The Look of Love

by Crystal B. Bright

  Shortly after lunch, a young white man walked into the salon carrying an African-American toddler on his hip.

  “I don’t have an appointment.” The slim man waved his hand in the air. Both he and the little girl wore the same style fur-lined coat. “I need help.” He sat the child on the reception desk counter.

  “Don’t set that baby up here.” Monica pointed to the customer who’d styled his hair to mimic a rollercoaster ride. He had it stiffened with enough hairspray and mousse to withstand any hurricane or tornado.

  “Easy, Monica.” Gunnar walked up to the customer. “How can we help you?”

  The customer grabbed his child and took a couple of steps back from Gunnar. “Look, I’m not here to be ridiculed.”

  Gunnar scanned the area around him. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ve encountered guys like you before. Big, tough guys. Think it’s funny calling me names like fag or gay boy or wanting to talk about me having a black daughter.”

  Gunnar raised his hands in the air. “Sir, I’ve never met you. I would never be disrespectful to you or your child. I’m here to help.”

  “I don’t want your help.” When the little girl wiggled too much in his arms, he placed her on the floor to run around. “Terral is so much better with this than me.” The man covered his eyes with his hand.

  Gunnar thought he heard him sobbing.

  The girl walked up to him and patted him on the leg. “No cry, Dada.” Her hair had been styled in two disheveled Afro puffs.

  Yes, this man definitely needed help. Gunnar could tell that guys that looked like him had picked on this man for his lifestyle. To Gunnar, it didn’t make a difference.

  Eboni brought over a cup of water to the customer. “How can we help?”

  He dabbed under his eyes and brought his child over to him. “My husband’s is out of town. He normally does Alicia’s hair. That’s her name. Alicia after Alicia Keys.”

  “Very pretty name for a very pretty girl.” Eboni crouched down to get eye level with the child.

  “Thank you. I’m Marc, with a C.”

  “Nice to meet you, Marc. You need us to do her hair?”

  The customer nodded. “She won’t sit still for me. She won’t let me wash it. She won’t let me comb it. Her hair is a little, um, challenging.”

  Monica squeezed out an, “uh-huh,” through her nose.

  “Monica.” Gunnar shook his head at her.

  “Let me give her a try.” Eboni opened her arms up to see if the child would let her pick her up.

  “No!” Alicia ran to the other side of her father.

  “Maybe it would be best if you held her while I did her hair?” Eboni stood.

  “Come on, baby. Come to Daddy.”

  The child, in her pink tights with matching white dress with pink flowers over it, jumped into her father’s arms. He walked her over to Eboni’s station.

  Gunnar strolled over to the cart with the hair curlers and searched the bottom shelf for his mother’s secret box. She kept it for children like Alicia.

  He watched Eboni attempt to remove the hair ties from the child’s jet-black hair. Alicia twisted and turned her head so much that watching her could make a person seasick.

  While Marc attempted to hold Alicia on his lap, Eboni managed to remove one rubber band from her hair.

  “Oh, not good. Shouldn’t use rubber bands on her hair.” Eboni threw it away.

  “I didn’t know. Like I said, Terral normally does this.” Marc reached up to remove the other rubber band.

  As soon as it was removed, Alicia’s wild hair made a halo around her face.

  “Okay, let’s get started.” Eboni pulled out a wide-tooth comb.

  As soon as Alicia saw it, she started crying and hugged her father around his neck.

  “She does the same thing with me.” Marc patted his daughter on the back. He looked like he wanted to shed some tears himself.

  Gunnar had to help them out without pushing himself on them. Marc had made it clear that he didn’t like Gunnar’s kind.

  In an exaggerated fashion, Gunnar plopped down in one of the chairs that sat under the hair dryer. Alicia, Marc, and Eboni turned to him.

  Gunnar carried his mother’s box in his hand. He backed his head up and bumped it against the hairdryer bonnet. He pretended the intentional ding hurt him so much that he had to rub the back of his head.

