My gut did an acrobatic maneuver at that age-old invitation…but then I realized a Vibe was nowhere in evidence. I’d let Olga’s “cute couple” comment get to my head. Not every invitation to come inside involves coming inside. And sometimes a pancake is just a pancake.
Whatever he was playing at, I refused to let him get the best of me. “Sounds delightful.”
His apartment was sparse in a just-moved-in kind of way. New appliances, spotless wood flooring, tastefully restrained. I parked myself at the kitchen counter and waited for him to break the ice. He was one cool customer, I’ll give him that. He turned on the oven, arranged the horrid little pancakes on a baking sheet and got them all situated before he turned to me and said, “Iced tea? Water?”
Who the hell offers a guest water? I countered with, “Wine? Vodka? Anything with alcohol, actually. I’m easy that way.”
“I don’t drink.”
Fantastic.
I sighed and accepted some tea, and told myself I wasn’t curious as to why he didn’t imbibe. He seemed awfully young to be on the AA bandwagon. Some kind of straightedge punk rock philosophy? Could be alcohol just didn’t agree with him…though if that were me, I’d simply figure I hadn’t yet found the right booze. Easiest thing would be to simply ask. But I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
He poured me the tea, and took water for himself. Oh, touché. He parked himself beside me at the breakfast bar without a word, the picture of ease and grace, as if he hadn’t just sat in excruciating silence for the past ten minutes. And finally I decided I was doing myself a disservice if I didn’t take this opportunity to get inside his inscrutable head. “Tell me something,” I said, and he shifted his focus wordlessly to me with the faintest cock of an eyebrow. “Why’d you stay late tonight? Scoring brownie points with Ralph?”
A minuscule laugh twitched his shoulders. “I doubt it.”
“Then, what? Exploring your inner masochist?”
“What makes you say that?” He turned on the stool to face me full-on, and the weight of his undivided attention made me clench my toes so he didn’t see me squirm. “Seemed to me like you wanted to do that woman’s hair.”
We all want things. The question is, what? Me, for instance, I’ll go way overboard to prove a point. Even if I only have a vague idea of what that point might be. I shrugged off the question and steered the inquisition back at him. “And you?” I asked. “What do you want?”
“To see the salon thrive.”
“Not generally—specifically. Why are you here? Right now. With me.”
“My intention was to be supportive.”
I snorted into my tea. “Says the guy whose presence made the cut last twice as long as it needed to.”
“If you didn’t want to be there, why did you offer?”
“Because I was the one who sold the ticket, that’s why. I talked the old lady into buying it, so I had to pay the piper.”
“You didn’t have to. You chose to.”
“Same difference.”
“Not really. We all experience pain—but we choose to suffer.”
Clearly, he had his double-talk well rehearsed. I, however, was unwilling to concede. “Going a whole Saturday with squat for tips, shilling tickets on the sidewalk, then spending the time I could normally be getting lit or getting laid giving a free haircut? No way did I choose to suffer that.”
“If that’s how you saw your day, it’s not for me to judge. Me, I got to interact with the community, and meet new people, and help grow the business I came here to work with. Ralph has a strong vision for Luscious and I’m fortunate to be a part of it.”
The oven timer buzzed. I was saved by the bell from telling him to take his high and mighty self-righteousness and fuck off. He put a plate in front of me and I tried a greasy pancake. They were slightly better warmed up, but only slightly. Was he seriously going to eat his? “Talk about choosing to suffer,” I said. “So the boss wasn’t kidding when he said he bought them just for you. Vegetarian? Don’t answer that, of course you are.”
A tiny smile played at his lips, and the grease only accentuated it. In just a split second, a fraction of a heartbeat, a series of fantasies unspooled. That generous mouth wrapped around the head of my dick. Our oily lips sliding together around trembling, sated gasps. A flutter of contentment as he said my name, and smiled.
Who knew I’d be raring for a hate-fuck? And now that I’d glimpsed that thought, I could hardly unthink it. It made perfect sense. Why else would he have invited me up? (And don’t give me that shit about being supportive.) More importantly, why else would I have accepted?
