After a short time strolling on the pavement, he perceived that someone was about to exit the salon, although he couldn’t clearly see who it was. He had a better vantage point on the sidewalk than he had had from his car, but he saw even less than before, because he did not want to be seen looking into the window. He only made quick glances in that direction. Since it never occurred to him that the women inside would recognize him as the recent driver whom they had stared at, he wasn’t nervous. He had forgotten the self-consciousness he had felt in his car from their accusing stares, because of his subsequent intense vexation at the other car and the text message from Linda. But although he was largely unbothered being outside the salon, he didn’t want others to see him peeking inside or suppose that he wanted to go in. So when he saw someone about to leave the salon, he turned his back to the door and looked across the street, as if he was trying to catch sight of the person he was meeting or locate a dollar store.
It was Helen with her newly cut and highlighted hair, who walked out of the salon.
“Bill, what a surprise! What are you doing here?” All of the laughing and excitement that morning had put her in a sassy mood. Although she had felt sympathy for him in his predicament, her personality was not weak and sensitive, and she knew his was even less so. She was not about to treat him delicately.
Startled to hear someone calling him, Bill spun around in genuine surprise.
“Hi...Helen...uh...I’m fine,” he stammered. His mind was on other matters, so he didn’t hear the question she had asked.
She overlooked his lapse of attention. “Is your back better?”
“Oh, that’s long gone,” he said. “I couldn’t feel better. I feel fine, really great.” To show his excellent condition, he stood up a little straighter and grimaced with pain, as he slightly strained his still sore back. “Ouch,” he said. He reached his right hand around to rub the tender spot.
“Are you waiting for someone?” she asked, failing to conceal a smile at his discomfort.
“Yes.”
“Linda?”
“No, not her. Someone else.”
“I hope you don’t wait long. It’s a beautiful day.” She decided to turn the conversation to help him out, although she thought it would be amusing to see whom he might invent as the person who would be arriving. “Don’t you like my hair? I just had it done.”
“It’s nice.”
“I’ve been going to this salon for years. The stylists are great, and men come here, too.”
“Oh, really.”
“And you don’t need an appointment. As good as they are, they’re never completely booked. You can walk right in.”
“Maybe I could use a little trim.”
“They dye hair, too.”
“You don’t say.”
“There’s no head of hair that they can’t improve. They’re almost miracle workers. Everyone comes out looking better than they went in. You should try them.” It required a huge effort on Helen’s part not to look at his hair while she spoke. Although she wanted to tell him he should get in there immediately and have it fixed, she managed to restrain herself.
“Maybe I’ll take a look.”
She knew what was on his mind. “And their prices are very reasonable.”
“That settles it,” he said. “I’m going in.” He walked to the salon’s entrance. “Thanks for the advice.”
“I thought you were waiting for someone.” Helen couldn’t resist making fun of him and his lie.
“I waited long enough,” he said, unaware that she was being ironic and mocking him. Bill had a habit of playing dishonest games with women, and he thought that they played such games with him, so he normally didn’t think much about what they said. He was also a bit distracted by his desire to go into the salon. The consequence of his lack of perception on this occasion was that he entered the salon thinking that Helen was becoming too friendly, too interested in him, and he needed to get away from her. She, on the other hand, went to lunch with friends, thinking he was still acting too unfriendly, too uninterested in her, and she needed to make more of an effort.
When Bill entered the salon, Donna was sitting behind the front desk, looking at a computer printout with receipts for the week, comparing how well her business had done in comparison with previous weeks. Her head was down, and she was concentrating on the numbers. They were harder for her to handle than hair, so she had to focus. She did not see Bill enter.
A hush settled over the salon. Most of the customers and stylists behind Donna were looking at Bill. At last they had a chance to see what the rumored stalker looked like up close. Some were whispering together. Since Bill had never been in the salon before, he didn’t perceive any difference in their behavior. He walked gingerly to the front desk. After waiting a few moments without being acknowledged by Donna, he gently cleared his throat. That inarticulate noise drew her attention, and she raised her head. Immediately, Cupid shot a two-headed arrow straight into Bill’s eyes, blinding him from appreciation of any other woman alive, and he froze, completely conquered by Donna’s attractiveness.
“Can I help you?” she asked. She recognized him as the person who had been driving by and walking in front, but she always thought the safest way to deal with a strange man was to act as if she didn’t know him. She also perceived the effect she had on Bill—other men had been affected in the same way—and she didn’t want to give him any false hopes.
“I...I...I,” he stuttered. While men of other nations, for example, France, can become eloquent under the influence of love, maybe too wordy, an American is struck dumb.
She examined him clinically, as if he were a rat in a scientific experiment. “You need a trim and that dye job fixed,” she said.
“Yes...Yes,” he answered. His voice burst out each time, as if he had been stung with an electrode. Like a mechanical toy, he nodded his head up and down repeatedly. “I do. I do.” He was ready to make his marriage vows.
“Do you want anything else?”
“Yes,” he said eagerly, still nodding. “Yes. I do.”
“What?”
He was a little reluctant to say what he wanted. “Can...can you...can I...get...”
