Summer Blowout

by Claire Cook

  8. Best Color. Select the one color you’re most likely to be wearing when you get a compliment.

  That’s it! Just press Continue to fill out your address and credit card info, and Bella’s Bag of Beauty Basics will be back at you with your individualized, customized, and personalized makeup plan. Your kit will be beautifully packaged and include customized foundation, a magic elixir ( just add two drops if your foundation looks too pale next summer), plus product samples and a personalized diagram with individualized product suggestions for eyes, cheeks, and lips. Bellisima!

  I’d found some great template-based Web design software when I designed our salon Web site, so I spent the afternoon downstairs at Salon de Paolo registering the domain and working on a site for Bella’s Bag of Beauty Basics. Then I took a break because I couldn’t wait to put a kit together for Lizzie.

  21

  THE SALONS WERE USUALLY CLOSED ON MONDAYS, but since we were going to be closed on Friday and Saturday because of Andrew’s wedding, my father had decided to make Monday Friday this week. “Rome wasn’t made to be a day,” he said whenever anybody complained that this might be too confusing, which, of course, was even more confusing.

  Our weekly or “standing” appointments had been jammed into Thursday. Friday appointments for customers who came in less often and had flexible schedules had been moved up to Monday, but Tulia’s mother, Didi, didn’t want to give up her Monday morning kickboxing class. Since she was the Friday receptionist at Salon de Lucio, the rest of us were taking turns answering the phone until she showed up.

  “Did you hear about Celeste Sullivan?” Esther Williams asked as I parted her hair and clipped half of it out of the way with a long metal duckbill clip. “Keeled right over in the middle of a bridge game. Two days short of her eighty-ninth birthday. That’s why I couldn’t wait till Thursday.”

  “Oh, that’s awful,” I said.

  “Too young,” Esther Williams said. “She’ll get a great turnout at the wake tonight, but the funeral might be only fair to middling. There’s a Senior Center trip to Foxwoods, and the tickets are nonrefundable. It’s a tough call. She loved Foxwoods.”

  I’d decided to teach Cannoli, who was wearing her black and white KARMA’S A BITCH T-shirt today, to be my assistant. She was turning out to be highly trainable, maybe even gifted. Just since I’d started setting Esther Williams’s hair, she’d already learned to fetch the plastic curlers that I dropped and hold them hostage until I gave her a doggie treat. I’d had human assistants who didn’t show half the promise.

  Mario walked by. “Don’t let Dad catch you doing that,” he said. “Hey, that’s not the same dog, is it?”

  I shook my head. It was a relief to know the disguise was working. Esther Williams was checking out Mario as he walked across the room. “By the way,” I said to her, “this is my new dog, Cannoli.”

  Esther Williams put on her glasses and leaned over the side of the chair so she could see Cannoli. “Well, doesn’t that look like a rabies shot waiting to happen. It better not be drooling on those curlers, Missy.”

  “Don’t worry. She’d never do that.” I took a closer look at Esther Williams. “Are you okay?”

  Esther Williams put one hand on her chest. “I don’t like going anywhere on a Monday. I read somewhere it’s the most common day for a heart attack.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I read somewhere it’s the most common day for finding a husband, too.”

  “You don’t say,” she said. I gave her a minute to look around the room for potential husbands. Then I put the next pink curler in.

  My father came walking by, carrying a grappa-size package under his arm and shuffling through the latest stack of letters from Realtors and developers.

  “Nice to be wanted,” Mario said.

  “Don’t think I don’t know who’s behind it,” my father said. He held one hand against his neck, then extended his fingertips, kind of popping them off the end of his chin in the direction of The Best Little Hairhouse in Marshbury.

  My father was wearing camouflage pants and a rib knit sweater that picked up on the army green. I grabbed a curler out of Cannoli’s mouth before he saw it. “Hi, Dad,” I said. “How’s it going? Is everybody loving that shiny new head of yours?”

  “Is the pope Catholic?” my father said. He noticed Esther Williams and picked up his pace.

