The Barbershop Girl

by Georgina Penney

  ‘Want to tell me what’s got you so upset that you cried buckets last night?’ Jo asked eventually.

  Amy stifled a sigh and finished pouring her luxuriously thick brew into Jo’s special blue and white striped mug before filling up her own. ‘I knew I should have poisoned Scott’s coffee this morning.’ She placed both drinks on a bamboo tray, added two generous slices of just-iced chocolate cake, then made herself comfortable at the table.

  Jo laughed softly, accepting her hot chocolate, running it under her nose and sniffing appreciatively. ‘Ta. Wouldn’t have worked. One look at you and I knew you were feeling flat.’

  Amy frowned.

  ‘You only wear those old jeans when you’re pissed off or have PMS.’ Jo shrugged. ‘The rest of the outfit gave you away too.’

  ‘What?’ Amy looked down at her bright yellow hoodie with a smiling Tweety Bird on the front. ‘How?’

  ‘It doesn’t go with your lippy or nail polish. It’s a sad, sad day when Amy Blaine isn’t colour coordinated.’ Jo shook her head with mock gravity, pursing her lips to hold back a smile.

  Amy scowled down at her nails, which were painted a bright coral. Damn, Jo was right.

  ‘I bet you’re wearing black undies too. You only wear those when you’re really pissy.’

  ‘Am not.’ Amy checked all the same, sticking her nose up in the air when Jo was proven correct. ‘Smarty pants.’

  Jo chuckled. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment. So what’s bugging you?’

  ‘Nothing. Everything.’

  ‘Man trouble?’

  ‘Yeah, or more to the point, lack of man trouble.’ Amy pushed a marshmallow around her hot chocolate before raising her finger to her lips, licking off the icing sugar that clung to it.

  ‘Want to talk about it?’

  ‘Nope.’ Amy smiled to take the sting out of her rejection. After a truly epic fight nearly a decade before, she and Jo had come to an agreement that her love life was off-limits. ‘You can tell me how the wedding plans are going instead, though.’

  Jo smacked a hand over her eyes. ‘Thanks, Ames. Stick the knife in and cut me to the bone, why don’t you? Tell me, why did I agree to get married in the first place?’

  ‘I dunno. From memory it had something to do with falling for an awesome, lovable lug and having spectacular sex on a regular basis, but what’d I know?’ Amy grinned widely at Jo’s obvious distress. ‘You know it’s not really the drama you’re making it out to be. Stephen’d get married in a shearing shed to make you happy. You’re just upset because you know I’ll insist you wear a frock.’

  Jo grimaced. ‘Yeah, you would too. Bitch.’

  ‘Love you too. Come on, it can’t be that bad.’

  Jo averted her eyes. ‘It’s not, but setting up the brewery has taken up all our time lately and it’s still gonna be another few years before we start making any kind of decent profit. The thought of arranging a wedding right in the middle of it all is giving me the willies. That, and . . . I dunno . . . it’s awkward, you know? Stephen’s got such a big family and on our side there’s just you and me. Not that I’d want Mum and Dad there in a million years after what they did . . . but it kinda seems a bit sad, eh?’ Jo scuffed her foot across Amy’s floor, scowling at her big toe poking through a hole in the threadbare sock.

  ‘What about Scott? He’s our family too.’ Amy reached across the table to put her hand over Jo’s, her heart aching in sympathy. Ever since meeting her fiancé, Stephen, Jo had been happier than Amy had ever seen her. It was awful that their crappy childhood was returning to cause Jo unhappiness now, when things were going so well. Since she’d hooked up with Stephen, Jo had gone from strength to strength, quitting her job in the oil industry to set up the brewery with him at his family’s winery.

  ‘Yeah, but Scott is Stephen’s cousin, so he sort of doesn’t count in this case. Although I’ve been threatening to make him a bridesmaid.’ Jo’s wide mouth curved up in a reluctant, wry smile. ‘He’s pretty enough.’

  They shared a mutual grin at the thought of their six-foot-three friend wearing a frock.

  ‘Pink for preference,’ Amy chuckled.

  ‘Hell, yeah.’ Jo withdrew her hand and broke off a large chunk of chocolate cake, moaning with pleasure at the first bite. ‘Hmm, Jesus this stuff is good.’

