Frannie drank off the remainder of her Bloody, caught some ground pepper in her throat and started choking yet again. At last, with watery eyes and a rueful smile, she tapped Randi on the arm. “Anyhow, isn’t there that old saying about the devil you know being better than the devil you don’t?”
“Ha!” Randi tossed back her head, her impossible hair glinting in the gloom, and laughed so shrilly that Frannie cringed and looked around, embarrassed a little for her friend.
It hadn’t been that funny. She hadn’t meant to be funny at all. Was this woman laughing at her?
Then, all at once, because she felt vulnerable and odd and exposed and ill at ease, she realized she was seriously annoyed.
“What are you laughing at? I don’t see anything all that funny in what I just said.”
“No, I wasn’t laughing at you, Frannie. Really.”
The soothing voice – the combing voice.
“It’s only that I’m confused, and a little astonished, maybe,” Randi went on, “that you don’t seem to understand that what you’ve been calling ‘love’ – what women think of as ‘love’ – is … I can’t think of another way to say it … isn’t something fine. It’s this miserable, lifelong affliction. ‘Love’!” She barked another harsh “Ha.” “You know, I’ve made a lot of friends through my work, Frannie, and like you, there are so many women who haven’t tumbled to the fact that love is sacrifice by this other, prettier name. It’s more than sacrifice, even. It’s self-immolation, I think. Sometimes I even ask myself,” grabbing a paper napkin, she wiped furiously at a wet ring on the bar, “are women just crazy? Giving their souls away to men? To children? Neither of which is remotely aware of the magnitude of their sacrifice. Let alone, grateful.”
“Only look at yourself,” Randi put the napkin in her purse and went on more quietly. Frannie had to lean in to hear. “You’ve been married for years and years and you’ve been a good wife and a good housekeeper and a good buddy and all those good things and here you are – after how many years – wondering if he loves you or you love him, as I understand it. ‘More or less lucky’ you said? Oh, definitely less, Frannie, my friend. A whole lot less. Which is why I need to ask. What even makes you think there is any man – anywhere on earth – who might actually be what you’ve told me you want?”
For a few more moments, purse dangling from her arm, hands in her lap, Frannie sat there enthralled. Not just because of the power and terrific sense of Randi’s argument, but also because … it felt as if the most popular girl in her high school had not only noticed her, but liked her. Liked her enough to have this serious heart-to-heart.
But where was it going? Again, she had that testy, gypped feeling. She hadn’t come out this evening to this awful, gaudy place to discuss the meaning of love. Not her marriage, either. Not for a second time today. So what about that beauty advice? All those life-changing tips?
These drinks were making her fuzzy and, besides, she was really feeling it now, a little sick. Things had gotten out of hand.
Frannie unclasped her hands, put her purse on the bar, and purposefully, pushed her third (third!) new drink away. Randi was just a stranger, not a friend. She hadn’t even known her yesterday and here she was confessing her innermost longings to this suggestively dressed, probably not-ever-married woman, who was laughing at her foolish confidences and presuming to advise her on her life.
But she’d be polite. Manners were important.
“How did we get so sidetracked, Randi? I was sort of expecting makeup tips or clothing tips or complexion tips or something, not marriage counseling.” She was hoping to sound playful, yet she heard the words fall flat. “Frankly, I don’t know exactly what I thought. But instead, you keep wanting to know about my personal life. And I know, yes, I brought it on myself. But basically, we don’t know each other well enough for this. And I don’t think I want to tell you any more about myself. So you know what?” She surprised herself by standing. “I think I’m going home.”
“Don’t go, Frannie. Please. I’m so sorry.”
Remorsefully, tenderly, Randi touched her arm. “It’s only that I wanted to know more about you. To know you better. You’re interesting to me. I’m so sorry if I’ve seemed intrusive. I didn’t mean to be.”
Frannie’s attention was caught by that “interesting.” Interesting? Her? Okay. She’d find out why, then she’d go home.
