I seduced them. I pampered them. I satisfied them.
And then, like a sated lover basking in the afterglow, they’d pick up their phone and brag about it to all their friends.
Time flies when you’re having fun…or at least the self-satisfaction of knowing you’re worth more than twenty bucks. Between customers, I found a message from Carolyn on my voicemail, and a shiver ran through me that was the opposite of deja vu. More like the feeling that since we’d last spoken, everything had changed.
“Is it too soon to do my roots? It’s my anniversary, I’ve got this dinner coming up….” A short sigh. “I need help.”
I booked an appointment. Of course I did. But the rest of the day I felt like an upwardly mobile bride caught in last year’s gown. Psychic talent was serious business for Carolyn. She believed it gave her a crimefighting edge. Me, I’d been mentored by a palm reader with a big neon sign, and it showed.
I didn’t leave my gear at CUTTERZ where Gail could paw through it at her leisure. I brought it downstairs and stowed it in one of Lydia’s tiny back rooms. The next morning I left half of it there in hopes of toning things down and making it less obvious I’d been trading on the popularity of all things psychic.
But knowing Carolyn would be there, I saw my station with fresh eyes. Even without my spinner rack of gemstones and my incense bundles, it still looked as if my haircutting was a flimsy excuse to hawk potions and charms.
And to make matters worse, when Carolyn strode through that door, she dragged the ghost of Red along with her. No, he hadn’t perished in some dramatic streetcar accident, he was just dead to me. But seeing her again brought that night in his apartment flooding right back. It wasn’t just Carolyn who’d be judging my mortifying song and dance. It was the paragon of integrity, Red.
My voice sounded edgy to me when I greeted her with, “My favorite detective,” and caped her with a flourish. She didn’t seem to notice. Her scowl was turned inward and the line between her eyes was deep. My shtick had been honed so carefully over the course of the month that muscle memory took over. I sank my fingers into her hair. Not in the cursory way most stylists check length, but in the more intimate way I’d taken to touching my clients while I watched their body language and considered how I might lift not only their hair color, but their spirits.
Something was definitely up. I could see it in the set of her shoulders and feel it in the way her eyes avoided mine in the mirror. I wasn’t going to pry it out. When she was ready, she’d talk. I just blocked everything out—the music, Gail’s glares, my own embarrassment—and focused on the scalp massage. Relax, relax, relax. Everything will work out. It’s all good. Obviously I couldn’t psychically shoot the ideas through my fingertips. I needed to get myself centered. Thoughts like that are reflected in your stance and your touch, and whether or not people realize it, we’re reading body language all day long. Panic is contagious, but so is calm.
Carolyn’s eyes had drifted shut, and they opened with a snap. She blurted out, “My husband isn’t attracted to me.”
Well…that sucked.
Maybe the change was too much for the guy. Maybe he just wasn’t into blondes. (Baffling, I know.) While I could probably come up with a bunch of reasons, I didn’t immediately begin flinging them out. I paused, absorbed what she said, and then went back to the massage with my mantra. Relax, relax, relax.
When the hitch between her eyebrows unhitched, I leaned in so as not to scream over the music and said in her ear, “I dug out my old mannequin practice head last night and practiced an updo that’s sassy as all getout. Maybe it’ll blow him away, maybe not. What matters is that you know you’re smokin’ hot.”
We spent two hours together, my icy blonde PsyCop and me, and nary a word was said about my silly novelties—or anything else. It was probably for the best that it was too loud to talk. I’m hardly one to give relationship advice. I might know how to land ’em, but I’ve got no clue how to keep ’em.
And while I generally don’t do makeup—the wedding and prom circuit is really not my forte—I begged a tube of lipstick off one of the other stylists and finished off Carolyn’s look by painting her lips a bold, neutral red.
She scowled at herself in the mirror. Even the scowl was sultry. Whatever the husband’s deal was, I hoped Carolyn knew her perfect look when she saw it. If a man wasn’t into the real you, then what good was he?