Too bad we didn’t have any booze to lubricate the situation. I watched him carefully. He ate another pancake and watched me right back.
No Vibe. None whatsoever.
Booze or no booze, the guy didn’t reciprocate my lust. And the depth of my disappointment startled me. I glanced down at the inside of his wrist, and there among a few bangles and strands of wooden hippie beads, I saw the tattoo. An inverted triangle with little angel wings.
“Are you gay?” I blurted out.
“I am.” He didn’t bother to ask if I was too. Either it was obvious, or he didn’t care. “Now you tell me something personal. All afternoon, I watched you play it safe with each and every client, barely dusting the ends, and rushing through as quick as possible even though you weren’t getting paid by the cut. Like you didn’t care about the cut itself, you just wanted to get it over with. It doesn’t make sense. If you don’t like to cut hair, why are you a stylist?”
There’s hate-fucks, and then there’s homicide. I pushed away from the counter and grabbed my jacket. “Let’s get something straight, pal. You don’t know the first thing about me.” I stomped out the door, livid. How dare he?
I thundered down the stairs and out to my car.
Really. How dare he?
Safe was the Juniors, plying the clients with compliments to make up for their rudimentary skills. Safe was leaving as much length as possible to avoid a freakout like the one Pilar endured. Yeah, maybe today I went basic, but that wasn’t safe. That was practical. That was smart. None of those walk-ins would come back for a real cut. None of them would refer their friends. They were just out for Square Days and thinking to kill two birds with one stone and take advantage of a big coupon. So why should I expend the effort of opening my heart and soul to them if they were only in it for a quickie? Better to give them a decent trim they wouldn’t hate.
Because…it was safe.
Fucker.
I climbed back into my car, which now smelled like old lady and cold potato pancakes, and headed home.
Chapter 8
I wasn’t too hungover by the time I met my mother for dinner the next day at the new Italian joint she’d been jonesing to try. But between the sub-par Limoncello Collinses I’d subjected myself to—making them at home is no mean feat—and the potato pancake I kept burping up, I’d tossed and turned half the night. Even with the whole damn bed to myself.
“And there you are,” she sing-songed as she swept into the restaurant lobby. She uses bubbly, expansive gestures in everything she does, but always manages to seem vaguely contrived. It’s not because the sunny grandiosity is a put-on. Her actual personality’s just naturally stilted. “Handsome as ever.”
I held still for the obligatory mom-hug: a squeeze followed by a timely rappel. Catch and release.
The maitre d’ warmed to her awkward breeziness as people in any service industry usually did, and he escorted us to a table with a decent view. We got ourselves situated and started in on the pleasantries. Same old, same old, beat for beat. I wasn’t there for the news, though, I was feeding my urge to see her with my own two eyes and make sure she was still okay. Not that I get all Norman Bates about it. I was away at school when my dad keeled over, and I needed reassurance that my remaining parent wasn’t pining away or adopting random rescue animals. It was a pleasant enough way to while away the evening and enjo
y a decent meal. Plus I had nothing better to do, since the bar scene’s kind of dead on Sunday nights.
Discussion ensued. Catch-up on my cousins’ latest news. Complaints about her Pilates class. A blow-by-blow description of a jewelry party where she made the atrocious beaded hemp thing on her wrist.
We were well into the entree before she had a chance to start harping on my love life. “So…have you met anyone lately?”
“Oh God!” I flung myself back so hard my chair rocked on its hind legs. My melodramatic gestures come a lot more naturally, so much so that they’re practically invisible to Maxine. “I am single. I like being single. I intend to stay single.”
“In your line of work you meet people every day. Quality people who can afford to spend money on themselves.”
“Oh, I meet people all right.” It was tempting to bitch about Square Days, but I stopped myself. She’s always covered it with a forced brightness, but I could tell she was chagrined I chose to be a “hairdresser” (as she calls it, never a stylist) and not a college professor, or an accountant, or an astronaut. “But I don’t need a partner to validate me.”
