by Beth Yarnall
“You look great. Doesn’t he look great, Juan Carlos?” Maybe it wasn’t well done of me to provoke him, but it sure was fun.
“Like a Mack truck,” Juan Carlos deadpanned.
“Love the new look, Juan Carlos,” Richard returned. “But isn’t it a little early for Halloween?” He tapped his chin. “Let me guess, Ward Cleaver?”
Juan Carlos came back with, “Aren’t you a little west of the Jersey Shore? Snooki and The Situation must be missing you big time.”
Richard took a step forward, nearly knocking me off the stage. “Your grandpa called from 1963. He wants his wardrobe back.”
“Easy, Roid Rage wouldn’t want you to get angry and turn all green or anything.”
Richard really got in Juan Carlos’s face then. “Are you insinuating that I take drugs?”
“Either that or your mama did.”
Uh-oh. The two things I knew about Richard were that you don’t mess with his styling tools and you do not insult his mother.
Richard grabbed the front of Juan Carlos’s shirt and lifted him off his feet. “Take that back.” He shook Juan Carlos, making his hands and feet jerk like a marionette. “No one disses my ma and walks away whole.”
“Guys. Guys. Come on. Everyone’s staring. Someone’s going to call security and then you’ll get hauled off to jail,” I pleaded.
“First he apologizes.”
I smacked Juan Carlos’s arm. “Say you’re sorry.”
Juan Carlos turned to me. “But I’m not—”
“Oh, yes you are. Do it now, or you’re fired.” There was no heat in this statement—I was totally bluffing.
Juan Carlos threw me another dirty look, then mumbled his apology.
Richard planted Juan Carlos back on his feet but didn’t release him. “No, say it to my ma.” Richard punched in a number, then handed Juan Carlos his cell phone.
“Is this jock itch for real?” Juan Carlos asked me, earning him another hard jerk that dislodged a hunk of his perfectly coiffed hair.
“Just do it!” I ordered, ready to get off the stage and disappear back into the crowd.
“Hello, Ma? Yeah, yeah, I know. I will later. Listen, this guy Juan Carlos said some disparaging things about you and he wants to apologize.” Richard handed the phone to Juan Carlos. “Make it sincere.”
Juan Carlos took the phone. “Hello, Mrs. Stain. Yes, that’s me.” Juan Carlos’s eyes bugged out of his head and he turned crimson. “Uh-huh.”
“Tell her you’re sorry,” Richard prompted with another jolt.
“I’m, uh, real sorry for what I said about you, Mrs. Stain. Uh-huh. Okay. Thank you.” Juan Carlos handed the phone back to Richard.
“Ma? What?” Richard released Juan Carlos and turned away, sputtering Greek with a lot of short, choppy hand gestures.
Juan Carlos smoothed the front of his shirt. “Can we go now?” Giving him a sideways glance, I caught Juan Carlos watching Richard with a look on his face that I’d never seen before. And then it hit me. Juan Carlos liked Richard.
Whoa.
Suddenly the months and months of squabbling, nitpicking, and hostility in the salon made perfect sense. I couldn’t wait to tell Vivian. This was the tastiest bit of gossip to come my way since I’d found out how the lady who owned the card shop next to our salon paid her rent. My hand twitched toward my cell phone.
“What did Mrs. Stain say to you?” I asked Juan Carlos.
“Nothing. Let’s go.”
“Wait,” I implored. “I have to say good-bye to Richard.” But Juan Carlos was already off the stage and heading toward the exit. I debated going after him for a moment and then decided against it. I knew Juan Carlos well enough to realize that I’d get nothing out of him while he was in the mood he was in. So I let him walk away. Whatever Mrs. Stain had said, it rattled him to the point of panic. If I had a hope of finding out what had happened, it would be from Richard.
On the other side of the stage, Richard was packing up his equipment, tossing things into his bag as fast as he could get ahold of them. He was in such a rush, he didn’t notice me until I walked up and tapped him on the shoulder.
He yelped and spun around, clutching his heart. “Oh, Azalea, you scared half a year off my life.” He searched the faces around me. Seeming calmed by what—or I should say whom—he didn’t find, Richard relaxed into his usual mellow self. “Did you like my presentation?”