Since I didn’t have any more appointments lined up, I suggested we swing by our restaurant for a quick pre-husband nip. When our margaritas came, I slid into the same side of the booth with her and said, “Give me your phone.” I snapped a picture of the two of us together so she could see herself like I saw her, fun and vibrant, then handed back her phone. “Your husband’s a lucky man. Don’t you forget it.”
Chapter 18
Tips at CUTTERZ were nowhere near as good as Luscious, plus I didn’t get an hourly rate, but between my special treatments and my marked-up party favors, I was bringing in something like my old income. I didn’t have to tolerate Ralph’s slimy groping to earn it, either.
Sure, what I offered was mostly window dressing. But the funny thing was, I got off on it. I spent my evenings checking out all the so-called psychic services people offered. Most weren’t old-school like Lydia’s fortune telling business. Nowadays they were more likely to combine themselves with pseudo-medical “therapies” or semi-psychological coaching.
Bureaucracy being what it is, the city tried to take its cut by limiting and licensing. Being certified as a psych was a four-figure proposition, and that’s just a single test. It doesn’t take into account the actual coursework you’d need as any kind of real therapist. But if the New Age practitioners were sufficiently vague in their claims, they could make do without an expensive certification—psychic, medical or otherwise.
It’s all verbiage. I couldn’t call myself a therapist, but I could say my services were therapeutic. Maybe I should have felt “inauthentic” for exploiting loopholes. I didn’t. I saw it as my duty to work the system that was trying to validate a bunch mumbo-jumbo firmly rooted in the placebo effect.
I’d put through for a wholesale license, not because I relished doing complicated taxes, but because it allowed me to shop where I could get bigger quantities of my best selling items at better prices. It meant buying in bulk, but so what? I wasn’t home enough to be bothered by the growing mountain of boxes dominating my living room.
I’d just scored half a pallet of incense, got it locked and loaded, and only realized once I was merging onto the Eisenhower that my car smelled an awful lot like Red Turner. No way was I going to store it next to the empty fish tank and have my whole house stink in a parody of domestic bliss. If I stuck it out on the balcony, it would get rained on, nearly three hundred bucks down the drain. Hopefully Lydia wouldn’t mind the smell. If anything, it might augment her business.
I shot her a quick text asking if she’d mind babysitting a few cartons of stinky incense and got an immediate reply: Outlook not so good.
While I’m a strong believer that clairvoyance is a bunch of hooey, several aspects of the reply pinged my radar. First, Lydia is such a heavy smoker, her nose probably hasn’t worked right in thirty years. Second, she had the space—I’d just moved two boxes of herbal hacky-sacks out of her closet. And third, she was being suspiciously cutesy by quoting the Magic 8 Ball…and the last adjective I’d use to describe Lydia is cute.
By the time I got to Wicker Park, I started telling myself I was overreacting. The building looked the same. No dramatic explosions or rioting mobs. Maybe I just didn’t know Lydia as well as I thought I did. I left the incense in the car and hurried in. Everything was hunky dory. The vestibule was its unlovely self and the stairs were still standing. Nothing out of place. Nothing but a single sheet of paper stuck to CUTTERZ front door…a love note from the Board of Health shutting it down for unsanitary conditions.
Numbly, I went downstairs, parked myself within view of the Buddha’s b
elly button and thumbed through an old magazine that extolled Ten Ways to Make Yourself Lucky. I’d go for just one, if there’d be any guarantee it wasn’t utter horseshit. After an excruciating stretch, Lydia’s client emerged, a twenty-something chick practically aglow from her reading, and I realized with no little disgust that I was jealous. What was waiting in her purported future? Love, money, fame? Whatever it might be, I doubted it was signed by the Board of Health.
Lydia slouched against the doorframe and crossed her arms. A sateen caftan decorated with astrology symbols covered whatever she had on underneath, most likely jeans and a T-shirt. “Tough break, kid. I’m booked up today, but if you want to hang out here…” she cocked her head toward her tiny back rooms. “Feel free.”
