Split Ends

by Kristin Billerbeck

  “No, the book. Camille is depressing.”

  “Not really. It depends on your point of view. Unrequited love isn’t always depressing, not when it remains in your heart. You know the adage: ‘It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’”

  “She dies,” he says, tapping the book. “Without her great love. Maybe I’m too practical, but even for a romantic, that’s hard to take.”

  “Thanks for ruining it for me.”

  He laughs. “Your choice might make some downright suicidal, though it is refreshing to discuss Camille with someone who’s actually read the book versus just seeing Moulin Rouge. That’s what LA is missing: great readers.”

  “LA is missing more than that. You can’t tell the homeless people from the business people because everyone wears those Borg cell phones in their ear. You don’t know if they’re talking to themselves or putting together the next big deal. It’s missing normal conversation in favor of imbedded cell phones, Treos, and iPods. It’s like you won’t work here unless you’re attached to something electronic. Everyone’s chest arrives in the room before they do, and there is not one person in this town who remembers what their original hair color was.”

  “It takes some getting used to. Everyone’s a multitasker, trying to fit in as much life as possible.”

  “But how do you do it? How do you actually reach people here?”

  “You act as though you want to.” He grins. “People are starving for attention.”

  “Unrequited love is not always depressing,” I say, reverting to our previous conversation. Though if it were me, it would always be depressing, albeit the Winowski way.

  “Armand wasn’t worthy of her.” He sits back on the couch, draping his arm over the back of it. I am calmed by his peace. Everyone else around here is too frenetic; they don’t sit still unless they’re getting a beauty treatment or making a deal over a meal.

  “You don’t think so? I mean, I don’t think so either, but I’m a girl.” I get up to thumb through the phone book, looking for bail bondsman and a cab.

  “Are you now?” He smiles. “I hadn’t noticed. If they’d married, he always would have thought himself above her and treated her as a courtesan.”

  “See, exactly what I was talking about earlier with the haves and have-nots. Humphrey Bogart—Rick—loved Ilsa enough to let her go and be who she was meant to be.”

  He stands up again and walks closer to me, “I’m more selfish than that. I don’t find anything romantic about being without the woman I love.”

  The way he says it indicates there’s something between us—the thing I’ve hoped for—but something stops me from daring to believe. I’m Sarah Claire Winowski. Things like love at first sight do not happen to me.

  “Armand was young and impetuous in Camille.” Inside I’m thinking, Also stupid and completely selfish, but I continue to stand up for Armand. After all, I spent many an evening with the man. “Camille died alone.” I look down at the book. “That part’s sad.”

  “Not in the movie. He comes to see her in the movie.” Dane moves a little closer. “See? Hollywood isn’t all bad. Of course it was Garbo. She wanted to be alone.”

  “I thought you didn’t see movies.”

  “I don’t see movies made after 1985. Flora’s hair looked great by the way. I imagine your days of being an unknown are coming to an end.”

  I don’t hear anything he’s said about me. “Flora looks good regardless. She could be a hairless Chihuahua and she’d still have that bone structure.”

  “I hadn’t noticed. I was too busy noticing the beautician.”

  I laugh at the word. “You do live in the fifties, don’t you? You didn’t seem like you were noticing.”

  “If I hadn’t noticed her, she wouldn’t think you were doing a good job. Am I right?”

  He grins at my glare. “That sounds like a good excuse. For someone who didn’t notice Flora, you sure looked close enough.”

  “Jealous?”

  I fidget. “No.” I fidget a little more. “Maybe.”

  “You’re the one who has a date on Friday—a perfectly good day for us to go to the beach and you’re eating out with someone else. Will you kiss him on Rodeo?”

  “How do you know I had a date?” I want to burst into tears because I don’t want a date, but I have one, and it’s with the wrong man, and the right man knows. See, this kind of garbage cannot be coincidence. Somehow I am Murphy’s Law come to life.

