Leslie's Curl & Dye Read online

  Guys N' Dolls, by contrast, was all over the web and social media. When Kendrick wasn't cutting hair, he and Monica ran a Marketing and New Media firm. He hooked us up with a dynamic website and we were everywhere from Instagram to Facebook to Twitter to Snapchat. Any time a new platform popped up, Kendrick made sure we had a presence there and we kept our accounts populated with current photos and a weekly flyer. People came from all over the place to get a cut at Guys N' Dolls.

  "See," I said to myself, groaning with relief as I lowered into my chair and propped my knee up on the chair I'd dragged around the desk. "It's not my fault that shop is going under."

  "Who are you in here talking to?" TC popped into the office, the familiar blue zippered pouch in the crook of her arm. "You know talking to yourself is a sign that you're a little..." She twirled her finger around her head and whistled.

  "I'm not crazy. Not yet, anyway. What's the day looking like so far?"

  "See for yourself." She handed me the envelope and dropped into the other chair. She kicked up her feet and propped them on the desk, something I hated, but she ignored my protests so I stopped making a big deal out of it. "Whew, it's good to get off my feet."

  I unzipped the bag and pulled out the wad of bills and the credit card slips. "Feels like a good day so far. You count it?"

  "Nah. Didn't want to be up front thumbing through a bunch of cash."

  I nodded, moderately pleased. This morning's receipts would replace the money I'd spent paying the utilities. Which reminded me that I needed to make another call to Mayor Adams. I stuffed the bills and slips back in the pouch and zipped it up.

  "You want me to do the bank deposit? You look locked up right now."

  I glanced at my knee, snug in its brace. It was throbbing, but starting to feel better now that I was resting it. "I'd appreciate it. Having a bad day today."

  "Have you been back to that doctor? Now that you’ve been off the court for a while, another surgery might—”

  "I'm not going back under the knife, T. It's inflammation. Nothing to feeling better but rest and some Advil." I reached for the mega-sized bottle of pain reliever that I kept on the desk and unscrewed the top, shook out a few of the brown pills and swallowed them dry.

  TC sighed, pulling her feet off my desk and pushing herself up out of the chair. "You're so stubborn."

  "Am not," I retorted, with a grin. She grimaced and sucked her teeth, then snatched the pouch from my desk, inadvertently bumping my knee with the bag.

  "Ouch, you bully!"

  "It was an accident."

  "You did that shit on purpose! You know my knee hurts and you smacked me right there with the bag."

  "I said it was an accident. You'll know when I do something on purpose. Gimme a deposit slip and stop being a big baby."

  "Excuse me?"

  I looked up to find Leslie standing in the door of my office, a cautious half smile on her lips.

  "Oh. Hey. Uh..." I tried to stand, but she stepped in, her hand raised.

  "Don't get up. I heard about the knee." She turned to TC and offered a hand to shake. "I recognize you from KC's old pictures. You must be TC. I'm Leslie; I own a salon on the— "

  "Other side of the lake, yeah." TC shook her hand and gave her a wide, friendly grin. "You're all anyone is talking about today."

  She swiped a hand across her forehead and blushed. "Listen, I wanted to apologize for that ambush. Monica told us to come over. She wanted Tamera to talk to KC about a job since that little shop she worked at was closing. And as the owner of said little shop, I saw red and… we went rogue."

  "I understand that," I told her. Because I did. "Now that you know where we are, you see what we're doing here. There's more than enough room for you and your staff to come over. It'd be nice to work together after all this time."

  A shadow crossed Leslie's face, taking it from friendly and apologetic to a rock hard sneer. "I told you...the Curl & Dye isn't going anywhere. I'm not coming to work for you. Not when I own a shop."

  "Oh. Okay," I answered, with what I knew was a snide snicker but I couldn't help it. "That's why you and your little pit bull was up in my face about me taking your customers. ’Cause Curl & Dye isn't going anywhere. Listen..."

  I paused, for just a moment, to let the sounds of the busy shop filter back to the office. "Does your salon sound like that today? You're here, so I'm guessing no."

  She huffed, blowing an errant loc of hair out of her face. "Of all the places you could have ended up, why are you back here? Why didn’t you go home?"

