She was wearing jammies, at least, she thought, looking down at her T-shirt and shorts. Then realized that wasn’t her T-shirt, although she recognized the shorts as a pair she didn’t wear anymore. She’d probably gone to throw up naked, or something. Good God. It just got worse and worse.
She looked out to the living room gingerly, wincing as light poured in through the balcony doors. God it was bright. What time was it? A glance at her clock—six o’clock. Where the hell did the time go?
Her gaze fell on the kitchen table, and she smiled. Walking over like an old woman who’d forgotten her walker, she shuffled her way to where three of Taylor’s Hangover Remover sodas sat, with a note:
Thought you’d need this.
Be ready to be picked up at 7:00.
We’re going to see Joey.
MARTIKA
Sarah read the note, slowly, three times. She then opened a soda and drank every drop, having remembered the positive results it garnered the last time she’d gone out with Taylor. She didn’t know why she was being picked up…and she had no idea who Joey was. However, it gave her an hour to get ready. She figured that she owed Martika that much. After all, she’d put up with a really amazingly nasty scene the previous evening.
She wandered into the bathroom, yawning slightly, looking forward to brushing her teeth…then turned on the light, looked in the mirror, and screamed.
She looked like a cross between a punk rocker and a scrub brush. Whole hunks of her hair had been cut short, while other layers of locks had been left at their original length, just past her shoulder blades. Her fingers reached up, and her mouth rounded in a circle of disbelief.
Oh my God.
She just kept brushing her fingers over the bizarre modern art that used to be her hair, tickling her fingertips with now wavy, now sticking-straight-out locks.
She seemed to vaguely remember thinking at one point the previous evening about Native Americans—God, what sort of train of thought had brought that on—and she’d remembered in the crap-trap that was her mind something about them cutting their hair. The scissors seemed to move of their own accord, like something out of Alice in Wonderland. She had literally not thought a thing about it since that moment, and now…holy shit, she looked like a mutant, she ought to be dragged out and shaved bald…
She brushed her teeth, trying as best she could to brush the terrible taste out of her mouth while simultaneously and religiously avoiding looking at herself in the mirror. Just a glimpse made her want to cry. She retreated to the shower, pulling the decorative curtain Martika had bought in front of the glass shower doors so she wouldn’t have to see even the frosted reflection of her head. She stayed in the shower for a long, long time, waiting for the bathroom mirror to get good and coated with steam before stepping out to the fluffy bath mat. She wrapped her head in a towel-turban, then dried off and went back to her room. She got in jeans, a T-shirt, and rummaged around for a hat. She was still looking for one—she was sure she brought one from Fairfield—when she heard Martika come in the house. “Sarah! Sarah! Sweetie, are you ready? Are you okay?”
Sarah found a floppy denim hat that she only wore when gardening back home. Grabbing what straggly long hair remained, she stuffed the whole thing under the brim as best she could. “I just have to put on my shoes,” she called.
Martika gave her a studied look, then grinned broadly. “You look like you’re about ten years old.”
Sarah frowned. “You don’t have to rub it in. I can’t believe I did that to my hair.”
“I can, and it’s about time. Not for you to cut your hair,” she corrected, waiting patiently as Sarah pulled on a pair of Keds with no socks. “I mean, obviously you’ve been storing that little episode up for some time. Now that you’ve let it out, I think you’ll be much healthier. I almost called you today, to make sure you were all right, but I wanted to make sure you got enough sleep…you were up puking half the night.” It sounded odd, all that maternal caring coming from an hourglass Amazon like Martika, but at the same time it was very, very comforting.
Sarah stood up, feeling awkward. “I wanted to say thank you, Martika. You were really…you’ve been so…”
“Don’t even worry about it. I’ve been waiting for you to become, well, interesting since I moved in here. I was starting to give up hope,” Martika said, laughing in that rough-scratchy way of hers. Sarah, surprisingly, did not feel insulted. “At any rate, we’re going to see my hairdresser, Joey. You’re lucky, he usually needs an appointment at least a month in advance, but he owes me a few favors, so I’m finally cashing in on one.”
“Thank you…”
Martika smiled. “Sweetie, this is just the beginning. You’re single now. You just wait…this is going to be so much fun!”