  Alicia giggled and pointed to Gunnar.

  Gunnar rubbed his head and then opened the box, being sure to keep the contents hidden from Alicia’s prying brown eyes. He removed a pink plastic hair barrette shaped like a bow from the box and slipped it into the side of his hair.

  Again, Alicia giggled. She wriggled off Marc’s lap and padded over to Gunnar, being sure to stay a couple of feet from him.

  Gunnar pulled a long yellow ribbon from the box and wrapped it around his ponytail holder. Then he retrieved a hair band with pink butterflies on it and put it at the front of his head. He realized that he’d made a fool of himself. In doing so, Alicia approached him.

  He finally turned the box around so that she could see the contents. The dark-skinned beauty reached into the box and pulled out a white barrette. Gunnar turned his head for her and she attached it to the end of his ponytail.

  “Pretty?” he asked her.

  She nodded. Then she pointed to her hair.

  “I could do that to you if you want. Can I try?”

  Alicia nodded.

  “Good. I’ll do you like my mama used to do her clients.” Gunnar slid down to the floor and rested his back against the chair.

  The child, as though she’d done it before, sat on his lap as she busied herself playing with another barrette from his box.

  Gunnar turned to Marc. “Are you okay with this?”

  Marc, with his mouth agape, could only look at Eboni, who also looked as shocked. Then the customer finally nodded.

  “Good.” Gunnar pulled out a paddle brush and started brushing Alicia’s hair.

  The entire time he styled her hair, Gunnar told her stories and kept the child talking. By the time he finished, Gunnar had put eight cornrows in her hair and secured the end with a hair clip that Alicia had chosen. As long as he talked to her, she stayed still for him.

  “All done, baby girl.” Gunnar lifted the child to her feet and stood up himself.

  Alicia ran to Marc and held her arms up to him. Marc admired the work and then looked over at Gunnar.

  Before Marc could say anything, Gunnar said, “Wrap her head at night. She should be good with this style for a few days. If you need help with her hair, don’t hesitate to come by the shop.”

  “Thank you so much. And I’m sorry for what I said to you before. It’s just--”

  “I know.” Gunnar held his hand up. “I did the same thing to a kid who came in here.” He glanced at Eboni, hoping she had caught his remorse. “I’m not one of those guys.”

  Marc nodded. “What do I owe you?”

  “I didn’t do a perfect job on her hair. Her parts are not straight. I could have made the rows a little tighter. No charge for this one as long as you spread the word to your friends to bring business here.”

  Marc helped his child on with her coat. “Done.” He shook Gunnar’s hand. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “Keep your business with us.” Gunnar looked down at Alicia. “Bye, Princess Alicia.” He gave her a courtly bow.

  “Bye-bye, Gun-Gun.” She laughed at him as she walked out with her father.

  Gunnar turned around and saw a sea of stunned faces staring back at him. “What?”

  “How did you do that?” Monica asked first. “I have five daughters. I’ve never gotten them to be as good as that girl was for you.”

  “My mom taught me the secret.” He pulled out the hair accessories he’d used to lure the child in to trust him. “Get down to their level. Make them laugh. Make them be a part of their
hairstyle choices. Doesn’t always work. For her, it did.”

  Gunnar walked by Eboni who stepped into his path. She stared at him but didn’t say a word.

  She cleared her throat. “Um, forgot one.” She unclipped the white barrette Alicia had put in his ponytail. “Here.” She handed it to him.

  “Thanks.” He hoped with the child and everything he’d done today that Eboni saw him as a different man.

  When he gazed back at her and she smiled at him, he had a feeling he had begun to win her over. Getting to know Eboni again went beyond his mother’s advice of sitting down with each employee and talking to them. Eboni started to look at him the way she used to when they’d first dated. Those stares alone ignited the smoldering flame that existed in him, the fire for her that had never been extinguished.