“A facial?” She saw that she was dealing with a real salon novice, a virgin in the beautician trade.
“Yes,” he nodded.
“Of course,” she replied, a little irritated. “Anyone with a face can have a facial.”
“I want that, too. I have a face.”
With some effort, Donna managed not to laugh at a grown man, who had become a simpleton. Instead, she looked at the schedule and turned around to see where the stylists were in their work. “Cathy,” she called loudly. “Come and wash Mr...” She asked him, “What’s your name?”
“Bill.”
“Oh, you’re Helen’s neighbor,” she replied casually. She had known his name all along.
Bill raised his eyebrows, surprised that she knew something about him. Instead of becoming suspicious, however, he felt as if there was a tie, a tender tie of new love between them. Her beauty had immediately conquered his senses, and now he thought he was drawing her close to his heart. For the first time, he was truly grateful to Helen for something—the good she had done him by recommending this salon—but then he forgot about her completely. All he could think about and wish for was Donna. Donna was the only woman in his life now.
Catherine approached from the rear of the salon, where she had gone to sit, relax, and look at a woman’s magazine. Donna told her, “Wash Bill’s hair and give him a trim.”
To Bill, she said, “When Cathy’s finished cutting your hair, I’ll color it and give you a facial.”
“So you’re the guy who was driving outside,” Catherine said in greeting him. “We thought you were a stalker.”
Bill was speechless again, but not on account of love. He could only look at Catherine with his mouth open. He was flabbergasted that she, that they, knew he had been driving by scoping out the salon. He was
too surprised to be embarrassed or to deny it. He stood like a statue, catching flies with his mouth. Since Catherine was not Donna, he didn’t have any desire to speak to her.
After he remained immobile for a few moments without emitting a sound, Catherine said, “You’re not a stalker, right?” She could see he wished to ignore her. She could tell he was madly infatuated with Donna and wanted her to vanish. But his attitude held little importance in her estimation. She was going to talk to him, whether he liked it or not.
Chapter 18
All the time that Catherine spent with Bill, washing his hair and giving him a trim, she liberally applied the tonic of her talk, but Donna never left the forefront of his thoughts. He couldn’t stop hallucinating about her.
“You shouldn’t dye your own hair,” Catherine remarked, while he reclined in a chair at a sink, about to have his hair washed. She was running one of her hands through his hair, mussing it up, while holding a hose faucet in the other hand. “The front is way darker than the back. Like a raccoon or a dead cat. And you missed this spot where your hair is thinning, so you look bald when you really aren’t...”
She ran her hand over the crown of his head. “Not yet,” she added.
Bill didn’t hear anything she said. His eyes were closed, and visions of Donna danced in his head. In his delirium, he slightly smiled. Catherine knew what possessed him, and on purpose to dislodge his thoughts, she squirted him in the face with a blast of cold water. She quickly apologized, pretending it was a great mistake, and dried his face, but her tactic failed. His dreams were undisturbed. He didn’t mind if they were wet ones.
The train of happy scenes unraveling in his brain continued when they moved to the cutting floor. With scissors and a comb in her hands, Catherine stood behind Bill, who was seated in a chair. Both faced the mirror ahead, but only Catherine looked into it with concentration. She was trying to visualize the best style for Bill’s hair, while he was imagining Donna in various stages of undressing. Even though Catherine’s reflection was visible in the mirror, he didn’t see her. He only saw Donna.
“How much do you want to take off?” Catherine asked.
“I want you to take it all off,” he said, dreaming of Donna.
“What!” she cried. “Hey, wake up! I’m asking you a question.” She shook him by his shoulder. “How much should I cut off?”
His vision momentarily cleared, and he made out Catherine’s more rectangular outline. “Just a bit,” he said, before the brilliance of Donna flared in his skull again, scattering his senses.
“An inch?” Again she had to jab him and repeat herself.
“Less,” he said, before slipping away to worship his shining icon.
She combed through his hair, raising it up, critically examining the current style. She was hurt by his disinterest in her, but she was a talented professional and wanted to give him the most flattering look she could. After a few moments, she smacked his head with the side of her comb before asking, “How about a new cut?”
“No. The same.” He had an aversion to the word “new,” because it rarely ever meant “free.”
She raised a patch of his hair with the comb and cut off more than an inch. Bill saw what she did and was startled, which pleased her. She had his attention at last.
“If you don’t like it, we’ll just shave your head. You won’t need a dye job then.”
Bill didn’t resist, because at that moment Donna walked behind them, and he gazed after her, sinking into a pleasant reverie again. His eyes became glassy, as he frolicked in his thoughts with Donna—he, a horny satyr, and she, a willing beauty with a distaste for clothes, both of them acting like characters painted by Rubens, suddenly come to riotous life. Catherine contemplated giving him a military cut in revenge, but she didn’t. She gave him a shorter style than he usually wore. It made him look a little younger and a lot more fashionable. When she had finished cutting his hair, he asked if Donna was coming to him now.
“You could say thanks to me first,” she replied.
“Thanks. Can you get Donna now?”
