The strip mall had fewer shops open than closed and the Sunday setting sun couldn't find any shoppers. Long gone businesses had removed their signs some time ago and a few stubborn ones remained to do everything they could to combat the lack of commerce.
Fl-Hair Shop sat at the end of the lot. It was next to a space that used to be a pet store. The salon didn't have a proper sign at all. A banner made with the cheapest font and one color (on white) flapped a little in the frugal breeze.
A jeep with a single passenger tore out of a u-turn and hit the drive to the parking lot with just enough speed to frighten a flock of dirty pigeons.
Reese hit one of the speed bumps, but he really hadn't slowed the jeep down enough to make it
not
lurch.
Most times, hopping his jeep would give him a light thrill, but this afternoon he was too upset to really notice the bounce below his roll bar. He'd driven clear across town in search of a place to get his haircut. He'd passed lots of other places, but he ignored them in favor of indulging his stress and worry about his upcoming job interview.
He hated hair places that worked too hard at being clever with their names.
D'hair to Be Different
,
Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow
, and
Hair-Free
were fine examples of salon titles that sounded more like long form jokes than places for serious business. He was annoyed to see that the salon he'd arrived to was something quaint called
Fl'Hair Shop
.
It was complete with a twenty-something woman with dyed hair puffing on a cigarette out in front. The employee's only company was an empty chair and a metal bucket that Reese deduced was for a cigarette butt collection. People who took cigarette breaks in front of their job places annoyed him to no end.
Reese's jeep parked right in front of her while she tapped her new cigarette on the near-empty pack in her hand. The engine trembled to silence and Reese got out of his jeep and slammed the door shut.
"You open?" He called to her and she set her cigarette between her lips.
"That's handicapped," she said and lit up with the end of a match.
Reese looked down at his parking spot and then stepped onto the sidewalk that contained the break chairs. He gave the thin woman a once over there in the orange sunlight. Her red dye job was in desperate need of a touch up. Light freckles were splotched on her flushed face. It looked to him like she had sunburn all up and down her long neck.
"You smoke in your apron? Is that sanitary?"
"I'm wearing sandals too," the woman shrugged and held her feet up for him to see. The red paint on her toenails was chipped and without its glossy sheen. Her smile was already tired of the visitor. "Gonna write me up?"
"How much is this?" He asked and drew a circle in the air that included her and the salon.
"I'm closing in twenty minutes," the stylist said and pursed her lips to inhale more smoke. She seemed more concerned with smoking than making money and the demeanor offended him.
"I just need a trim," he said and approached the salon's glass door. "You'll wash your hands at least first, right?"
He didn't wait for an answer. He just flung the door open and stepped into the salon's unremarkable space. He sighed at the sight of the space. The off-white walls held posters of hairstyles and they'd been hung up without care. They proudly displayed outdated styles with a crooked perspective. The tile floor was the cheapest anybody could find and sported a color less inspired than the walls. It was a lot like the girl smoking out front --neglected on purpose by its owner.
Nobody was in the shop.
She stepped in behind him with her cigarette still burning in her hand.
"Really?" Reese said over his shoulder at her. "You smoke in here?"
"Your not the boss of me," she said and her thin bottom lip dropped some.
He eyed her distant blue eyes and shook his head. "Well, could you not? It stinks."
"Get a magazine then," she said to him and returned to the parking lot.
The door closed behind her and Reese looked at her back while she smoked facing his jeep. She wore baggy shorts that reminded him of the punk rock girls from high school. She wore a camoflodge tank top and he could see the girl's skin was sunburned all up and down the backs of her legs.
He thought about leaving. The girl was rude. The place was dank. She was probably one of those girls who had some college, partied too much, and hurried to catch up when she realized her life was going nowhere and grabbed the last skill she could before her credit was totally destroyed.
Reese really needed his haircut. With Sunday burning itself out fast, his job interview was creeping closer and closer.
He looked at the coffee table and its uneven legs. It was littered in magazines that had out-dated subscriptions. He could also see the lame books with the hairstyles pictured in them. The table was framed without care by chairs that were worse for wear.
He looked out the shop window at the hairstylist.
She was looking at him now and smoking behind the glass.
He was appalled that the girl was going to finish her cigarette even though he was there for business (with money in his pocket). While she held her arm and continued what appeared to be an unearned break, he wondered if he could get a haircut somewhere else in the morning.
His job interview was at ten-thirty. He wasn't sure what time hair shops opened. The painted letters that indicated the Fl-Hair Shop's hours had their numbers scraped off, so there was no way to deduce if such places opened at ten am or sooner. He blinked his tired eyes shut and embraced the lack of information.
He would have to do it here. And she would have to it.
She dropped her still-burning cigarette butt into the sand bucket and blew her last breath of smoke to the sky while she reached for the door. When she stepped inside, he held his ground. He knew the customer was always right and it was a shame that she didn't know it too.
The lady walked right up and invaded his personal space. She was just a hair shorter than he was. The smell on her lips was revolting. How anyone could smoke his or her face in the scent of a nicotine burn was beyond him. It was on her face and stuck in her hair.
He had come up with something clever to insult her, but before he could speak, she put her hands right in his hair and combed it through her fingers.
Reese felt her fingers and they were delicate against his scalp. They weren't clumsy like he'd thought. Light pressure from her fingertips against his scalp actually felt pretty nice. He stared at her expressionless eyes.
