by Beth Yarnall
“All right.” She cast a wary eye around us, making sure she wouldn’t be overheard. “I met Dhane when I was sixteen during the summer I went to stay with my aunt Tita in Wichita.”
So just before Vivian and I had met in beauty school. I felt a little pang of jealousy at the thought that Dhane had known her longer than I did.
“She’d just had twins and my mom sent me to help her, since all of our family is in California.” Vivian paused. “I really shouldn’t be telling you this. I promised.”
“We won’t tell. We swear.” I glanced at Juan Carlos to get his agreement.
“Absolutely,” Juan Carlos agreed. “Even if you dipped me in hot oil and pulled my fingernails out one by one. Or did that water-torture thing with the drips on the forehead, my lips would stay sealed. Cross my heart, hope to die—”
Vivian stopped him with a hand. “Got it. You won’t tell.” She took a deep breath and another look around. “Aunt Tita had put the babies down for a nap, so I had some free time. I decided to go for a walk.”
She stopped again and looked out the window, but her gaze was unfocused, as if she were looking more within than without. I got the impression that she’d buried this part of her past so deep for so long that it took a great deal of effort for her to pry it loose.
After a moment, she continued, “I was walking, not really paying much attention to what I was doing. I was just so glad to be out of the house. It was hot, really hot. I put a hand up to wipe the sweat off my forehead and that’s when I got grabbed from behind and pulled into a space between two apartment buildings.”
She turned and paced a couple of steps away, then back again. “I was scared out of my mind. I thought he’d kill me. He told me to give him my watch and the pearl earrings I got from my grandma for my fourteenth birthday. He was big, huge. Like I said, I was really afraid. But my grandma had given me those earrings right before she died. I couldn’t just hand them over.”
She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, hugging herself. “He hit me. I went down and stayed down. I figured if he thought I was dead, he’d leave me alone.” She rubbed her arms. “But he didn’t. He bent down over me. I held my breath and tried to be as still as possible. And then he was on top of me. I panicked and screamed, kicking and hitting at him, but he was just too heavy.”
“Oh, Viv.” I took a step toward her, but she waved me off.
“I’m fine. I was fine because of Dhane. Only his name wasn’t Dhane then.”
Juan Carlos’s eyes bugged out of his head. “What…what happened? Go back. What happened with the guy?”
“He was heavy because he’d been hit in the head with a brick. Dhane hit him. He saved me.” I could tell her emotions were right there at the surface, reflecting in her dark brown eyes.
“Then what?” I asked, knowing there had to be more, a lot more.
“Dhane was skinny then, you know, in that young kid, gangly kind of way. But he was really cute even then.” She cracked a hint of that secretive smile I was already beginning to associate with Dhane. “He helped me up and then he handed me my watch back, but not before he’d kicked the guy in the gut.” She laughed. “I think I fell for him right then.”
“You and Dhane?” Juan Carlos asked with more than a hint of awe and an obvious twinge of envy.
“Well, no. I was a good Catholic girl. But we did fool around a bit.” She looked off, that grin playing around her mouth again. “I sneaked out as often as I could to see him. And then the summer was over and I had to go back home.”
“Did you see him again?” I asked.
“Yes, a few more times. Another summer and then he came out to see me. By then I was in beauty school and we were just friends. I showed him a little of what I was learning. He picked it up quickly. He had a natural talent for working with hair.”
“You said that his name wasn’t Dhane then,” Juan Carlos reminded her.
She looked confused. “I did?”
We nodded.
“Oh, well, I guess he wanted a new identity, a new name. His home life wasn’t the greatest and he wanted to distance himself from it. He came up with the name Dhane and I thought it fit.”
“Wow, you helped create Dhane.” Juan Carlos said this as if Vivian had invented a flying car or something.
“No, Dhane created Dhane. He worked really hard and he deserves his success.”
“What was his real name?” I asked.
She shook her head, scanning the small alcove as if she’d already said too much. “That’s for Dhane to tell.”