  “Your cousin told me you had a date. He’s trying to make sure I know you’re off-limits.”

  “I didn’t tell my cousin about my date!”

  “But Jenna in your salon did.”

  “I didn’t tell Jenna.”

  Dane shrugs his wide shoulders. “That I can’t help you with, only to say that the world is wired here. If it happens, it’s only a matter of minutes before it’s broadcast. Who’s your date with?”

  “Aren’t you going to tell me?” I ask him. “You seem to know as much as I do.”

  “Brad Pitt?”

  “That’s Saturday night. We’re going to watch Somewhere in Time together.” I wink at him.

  His eyebrow cocks. “To a man, that movie is so long it’s painful. It’s what they should show in POW camp; men would be surrendering in droves.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “I’ll never get those hours back, you know.”

  “So if I stay in Friday, I take it we’re not taking the movie to the beach?”

  “It’s one of those movies that makes me thankful for my Christianity. I have eternity to make up for those lost hours.”

  “I have to go.”

  “So, are you going to tell me about your date? Who I need to send my guys to check out?”

  “Your guys? I wasn’t aware the antique business was so unseemly. Is there a Louis XVI mob?”

  “You’d be surprised,” he growls.

  “Are you going to let me fix your hair?”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s crooked. Didn’t you look at it?”

  “I’ll wear a fedora tomorrow. You’ve done enough tonight.” “You look like a homeless person.”

  “In a good suit, though.” He smoothes his slacks. “It’s amazing what one can pull off in a good suit.”

  He moves closer still to me, and I look down at my shoes. “Don’t, Dane.”

  “I’m not letting you go out in the middle of the night by yourself. I’m just not. Maybe I don’t want you to fix my hair because I know who did cut it. I want to keep it this way for posterity. Tomorrow, you’ll probably be famous.”

  “Don’t tease me, Dane. You are not keeping it that way. You look ridiculous.”

  At his proximity, my breath quickens. I can’t take my eyes off his lips, praying they’ll take that last step toward mine, but he stays just far enough out of reach to where I’d have to make the first move. And I am not that kind of girl. I pull away.

  “And that, Sarah—,” referring to my distance “—is why I can wait. It’s late. You’re beautiful and vulnerable at the moment, if I may say so. I’m only human.”

  “You think I’m vulnerable?” I ask, wondering what kind of woman wouldn’t be vulnerable to a man who looked like him in a suit, inviting her to Paris with all the right words. Not to mention the added benefit of sleeping down the hall from me. I don’t call that vulnerable. That’s just lucky in my book.

  “Your mother coming to town,” he reminds me. “Your best friend?”

  “Oh, right.”

  “Having to cut off all the hair of one of Hollywood’s beautiful starlets? That didn’t make you vulnerable?”

  “She’s not that beautiful.” I’m not above fishing for a compliment, and Dane had better take the bait.

  “I meant according to Hollywood, not my own assessment. I just used her presence to make mine known to you.”

  He shoots. He scores!

  “I can’t stand it. Sit over there.”
I point, and I’m not taking no for an answer. He ambles over to the stool, and I start fixing his hair—trying not to touch him. It’s like he has rabies.

  “I can’t talk much about cattle drives, so we have to stick to my strong suit. My parents traveled all over when I was young. Books were all I had while they did business.”

  “Me too. Well, that and the old movies. They were all I could get at the library.” Of course, I leave out the fact that it was because my mother was drunk half my childhood. We’ll save the happy memories for later.

  “I think being rich is overrated. You put too much stock in money solving your problems.”

  I let out a labored sigh as I check the cut for evenness. “People with money always say that.”

  “Someday you’ll see. I knew your cousin before he made money. He was happier then. He just wasn’t as busy.”

  “He likes to be busy. Everyone here does. It’s a way of avoiding actual relational contact.” Setting down the scissors and refraining from running my fingers through his hair yet again, I step back. “You’re done.”