“I never said you did.”
“I want to go where I want to go, and do what I want to do. No yes, dear…no, dear…did you take out the garbage, dear. That’s my idea of hell.”
She rolled her eyes the whole time I spoke, and when I stopped for a breath, interjected, “He doesn’t have to be boring.”
“There is no other half. I’m not broken. I don’t need a man to complete…me.”
A busboy clearing the table behind my mother caught my eye. My age, maybe younger, but with a swarthy broodiness that made him seem sullenly ageless. He flashed me an angry look—and it morphed into a Vibe that threatened to ignite the very air between us in a flash of frustrated longing.
Maxine prattled on, blissfully unaware. She was lucky her hair didn’t go up in flames, and not just because she used ten times as much spray as she needed. “Now you’re just being argumentative. Of course you’re not broken. Being in a relationship isn’t about completing yourself. Loving someone isn’t a weakness.”
“Uh huh,” I said absently. The busboy blasted me with another look. He twisted, tray in hand, and his stiff white dress shirt gave a tantalizing hint at the planes of his chest. It would be hairy. I could tell by the lushness of his five-o’clock shadow.
“I can’t imagine my life without your father. And without him, I wouldn’t have had you.”
That argument was so irrelevant I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Especially when the waiter’s dark eyes raked down my chest and lingered on the tabletop as if he wanted to scorch a hole straight through it that led to my groin.
He turned toward the kitchen, and I found myself up and out of my chair as if an invisible tether connected the two of us and he was dragging me right along behind him. “Hold that thought.”
Maxine pushed back from the table as if to follow. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“Fine. Just need to hit the powder room.”
Or…hit something else.
The busboy parked his tray by the kitchen door with me hot on his heels. One thing Maxine had right, being a stylist gave me plenty of opportunities to meet people, even when I was nowhere near the salon. I slipped a business card from my pocket—a special one with my personal number scrawled under the salon’s—and followed him up the staff hall. I debated whether to be so blatant as to tell him I couldn’t wait to run my fingers through his hair, when he turned on me and flattened me against the wall. Not with a kiss, either. My card fluttered to the ground.
“What the fuck is your problem?” That’s what his mouth was saying. But I wasn’t worried. The Vibe was palpable.
“No problem. Just thought I knew you from somewhere.” I pulled an Italian name from the air. “It’s Salvatore, right?”
“No.”
“Oh. Sorry.” His mouth. Yeah, baby. Hot, hot mouth. “My bad.”
He released my shoulders and stepped back, but there was a pause in between, a brief but telling pause, in which he could’ve given me a little grind first. He didn’t. But I knew he was just dying to rub our naughty parts together. “You stay away from me,” he growled. “I ain’t no fag.”
“Got it.” I barely restrained myself from raking my eyes down that white permapress shirt again, though I couldn’t keep the lilt out of my voice when I shot him the parting line, “Though who am I to judge?”
I hit the bathroom and rinsed my hands before I rejoined my mother. Maxine would notice something like dry hands. She notices everything, actually. She just doesn’t put it all together. Probably too busy trying to figure out how to convince me I needed to be saddled with a significant other.
I seated myself, and she asked, “When was the last time you actually had a conversation with someone you didn’t have to shout over loud music?”
Not-Sal’s friendly warning probably didn’t qualify. Neither did the banal chitchat I used for putting customers at ease. I supposed I’d been subjected to a pretty big earful while I choked down those potato pancakes. “Just last night I had quite an extensive dinner conversation.”
“And?”
And Red had accused me of playing it safe. Being an underachiever. Phoning it in. “And nothing. It was mostly work stuff, I guess.”
A frown of disappointment flitted across her face, but she covered it fast with a trademarked baring of the teeth that was nearly as much grimace as smile. “Isn’t that nice?” She snatched up the dessert menu and quickly added, “Should we split a tiramisu? I’m dying to try it but I shouldn’t eat the whole thing myself.”