“If he’s from Kansas, then how’d he get the accent?” Juan Carlos asked.
“It was part of reinventing himself.” She bit her lip, and her voice took on a pleading, desperate tone. “Look, please don’t say anything to anybody. This is important. Please promise me you’ll keep what I’m telling you to yourself.”
She’d told us everything she was going to, and I got the impression she regretted even that small amount. I examined Vivian’s face in that way we did when we wanted to know what the other is thinking. She avoided meeting my eyes.
I knew Vivian better than I knew myself. There was something else going on here. And as soon as I could get her alone, I was going to find out just what that was. The one thing I knew for sure was that Vivian seemed very protective of Dhane, and keeping his secret was extremely important to her. Being the keeper of more than a few of my secrets, I knew Viv would never spill Dhane’s.
I also knew without a doubt that the story she’d told us was at best incomplete and at worst a total and complete lie.
Giving her my word of honor to keep what she’d told us to myself, I couldn’t help but wonder what she’d left out…and why.
Chapter Two
Vivian, Juan Carlos, and I went our separate ways, each of us heading to the workshop or class we wanted to see. I made my way to my friend Lisa’s class, where she would be demonstrating a new deep-conditioning treatment from Spain that promised one formula to flatten hair with too much volume and another to volumize hair that was too flat.
A miracle if there ever was one.
As I sat and watched Lisa run a brush through her model’s hair, the special conditioning vapor billowing from it nearly obscuring her, I replayed Vivian’s story in my mind. It didn’t add up. True, she had an aunt Tita who lived in Wichita and had five kids including a set of twins, but as far as I knew, Vivian had never been to Kansas. Or if she had, she’d never mentioned it before today.
And why the secrecy surrounding Dhane’s real name? I mean, who cared? A lot of celebrities change their names to make them more exotic…or less exotic. It wasn’t like Juan Carlos and I worked for the IRS or something. We’re trustworthy. Well, I was, anyway.
What hurt the most was not what she’d told us, but what she hadn’t told us. The thought of Vivian holding back left me feeling a little lost. I went on a long, mental trip around Speculation Island, trying out one far-fetched theory after another. The stakes had to be pretty high for Vivian to have kept this from me for so long. We knew everything about each other right down to our bra sizes and tampon preferences. So what was the deal?
I was so absorbed in my thoughts, I didn’t notice the person sitting down next to me until he tapped me on the shoulder.
“Excuse me.”
I turned to see a guy of indeterminate age and nationality staring at me with exaggerated anime cartoon eyes. He wore large, dark, round contacts that obscured a good portion of the whites of his eyes, giving them a Kewpie doll-like look. He’d used white eyeliner on the inside of his lower lids and mascara to spike his lashes, which intermingled with the spikes of black hair hanging in his eyes.
At least I thought he was a guy. His facial features could have gone either way, but what threw him over to the masculine side, besides the lack of feminine curves, was his outfit. He wore a long, nearly to his knees, black vest riddled with zippered pockets and topped with a mandarin collar. Slim black pants and boots completed
the look. He wore no shirt and his arms were thin yet toned, like that of a young man.
“Yes?” I answered after a too-long stunned silence.
He smiled and handed me an envelope. “I was told to give you this.”
I eyed it as if it were a subpoena. “What is it?”
“An invitation.” He nudged it in my direction. “Take it.”
The plain white envelope seemed innocent enough, so I accepted it. “Who’s it from?”
“You’ll see.”
He turned to leave, but I stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Do I know you?”
“No, but I know you…now.”
“What’s your name?”
“I call myself Jun.” He said this with expectation, as if I should’ve been impressed. “It means obedient.”
There was something about this boy I kind of liked. Maybe it was his full-out commitment to Japanese animation and the adolescent confidence it took to parade around in public dressed like a comic-book-convention reject. Or it could have been the optimism and anticipation that radiated from his young face. I’d lost the shiny expectation that the world would be kind to me, that life was simple and fair. I missed it. Whatever drew me to him, I had the feeling Jun and I were destined to be friends.