To Stanley and TV.
Leaning so near her breath stirred Frannie’s hair, Randi seemed to whisper, “Would you mind very much if I asked just one last question? Then we’ll talk beauty tips. I promise.”
For a minute, Frannie studied the impossibly beautiful face, the skin, those lips, that voice. This woman was courting her. She was. And that was kind of thrilling, in a way. Because she hadn’t been courted in years and, okay – a lesbian flirtation, or whatever this turned out to be – might be … what? Fun? Life-changing? Terrifying? How could she even think of going home before figuring out what this was really about? Not to mention whatever there might be to learn about making herself prettier or less invisible before she grew old.
“Well, as long as we don’t talk about this morning again.”
Randi straightened up on her stool.
“I won’t. I promise. As I said, Frannie, I like you. A lot.” She searched Frannie’s face.
“Would you consider a deal?”
“A deal?”
“Yes. An unusual sort of deal. One you may even have heard of, because it’s a kind of a special deal that I can offer every now and then. To women of a certain age.” She smiled warmly. “To people like you.”
Frannie felt bitter disappointment. Was this it? Some kind of “senior special”?
Oh, money, she realized, reaching for her handbag. Why on earth hadn’t that occurred to her? Advice didn’t come free. Randi probably had a line of cosmetics to sell: miracle creams; avocado masques.
“How much is it?”
“Oh, money.” Randi echoed her thought, leaning even nearer, smiling. “Money’s beside the point. We never take money.”
“I’m sorry. What?”
Had she misheard? It was unbearably noisy in here. The slots, the music, this hectic jangle of loss and desire.
Then all at once all the noise fell away and left Frannie sitting there, transfixed.
Because Randi had just laid her arm on the bar and with her index finger, was delicately circling the rim of her glass. So compelling was the movement that Frannie almost missed her other hand – the one that was now extracting a filter-tipped Marlboro and a gold lighter from her scarlet-satin clutch. Almost missed it as, thoughtfully and deliberately, Randi slipped the cigarette between her lips and with her other hand, flicked the little wheel. She watched as, after drawing on it deeply, Randi exhaled a lungful of smoke upward toward the invisible ceiling and, instead of returning the lighter to her bag, lifted her hand from the rim of the glass and at last – eyes on Frannie all the while – made a fist, raised her middle finger and held it to the flame. “I can do things like this. See?”
She had stopped smiling.
Aghast, Frannie watched the slender finger turn deep pink, then red, then brown. She watched it bubble up, blacken and crisp until the smell of burning flesh made her start to gag. And still she couldn’t look away. At last, when there was nothing but a stump of charred and crusty bone, Randi dipped it into Frannie’s drink.
She heard it sizzle.
“See?” Randi repeated, thrusting her hand toward Frannie’s face and holding up her middle finger – unburned, all long and pink once more. “I’m flame-resistant, pain-resistant. Kind of immortal.” She dimpled once again. “And because of that, dear Frannie, I can arrange for you – sad old lady that you are – to have anything you want in the world. Love? Beauty? Youth? A man? All yours.” She put the finger in her mouth and sucked the Bloody off.
Frannie leaped to her feet with a speed that shocked her, and staggering, she vomited, splashing cheesy curds on
the bar, the carpet, her shoes and, oh God, the trouser cuffs of the large man sitting to Randi’s left. He recoiled in instant revulsion, simultaneously spilling whatever it was he’d been drinking down the front of his yellow shirt.
“Shit! Watch it, will ya?” Livid, he jumped to his feet and turned furiously on Frannie, who was wiping at her sour mouth with the back of one hand while she cringed and tried to move away. But she backed instead into a second man who’d been handing beers around. Foam geysered from the glasses in his hands and drenched everyone in beer.
The men reacted with animal rage.
“Godammit!” yelled the beer guy, “Watch where you’re going, lady! What’s the matter with you, you dumb old cunt?”