“Very much.” I paused, thinking how best to go about getting the information I was after. “Sorry for the things Juan Carlos said. He gets a little carried away sometimes. I hope you and your mom weren’t too offended.”
“No. No. It’s fine.” His words were meant to be nonchalant, but he sounded more panicked than indifferent. He loaded the last of his items into his bag and turned toward me.
Rocking back on my heels, I gave him my best you-can-confide-in-me smile. “Juan Carlos seemed kind of, um, upset when he spoke to your mom. I wonder what that was all about.”
“Sometimes my mom says things she shouldn’t.” He hitched his messenger bag higher on his shoulder.
“Is there something going on between you and Juan Carlos?”
“No.” He huffed out a frustrated breath. “There could’ve been… There almost was, but he’s just so damn stubborn, I…” He shook his head. “Never mind. It was good seeing you, Azalea.” He gave me a quick hug. “I’m sure I’ll see you around. Give me a call when you get back home and we’ll do lunch or something.” He sketched a wave and then he, too, disappeared into the throng.
The convention floor pulsed to the beat of a nearby speaker, snippets of conversations drifted around me, and every now and then someone jostled me with a muttered apology. I stood there a moment in that vastness of humanity, feeling rather abandoned. I hated being alone in a crowd.
It felt a lot like that time when I was six and kinda, sorta wandered off from my mom at the mall to check out all the lighty, blinky toys at another store and got lost. By the time I was finally discovered, I was hysterical, and my mother had threatened to sue the owner of the mall and every single employee in it. I hated the mall and crowds after that. Thank goodness for online shopping. And therapy.
So far this trip hadn’t been the life-cleansing, forget-my-troubles-and-all-the-lousy-men-I’ve-dated weekend getaway that I’d expected it would be.
Contemplating what to do with myself, I shoved my hands in my pockets and froze. I cast a look around, then scampered to an out-of-the-way corner. Pulling the hotel key card from my pocket, I felt nervous to the point of nausea. The card Lisa’s model had picked up off the floor and given me wasn’t mine—Dhane had included the key to his hotel room with his invitation. Examining the Raine Hotel logo, a feeling of foreboding swept over me, creeping up my spine and settling into a headache at my forehead.
Whatever Dhane’s motives were for inviting me to his suite, they weren’t good. Certainly they wouldn’t be good for my relationship with Vivian.
I considered dropping the key and invitation in the nearest trash can. A part of me resented Dhane for putting me in this position. Was I supposed to be flattered? Hi, I’m a long-lost boyfriend of your best friend. Wanna come to my hotel suite late at night under the cover of secrecy? Wanna jeopardize your friendship for a clandestine meeting with a hot, rich, famous hairstylist? Who does that to a person?
And yet the other part of me had to know. Why me? What did he want? Another thought struck—what if the note and key hadn’t been meant for me? It wasn’t addressed to anyone. What if it had been meant for Vivian? People got us mixed up all the time.
I flipped the key card over, hoping to find a clue to this mystery. The words “Please come” were written in thick black ink, reminding me of Jun’s persuading.
Jun.
Jun had seemed pretty confident that I was the intended recipient. And how smart of Dhane to send him. Sweet, innocuous Jun. Who could resist? Maybe that was the point. Sending Jun was like sending a singing telegram. Dhane must
have counted on Jun’s charms to strike up enough curiosity in me to ensure my attendance. I didn’t appreciate the manipulation. And yet, it had worked. Knowing I shouldn’t, I wanted to go. I told myself it was because he was interested in me as Vivian’s friend, not in me romantically.
Maybe this was an invitation to a party and Vivian and Juan Carlos had also been invited. That scenario made more sense than any of the other crazy ones I’d come up with. A party. That was it.
Making my decision, I tucked the key into the front pocket of my jeans and lost myself in the crowd.
Chapter Three
That afternoon, I met up with Lisa in a stark, stuffy room where twenty-five fledgling hairstylists sweated over doll heads attached to rickety tables, each one trying to distinguish him or herself from the others. You could almost smell the ambition pumping off them in hot waves.