Sarah felt about ten when she walked into the salon in Beverly Hills. Martika had zoomed them there in her midnight-blue BMW convertible in about half the time it would have taken Sarah to go across the street, it seemed. Sarah tried as best she could to surreptitiously grip the car door handle while Martika managed to put on lipstick, talk to Taylor on her cell phone and negotiate traffic on a busy Wednesday night. “Taylor, sweetie, you’ve got to meet me at the salon. Joey’s salon, silly. We’ve got a project going on. Yes, Sarah is with me.” She smiled at Sarah even as she narrowly avoided plowing into a VW bug. Sarah smiled back nervously, feeling her palms grow sweaty. “We’ll be there in about…oh, here we are. Gotta run. We’re drinks later, right? Maybe Sarah will come with.” She winked at Sarah, then seemed to float the car into a parallel parking spot. “Later.” She beeped off her cell phone, then gestured to a very posh-looking salon storefront. “Voilà. Let’s go get you girlish.”
Sarah looked in, anxiously. She saw her reflection in the mirror, as well as Martika’s. Martika was wearing a micromini in some black stretchy material, a black sleeveless sweater-top, and knee-high black boots. She also wore sunglasses, pushed up to act like a headband for her crazily tumbling maroon curls. Sarah, on the other hand, really did look like a ten-year-old in her jeans, T-shirt, Keds and floppy denim hat. If Martika looked older, she probably would have passed for Sarah’s mother, for pity’s sake. She followed behind Martika, head down, trying to avoid the gaze of other patrons who were all swathed in soft pink robes and who were staring at her expectantly.
“Joey!” Martika did a trademark squeal, then went over to air-kiss a man who was wearing black leather pants and a crisp white T-shirt that Sarah could have bounced a quarter off. “Sweetie, it’s been ages!”
“You bitch. Tell me somebody else did your hair color, and I’ll strangle you,” he said, though his tone didn’t sound at all threatening. In fact, it sounded like some sort of compliment, in a weird, femmy sort of way. “It looks good, but you know I can do better.”
“L’Oreal Hydrience, can you believe it?”
“Eyew. Box color.” Joey rolled his eyes. “So, where’s your project?”
Sarah wasn’t sure she liked being referred to in these terms.
“Here’s our girl,” Martika said, gesturing to Sarah as if she were Vanna White turning letters.
He looked at her, and his eyes widened so far that his pierced eyebrow twitched. He made a low whistle. “Hmm. I don’t suppose…I just signed on for hair, Tika, I didn’t sign on for a full-day here…”
“No, no, hair to start,” Martika said. Okay, now Sarah was pretty sure she was feeling offended. “Sarah, sweetie, take your hat off for Joey, okay?”
Sarah obviously understood why it was necessary, but she still felt like Martika had asked her to strip. It would have been no less embarrassing. She slowly reached up, grabbed the brim of her hat, and tugged it off. The few long strands tumbled limply down her back.
Joey gasped. “Oh, my.”
Martika simply nodded.
“Ah…well…” Joey was obviously trying to get a handle on this unexpected situation. He circled her like a knife-fighter. “Um. I see.”
“I know you’ve s
een worse,” Martika said. Sarah wasn’t sure how, but it sounded good when Martika said it. “I’m thinking chic, kicky, something fun. Something that says ‘I eat men like you for breakfast.’ But still sexy.”
“I’m thinking something that says ‘No, I didn’t stick my head in my Mixmaster,’” Sarah said under her breath.
Joey heard it, and laughed. “Well, all right. Let me go to the magazines, I’m sure we can do something…you’ve got a good natural wave,” he said, obviously getting his balance back. He sounded all business. “Kicky, sexy, fun,” he muttered, as he wandered over to the magazine rack.
“Sarah, darling, I heard everything,” Sarah heard Taylor’s voice say from the front of the room, and she smirked. “I’m so very, very sor… Oh my God what happened to your head?”
Martika rolled her eyes, and Sarah laughed.
“Obviously you didn’t hear everything,” Sarah said, grinning.
“Obviously.” He circled her, much as Joey had. “Wow. When you get drunk, you really get drunk, huh?”
