"Are you sure this is the right place, Sweetie?" Courtney asked her daughter, frowning about in suspicion at the dingy old strip mall. "I don't feel safe leaving the car unattended in this kind of neighborhood."
"You gotta relax, Courts. We live in Frederick, Maryland, not downtown Detroit." Her daughter Violet scoffed with the eye roll audible in her voice. "And this is definitely the spot, it fits perfectly with how he chooses each new location."
Courts... Not Mom, or Mother, or even Courtney. No. Her one and only daughter called her... Courts.
She wasn't sure when it had begun. Sometime around her baby girl's eighteenth birthday when she had apparently decided that being old enough to vote also meant she could start addressing her Mother by a reductive nickname.
Well Courtney wasn't going to bite. Not today. Not when they were finally spending some quality time together. Mother daughter bonding time. An increasingly rare and precious commodity as her little Violet bloomed into an independent young lady.
"You said that it was a pop-up... thingy, but not a restaurant." She pressed for clarity while stepping around a wilted stack of old magazines moldering outside a boarded up news agency. "Run by some big-shot celebrity?"
"A pop-up beauty salon, yeah but not just any celebrity. Claude Bimbeau was, like, the stylist to the stars! Still super famous in international circles. He's been making these flash appearances all over the world since he quit the Parisian fashion scene. It's all the rage now."
Violet's evident excitement was enough for Courtney to suppress her own eye roll--goodness, but the girl had probably learned it from her mother--and plastered an attentive expression on her face instead of asking the obvious questions.
Like; "if this so-called stylist was so famous, what were they doing in a quaint country town like Frederick?" She didn't ask.
Or "what sort of name was Claude Bimbeau?" She refused to inquire.
Courtney wasn't about to plant loaded--if totally reasonable and rational--conversational landmines on the path to a pleasant day spent with the most important person in her life.
Even if that same person was walking blindly through a derelict suburban mall with her nose buried in her smartphone.
"Sweetie, I thought we promised to be present for each other today." Courtney gently guided Violet away from a toppled shopping cart with a maternal hand on her elbow. "Real life face time. Can we put the phone away, please?"
"In a second, I'm double checking the location pin on Google Maps. Turn left up ahead."
Courtney absolutely didn't sigh in frustration as she took in the dimly lit storefronts with dusty 'out of business' signs taped to the security shutters. She would indulge this minor distraction and, when it reached an inevitably disappointing conclusion, suggest they should get mani-pedis together at that Vietnamese place on West Third Street and share a hot fudge sundae at the North Market Pop Shop afterwards.
A proper day of argument-free togetherness.
"There it is!" Violet squealed gleefully after they turned down another unswept walkway. "I knew it would be here. Suck on that, internet haters!"
Up ahead of them, standing out like a shiny penny amongst the overflowing trash bins and dead planter pots was a brightly lit glass door and display window with the words 'Bimbeau's Salon' curled across the polished glazing in fancy gold leaf lettering.
It was so clean. So new. So out-of-place against the background of commercial ruination that Courtney paused and pulled her daughter back behind her on pure mothering instinct.
"Courts, what are you doing?" Violet squawked, struggling in her white-knuckled hold. "You're hurting me."
Feeling a sudden wash of shame and not a little ridiculous at her knee-jerk reaction, Courtney eased her iron grip and let her shoulders relax with a deep, calming breath.
"Sorry, Sweetie." She apologized meekly. "The spooky feel of this place has me on edge is all."
"Right?" Her daughter enthused, rubbing at her sore wrist. "This is part of Claude's genius. He finds some out of the way dump that no one would visit and refits an old outlet into one of his exclusive beauty parlors for true believers to find. It's all about the theater. Kinda like a treasure hunt."
"I think I understand." Courtney demurred, though as a self made businesswoman, she didn't get it at all. What sort of backward business paradigm was that? "Shall we take a peek?"
"Yes, we totally shall!"
________________
A silver bell tinkled over the door as the mother and daughter duo shyly entered the salon.
Courtney was immediately dazzled by bright overhead lights, shining reflective finishes, and powerful aromas of perfume and peroxide pervading the shop's interior. It was such a jarring transition from the mostly abandoned strip mall outside that she had to blink spots from her vision.
A stab of uncertainty speared her gut as she drank in the colorful decor. The salon had been outfitted in a warm pastel palette. Soft pink, yellow and blue painted the walls, and the vinyl padded seats were upholstered to match. Polished chrome glittered everywhere; from the wash basins to the struts on the reclined styling chair to the varied combs, brushes and scissors laid out with painful precision on spotless worktops, and reflected in the many tall mirrors mounted upon every vertical surface.
It all looked so... retro. Was that the right word? Vintage, maybe?
As though it had been sliced directly out of a 1950's women's fashion magazine and dropped into the rundown commercial district on the westside of town. Soft violin music warbled from invisible speakers and tickled the ear in a most distracting manner.
Set to the side of the large display window was a row of four large stainless steel dryer bonnets mounted behind plush beige armchairs. Two of which were already occupied by unmoving figures shrouded in powder pink cutting capes, the tops of their placidly smiling faces masked from view behind the quietly whirring metallic domes.
Courtney thought they might have been asleep if not for the gentle, pleased noises they occasionally breathed out through dreamy lips.
"Bienvenue mesdames au salon de maître Claude Bimbeau."
A silken voice hummed from the back, bringing both mother and daughter's wandering stares to a vision of beauty emerging from behind a curtained doorway.
The stranger's willowy body, elegantly long and supermodel thin, moved with impossible grace as she straightened up behind a small serving counter and smiled. Her face was regally attractive, fine-boned and delicate. Her complexion flawlessly pale, and her glossy onyx hair parted in an almost severe center-part before falling down to her slim shoulders.
A lacy black panel dress swaddled her feminine frame, with billowing mesh sleeves that reached her slender wrists and hip hugging skirts that pinched in her tiny waist before dropping down past her knees.