  He stands up without even acknowledging I’ve fixed the avalanche that was his lopsided haircut. “I’ve delivered furniture to a lot of very wealthy, unhappy homes.”

  “Not all of them are unhappy. You know, I’d like to try a little of that unhappiness. They say youth is wasted on the young? I say money is wasted on the rich. Those people are pathetic. The world isat their fingertips, and they whine that things aren’t perfect.” I pick up the phone book again.

  “Not all poor people are unhappy either.” He takes the book from me and opens the cover, fanning through the pages. “In fact, I’ve known more happy poor people than happy rich people. Happy is a state of mind.”

  “Maybe you’re just hanging out with the wrong rich people.”

  He smiles that devastating grin. “So tell me, are you happy, Sarah?”

  “I’m happy and poor; does that bode well for your research? Well, except for my mother’s issues still outstanding. And my best friend skipping out on her fiancé and she wanting me to give his ring back. And the fact that I have a quarter for a father. Okay, so I’m not entirely happy; you’ve proven your point, I guess.”

  “If I paid to fix your mother’s problems, would you be happy?”

  “No, because then I’d be in debt.”

  “Exactly!” He points at me. “It’s always going to be something.”

  “No, that’s not it at all.” I cross my arms, angry he tricked me. “You’re going to be happy with your mother sitting in a LA jail? I don’t think so.”

  “She’s safe. Right?”

  “I still can’t leave her there. She’s my mother. At least in Sable I know the sheriff is going to take care of her. She’s probably just another number here and—” I pause, looking into his dark eyes. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s personal.”

  “It’s actually a matter of public record. So technically, not all that personal.”

  “Stop it! It’s personal to me. Stop twisting my words around like a television lawyer. I have guilt, okay? I’m entitled to a little guilt today. I’m here in a penthouse suite and my mother’s in jail.”

  “Your mother did something illegal and she’s paying for it. Hasn’t she watched the news? You don’t evade LAX security and expect to get away with it. She’s lucky she wasn’t shot. Why should you have guilt?”

  I’m about to argue the point, but instead I say, “Well, duh?”

  Dane starts to laugh. “‘Duh’? That’s your debate?”

  “You’re telling me if you had everything right now, and your daddy did something—let’s say he stole some antiquity from Europe and now he’s in jail awaiting extradition to France—”

  “France’s justice system is liberal. He’d be all right.”

  “Change it to China—he’s imported an internationally famous statue of Buddha out of perfect jade, and he’s in jail. You’re going to just go to the beach like nothing happened?”

  “I’m not going to sit and feel personally guilty about it. I either can do something about it, or I can’t. And you can’t, Sarah. But if you feel more comfortable with a shawl of guilt, you go right ahead. I won’t stop you.”

  “I’m going to call the jail.” I head toward my bedroom.

  Before I can do anything, though, I hear Scott coming back in, having delivered Flora. I open my door a tad and look down the hallway, eavesdropping.

  “Dude, I see the way you’re looking at my cousin. Get over it, you hear me. You’re better off with Flora.”

  Dane shakes his head. “Whatever.”

  “I told you she wouldn’t go to the beach with you. She’s not that kind of girl, and like I said, she’s off-limits. What part of that did you miss?”

  “The part where you run my life just because you’re letting me live here,” Dane fires back.

  The briefest blip of guilt fires through my brain, and I think to myself that I should close the door, but the thought is quickly extinguished by the desire to know what they’re talking about. Is Scott going to tell Dane who we are in Sable? What would Dane’s family think of me if they knew?

  “I told you my cousin was off-limits. I told you that plain and simple. You two are wrong for each other— wrong, do you understand?”

  I don’t know why my heart’s pounding. This is all information I know, but to hear it so blatantly laid out for Dane. That I’m no good—and coming from Scott, it’s excruciating. He changed his course; why would he stop me from changing mine?

  In Camille, Marguerite ran away from her abusive, dysfunctional family. Clearly, I didn’t run far enough. The gutters of Paris are calling . . .

