Free A Better Man by Leah McLaren Page A

lowlights and a high-gloss rinse. The salon has no sign and the windows are taped over with tissue paper, giving the place a disused look. Inside, however, the Drams (as it’s known among regulars) is a balm for the bourgeois soul—all retro barber chairs, antique gilt mirrors and church pews in the waiting area.
    Antonio’s three black cockapoos tear out of the back to greet Maya in a spittle-misted chorus of yelps, ears flying behind them like protest banners. She can never remember their names—a faux pas she tries (and fails) to remedy by sending a magnum of champagne every year on the Saturday before Christmas.
    Antonio stands behind her, hands resting firmly on her smock-covered shoulders.
    “What can we do for you today, my darling girl?”
    He rubs his elegant tapered finger along the base of her skull and lifts up the hair from her neck, making her shiver with delight. Plucking a small tendril away from the nape of her neck, he inspects the ends in a way that makes the roots twirl and sends electric shocks from the crown of her head to the tip of her pinkie toes. She knows he’s only checking for damage, but part of her wants to beg him not to stop. Instead she shrugs.
    “I dunno … the usual? I was toying with the idea of bangs, but I’m still not sure.”
    Antonio nods solemnly, then closes his eyes and presses his fingers into her scalp as if intuiting the right course of action from her inner hair spirit. After half a minute, he says, “Maybe just a root touch-up and a trim for today. What do we think?”
    Maya exhales, relief flooding her body. “Perfect.”
    Despite Maya’s marriage, the birth of her twins and the subsequent derailing of her career, Antonio still tends to her like she’s an unspoiled ingenue on the cusp of a great adventure, her whole life waiting to unfold in series of dazzling events, each of which promises to be more glamorous and fascinating than the next, if only—and this is the crucial bit—she can get her hair exactly right. For the past several years, Antonio has been working toward an ashy-yet-lustrous shade for Maya’s highlights that he calls gin-and-tonic blonde. Every six weeks, her standing appointment brings them both a little closer to the pinnacle of hair colour nirvana. There is nowhere in the world she is quite so at home.
    He beetles off to mix the colour, leaving Maya alone with a two-month-old copy of
Us Weekly.
She is halfway through a storyon why Pippa Middleton can’t seem to find a husband (apparently she’s “too sexy” to be “wife material”) when she hears someone air-kissing her way through the salon with loud, smacking “mwahs!” Before Maya can arrange herself more inconspicuously behind her magazine, Rachel Katz is descending upon her with flinging arms and juicy air kisses.
    “Oh, my God! THIS IS UNBELIEVABLE!” she cries.
    Maya’s not sure if she means their running into each other or the fact that it happened the last time they were here too. She makes a mental note to change her standing appointment.
    Rachel is married to Glen, one of Nick’s many entertainment lawyers, which has the effect of throwing them together in various social situations throughout the year. Rachel is also one of those people Maya finds she bumps into with random consistency, making them feel more connected than they actually are. In Maya’s view, they are not so much friends as co-wives, watching from the sidelines of real life. Nevertheless, in a grand show of intimacy, Rachel tells Maya how gorgeous she looks, and how amaaaazing her perfectly ordinary shoes are. Maya smiles wanly and allows herself to be complimented, then in return tells Rachel how lovely her earrings are (for this, she well knows, is the Girl Code). After they are done making the obligatory fuss over each other, Maya sits there feeling weirdly limbless in her polyester poncho.
    “God, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? I still can’t believe you have twins—honestly you’d never