She plowed ahead with an animated reading of the cake’s description, and all the while, I pondered her abrupt shift in mood. Saddened that my “deep conversation” had produced absolutely zero romantic sparks?
Or disappointed that the person privy to my deep and intimate thoughts was naught but a lowly hairdresser?
* * *
By the time Monday rolled around, Pilar’s outrage had shifted to worry. She second-guessed herself all the way to the shop, carefully reimagining pithier comebacks and better reactions to every sleight Ralph could dish up.
“Haven’t you known me long enough to realize I have the least comforting shoulder you’d ever cry on?” I finally said.
“Long enough to know you’re more sympathetic than anyone else at Luscious.”
True. Plus she hadn’t been the only one to come out of Square Days with a bruised ego. I wasn’t about to drag out the whole Red conversation and dissect it, though. Not that I didn’t trust Pilar, I just had no desire to salt my own wounds.
“Maybe I should try to line up another job while I’m still in Ralph’s good graces,” she said, “before he has a chance to smack-talk me to every other salon in the city.”
“Then you’d better figure out what you plan to say when it all gets back to him before the day’s over.”
“I need to work on a good excuse. Tell him Nick has some kind of thing after school. I need a salon with different hours so I can drive him.”
“Everyone’ll see right through it. He’s old enough to take the bus.”
“Or that I plan to move. And start applying to salons out in the burbs.”
“And when you didn’t actually follow through and relocate, the shit would hit the fan.” I had no illusions that Ralph wouldn’t fuck with her reputation even after she’d flown the coop. “Lying doesn’t get anyone anywhere. You need to start saying what you mean.”
“Easy for you. You’re a man. When you stand up for yourself, you’re being forceful. If I do it, I’m a bitch. Women have to sugarcoat everything we say so our opinions don’t offend anyone.”
“Sounds an awful lot like an excuse to me.”
We pulled up to the salon. “You know what?” she said. “You’re right. Your brand of sympathy does suck.” Ralph’s insufferable Prius was already in the lot. I could practically feel Pilar’s guts twisting
up in knots from the mere sight of the man’s car.
“This dynamic can only bother you if you let it,” I offered.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. No one would ever go out of their way to make you question your own worth.”
Oh, you have no idea.
Thanks to the coupons we’d blanketed Lincoln Square with, there wasn’t time for navel-gazing. The receptionists were deluged with calls, and walk-ins crowded the normally-serene waiting room. Some people hate chaos, but I got a little buzz off the energy. It felt like one of those all-in-one foil popcorn pans, heating up, growing, expanding, ready to burst open with steamy goodness. And Red was equally busy, occupied with a corrective color that would keep him well out of my hair.
The babble of a full shop rose and fell, punctuating the pretentiously atonal spa-like music Ralph piped in. I found my groove and delivered on three precision cuts, when an incoming text threatened to break my stride. One of my regulars.
Stuck at work, gotta reschedule. Sorry.
And a smiley-face.
No big. Wasn’t there a lobby full of walk-ins just dying to make my acquaintance? I had myself convinced things were unfolding just as perfectly as they possibly could—that it was all a big synergistic lovefest—when I realized some of the raised voices I’d been half-hearing had a distinctly uncomfortable edge.
“Why are you crying?” a woman demanded. “There’s nothing to cry about.”
The palest, frailest receptionist darted past me, face buried in her hands, on a beeline to the staff toilet. Matthew met my eyes in his mirror and mouthed “Oh-em-gee.” Trevor, who’d also been heading up front, suddenly veered away as if he remembered something very urgent that needed doing at the other end of the salon. Which left me charging into battle all by my lonesome.
Well, why not? I’m not one to back down from a fight.
An uptight professional woman in her thirties—brown hair, corporate skirt suit, big stick up her ass—stood at the receptionist desk with her hands on her hips. She blinked incredulously at the seat vacated by the weeping girl. The other receptionist was busy talking through her headset and focusing very hard on her scheduling software. From my point of view, I could see her phone wasn’t actually on.
Skin After Skin - PsyCop 8 Page 6