Into Frannie’s head popped the idiotic thought that for the first time in decades, it seemed, men were actually noticing her.
Stammering and hoping to make it all right, she was still trying awkwardly to back away when she felt Randi just beside her. Randi had drawn herself up to her full, impressive, height, and before all their astonished eyes she’d turned fiery and potent and strong. Sparks flew from her body so that the group of furious men, frightened, shrank away. Randi leaned across Frannie, grabbed a thick handful of bar napkins, knelt, and began to mop up the mess. And as she kneeled there, expertly wiping the floor and their shoes, the globes of her perfect breasts dropped cleanly into the sling of her low-necked black tee. She held the pose for half a minute, then sat up on her knees and, looking amused, threw back her shoulders for the fullest effect, widened her emerald eyes and purred, in a darkly silken voice:
“I’m so sorry, gentlemen. I’m afraid my friend hasn’t been feeling very well this evening. She might even be coming down with something, um … preternatural. Please let me finish cleaning all this up and I’ll stand you all to a fresh round of drinks.”
They’d gathered about her, spellbound.
“Oh, please don’t bother,” Mr. Yellow Shirt murmured. “It’s all right. Really. No kidding.” Feeling behind himself for an empty stool, he dropped onto it hard.
“No, no, we’re fine,” they spoke over one another, childlike in their bedazzlement. “Let me help you up.” “Let me.” Elbowing and jostling each other out of the way, they competed to help the far-from-helpless Randi to her feet.
Arising gracefully all on her own, Randi bestowed her most brilliant smile on her worshippers and then, slipping her arm through Frannie’s, drew her away and through the crowd to a secluded booth, very far from the bar.
“I like to think of this as my office when I’m in town. It’s quieter here than it is over there. Not as dangerous, either!” Randi grinned. “Sit.”
Fighting nausea still, and stunned, Frannie bumped her way across a curiously patterned velvet seat and dropped her purse on a black-marble tabletop. The marble felt cool, and there was better light here, which felt fine. More than fine, because she needed light to study this person, this Randi; to examine her … flawlessness? What in God’s name was she?
But Randi had become her everyday self now, while beside her, Frannie felt she had transformed into someone tipsy and imbecilic.
And she’d been worrying about a lesbian pick-up.
“Want another drink?”
“Want”, not “would you like.” A sign.
“No,” she whispered, noting her drink was here on the tabletop. How had that happened? “This one will do.”
“So, what do you think, Frannie?” Randi asked companionably.
The woman could read her mind.
“What are you? A devil or something?” She tried for a smile. “I always thought the devil was a man.” She eyed the other woman apprehensively.
“Oh my God, how boring. No, I’m not the devil. I’m her gatekeeper. Her intermediary, you could call it.”
“Her? HER!” Frannie was startled. “And there’s a gate to Hell?” (How drunk am I, she wondered?) “Not a pearly one, I suppose.”
“Not remotely pearly. You were standing there this morning, in fact.”
Frannie had to struggle to remember where she’d been this morning.
“Oh, you mean The Hair House?” She pondered that for a moment. “You mean a beauty parlor is the door to Hell?”
“We like to call it a portal.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Those of us who own Hair House franchises.”
“You mean there are more of you? Of them?”
“I mean there are hundreds, all over the world.”
“Oh my God!” she said, before catching herself. “Oh, I’m sorry!”
“You don’t have to be sorry. God knows all about us. We suspect she sometimes sends us clients.”
Was she having this conversation?
Surreptitiously, she glanced at Randi’s fingers again. All ten were intact.
“And who owns these places?”
“Just ordinary women like us. Like you and me.” Randi paused. “Or maybe, more like me. Women who longed to look like movie stars or celebrities. Women who were born quite plain, some of them. Or disfigured. Women who’d grown sick and old. Women who were unhappy with themselves.”
“And you are one of those?”
“I was.”