I realized I wanted to be anywhere but there. Ridiculous as it was, I felt betrayed. As a certified precog, the logic went, Lydia should have warned me something like this could happen. Yes, I was fully aware psychic ability was all a trumped up scam. And yet there was a wounded flutter of disappointment deep in my gut anyhow.
I was supposed to meet my mother for a craft fair and an early Sunday dinner, but I needed time to think. Never mind that I now had all the time in the world, since there was nowhere to report for work come morning. I couldn’t deal with the thought of fending off Maxine’s strained inquiries into my wellbeing, so I texted a vague line about not feeling so hot. She’d presume I was hungover. I didn’t bother to correct that presumption.
Back at my apartment, my late optimism surrounded me in the form of great, teetering stacks of boxes. Thousands of dollars, sunk. Herbs and tinctures, rocks and beads. Utter crap. Hours ago, I was positive I’d sell it all, and more. Now it loomed around the edges of the apartment, mocking me.
My Luscious customers were a loss. Even if I hung my shingle right next door, they’d find some excuse to not switch salons. But in all likelihood, I’d keep the clientele I’d started building up at CUTTERZ if I stayed in that neighborhood and worked similar hours. I could count the number of salons in a mile radius on one hand. The fancy ones were all owned by stylists too besotted with or too terrified of Ralph Maldonado to give me the time of day. The small ones were one-woman operations in someone’s home or basement. Plus a Mexican barber shop that probably wouldn’t appreciate my unique accessory scheme.
Even as I broadened my search, it was all more of the same. Gail had been my one shot. And it couldn’t have crashed and burned any more spectacularly.
I was staring at the same online map, clicking through the same few red salon dots hoping maybe I’d missed one that would fit, when my cell phone rang. I could not deal with Maxine. Not now. She’d insist on giving me a spirited pep talk—bad enough—and even worse, I’d undoubtedly hear the threads of relief and self-satisfaction as she not-so-secretly reveled in my failure. Because clearly, I wouldn’t be in this predicament if only I’d been something more respectable, like a senator.
I almost sent the call to voicemail before I realized it wasn’t my mother, it was Pilar.
My pall lifted.
“Long time no hear, girlfriend,” I said. “I sure as hell hope you’re not looking for a chair over at Gail’s place.”
“Why, what happened?”
“Condemned by the Board of Health, that’s what.”
“Wow. That’s a drag. But once she fixes the violations….”
“I highly doubt it.” In the course of my research, I happened upon some of the fines she would have racked up. Beaucoup bucks. She could do fifteen-dollar cuts round the clock and not even put a dent in them. “To be honest with you, I really won’t miss working with Gail. I always felt like I had to keep one eye on her or else she’d undercut me…and I’m not talking about a high fade, either.
“But you—I really miss working with you. You know how to treat people, and you take the time with them to make them feel special. Your cuts are right on the money, every time, and your clientele keeps coming back.
“I’ll bet if you flew the nest, enough of them would follow. Think about it: me, you, a little shop of our own. We run it like we want. No stupid Square Days or meltdowns at the reception desk. Charge what we want and keep every last cent, plus the tips. And best of all, no Ralph to deal with.”
“Since you left,” she piped in, “he’s been kind of a non-issue.”
“You’ll have to help me out. I can’t even begin to picture that.”
“He’s laying low. Stays in his office, mostly, and just focuses on the business end.”
Maybe for now. But Ralph was too old of a dog to learn new tricks; he’d start focusing on an end much fleshier than the business end just as soon as he recruited another stylist who got under his skin in all the right ways. “Obviously I won’t wish his wrath on anyone, especially you. But you know it’s just a matter of time. Nothing will ever really change there, he’s too married to the power. Tell me you don’t sense it every time he hands out the tip envelopes.”
There was a pause. Three years of sounding off at me about Ralph, and suddenly she needs to be diplomatic in her choice of words? With me? “Funny you should say…that’s one of my duties, now.”
“Handing out the tips?”
“Anything to do with the Junior Stylists. He put me in charge.”
She’d spoken gingerly, as if she was scared of pissing me off. Which pissed me off even more. “Senior Stylist. I see. I suppose I should take you out for a celebratory drink.”