  Chapter 7

  At the end of the day, Gunnar helped clean up the salon until only he and Eboni remained. He had a feeling from the way she dragged out folding the clean towels that she’d planned it that way. When he thought about being alone with her, he felt like a teenager again and his stomach fluttered. He wondered what kind of damage they could do in her Smart Car.

  As soon as Tillman walked out, she eased over to him in Elizabeth’s office.

  “Did I thank you for donating your money to me, I mean, the center?” She sat on the edge of the desk as he sat behind it watching the security monitors.

  “It wasn’t my money. I told you I would do what I could while I was here.” He turned in the chair to face her. “Guess I’m not as cruel and heartless as you think.”

  “I deserved that.”

  Even with her working hard all day, Eboni glowed. Her golden skin tone brightened the dim office.

  “Why?” Eboni started to chew on her thumbnail, a habit he hadn’t seen her do since her junior high days. “Why was it so easy for you to come back for your mom?”

  Gunnar stared at her for a moment, considering the ramifications of letting her get that close to him, that close to the truth, the ugly truth.

  “My birth mother was a really bad drug addict and alcoholic.” He spoke slowly and evenly so that she could absorb his words. “Gideon was too young to remember a lot of what she did. She used to beat us for no reason. Some boyfriend left her, she would hit me. She couldn’t get her beer or wine for the night, she’d smack Gid.” He raised his arm and showed her a small circular patch of discolored and rippled skin near his inner elbow. “See that?” He glanced up at her. “That’s where she put out her cigarette on me because the store wouldn’t sell me beer for her and they called social services. I was only eight.”

  Recalling that moment, Gunnar could feel his birth mother’s cold hand wrapping around his wrist, pulling him forward, and stamping out her smoldering cigarette into his flesh. He covered his arm when his imagination got the better of him and he could feel the burning sensation over again and smell his scorched skin.

  “I didn’t know.” Eboni attempted to stroke his face but he leaned back, not wanting compassion or pity right now.

  “No one knew. I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t even share this with Thane, who was a baby at the time. The three of us got bounced from foster home to foster home. Sometimes together. Sometimes not. It wasn’t until the three of us landed with Miss Elizabeth Wells, as she was known when she took us in, that we started to have some stability.” He recalled the moment he walked into her home. He distinctly remembered the doilies. She had them everywhere. He remembered how much he’d hated them back then. Now, whenever he saw one, it reminded him of her.

  “She took you in. That was a good thing, right?” Eboni moved closer to him.

  “Absolutely. As a kid, I didn’t see it that way. I had been with people who’d taken me and my brothers in for the check. I lumped my mother into that category. So I made her life a living hell in every way possible. I screwed up at school. I stayed out late. I drank. I smoked pot. If I was offered drugs, I took them. I wanted to be out of this woman’s house and this world.” Gunnar saw the look of horror grace Eboni’s face.

  She wanted truth. He would give it all to her.

  “When I got older, maybe twelve or thirteen, right before you and I met, I became uncontrollable. I stole from my mother. I treated my brothers like crap. They didn’t get it. They didn’t understand my pain because I didn’t understand it. My mother did all she could to help me. She took me to church. I would steal money from the offering plate and sleep during the sermons. One night, I started to leave the house to hang out with this group of friends who were the dregs of society. Real pieces of crap. They were who I thought I deserved.”

  “What happened?”

  “My mother tried to stop me. She told me not to leave the house. I told her--” Gunnar paused in this hurtful part of the story. His throat started to feel scratchy. He cleared it and barreled through the rest of the tale. “I told her that she wasn’t my real mother and I cursed at her. I left the house and got up with my buddies. One of them points out a crazy lady in heels walking toward us. I turn. It’s Queen Elizabeth herself.”

  Eboni smiled. “She followed you?”

  Gunnar nodded. “She said in front of my friends that I was her son and that she loved me. She said that she had no problem showing me off to her friends and that she hoped I had that same feeling and wanted me to introduce her to my friends. When I told her I couldn’t do that, she said that if my friends weren’t good enough for me to introduce to my mother, then they aren’t the people I should associate with.”