Was she actually taking this seriously? That had to have been a stupid magic trick and Randi, a crazy person. But somehow, she needed to hear more. So maybe she’d finish this drink. Or order another, because this drink had – oh, God – quenched that terrible finger.
“So how does it work?” she asked, hoping to sound convincingly interested. She didn’t want to make this madwoman mad.
“Well,” Randi began, looking pleased and settling in, “it’s fairly simple. In exchange for making us look like I do and/or making us immortal, Mrs. Andros, our founder, sets up a Hair House in a city that doesn’t have one. In return, we find her souls.”
Really? Frannie thought. That easy?
She studied Randi’s face in the half-light. The woman didn’t look delusional (whatever that looked like) and she’d explained the “arrangement” in such a casual way, as if she’d done it many times.
“All of them want the makeover or the do-over, but not everyone wants the immortality thing. So we’ve learned to create ‘custom deals’,” she made quotation marks with her fingers. “Like what I did with those men tonight, for instance. Sexual power was a big part of my own personal deal.”
Frannie was silent.
“Wouldn’t you love to be able to do that, too? Have them just drool over you? Want you to the exclusion of everything – everything – else? Be blind to everything else but you? Blind to, oh … sports and religion and politics. And money? I’ve got to tell you, I just love it. I love it like napalm in the morning.”
Frannie’s jaw dropped. What? Randi goes to movies?
‘I mean, if I want to get laid, of course, I only have to pull out my phone, but sometimes, a little thing like tonight …” She lit another cigarette. “You know, it’s especially exciting when they try to touch me.” She exhaled at the ceiling. “They regret it, you know. I’m hot.”
She hooted, enjoying her pun.
“Eons and eons have passed and, I’ll be honest. I’ve never gotten used to this thing! Almost makes you believe in Her.’ She looked toward the ceiling again, briefly.
The velvet upholstery swished faintly as she slid a little closer.
“Really. Be honest now. Wouldn’t you like to be Delilah, Frannie? Jezebel? Helen of Troy? Marilyn?” She took a deep, luxurious puff from another Marlboro and picked a shred of something off the tip of her tongue. “Although Helen wasn’t that terrific, actually.”
Randi began reapplying her lipstick without even looking, and Frannie, who was beginning to think she was almost drunk enough to play along with all this, was momentarily envious. The thing seemed so deliciously … possible … just now.
Although, down below the alcohol, below the cerebral, there was something terrible squirming on its belly. And sneering.
Be
side her, that husky voice dripped blandishments.
“Stick with me, Frannie dear, and men will ache for you, weep for you. Women will envy you.” (Ah, she did read minds) “You’ll know power and earthly success. You’ll be ravishing. Desirable. You’ll possess all that you’ve secretly longed for.”
Until this moment, Frannie could truthfully say she’d never craved physical beauty. And definitely not power. But here, in this moment, she sensed the tiniest yearning for both; a furtive tug of lust.
She hoped it didn’t show.
“And what do you want in exchange?” Frannie smiled. “My soul?”
“Exactly.”
She slid to the very end of the velvet seat. “You want me to agree to burn in eternal Hellfire?
“Isn’t that the usual deal?”
“Hellfire.” She repeated the word. And, shocking herself, she replied, “Give me a minute to think about it.”
But instead, she was madly thinking: I am so incredibly drunk to be sitting here on a seedy gambling boat discussing selling my soul to a peculiar – no, crazy – hairdresser. Another minute to think? What was there to think about? This discussion was insane.
Her skirt was uncomfortably caught between her thighs and she was mechanically pulling it free and pressing the wrinkles out when her eye was caught by the backs of her hands. Stanley was right. They were wrinkled and veinous and pocked with liver spots. And Randi’s repellent finger appeared in her mind just then, and as it appeared, the slot-machine bells pinged seductively, and then ebbed and faded away and vanished as something terrifying – something cold and sick – clicked on in her brain.
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