  "This is home. I would think you would be happy to see me back here, starting up a business, establishing some roots—”

  “When your roots pull mine out, we have a problem. You honestly never thought to check if my mom's shop was still open?

  "Being honest...." I sighed, wagging my head. "I got caught up in opening this place. I wasn’t going to drive across the lake looking for a beauty salon to make sure I wouldn’t be someone’s competition. Besides, last I heard, you were shacked up with some square in Chicago. I didn't know your mom's shop still existed, let alone that you run it now. But now that I do, all I can say is..."

  I shrugged my shoulders, leaning back in my chair. "May the best man win. And by the sounds of my shop, today at least? I'm the best man."

  Red-faced, Leslie sucked in a loud breath and her lips curled inward. I braced for an onslaught, the kind I knew she was capable of. But she didn't scream or curse or even cry. Leslie turned on a heel and stormed out of my office.

  "Well." TC leaned against the desk and folded her arms. "That was... interesting."

  "Pffft." I blew a short breath and shrugged a shoulder. "That's nothing, T. Really, it's... nothing."

  "Didn’t sound like nothing. I remember you talking about her, about how she dropped you. You went in on her just now. You don't think you're still a little hurt about that?"

  "Ancient history, T. I haven't seen or thought about her in a long time, in a lot of years. I know what she's doing, and it's not going to work."

  "And what is it that you think she's doing?"

  "Trying to give me the guilt trip to get me to back off of building this business. If people want to come here I can't stop them."

  "True. True." TC nodded, one of those slow nods that said she had more to say. "But—”

  "But nothing, T. I wasn't trying to shut her down before and I'm not trying to now. That shop has problems that didn't start with me."

  I forced myself up from the chair and snatched the zippered pouch from TC, then limped out of my office.

  Chapter Five

  Leslie

  * * *

  I was still fuming, trembling as I pulled into the parking lot outside the salon. I sat in my car, sucking in dry air and trying to relax. It wasn't working.

  "Hunh!" I shot out into the quiet interior of the car, pounding a fist on the steering wheel. "May the best man win? Like he has a chance at winning."

  Big talk, but a glance around told a different story. The lot used to be so full that I couldn't sit down all day. Today, I could count the number of cars in the parking lot on one hand and have fingers left over. Truth be told, the whole block looked like a deserted island.

  I checked my watch and popped the latch to open the door. I had an appointment coming in and we needed all the business we could get.

  The front door to the shop was propped open, the sounds of Kendrick Lamar wafting through the opening. The air inside was noticeably warmer, stuffier. And even though there were two dryers running and music playing, the place seemed... dead. Tamera and Evonne had clients. Gisela was reorganizing her supplies. Again. It was something she did to look busy so she didn't have to do anything else.

  I reached across the counter and flipped the switch to turn the music off. All hands stilled; all heads turned in my direction."I have a headache," I offered in explanation. "I can't take that noise right now. Gisela, could you fold some towels, please? I can see the basket over
flowing from here."

  I watched her roll her eyes, then push her cart away and stomp to the back room to grab the basket. I caught Tamera’s eye, but she wasn’t watching Gisela. She was watching me.

  "What's your problem? And where've you been? Don't you have Mrs. Isaacs at one o'clock?"

  I busied myself with organizing my station and tying on my apron. I filled the pockets with my usual tools— comb, brush, a small mirror and a couple of clips and bobby pins.

  "I don’t have a problem. And yes, I have a one o'clock. That's why I'm here."

  I felt her stare, even though I refused to lift my eyes from the appointment book to meet her gaze. "You didn’t answer my other question, but nevermind. I already know you’ve been at KC's shop." My head shot up and I instantly regretted doing so. The smug I knew it expression was all over her face. "Did you get what you wanted?"

  "What is it you think I wanted?"

  "For him to be nice and say something in that lil southern accent he thinks is sexy. Why, sure Leslie. I'd be happy to start sending clients back over to you, for no other reason than you asked me to."

  I sucked my teeth and rolled my eyes, flipping the page in my appointment book loudly. "That is not why I went over there."