“And are you?” I asked, a bit tongue in cheek.
He grinned with teeth so white I had to resist the urge to cover my eyes.
“Sometimes.” He tapped the envelope in my hand. “Come,” he cajoled.
“Maybe,” I hedged, knowing I wouldn’t be able to resist. My curiosity was already shoving aside any other plans I might have had.
My answer seemed to satisfy him, and his face settled into a comfortable just-us-buds smile. “Until then.”
Twisting in my chair, I watched Jun leave until the heavy conference room door closed behind him with a quiet click.
I turned back around and stared at the envelope he’d given me. It suddenly hit me how freaky it was that Jun had found me in a convention full of thousands, and goose bumps scattered over me. I tightened every muscle in my body, suppressing the urge to shudder.
I mentally debated whether or not I should read it. Turning the envelope in my hand, I felt a bit like Pandora about to open a box and unleash who knew what. Once done, knowing what it contained could not be undone. I might be better off if I dropped it in the nearest trash can and forgot about it.
Oh, who was I kidding? There was a reason I’d become a hairstylist—and it wasn’t for the long hours standing on my feet. The cutting cape was like Wonder Woman’s lasso. Once on, clients would spill their deepest darkest secrets, like coins from a winning slot machine. My rampant curiosity fed on a consistent diet of hush-hush info and hidden agendas. There was no way I could stop myself from peeking inside.
I opened the envelope and unfolded the plain white paper, smoothing out the creases on my jeans. Taking a breath for courage, I read the three simple lines:
Dhane? Of all the people I’d expected the note to be from, Dhane would have been at the bottom of the list, along with the president of the United States and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. What did Dhane want with me?
I looked around the room, expecting someone to jump out and tell me this was all a joke. Lisa was inviting the audience to come up and feel her model’s before-and-after hair. The crowd moved toward the stage, but I stayed where I was, alternating baffled glances at Dhane’s invitation and the door Jun had disappeared through. I debated going after him, but that shiver I’d suppressed earlier shook me and I had a feeling Jun had vanished as abruptly as he’d appeared.
I refolded the paper and stuffed it into my oversize hobo bag, the one with so many pockets Vivian called it my Mary Poppins purse. Then I texted Juan Carlos: What are you doing? I was testing the waters, unsure if I should mention Dhane’s note or not. For all I knew, I was overreacting and Dhane had invited all three of us to his suite…late at night…clandestinely.
“Hey, Azalea.” I glanced up to see Lisa standing over me. We were the only ones left in the room.
I popped up and gave her a hug. She’d put on a few pounds since the last time I’d seen her. But then who was I to judge, what with glass houses being vulnerable to stones and all. I’d packed on a few post-breakup pounds myself. And Lisa looked good. The extra weight softened the sharp angles of her face, giving her a kind, almost benevolent look. She’d clipped her hair short and it shot out from her head in a profusion of tightly coiled black curls.
“How did you like my presentation?” she asked.
I shuffled my feet, not wanting to confess that I’d missed a good portion of it. “You did great.” That wasn’t a lie. I’d noticed the audience had been very involved in what she had to say.
“You didn’t feel the before and after.”
“I was waiting for the crowd to die down.”
“Sheila!” she exclaimed. “Sheila, come over here and let my friend Azalea feel your hair.”
A young blonde with a milquetoast face plodded over to us and offered me two hunks of hair to touch, with all the lackluster enthusiasm of a diner waitress reciting the daily special.
I obediently ran my hands through Sheila’s hair. “Wow.” I turned my attention to the “after” side. “There really is a difference.”
“Do you think you’d be interested in adding this treatment to your salon service menu?” Lisa asked.
“Possibly. But I’d need to run it by Vivian first.”
“Of course.” Lisa turned to her model. “Thank you, Sheila. Come back in an hour for the next presentation.”