“I don’t know. I don’t get drunk a whole lot.”
Martika and Taylor gave each other challenging grins. “We’ll fix that,” they said in unison.
“Um, I don’t know…”
“Right! Here we go. It looks kicky and fun.”
Sarah, Martika and Taylor hunched together like football players in a huddle, looking over the magazine Joey presented to them. There was a woman in a sharp dress with hair that looked…well, like she’d just emerged with curls from a very sexy wind tunnel.
“I don’t know…” Sarah repeated, but Taylor and Martika were already ushering her toward an impossibly thin young woman in black jeans and a white T-shirt, her hair pulled back in a severe bun. The woman nudged her into a changing room and handed her a pink towel, giving her head only the quickest glance and the most fleeting sneer. Sarah then shut up. She couldn’t keep her hair the way it was, that much was apparent. And Martika and Taylor seemed to know what they were doing. Right?
She sat down and allowed Joey to wash her hair in something that smelled deliciously like apricot. The whole time, Martika updated Joey on the Benjamin fiasco. Sarah didn’t mind…after all, if you couldn’t share with your hairdresser, who could you share with, right? With every sentence, Joey seemed to get more irate…and more convinced that he would make her a masterpiece. “This one’s going to be an ass-kicker,” he said, eyes narrowed and eyebrow ring glinting. “That prick, that absolute prick.”
It felt good, Sarah realized, as several pink-clad women deliberately eavesdropped, then started giving their opinions. There was something about salons, good salons, that was like group therapy and a very nice slumber party all rolled into one.
But as they continued to talk about Benjamin, it hurt her heart…yes, that prick, that absolute prick. Four years engaged, five years together, and he couldn’t live with her? That was disturbing. She felt tears welling up, and tried to think of other things, but she couldn’t and gave up. The women simply nodded to her and shared stories, which helped slightly.
“Don’t waste any tears on that asshole,” Martika said firmly. “You’ve been doing fine all these months without him, right? And to be honest, he’s just been using you.”
“I know,” Sarah said, trying not to move her head as Joey snipped and yanked at her hair. “It’s just that I’m used to him using me.”
“Oh, honey, I know that one,” an older woman in the chair opposite chimed in.
“Well, now you can get used to being independent,” Martika said, and several other women nodded firmly. If they’d all stood up and broken into a spirited version of the new Charlie’s Angels song, Sarah wouldn’t have been the least surprised, it was that sort of day.
Taylor smiled with delight. “You know what this means. Wardrobe.”
“I’m unemployed now, Taylor,” Sarah pointed out, then it suddenly occurred to her…she was in a salon in Beverly Hills. She had heard rumors that somebody had paid one hundred dollars for dim sum for one in this town. Good God, she was going to be on a budget from here on out. What the hell was she doing?
As if reading the panic in her eyes, Martika put a strong hand on her shoulder. “You won’t be unemployed for long.”
Taylor put a comforting hand on her other shoulder. “We know it’s hard,” he said, and his voice was soothing. “Still, at the very least let us think about what you ought to be wearing. No offense, girlie, but every time I see you in that Eddie Bauer denim dress, I just want to cry.”
“For me, it’s that sundress with the flowers,” Martika volunteered. “The Laura Ashley PTA one.”
Sarah pulled her lips tight, offended. “I don’t see anything wrong with what I wear.”
“Of course you don’t. I’m sure Benjamin approved of all of it.”
Martika had her there, so Sarah kept her mouth shut.
Like a couple of excited schoolkids, Martika and Taylor tore through old magazines that Joey was about to throw away, only keeping the most recent of everything. Lots of them were in Italian or Czechoslovakian, with women that looked like cats and shot hateful glances at the camera. “What do you think of this?” they would say periodically. Sarah kept saying she wasn’t sure. Apparently, they thought that meant “perfect!” because that would be inevitably yanked out.
She spent the better part of an hour under a hair lamp with foil on her head. Joey had now entered the insanity with Martika and Taylor, and was tearing out magazine pictures and comparing things. Sarah couldn’t hear what they were saying, just watched as they gesticulated wildly. Patrons were taking sides. It was turning into a free-for-all. Sarah tried to read the magazine in front of her and pretend she had nothing to do with all the proceedings. After a grueling long time, Joey finally pronounced her done.
