she’s referring to the haircut or to the way I just offended Jake, but I decide that I don’t want to discuss either. “Not particularly.”

  “Has he kissed you yet?”

  “Now what kind of question is that?” Miss Chelle pipes up. “Don’t you think that if he’d kissed her he wouldn’t be able to take his hands from off of her? Obviously he hasn’t kissed her; he’s being a gentleman and waiting for the right time.”

  “I don’t think Jake’s interested in me that way, and I doubt either one of us are looking for a relationship right now.” I finish Maggie’s rinse and towel-dry the rods to remove the excess water before applying the neutralizer. I set a timer and wash my hands in the other basin, and then I move on to Chelle.

  “Oh sugar, he’s interested,” Miss Maggie says. “Trust me on that.”

  “It’s complicated. There’s Spencer to think about and Jake . . . well, he has his own self to worry about.”

  “Terrible shame what happened to the boy. Tragic,” Miss Maggie says quietly, and I glance at the man in question. When Jake Tucker first came home, it was all over the news. He was hounded by reporters and our quiet little town was full to bursting because of it. Tourism was up, vendors’ pockets were lined, and our town thrived because everyone wanted a glimpse of a real-life war hero.

  As a result, Jake never went anywhere. The next big tragedy struck and the reporters moved on to terrorize people elsewhere for their scoop. After all, news happened every day. We all watch our television sets and send our prayers to strangers we’ve never met, and then we go about our lives and last week’s news is all but forgotten.

  Me though? I never forgot Jake Tucker’s story. I hadn’t grown up here, so I hadn’t known him like everyone else, but that didn’t mean my heart didn’t bleed for him. It didn’t mean that I hadn’t watched him every day for a year knowing that he was just as alone as I was and unable to find a way to reach out.

  “I think all Jake really needs right now is a f
riend.”

  “I think you hit your head harder than you realized in that accident,” Miss Chelle says. I shake my head. Good Lord. Does the whole town know? I begin unwinding Chelle’s rollers and comb the curls through with a wide-tooth comb, setting them with a spray of lacquer, and pinning back her long bangs in a modified victory roll with the same tortoiseshell combs she’s been bringing to me since I first opened.

  “Well, you’re all done.” I pat Chelle’s shoulders and hope that the two of them are finished grilling me about Jake. Maggie’s timer buzzes, and I rinse off the neutralizer and bring her back to the chair to dry it off and style.

  “I just want to say one thing.” Miss Maggie stares at me in the mirror as I stand in front of her and shape the curls by her face. “I know you have your little boy to look after and I know it hasn’t always been easy for you, Miss Ellie, but it’s been so long since you viewed yourself as a sexual being that you’re not seeing things clearly. That man out there wants inside your panties, but I think he wants more than that too.” She pokes a bony finger at my chest. “I think he wants inside here too.”

  I balk a little at having an eighty-two-year-old woman talkin’ about my panties and who wants inside of them. What’s more, the second part of that speech is just as terrifying. In many ways, she’s not wrong. I’ve been without so long that I’ve forgotten what desire looks like when it’s reflected back at you from a man’s eyes. I’ve seen a glimpse of something akin to that in Jake’s gaze from time to time, but it’s shut down before it has time to evolve into anything more. I may want him, I’ll give her that, but there are so many variables, there are so many ways it could end badly for all of us. That’s not a chance I’m willing to take. Not when it comes to my son’s heart being broken in the process if this all doesn’t work out.

  “It don’t matter, Miss Maggie—”

  “You think on it,” she says, handing over her credit card for payment. “In time you’ll know what’s right.”

  “Don’t think too long though,” Miss Chelle says, as she stands and collects her Zimmer frame. She waves her purse at Miss Maggie, the more mobile of the two, and Maggie takes it from her in order to pay me. It’s a ritual that takes place every Thursday and right after they leave me they have lunch down on the pier. “I may ask him to check beneath my hood when he’s done.”