  "Then what did you go over there for? To look at him? Talk about old times? Maybe talk about how he dumped you and rolled up out of here the second a better life came calling?"

  "He didn't dump— "

  "Look at who?" Evonne butted in, pulling a round brush through her client's hair.

  "Nobody," I answered. I dropped the appointment book and headed for the kitchen to get ready for Mrs. Isaacs. She would want to refresh the silver rinse on her hair but she liked a specific recipe and I needed to mix it up.

  "The owner at Guys N' Dolls," Tamera answered, at the same time. “He used to be an NBA baller— Kade Cavanaugh? He and Leslie… let’s just say they go way back.”

  “What?” I heard Evonne screech. “I used to love me some Kade Cavanaugh. He went to Healy. Then he left to go pro and— ohhhh.”

  "Didn't I say nobody? I distinctly remember saying nobody," I yelled from the back room, which housed the mixing sink, a shelf built into the wall, a small card table and four chairs and the oldest washer and dryer set in the entire county. How it was still running, I didn't even know. Jessup Plumbing had had to make plenty of emergency calls to deal with that washing machine and the old pipes that fed it.

  "So, what did he say about trying to shut us down?"

  "Okay, guys..." I sighed, coming around the corner and standing in the middle of the room. "I can't believe we're having this conversation in front of clients, first of all. Second of all, he's not trying to shut us down.”

  "He doesn’t have to try, Les. He just is," Tamera finished.

  "And third… yes, KC and I go back, way back to his pre-NBA days, before he was a big damn deal. I guess I thought I could remind him that we used to be friends and see if he could understand the situation from my point of view. He claims to have not known we were over here."

  "Don't mean it's true, just 'cause he says it And I mean... he knows we're here now. What's he going to do?"

  "Just like you said, what can we expect him to do? He's got that big, shiny shop with red leather chairs and fancy floors and huge flat screens everywhere. He's rolling at least ten deep with barbers. That shop was so full today I could barely walk down the center aisle. And he's in a brand new shopping center where he might have a chance to catch walk in customers. We're..."

  I turned in a slow circle, my arm extended to demonstrate the extent to which we were not Guys N' Dolls. "We're photos so old the corners are curling, taped to dingy walls. We're plain white linoleum floor tile. We're old black salon chairs and only half of them even work. We're the same people, day in and day out, week in and week out.”

  I grunted, my lips pressed together in a tight line. I was all caught up in the emotion of losing my shop, of seeing KC again, of trying not to remember the time we had together, when we were on the cusp of something that could have been amazing. And then the moment it all fell apart. And that was the problem; I was caught up in emotion and not using any of the business sense I'd learned in my courses at Healy.

  "The Curl & Dye doesn't have the luxury of being the only game in town anymore. If this shop means anything to any of us," I said, catching glimpses from Gisela, Evonne and Tamera. "We have to do more than sit here moaning and waiting for people to come in."

  Ironically, the door swung open and Mrs. Isaacs came in, her hair covered in an indigo blue scarf. Cara Isaacs had only been coming to Curl & Dye for a few months. Her husband, who worked for the postal service in Healy, passed away last year. She’d moved to Potter Lake in hopes of a slower, calmer life. Cara always had a ready smile and a funny story. I was in the mood for both.

  "Afternoon, Mrs. Isaacs," I greeted her, grabbing one of her hands and leading her to the shampoo bowl. "It's good to see you. Go ahead and get comfortable. I'll be right back with your rinse."

  I emerged from the back room, stirring the rinse mixture in a plastic bowl to the sounds of laughter. Mrs. Isaacs was mid-story. "You should have seen Garth's face," Mrs. Isaacs was saying, between chuckles. "Raspberry red! He was fair skinned, about Leslie’s tone. I bet when you get angry or embarrassed, it shows."

  "Every emotion shows on Leslie," quipped Tamera.

  "That's not true," I argued, pulling a cape tight around Mrs. Isaacs' neck and reclining the seat so that her hair hung in the shampoo bowl. "And I'm not light skinned."

  "The hell you're not," she argued back, continuing our lifelong argument about the honey-beige skin I inherited from my mother and Grandy. Tamera was a sun kissed, dark bronze but that did not make her the resident expert on skin tone.