“It was not easy,” he said, in a tone usually reserved for Oscar acceptance speeches, “but I think we can all agree that it was worth it.”
Sarah looked at the mirror, and her mouth dropped open.
She looked frosted, was the only way she could describe it. Her usually ashy-honey blond hair now had all these streaks, like she was running through a perpetually sun-dappled meadow. She knew she had wavy hair, but this was artistically wavy, not the Sonic the Hedgehog tangles that she was used to.
She, too, had gone into a sexy wind tunnel and lived to tell about it.
“How long will this last?” she said, her fingers reaching up but only touching the aura of her hair, as if by touching the hair itself the whole thing would vanish in a puff of smoke and she’d be reduced to the hedgehog looking thing she’d resembled when she walked in.
Joey laughed. “You just need to do a few simple steps,” he said. “I’ll give you some molding mud, and you need to put that at the roots…then some of this mousse at the tips…you just go like this—” he tilted his head upside down, pretending that his closely-cropped hairstyle matched hers “—and then like this, swing your hair up, and it’s just that easy.” He grinned. “And tell everyone you came here, naturally.”
Martika and Taylor could not have been prouder if they were her parents. “Let’s hit the town,” Martika said, and in that moment, Sarah could have said yes.
Taylor nay-sayed. “What do we always say in Marketing? It’s all about positioning. The haircut is a fabulous start, granted. But we’ve still got to draw up a game plan.” He grinned, taking Martika’s arm. “I say, dinner at El Torito with absolutely tons of margaritas.”
“I concur.” Martika linked her arm in Sarah’s, and Sarah smiled. Martika saw the hat in her hands, frowned and took it, tossing it in a tall artsy silver trash canister. Sarah still smiled.
“You did what?”
Judith watched Sarah calmly eat her salad, her hair glinting platinum and honey-blond in the afternoon sun. “I dumped Benjamin.”
“Would this be before or after your emotional pyrotechnics at Salamanca?” Judith asked. “Because if it was before, maybe I could negotiate to get your
job back. Sort of like temporary insanity. I mean, Becky herself has been under some emotional strain and would probably cut you some sort of slack, especially as she’s shorthanded now…”
“I don’t want to go back,” Sarah said firmly. “I’m sorry if it made you look bad, Judith.”
Judith smoothed her napkin in her lap, glancing out the window. “It did cause some commotion. I mean, I did recommend you.”
“And I’m sorry, but I couldn’t work for that horrid woman one more day,” Sarah said, her green eyes earnest. “She wanted me to clean out her cat box, Jude. I swear, the woman was a nightmare.”
“You could have handled it better, Sarah,” Judith corrected her gently. “You could have simply told her no.”
Sarah sighed. “I don’t think you’ll be able to understand.”
“I’ve been there,” Judith said. “We’ve all had nightmare bosses. You just pay…”
“Don’t say pay your dues,” Sarah said, her voice uncharacteristically steely. “I mean it. I’ll scream.”
Judith was so surprised, she put her fork down. “Sarah, what’s gotten into you? First the outburst at Salamanca, then dumping Benjamin—and what really happened there, anyway?”
“He was being a dick. Don’t even try to argue with me on that point.”
Now Judith openly gaped. “What do you mean?”
Sarah pushed radicchio leaves from one side of the broad white plate to the other. She looked like a bored starlet with that hair, Judith noticed. “I mean, he’s been so insensitive. Here I am, working thirty hours in one day, and all he can say is I have to pay my dues, keep my chin up. Everything I was doing was for him, Jude,” she confided. “Everything was to convince him that I could make the cut, that he wouldn’t be making a mistake in marrying me. Can you believe that?”
“It can’t have been that bad.”
“Couldn’t it?”
Judith couldn’t believe the bitterness in Sarah’s voice. “Sarah, moving to a new city is hard—and working at an ad agency in Los Angeles is brutal. You might have lost some perspective, but it’s not impossible to pull off. I mean, I do it. I’ve been able to balance a husband and a work life for the past few years.”
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