  ‘I know, I made it.’

  ‘No ego on you, Ames.’ Jo chuckled. ‘So you gonna get around to telling me about giving an opera singer the brush-off, or do I have to drag it outta ya?’

  ‘Scott told you that too?’ Amy felt a heated blush creeping up her cheeks.

  ‘Mmm hmm,’ Jo said, her mouth full of cake.

  ‘He’s such a tattle tale,’ Amy grumbled. She’d Googled Alex Crane the minute she’d returned home with her hardware supplies and had quickly discovered Scott had been right; Crane was an operatic superstar. Even more embarrassing, he was in Perth for a huge sell-out production that was being advertised all over town. How she’d failed to recognise him from the billboards, the flyers and the TV ads was beyond her.

  She’d also tried looking up his rude friend but hadn’t been able to remember the man’s last name. It was Ben . . . something. All she knew was that he’d featured in a really unpleasant dream last night.

  She’d been back in the bar, but this time she’d been naked and Mr Thug had been sitting across from her, smirking, his ice-green eyes cataloguing every one of her faults before he’d started laughing.

  She’d woken up feeling exposed, horribly vulnerable and, above all, confused.

  She successfully interacted with men in her barbershop every day of the week. Despite her past negative experiences with her alcoholic father and a bevy of ex-boyfriends, Amy rarely had a problem talking or relating to men and frequently felt more comfortable in their company than she did around women, in professional situations at least. It didn’t make sense that five seconds around this particular man had left her feeling like an overexposed piece of film. This morning she’d brushed the feeling off as the effect of too much wine, but that didn’t stop her feeling anxious about him actually turning up on Monday morning.

  ‘This is where you tell me what happened instead of staring into space.’ Jo poked her gently with a finger.

  ‘Do I have to?’

  ‘Yep, or I’ll sit on you and force you to. Tell you what though, how about I let you rip the hair off my legs while you do it? Come on, that way you can make me scream if I laugh. Remember last time?’

  Amy chuckled despite herself, pushing the memory of taunting green eyes and nine o’clock appointments firmly out of her mind. ‘Old Mrs Korrigan next door called the cops last time, thinking someone was attacking me. Yeah, alright, it’s a deal. I haven’t been sadistic in a while. I’ll heat up the wax. Want your bite stick?’

  ‘Hell, yes.’

  Ben’s ring tone assaulted his ears with all the force of an air raid siren. Clearly someone in his acquaintance had lost all sense of civility and had taken up torture for a hobby.

  He snatched the phone off his bedside. ‘What?’

  ‘It’s me,’ Alex announced as if it were inconceivable that Ben could think it was anyone else.

  ‘I gathered that. To what do I owe the pleasure?’ He rolled over, pried his eyes open and peered blearily at the obnoxious red glow coming from his alarm clock. ‘At eight a.m. Eight a.m., Alex.I didn’t get to bed until four. Neither did you. What fit of insanity inspired you to wake me up at eight?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Something about a cut-throat shave.’ Alex’s smugness was almost tangible.

  ‘You go instead. I’m tired. I’ve changed my mind. She wasn’t all that interesting. I’ll write about something else.’

  ‘I can’t go. I’m tied up getting ready for my flight. I’m in the kitchen. I’ve made coffee, so get your ass out of bed and come drink it.’

  Ben grimaced, rasping his hand across his chin. It was covered in its usual dense, spiky forest of stubble, possibly the only thing he’d in
herited from his father. ‘You can drown yourself in that swill you call coffee for all I care. Then after you’ve finished doing that, you can untie yourself from getting ready for your flight and go get a shave. I’m staying here. In bed. Sleeping. Let yourself out quietly when you leave.’

  ‘Oh no, you don’t,’ Alex said with an inhumanly good-natured chuckle. Ben never understood how his friend could be such a cheerful ass in the morning.

  ‘You were the one who was a prick about making the appointment. I know you’re feeling guilty, or should be feeling guilty, so get out of bed and go apologise to the nice lady.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Can’t get out of bed?’

  ‘Can’t go. Don’t remember the name or address.’

  ‘The store is named Babyface in . . .’ Ben could hear paper rustling. ‘Fremantle. Not far from here according to Google Maps. I’ll see you in five minutes, or I’m coming in there, taking a picture of you and posting it online with your address so the paparazzi know where you are.’ Alex hung up and Ben threw his phone onto the unattended pillow next to him.