  “Is that you, Lucky Larry Shaughnessy?” Esther said. “Come over here so I can get a good look at you.”

  The phone rang. “Your turn, Bella,” Angela yelled across the room from her station.

  I scooped up Cannoli and jogged over to the phone. “Good morning, Salon de Paolo,” I said. “I mean Lucio.”

  The voice on the other end said something that sounded like cost of fog. I knew that voice.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  He said it again, but this time it sounded more like lost of dog.

  My heart started to beat like crazy. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I think you have the wrong number.” And then I hung up.

  The phone rang again. I walked away.

  Mario picked it up. “Salon de Lucio,” he said. “What? That’s ridiculous. We’ve never had a problem with it. Okay. Okay.”

  “Dad?” he said after he hung up. “That was somebody from the town. They said they got a complaint that our septic system is failing. They’re sending somebody over to test it. You know these old systems never pass inspection.”

  It would be hard to find anyone in Marshbury who hadn’t heard a septic system horror story. Title V, which detailed the state’s stringent septic regulations, was meant to protect the environment from faulty systems, but there were lots of people in town, particularly elderly people, who could barely afford to pay their skyrocketing property taxes. If a septic system failed, or worse, if someone anonymously reported it failed to the health inspector because they wanted to get their hands on the house, a person might be forced to sell their home if they couldn’t afford to put in a new, expensive septic system.

  And even if they could afford it, a septic system for a waterfront property, like the one my father’s house and Salon de Lucio sat on, might have to be raised up out of the ground, so it wouldn’t contaminate the harbor. Nothing like walking out the door to a big hump of grass-covered septic system between you and your view.

  My father crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s that hairhouse, I know it is. They’ve got another thing coming if they think they’re going to put me out of business.”

  “ARE YOU SURE SHE DOESN’T look like a Chihuahua/ terrier with a dye job?” I asked Mario.

  “Honestly, it looks completely different,” Mario said.

  “Cannoli,” I said. “Call her Cannoli. Come on, practice saying it, everybody.”

  “Cannoli,” everybody said in unison. We were all sitting around waiting for my father to show up for the Friday meeting, which had been switched to Monday along with the rest of the day.

  Ever since the lost of dog call, I’d known it was just a matter of time before the Silly Siren father of the bride showed up. By now I was such a wreck I was practically starting to twitch. “Tell me what you think she looks like,” I said.

  Vicky stopped dusting. “A dog,” she said. Her Road to Responsibility coach looked up from her magazine.

  “Thanks, Vicky,” I said. “I don’t know, I think she looks more poodle than terrier now, but I can still see some Chihuahua. Maybe we can pass her off as a chawoodle.”

  “Or a poowawa,” one of the stylists said. She and another stylist were straightening each other’s hair with a flat iron today. I was kind of wishing I’d thought of doing that with Cannoli’s fur, instead of buzzing it off. Maybe I could have turned her into a mini-Afghan.

  “Okay,” I said, as soon as I gave my lips a calming hit of Maybelline Peach Colada. “The important thing is that we all get the story straight. Cannoli came from a breeder in Italy, and she’s been with us ever since the salon opened.”

 
“Wouldn’t that make her two hundred and thirty-eight in dog years?” Todd said.

  “Stop being such an accountant,” I said. “We can’t lose sight of the fact that she’s not safe with that awful bride. Just remember, even if this seems like a small thing to you now”—I looked over at Sophia, who was glaring at me—“it might well save a dog’s life.”

  My father usually entered through the breezeway door, but the salon door opened, and he came tiptoeing in, still wearing his camouflage clothes. He tucked the big rubber mallet he was holding behind the reception desk.

  “That’ll fix ’em,” he said. He started snapping his fingers. Nobody moved.

  “Lucky,” Tulia’s mother, Didi, said. “Now what did you do?”

  Mario got up to look out the window.