“Okay.” Sheila started to turn, then bent down and picked something up. “Is this yours?” She held out a plastic hotel key card.
I felt my face go hot and quickly tucked the card into my front pocket. “Yes, thank you.”
We watched Sheila traipse away, and then Lisa turned to me. “What are you doing later?”
“There are a couple of classes I want to see. Why?”
“I’m one of the judges for the student competition. I have to watch them prep their doll heads this afternoon to make sure no one cheats. Want to hang out and observe with me?”
As a salon owner, I knew this was a great opportunity. We were always on the lookout for new talent. “Sure.”
She gave me the particulars and we parted ways. I wandered out onto the main exhibition floor, not really paying attention to the booths I passed, my thoughts swirling around Dhane’s invitation. A part of me couldn’t help but feel flattered. Dhane was seriously hot. Of course my ego liked the idea that he might be interested in me. And it wasn’t as though I currently had a love life. Well, I guess I sort of did, if you counted made-for-TV-boyfriends and pints of Ben & Jerry’s a love life.
Even so, I refused to entertain the notion that I was so very desperate as to risk my relationship with Viv for whatever Dhane might have in mind.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. Juan Carlos had texted: Watching Dick Stain make an ass of himself. Wanna watch with me?
Richard Stain had been an employee at our salon until a few months back. To say he and Juan Carlos hadn’t gotten along would be like saying Democrats and Republicans had a few minor disagreements on occasion. Those two fought worse than two stags in season. And the trick of it was that no one could figure out why.
I stopped near a booth with racks and racks of colorful, clip-in hair wefts and made a mental note to pick up a few pink ones for my niece, even though I knew it would irritate every single woman’s liberation cell in my mother’s body. Mom’s idea of childhood dress-up had included a briefcase and a judge’s gavel. She’d hate me giving her granddaughter something so frivolous. Must compete with men, even at playtime!
I returned Juan Carlos’s text: Stop calling him that! Where are you?
He responded: The Torrid Toolz booth.
I pulled out my convention map, found it, and made my way over.
Torrid Toolz had a booth large enough for a small platform stage to be wedge
d into it. I found Juan Carlos watching Richard smooth out his model’s hair with TT’s new ceramic flatiron.
Juan Carlos immediately began scrutinizing Richard’s performance as if he were an American Idol judge. “Dick should have taken larger sections of hair. I could make those micro mini sections smooth with just the heat from my bare hands and a dab of relaxing liquid. For cripes sake, his model looks like she’s part Asian. Why would an Asian person need her hair straightened when she already has the straightest hair on the planet? It’s a fix, I tell you. The Dickster couldn’t style his way out of an underwater beauty pageant.”
I put my hand on his arm to stop the tirade before Richard’s mike picked it up and broadcasted it to the crowd. “Jealous?”
He gave me a look that was the ocular equivalent of the middle finger.
I turned my attention back to Richard winding up his spiel onstage. He was good—convincing yet trustworthy. A respectable combination in a sales person.
“He’s done. Let’s get out of here.”
Juan Carlos made to leave, but I grabbed his sleeve and jumped with my hand in the air. “Richard!”
“Shut up! What are you doing?”
Waving higher, I moved forward with Juan Carlos twisting to free himself from my grip. “Richard!”
He saw me and beamed with recognition. Then his dark eyes moved past me to Juan Carlos and his smile slid into a slit-eyed scowl. At the edge of the stage, Richard helped me up and gave me a big hug. He was a bear of a man. Built out of blocks, he was all squared-off angles and thick slabs of beef. He reminded me of a Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robot. Hugging him was like embracing a Buick.
“I’m so glad to see you, Azalea.” The mutual love/hate society was now in session.
“I didn’t know you’d be here. How have you been?”
Juan Carlos joined us onstage, a stone statue of obstinacy.
“Good. Good. I just started working for Torrid Toolz a few months ago, and they asked me to be one of their demonstrators for the show.”