  Eboni nodded. “Sounds like something she would say.”

  “One of my friends got the bright idea that he was going to rob my mother in front of me. In that moment, something clicked. No one, and I do mean no one, had ever stuck their neck out for me. She did that. She actually cared enough to put her life on the line. I knew a few of those guys had weapons on them. Knives, brass knuckles, guns. They could have hurt her. As soon as one tried going after her, I jumped on him and beat him down. If she hadn’t pulled me off of him, I would have seriously hurt him. I straightened up then. I went to church. My grades in school improved. I followed her teachings to the letter. When she told me to respect women, I did it.”

  Eboni chuckled. “You were and are the only guy who ever opened my door for me.”

  “My mother, the woman who raised me, will always be number one because she made me and my brothers a top priority in her life. I can honestly say I wouldn’t be where I am today without her. She taught the three of us a good work ethic when she made us work in her businesses. That’s when I met you I think.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t remember?”

  Gunnar racked his brain but couldn’t recall the exact moment.

  “You were at Oceanfront with your friends playing basketball. My girlfriends and I were doing double Dutch and some boy took our ropes. You ran after that kid and he screamed for dear life.”

  Gunnar laughed. “Yeah, I had a temper back then.”

  “You caught up to that boy and got our ropes back. You handed them to me and stared at me.” She glanced at him. “Kind of like the way you’re looking at me now. And you said--”

  “I believe these belong to you.” He remembered that moment now. He also recalled the softness of her skin.

  “You said you liked watching me jump.” As soon as she said it, her bottom jaw unhinged. “You pervert.”

  Gunnar laughed. “At least I was honest.”

  “Thanks again for taking on Mrs. Pratt.”

  He started to stand. “You didn’t think I could handle her, did you?”

  “She is a lot to take.”

  “It’s okay. She probably recognized that I could do hair better than you.” He shrugged.

  “Excuse me?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You had one good day with one or two clients and you think that that means you’re a better stylist? Get real.”

  “I’ve only been here for two days and I’ve done
more hair than you. All I’ve seen you do is slap your gums around.” He made a talking mouth motion with his hand.

  “Great of you to say that when there are no clients left to show you.”

  Gunnar raised his hands in the air. “I’m here.” He took out his hair tie to allow his hair to fall freely about his neck and shoulders. Chuck would have hated to see it. “Work your magic on me.”

  Eboni snickered. “Are you serious?”

  “Sure.” He walked by her to the main salon. He wrapped a towel around the back of his neck and assumed the position. Of course, he had to scoot down in order to get his head into the bowl. “Work your magic.”

  “Okay. Just don’t start crying when I make you look fabulous.”

  “I’ll try to reserve my tears.”

  * * * *

  Eboni couldn’t believe Gunnar’s challenge. She ran the water in the sink, testing the temperature with her fingertips before sluicing the water over his hair. She ran her fingers through it to make sure to fully saturate each strand.

  Yes, that excuse sounded good in her head instead of the real reason of wanting to run her fingers through his silky tresses.

  She started to choose the standard shampoo that all the stylists used but stopped herself and instead chose one with a flowery scent. As soon as she rubbed it in his hair, Gunnar opened his eyes.

  “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.” He screwed up his lips.

  “You relax, Mr. Wells. I’ll have you in and out in no time.” Eboni had to bite her bottom lip to keep from laughing.

  After rinsing the shampoo out, she covered his hair with creamy conditioner. Gunnar kept his eyes closed while she slathered the product.

  “Sit up, please.”

  Gunnar did as instructed while keeping the towel wrapped around his neck. Eboni picked up a wide-tooth comb and started combing his hair to detangle it.

  “Sharing time.” Gunnar kept his head still while she combed. “I opened up about something personal. Time for you to do the same.”

  Eboni stopped combing for a moment. “Depends on what you want me to share.”