  My father was wearing his cat-who-swallowed-the-canary look. He rubbed his hand back and forth across the top of his head like he was polishing it. “Go outside and look across the street,” he said. “One at a time, so it won’t seem obvious, in case anybody’s watching.”

  “I’ll go,” Mario said.

  My father started snapping his fingers again, and by the time Mario came back we’d all moved our chairs into a semicircle. Sophia and I made sure ours were at opposite ends.

  Mario pulled the salon door closed behind him. He was wearing a button-down shirt in a shade of rust that matched his freckles exactly. “The Best Little Hairhouse in Marshbury is for sale?” he asked.

  My father slapped his knee.

  “Dad,” I said. “You didn’t.”

  He pretended to zip his lips. Everybody got up from their chairs and started heading to the windows.

  “Come on, Dad,” Mario said. “We don’t need trouble. It’s going to cost us enough money if we have to put in a new septic system.”

  “Lucky, where’d you get the sign?” Todd asked.

  My father gave his head another rub. “Lots of houses on the market these days, Toddy. It wasn’t even a challenge, except they sure hammer those signs in deep. They’re not as easy to pull up as you might think.”

  Tulia turned away from the window. “I don’t get it,” she said.

  “What’s not to get, my little bambino?” my father said. “Two can play at this game. They’ll never put us out of business if everybody thinks they’re on their way out of town.”

  The rest of us were still looking out the window. “Ooh,” one of the stylists said. “Here comes the hairhouse. This is so dramatical.”

  Mario looked out again. “Wow,” he said. “Those two wouldn’t slip under anybody’s gaydar.”

  “I told you,” my father said. “I’m doing my part, but the rest of you are going to have to start dressing a little bit flashier around here.”

  The salon door swung open. The two guys walked in. Both were wearing skin-tight jeans and T-shirts that were even tighter. They had blond-streaked hair, perfectly arched brows, and I thought perhaps I detected a hint of Botox. I squinted to see if their faces moved when they talked.

  My father put his hands on his hips. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But we don’t take walk-ins.”

  “Like we’d even consider it,” the taller and blonder of the two said.

  “Good thing,” my father said. “Because I’m a beautician, not a magician.” He bent over and slapped his knee.

  The tall guy ignored him and held up a FOR SALE sign. “Know anything about this?”

  My father laced his fingers together on top of his scalp. “About what?”

  I felt like I was in an old western. I took a step forward. “Listen,” I said, “there’s plenty of room in this hair town for all of us.”

  “Tell that to the old man,” the tall one said.

  The shorter guy spoke up. “You know, you’re not the first homophobe we’ve met in our lives, Gramps.”

  “Hey, watch that big bocca of yours, sonny boy. I even have a gay of my own. Two if you count the husband.”

  Mario and Todd waved. “He’s not very PC, but he grows on you,” Todd said.

  “Say you’re sorry about the sign, Dad,” Mario said. “And promise you won’t do it again.”

  “Sei pazzo!” my father yelled. “That means ‘you’re crazy,’ for the non-Italians in the room,” he added.

  “Which would essentially be everybody,” I said.

  My father started shaking his fist. “What kind of hairdresser drops a dime on his neighbor’s septic system? Scemo! Stupido! Cretino!” He spit on the floor of the salon. “Disgrazio!”

  Vicky walked over and started sweeping up the spit on the floor.

  The Best Little Hairhouse guys shook their heads. “We have no idea what he’s talking about,” the shorter one said.

  My father took a step forward. He made the finger-popping-from-his-chin gesture again. “Disgusto!” he yelled. Mario grabbed him by the belt loop of his camouflage pants.

  The taller guy handed the FOR SALE sign to Todd. “Just keep him away from our salon, okay?”

  As soon as they left, Cannoli ran over to the door and started barking.

  “A little late, don’t you think?” I said.

  “That’s not a dog in my salon, is it?” my father asked.

  “Okay, let’s not get testy, everybody,” Mario said. “We’ve got a big week ahead of us.”