“Sure, I’ll go see if your date is ready,” she said sarcastically. “I’ll tell her that you can’t wait to see her. I’m sure she’s been thinking about you this entire time.”
Bill did not comprehend her derision of him. In fact, he hardly listened to what she said, but there seemed to be some truth in what he heard, or so he thought. Since he had been contemplating Donna non-stop, why shouldn’t she be equally absorbed in him? Satisfied with his reasoning, he sat in positive expectation, waiting for her arrival.
Like a zookeeper, who has to feed bears and lions, Donna came, reluctant to get too close to him. While she worked on his hair, lightening and redyeing it to give it a natural, attractive, even color, she was aware that he was ogling her. He watched her, as if she was a lap dancer, performing a private show for him. His eyes roved all over her figure, lingering here and there, fondling her. Although with strange men she was not an avid conversationalist by nature and preferred to let them initiate whatever dialogue took place, with Bill she thought she had to start talking, lest he think that her silence implied some sort of consent. In her experience, men seemed to become less mature, less humble, and less socially restrained the older they grew, and they needed to be checked to prevent harassment. The more advanced in years some men became, she had discovered before, the more they desired what they didn’t deserve.
“Have you known Helen long?” she asked him.
“Helen?” he repeated quizzically. He had to pause to remember who Helen was. His mind was completely occupied with another woman, the woman who had become everything to him in the past hour. “Oh, yeah. Helen. I’ve known her about ten years. She goes to the same church. Her husband was a buddy of mine. We used to all go out dancing before he died suddenly about two years ago, I think. He was a good guy.”
“That was a shame,” she said.
“Yeah,” he agreed. Why was she asking about Helen, he wondered. He wanted to talk about the only woman that mattered to him. If he didn’t feel so bashful around Donna, he would be chatting with her as he had with Tanya on the train, but Donna’s gorgeous, curvaceous body and confident sensuality overpowered his ordinary social skills. Her presence was a potent aphrodisiac that left him like so many helpless hairs in her hands. She could do whatever she pleased with him.
“She’s a wonderful, sweet lady.”
“A little old,” he noted.
“Would you believe I’m only a year younger?” Actually, Donna was only six months younger than Helen.
“Can’t be,” Bill denied with his eyes bulging from his head, looking at her more closely.
“I have four grown children, all living on their own.”
He was still looking at her carefully, as if he suspected that a precious diamond might in reality be a chunk of glass. He concluded that the item was genuine. “You look at least fifteen years younger than her.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You could be in your thirties. You look like Sophia Loren, with curves in places where other women don’t even have places.”
“In this business, I have to take care of myself. Appearances matter here.”
“You’re definitely a success. A big success.” Bill addressed his compliment to her breasts, which were the biggest achievements he saw. Although his flattery was crude and only for her physical appearance, Donna received it complacently. She was proud of how well she looked for her age, especially in comparison with other women. She also felt that any man who could say such things was less likely to paw her like an animal. A barking dog seldom bites, she believed. Donna began to relax and tell him more about herself.
She told him she was divorced, while she was giving him a facial. “I was married, but now I’m not,” she stated without emotion, as if she was talking about someone else.
The one forbidding suspicion Bill had held about her was that she was married. He hadn’t seen a ring on her finger. Y
et he had assumed that her occupation made wearing rings impractical. His fear that she was already tied to someone had made him think she was beyond his greedy reach—at least for the moment—despite how saturated his sensibility had become with her. Her announcement was a shock. His mouth gaped open in surprise, just as she was spreading a mud masque over his face. Consequently, she accidentally pushed some between his lips, which caused him to jerk upright and spit it out repeatedly into his cupped hands.
“I’m sorry. Sorry,” she cried, quickly getting towels for him to use instead of his hands. “What did you open your mouth for?”
Catherine, who was passing by then, noted wryly, “A dirty mouth goes with a dirty mind.”
Bill glared at her. But Donna had to press a towel against the lower part of her face to muffle her laughs.
To compensate him for his muddy mouth, although it was not her fault, Donna added a complimentary massage to his salon visit. While he sat in the massage chair, he thought he was in heaven. Her angelic hands caressed and kindled his body, stoking the fire of love, and he didn’t have to pay a dime.
“I’m so glad I came in today,” he sighed through the hole of the chair’s headrest.
“The mud didn’t taste that bad?”
“I can’t complain. I got this free massage.”
“You have some big knots in your neck,” she pointed out, as she worked in that area.
“Gifts from China,” he said.
“What?” She didn’t understand.
“I had a Chinese girlfriend, a doctor. She’s highly skilled at inflicting pain and stress.”
“She’s a doctor? Sounds like she’s in the wrong profession.”
“She likes sticking needles in people. She thinks those tiny needles do something.”
“Oh, I see.”
“I wouldn’t let her stick her needles in me. We just argued. That was enough of her medicine for me. She’s crazy.”
“I’ve never tried acupuncture.”
“Don’t. It doesn’t work. I don’t know why she has so many patients. Her prices are higher than a regular doctor’s.”
Cheapskate in Love Page 12