  Besides, black was black and I was black. At least that’s what my mama told me when the girls used to pick on me for being so light.

  "Well, anyway," she continued, raising her voice above the sound of running water. I pumped shampoo into my hands from the industrial sized bottle we kept at the sink and began working it through her hair, creating a thick, rich lather. "Garth hadn't realized that he'd misdialed the phone number and called some kind of sex line. That man was almost blind and half-deaf, so by the time he figured it out, they'd already billed for the first two minutes. At $4.99 a minute!"

  She was cackling, laughing so hard she had to stop. “When we got the bill, “ she continued, after she’d caught her breath, “ — and 966-HOTLOVE showed up, he turned so red I thought the top of his head might blow off. I told him he'd best stop acting like he was young with good eyesight and wear his bifocals."

  "And did he, Ms. Cara?"

  "Every day, child. Sun up to sundown, Mr. Garth Isaacs had his specs on. He was never paying ten dollars to be vain ever again."

  The shop erupted in that sound I liked— laughter. I chuckled along with everyone else while I rinsed Mrs. Isaacs' hair and wrapped it in a towel, then led her to my station. I towel dried her hair and pulled out the blow dryer to finish the job. Once it was dry, I began to brush the silver rinse into her hair and let it set.

  The topic of conversation bounced from who was sleeping with whom and thought nobody knew; to who brought lunch to her husband at work, only to find out he’d been fired two weeks ago; to what Mr. Torrence was caught doing in the back of his taxicab on Saturday night. A few walk-ins filtered in and between Tamera, Evonne and Gisela, the shop was busy. Every seat was occupied and the sounds of good hairstylists doing good hair filled the air.

  "Excuse me?"

  I'd been lounging in my salon chair, enjoying a few minutes off of my feet, when a heavy set older woman entered the shop, a scowl sitting on thick red lips. Behind her, a girl cowered with her shoulders hunched, a Potter Lake Tigers ball cap on her head.

  “Y’all do natural hair?"

  I shot up from the chair to greet her, but she seemed in no mood for pleasantries, so I got right to the point. "Yes, we do natur
al hair here. What can I help you with?"

  The woman reached for the girl, pulling her around in front of her. She yanked the cap from her head, which garnered a collective gasp from the entire shop. The poor girl looked mortified.

  "Mmmhmm," hummed the woman, those red lips pressed together. "She had asked me if she could dye her hair gray, like all the kids are doing. I told her no, that she would look ridiculous. She decided to defy me and do it herself. She didn't like it, because like I had said, she looked ridiculous. She tried to wash it with a whole bottle of my dish detergent, but I keeps a mixture of bleach and detergent in that bottle."

  She thrust a finger at the child's head. "Look at this mess!"

  My jaw had been hanging open since I saw the fragile pile of… something atop that poor child’s head. I quickly recovered and led the girl to my salon chair, never taking an eye off of the orange and grey rat's nest. It was so dry it was brittle and standing on end. I was afraid to touch it, but then I figured... how much worse could it get?

  I waived Tamera over, since her client was leaving. She approached my chair with wide eyes and her eyebrows near her hairline.

  "So...?" I lowered my voice while I draped a cape over the girl’s shoulders and fastened it at her neck.

  "Shave it off?"

  The girl whimpered and I smacked Tam on the arm. "Stop it. How about a color lifter?"

  "Unh uh. You gotta strip that color out." Tamera bent down so that she was eye level with the girl. "What's your name, honey?"

  "Patrice," she whispered.

  "Speak up!" yelled the woman that brought her. "Bold enough to do what I told you not to do. Bold enough to try and hide it. Should be bold enough to help these ladies fix this mess you've got on your head."

  "Why don't you..." I paused, and began again. "If you'd like to have a seat, Ms..."

  "Mrs. Mrs. Joyce Black. This here is my granddaughter Patrice."

  "Mrs. Black, would you like a bottle of water?" I guided her to the three empty chairs that served as a waiting room and got her settled with a bottle of water from the cooler. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Evonne approaching my station to consult with Tamera.