  “So, is Andrew all set for the wedding?” Angela asked when we all sat down again, except for my father, who’d gone back to the house to get a bottle of grappa. “By the way, we’re not leaving until Saturday morning. The kids have Friday afternoon soccer games they can’t miss.”

  Mario smiled. “I think he’s getting a little bit nervous about the wedding. He hates being the center of attention.”

  “Mike wanted to work late on Friday and meet the kids and me there on Saturday,” Tulia said. “I said no way, so we’re all flying down together Friday afternoon. Maggie still can’t believe she really gets to be a flower girl at her cousin’s wedding. And Andrew was so nice to ask both Mack and Myles to be ring bearers. I just hope Myles doesn’t eat the ring. He’s in an oral phase.” The kids weren’t with her today, unless she’d forgotten to take them out of the car.

  “Well, they’re the perfect age,” Angela said. “My kids loved it when they were in Bella’s wedding.”

  “Let’s not go there,” I said.

  “You know,” one of the stylists said, “I keep thinking it’s Friday night, and it’s almost time to go out.” She shook her head. “It’s very disorganizing.”

  There was a knock on the door. “I wonder who that is,” Sophia said. She looked at me and smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. She got up and started walking to the door.

  The door opened. It was the Silly Siren father. I grabbed Mario’s arm.

  “Hi,” Sophia said. “Looking for something? Maybe with four legs?”

  Mario peeled off my hand and stood up, too. “Nice to see you again, sir,” he said. “Can I help you?”

  I hunched over Cannoli so she wouldn’t be so noticeable. Mario walked past Sophia and told the Silly Siren father we were in a meeting. He opened the door, and they walked outside together. Sophia paused at the doorway. The rest of us all leaned forward in our chairs, trying to hear them.

  Sophia turned around and looked right at me. “I can’t believe you’re trying to take his daughter’s dog away from her,” she said.

  “Look who’s talking,” I said. “Care to discuss who took what from who?”

  Vicky looked up from sweeping. “Whom,” she said.

  “Wow,” one of the stylists said. “She has good grammar.”

  “Not good,” another stylist said. “Well.”

  Sophia and I were still glaring at each other when Mario came back in, holding the pizza.

  “What happened?” about half the people in the room all asked at once.

  Mario put the pizza boxes on the reception desk. “Okay, here’s the official story. I told him you brought the dog back here because you didn’t know what else to do. And whe
n no one came to get it, I had to drop it off at the Marshbury Animal Shelter because we already had a salon dog. One who was known to be vicious with other animals. Killer Cannoli.”

  I got up and gave Mario a big kiss on the cheek. “You’re the best,” I said. I held up Cannoli so she could give him a kiss, too. “Did you hear that, Killer?”

  My father came back with the grappa and opened a pizza box. He held up a slice. “Mangiamo!”

  We started reaching for the paper plates. “Did we have the meeting yet?” one of the stylists asked.

  22

  IT WAS GREAT TO HAVE A FOCUS. I’D BEEN WORKING almost round the clock and had a pile of kits all made up with nowhere to go. Once I finished the design and uploaded my Web site, I’d be in business. Lizzie’s kit was already in the mail. I’d been buying her makeup since she’d first asked for lipstick just like mine, so I knew exactly what would and wouldn’t work on her.

  I mixed up her foundation first. She had tawny hair, deep brown eyes, and cool medium skin, so to make her eyes pop, I also added some Revlon Molten Metal eye shadow in a gray-blue called Scene Stealer and a Bobbi Brown long-wear gel eyeliner in Sapphire Shimmer Ink to her kit. I didn’t put in any more makeup, because I wanted an excuse to send her another package soon.

  At the last minute, I’d decided to throw in four coupons for free online makeup kits for Lizzie to give to her college friends. I mean, why couldn’t I do a little bit of buzzing of my own? Plus, they could be my guinea pigs to make sure all the questionnaire links worked on my Web site. And their feedback would be a big help in fine-tuning the process. My goal was to make sure my foundation and product suggestions were as accurate online as they were in person.