Lisa and the two other supervisors kept a sharp eye on the contestants as they cut, curled, coaxed, and coiffed their mannequin’s hair into competition perfection. The blank-eyed stares of the doll heads should have long since lost their creepiness for me, and yet they hadn’t. There was something inherently unnatural about severed heads being shoved onto rotating posts, then attached to tabletops just so stylists could play with their hair. It didn’t help that the mannequins came with names like Annie, Rachel, or Derek, as though they were real people who had bequeathed their heads to the science of hairstyling.
Representing each sex and every nationality, loose doll heads lay topsy-turvy in bins along one wall, waiting to be chosen and transformed. Curly, straight, dark, light, long, short, anything and everything a stylist could want or want to make over.
They gave me the willies.
A student along the sidewall caught my attention. He painstakingly smoothed each strand of his doll’s hair into the shape of a tulip. But what drew me to him was the color technique he’d used to create a deep red at the base that gradually lightened to pale pink “petal” tips. I stepped closer to get a better look. The shading was near perfect, no blotches or steps, just a slow transition from dark to light.
I pulled a business card from my bag and laid it on the table where he was working, taking a chance he’d be interested in a job in California. Startled, he glanced up, then nodded at my encouraging smile. I hoped he’d call. Naturally talented hair colorists weren’t thick on the ground.
Moving on, I watched another student tease a large section of her doll’s hair. After packing the hair thick with her comb, she then flipped the section toward her and smoothed one side with a plastic bristled brush. She gently turned the hair under, forming it into a Liberty Roll made popular in wartime 1940s, and then secured it with bobby pins. Although nice, there was nothing special about the style—until I caught a glimpse of the drawing sitting on the table in front of her. The finished product would have American flags and…were those sparklers?
I suddenly had the urge to make note of the fire sprinklers and emergency exits. Hairspray and fire didn’t mix. Continuing down the row, I studied each student’s creation. Two of them had very similar designs. I was speculating on who had copied whom when a voice whispered in my ear.
“Holy catfight, that’s going to get ugly.” Juan Carlos seemed to have recovered from his run-in with Richard and was back to his usual sarcastically observant self.
“How’d you get in here?”
“Please. I’m more connected than a mob boss’s barber’s bookie. I should be asking how you got in here, but I won’t because I’m just so happy I found you. Guess who I ran into?”
“Who?”
“Guess.”
He knew I hated this game. “Just tell me.”
“Don’t be such a Crankerella Crankenstein. You take the fun out of everything. Fine,” he huffed. “I’ll tell you. But I want it on record that I tried to surprise you.” He paused, then with great dramatic flair announced, “Bobby Brickhouse!”
I groaned. Bobby Brickhouse was not a time in my life I wanted to revisit. Neither was the memory of finding him with his hand up my assistant’s shirt.
Juan Carlos looked genuinely disappointed. “I thought you liked him liked him. What’s the deal? How could you not like him? He’s built, stacked—”
“Yes, I know. Like a brick house. Ha-ha. That joke’s not too old.” At his glare I explained, “I did like him. But Bobby Brickhouse is a two-timing, empty-headed jerk.” Why couldn’t I ever find a guy who just wanted me? Not me and my assistant.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. How did I not know you and Bobby Brickhouse hooked up? First Viv and now you with a secret. What is this world coming to? Doesn’t anybody tell anybody anything anymore?”
The sting of Vivian’s dishonesty hit me anew and my cheeks went hot with shame for not having told Juan Carlos about Bobby Brickhouse. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I should have told you. I was just so embarrassed that I—”
“What is he doing here?”
I turned to see who had nabbed Juan Carlos’s attention. Richard Stain’s dark head was bent toward Lisa’s and they appeared to be in deep discussion.
Juan Carlos shifted as if the ground beneath him had suddenly turned into molten lava. “I gotta go.” He glanced around, looking for another way out, but the only exit was directly behind Richard. “I gotta go,” he repeated, the panic in his voice rising.
I reached for his hand, not knowing what else to do. “Do you want me to distract him so you can leave?” I offered.