  I’m tossing that book. It always did depress me. When I’m tempted to reread it, I’m going to grab Pillow Talk instead and cheer myself up.

  chapter 22

  I’ll cry tomorrow.

  ~ Susan Hayward

  Kate walks into Yoshi’s as though she owns the place. She ambles right past Jenna without even stopping to explain herself. I see her from the shampoo room and laugh out loud.

  “You have no respect,” I say when she meets me.

  “It’s a hair salon, not lockdown.”

  “It’s Beverly Hills. People want it to feel exclusive.”

  “Yeah, well, whatever. Show me around. The receptionist looked at me funny.”

  “She’s an office manager.”

  Kate rolls her eyes. “I assume she puts her pants on like me.” She looks back at the reception desk. “Albeit a little lower on the hips.”

  “It’s the style here, and Jenna has been very good to me, right from the start.”

  Kate looks back again. “All right, do you want me to invite her to be in my wedding, or what?”

  “I thought there wasn’t going to be a wedding.”

  “Oh, right. Before I forget.” She hands me a grey velvet box.

  “You’re really not going to give this back appropriately?”

  “He’ll just try to tell me I’m making a mistake.”

  “And what if you are?” I ask her.

  “I need more time. You don’t have to give it back to him yet. He doesn’t even need to know you have it. Let me stall a little, that’s all.” Kate makes herself right at home in Yoshi’s, opening cabinets and even the door to Yoshi’s office.

  “May I help you?” I hear him bellow.

  “Sorry, thought this was the bathroom.” She smiles and closes the door behind him. “That him?”

  “That’s him.”

  “How did he know I wasn’t a client?”

  “You don’t have Barbie skin.”

  “Yeah, what’s up with that? Why does everyone look like that? Are pores illegal here?”

  “It’s the chemical peels and Retin-A in massive doses slopped onto their skin. They run down to Mexico if their doctors won’t give them enough of it. The skin cancer rate here has got to be phenom
enal. They say it’s the sun, but it’s totally that they peel off their top layer of skin.”

  “Well, the salon is gorgeous. I’ve gotta run. I’m going to Newport Beach today, and I want to make sure I have the whole day.”

  Kate is like a stranger to me right now. She’s never done anything on her own, and now it seems as though she’s allergic to anyone who tries to get near her. “You know, getting cold feet about the wedding is perfectly normal. But you don’t have to escape me, do you?”

  “Sarah, you know how everyone in Sable knows exactly how everyone is going to react to something. If your mother is in jail, for example. Al bails her out, he puts her in the holding tank until she’s sober, and then the next day starts again. The sheriff usually lets it slide, acts like she hasn’t been in there a million times, like she’s not driving a bullet with someone’s name on it.”

  “Is there a point about you in this?”

  “I don’t want to be the kind of person who just fits into life, the kind of person who is going to wear the blue sweater on Tuesday. The person who will bring the potato salad to the church picnic—not the snickerdoodles, not the pecan pie, but always the potato salad.”

  “You make good potato salad.”

  “I do make good potato salad, but I don’t want to have to make potato salad.”

  “So this is about salad? Make a noodle salad.”

  “Yeah, that will change my life. A noodle salad. Why didn’t I think of that and save myself some hassle?”

  “People are ridiculous.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Kate’s arms cross in rebellion.

  “It means if we don’t have real problems, we have to make some up. That’s not a real problem, Kate.”

  “You’re trying to tell me the need for organic shampoo is real? The need for Yoshi in there to have a spotless garbage can—that’s real?”

  “Shh. He’ll hear you.” I look to Jenna to see if she’s heard, and I notice Dane talking to her. “What’s Dane doing here?”

  “Dane!” Kate exclaims loudly enough for him to hear. His head turns in our direction. “Dang, girl!”

  “I know. Can you blame me?”

  “Ingrid Bergman wouldn’t blame you.”