  ‘Bastard,’ he mumbled to himself, cursing both Alex’s sense of fair play and his own smart mouth. There’d just been something about the lady that had made him want to push her buttons to see which ones made her go. He knew he should be feeling a little remorse for his rudeness, and he was, but not enough to want to get out of bed. After all, she was only someone he’d offended once. There were numerous people in his life he’d offended on multiple occasions and he’d never bothered to get out of bed early to apologise to any of them.

  Although . . . he hadn’t yet come up with any material for his weekly newspaper column in the London Enquirer. Maybe the little blonde mistakenly identifying Alex as a sailor could be rounded out to produce an entertaining tale. He’d discounted it earlier because that one meeting didn’t provide quite enough material.

  Ben’s personal experiences were frequently fodder for his column, albeit augmented with a generous sprinkling of the salt and pepper of literary free licence. That wouldn’t change now that he’d relocated to Australia. In fact, after the recent unwanted media attention he’d received care of an ill-conceived fling with a publicity-hungry reality star, shining the light on someone else’s world would be entertaining.

  As much as he didn’t want to get up, he couldn’t pass up this golden – or more to the point, blonde – opportunity.

  Forty minutes later, Ben studied the front of an old-fashioned barbershop, its window painted with bold white letters spelling ‘Babyface’ and garnished with a spinning red and blue pole. Next to the barbershop sat some kind of beauty salon with similar bold writing over its window declaring that ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’.

  ‘Cute,’ he murmured before pushing the door open. A bell rang in the shop next door but the long, narrow space before him was devoid of life. Well, almost. The silence was broken by an antique record player spinning the sounds of an old Muddy Waters classic.

  Glancing around with a critical eye, Ben set about mental note taking, registering the dark green walls, scarred, dark wood floorboards and the two plush, deep brown leather barber chairs facing heavy square mirrors. On the wall directly behind one of the chairs, visible in the mirrors, was a framed print from Marilyn Monroe’s famous 1953 Playboy spread. It hung next to an equally large black and white print of a young shirtless Rock Hudson, a cigarette dangling out the corner of his mouth. Obviously catering to all tastes, Ben mused with raised brows.

  The room smelled invitingly of coffee and, if he wasn’t mistaken, chocolate.

  He turned around, wondering what the hell he was supposed to do now, when he spotted a discreet sign by the record player requesting that patrons take a seat and wait for Amy. Deciding to do just that, he took the chair affording the view of Marilyn and waited.

  The bell rang announcing someone’s presence in the barbershop and Amy paused in applying bleach to Jody Greave’s inch-long hair to make a futile motion for Kate, her only other senior stylist, to take over. When Kate feigned blindness, Amy squelched the urge to throw a hair dryer at the woman’s beautiful, sleek blonde head. She met her nail and beauty technician Marissa’s sympathetic gaze and grimaced, cursing the circumstances that had left her short staffed.

  On Monday the week before, Amy’s other senior stylist and good friend, Mel, had quit for the third time in the space of a year. As always, Mel had cited personal reasons for leaving without providing any details. She didn’t need to. It was obvious that she and Kate were on a downturn in their perpetual rollercoaster romance.

  For her part, Kate appeared largely unaffected by the temporary split. Well, other than exploring her inner bitch and being a total drama queen, but that was kind of normal.

  Amy had seen this particular soap opera numerous times now and knew that the two women would patch things up in a matter of weeks. Mel would ask for her job back and Amy would say yes.

  As much as Amy knew she shouldn’t forgive and forget, she would. Besides being a sweetheart, Mel was her only member of staff who could do decent weaves for Perth’s growing community of African immigrants, and Amy was losing customers without her. Just once though, Amy wished it could be Kate who quit instead. Kate had only been with Amy for two years and, despite being adored by Perth’s diva set, she was a pain in the arse and temperamental at the best of times.

  Luckily, it was the first day of the winter school holidays and the next two weeks would be quiet. The only appointments due in the salon this morning were Jody and a performing arts student, Lilly, who was probably foregoing food for the next month to have an expensive style and colour done by Amy’s junior stylist, Roslynn.

  The barbershop was another matter.