He seemed to take some comfort from our contact. Visibly summoning his strength, Juan Carlos gripped my hand in both of his and took a deep breath. “No. I’m fine.” Then he shook himself loose and straightened his sweater. “I’m fine. It’s fine. Whatever. I don’t care. He can be here. I can be here. It’s fine.” He turned his back on Richard and directed his attention to one of the students instead. “That’s gorgeous! Look at that.”
The style the student had created was amazing. We inched closer for a better look.
“Wow.”
“Do you think she’d show me how she did that?” Juan Carlos asked.
“Probably, if you asked her.”
“I’m going to grab a doll head just in case.” Juan Carlos scooted around the tables, bound for the doll head bins on the other side of the room.
“Ten minutes!” Lisa announced, galvanizing the students into a panicked frenzy of hairspray clouds and last-minute checks on the competition.
“Oh. My. God! You are such a cheater!” shouted a young man—one of the two students who had really similar designs.
“What?” At the accusation, the other student, a redheaded girl, stared back and forth between the two hairstyles, obviously surprised by what she was being accused of. Then her indignation kicked in. “I didn’t cheat! You’re the cheater. I’m telling.” She jumped up with her hand in the air. “Judge!”
“I’m telling,” the boy mimicked. “Go ahead. Confess your cheating ass off. Tell them how you stole my idea then ruined it.” He flicked a finger at a curl on the redhead’s doll, causing it to fall. “See. Crap. A total knockoff.”
The redhead clenched her fists at her sides and screamed, “You ruined it!” Then she launched herself at the boy, knocking her doll head off its stand and onto the floor.
The poor loose head rolled across the floor, tripping up Lisa and one of the judges who was coming to the girl’s aid. Realizing what she’d done, the redhead made a grab for the boy’s doll head. Grappling with her, the boy juggled the head in the air like a football receiver trying to clutch a just-in-reach pass. The girl slammed her body into his, causing him to knock into the table and lose his battle to save the head. It flew out of his hands and collided with the tulip-shaped doll head.
After that it was every man for himself. Those who had stations near the brawl ripped their doll heads off the stands, trying to protect them. As the fight rippled out, involving more and more students, craniums became the projectile weapons of choice.
I ducked, narrowly missin
g a blow to my own noggin and crawled under a nearby table. A second later I was joined by Richard Stain, his large body nearly crowding me out and into the clash.
“This is like being in the court of Henry the Eighth. Because of all the severed heads, I mean,” he explained with a shy grin.
I cracked a smile and nodded. “I got it.”
“Holy Anne Boleyn.” Juan Carlos wedged himself in behind me. “I feel like I should be singing the chorus for that Henry the Eighth song.” He nudged me to scoot over for him, pushing me into Richard. “Give a guy some room.”
I could hear Lisa and the other judges trying to calm everybody down.
“There is no more room. I’m not the only one under here,” I complained.
Juan Carlos caught sight of Richard and glowered. “Figures. Quit hogging all the cover, Gigantor.”
“That’s it!” Richard reared up, taking the table and our hiding place with him. As he stood, the table flew off his back and crashed to the floor behind him, narrowly missing a student. He pointed a meaty finger at Juan Carlos. “You’re going to stop insulting me. Right now!”
The sudden violence seemed to have a startling effect on the students. They stopped pelting each other with doll heads and turned as one to watch the new fight.
Juan Carlos slowly unwound from the floor and puffed up to his full five-foot-ten-inch height. He pointed a finger back at Richard, right up in his face. “I’m sick of you telling me what to do!” He jabbed his finger to punctuate his point. The doll head he had clutched in his fist swung back and forth by the hair, hitting Richard in the chest.
Everyone froze, and the room went eerily quiet.
Something wasn’t right.
A scream, sharp and staccato, slashed the air. The sound created panic. Chaos rose up all around as if the three of us, Richard, Juan Carlos, and I, were in the center of a tornado. People whirled and twirled, generating a cyclone of pandemonium and noise.
So much noise.
That piercing, penetrating scream never stopped. I clapped my hands over my ears, trying to shut it out.