“Totally. Next week, maybe? Not right now—things are crazy busy right now.” Right. So if Pilar wasn’t calling to bitch about Ralph, which I now realized was the basis of our relationship, and if she wasn’t calling to gloat about her promotion…. “Actually, I was hoping you could put me in touch with Red.”
Oh, girlfriend. You did not just say that.
“Because Julia was in for a touch-up and I’m starting to see some green peeking through—box color is such a mess, and I don’t want to make it worse. If he could tell me what he used to counteract it in the first place—”
“No.” I said it calmly. I think. Pilar waited for me to elaborate. I didn’t.
“No, you don’t have his number? Or no, you won’t help me out because you hate Julia?”
I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and said, “All the no.”
“Fine. And not that you asked for my advice, but maybe if you acted more like a professional, people would start treating you like one.”
* * *
CUTTERZ closing when it did was the perfect storm. I’d just paid a fat stack of bills including rent on both my apartment and my booth.
Yes, Gail owed me that money back, but I wasn’t counting on her forking it over anytime soon. So that left me with a bank account running on fumes, a living room full of gimmicky rocks, and absolutely zero income in the foreseeable future.
I thought being free from both Ralph and Gail would feel liberating, but instead their absence just made me aware of the nagging feeling I should do something. If only I knew what.
One good thing came out of all that time off. I got so sick of looking at my empty aquarium I finally put it on Craigslist. People are funny, though. Despite the quality of my tank, no one was willing to pay even a quarter what it was worth. The local FancyFish had a tank that size on sale, and even though that model was a cheap piece of crap, the prevailing argument was that mine should be even cheaper because it was used. So I told them if they felt that way, they were welcome to shop at FancyFish.
Maybe I told one or two to fuck off, too.
The thing about Craigslist is that it’s so easy to wander over into the personals and end up wasting time on a bunch of lame nooners. On the plus side, I met several hot guys over the course of the month. Too bad none of them were paying clients. And none of them knew the value of an aquarium, either.
Meanwhile, all my daily expenses went on the plastic. Every time I tried to stick to an allowance, I’d realize my gas tank was empty, my stomach was rumbling, or I was distressingly s
ober. Eventually I decided the daily allowance was an abstraction anyhow. What good was it to try and balance income with expense if my income was always zero?
My job search broadened. If it came down to it, I was willing to babysit a cubicle or wait tables to get my feet back under me. But looking like I look, I didn’t endear myself to the corporate types—and restaurants weren’t willing to take someone without foodservice experience, even when I did argue that I loved people and I was used to being on my feet all day. I suspected the arguing part hadn’t scored me any points. Then again, I wouldn’t have had to argue if they’d just kept an open mind and given me half a freakin’ chance.
I was closing in on the first of the month again, and with that, all the bills and payments I’d so cleverly engineered to come due at once. At the time, it was a matter of convenience. Now I was well and truly worried.
Once the first of the scary bills hit my inbox, I fled down to Wicker Park to see if Lydia might have any ideas. She managed to support herself without an unbearable boss or a shitty dayjob. She’d help me come up with something.
“I figured you’d come around sometime soon,” she said. “The Page of Wands has been hopping out of the deck all morning. C’mon in back and help me get these hangings to the laundromat.”
If I’d felt even remotely guilty for doing all the taking in the relationship, I rid myself of that notion ten minutes in. Those old ceilings are high, and unhooking the dusty curtains was nasty, precarious, eye-watering work. It took almost an hour for us to bundle them into some hampers—how had she planned to do all this herself?—and then three trips up and down the block to stuff them into the huge industrial front-loaders.
We parked ourselves in the plastic chairs to watch the curtains begin their journey to cleanliness. It was comforting. Who knows if it was the hypnotic motion of the sudsy water churning through the fabric, the camaraderie, or the fact that I was somewhere other than my stifling apartment. Even though I was still coughing up dust bunnies, for the first time since CUTTERZ went bye-bye, I could actually breathe.
Skin After Skin - PsyCop 8 Page 14