  The thug from the bar was the only nine o’clock appointment she had scheduled and someone was definitely waiting next door. No matter how much she’d told herself she was used to dealing with difficult people – her industry practically invited it – he left her unsettled. His apparent celebrity status just made her anxiety worse.

  ‘Kate, can you take care of Jody for me?’ Amy said finally, when Kate continued gazing out the shop window.

  Kate heaved an overly dramatic sigh. ‘Yeah, alright.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Amy said with forced cheer for her client’s sake. She gave Jody’s brawny shoulder, hewn on the hockey pitch, a gentle pat. ‘I’ll see you next time, toots. I’ve got a customer in the barbershop.’

  ‘Catcha, Amy,’ Jody said with an endearingly shy smile as she watched Kate’s approach. Her crush was painfully obvious, and she only ever booked an appointment when Kate was temporarily single.

  Amy felt a pang of sympathy over Jody’s futile infatuation. She knew what it was like to be looking for love in the wrong places and, in crushing on a beautiful snob like Kate, Jody had picked the worst spot possible to park her heart. Amy just hoped she’d be strong enough to pick herself up when she realised that her affections weren’t returned. Lord knew, Amy had had to do as much over the years.

  Giving Jody one last smile, she braced herself to see to her first barbershop customer for the day.

  Ben jolted awake at the sound of a door opening at the back of the barbershop. He stifled a yawn. He had no idea how long he’d been sleeping. All he knew was that he now had company. Chatty company.

  A slightly breathless, melodic female voice pervaded Ben’s consciousness. ‘Good morning. Sorry to keep you waiting, Ben. It was Ben, right? I was just finishing up with a customer next door. I’ve brought you some homemade chocolate cake to make up for being late. Are we having coffee this morning?’

  ‘I just woke up. What do you think?’ Ben grumbled, rubbing his hands over his eyes.

  ‘I think you’re one of those.’

  The blonde, Amy if he remembered correctly, approached and placed a tray bearing a steaming mug of black coffee, a small jug of cream and a pot of sugar cubes along with a generous slice of chocolate cake on a small inbuilt ledge in front of his
chair.

  ‘Thank you.’ Ben looked up into a pair of china-doll blue eyes that were watching him warily, despite the smile stretching her fuchsia-painted lips. He paused momentarily to collect his thoughts. The woman was truly a polished piece of work, spectacular in fact.

  The fifties pin-up thing was obviously an ongoing theme. Today, her platinum hair was styled in a high, soft ponytail with loose C-shaped curls framing her features. The rest of her wasn’t so much cute as ridiculously sexy: a frilly, long-sleeved white blouse tucked into a navy below-the-knee pencil skirt that cupped her curvy little rump lovingly. Ben couldn’t help but notice what her impossibly high red heels did for her calves as she walked away from him to collect a small trolley.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ she said over her shoulder.

  ‘What do you mean, I’m one of those?’ Ben demanded.

  ‘A grumpy bear in the morning. I’m used to your type.’

  ‘You’re not one of those disgusting morning people by any chance, are you? I heard you were a dying breed.’ Ben reached for the coffee, added a dash of cream and took an experimental sip. It was good. Very good. Much better than Alex’s dismal efforts, to say the least.

  ‘Better?’ she asked, draping an olive-green cape around his shoulders and tying it behind his neck.

  ‘Marginally. This is good coffee.’ Ben took a larger sip, feeling the caffeine zapping his neurons to life and kickstarting his charisma. He risked cracking his first smile of the day and was rewarded with one in return. No dimples though. It was obvious he’d have to try harder for those after his behaviour the other night.

  ‘I know. It’s fantastic, isn’t it? It comes from a little place down south in Margaret River. I order it especially.’ She smiled again, this time bringing out one dimple. For some inexplicable reason, the sight brought Ben out of his early-morning malaise like no coffee ever could. He couldn’t quite fathom the why of it, but he was experiencing the first rush of purely physical attraction he’d felt in years.

  Sex and relationships had come so easily to him for the past decade that he thought he’d long since graduated from the rampaging hormone-driven lust of his teens. Obviously he’d been wrong. That he felt it with this woman was perplexing and somewhat alarming in light of his recent disastrous, highly publicised affair. Been there done that, wanted a refund. But still . . . he hadn’t managed to earn both dimples yet.