Free Ms. Taken Identity by Dan Begley

isn’t the sort
     who’d go to a salon in the first place.
    “Right. But if you came in, I probably wouldn’t cut yours.”
    “Oh? Why’s that?”
    “You don’t need it.”
    I lean on my elbow. “Wait, so you’re telling me you’d pass up a sale? Aren’t you afraid you’d tick me off?”
    She shrugs. “I’d try to be nice about it and tell you your hair’s short enough. Maybe we could do a little styling, add some
     product, but not a cut.”
    I take the hard line. “Not good enough. I’ve come for a haircut, I’ve decided it’s got to go. Here’s my cash, now cut my hair.”
    She traces a line of condensation on the side of her glass with her French-manicured nails, which I take for stalling. “Then
     I guess I’d have to tell you the real reason.” She clears her throat. “I’d say, ‘Customer Jason, you have a handsome face
     with very strong features. Short hair makes them jump out a little. With longer hair you get a little movement, and it would
     make you look even more handsome.’” She goes back to fingering her glass. “That’s what I’d say.”
    “To ‘Customer Jason.’”
    “To ‘Customer Jason.’”
    She buries her head in her drink and takes a long sip, but I think she’s beginning to blush. As, I think, am I.
    We leave around eleven and troop back across the street to the studio parking lot. There’s a bit of an awkward moment when
     I tell them I took the bus, since I don’t have a car, then I realize my gaffe—a pharmaceutical rep without a car?—and quickly
     explain that I don’t have a car
tonight
because I don’t like to drive when I don’t have to, since I drive so much for my job. Get it? They seem to.
    At home I make a transcript of the evening, write down what people said and wore and looked like, and when I see it on paper,
     the whole lot of them—Jason included—seems like a gaggle of idiots. Like the characters I created last week. But it didn’t
     seem so kooky when I was there. I…
enjoyed
it. Which leads me to believe that possibly,
maybe
, my characters and I got off on the wrong foot when they showed up in their Versace and Max Mara and Chloé, and started bragging
     about their brooches and bubble skirts and booty calls, and I told them all to go to hell (or Barneys). Perhaps I played Mr.
     Darcy to their Elizabeth Bennet, and we all rushed to hasty judgment. Now, I believe, we all have a better understanding of
     each other. We may not read the same books or watch the same movies or apply the same brand of age-defying anti-wrinkle serum,
     but we’re still human. We all bleed if you cut us.
    Rosie’s the ringleader of the group, the engine that makes it go. If the studio and its inhabitants were a half-hour sitcom,
     it’d be called
RosieTown
and she’d be the star: Rosie learns to surf; Rosie meets the Prez; Rosie wears a puffy shirt. But the one I keep coming back
     to is Marie. She’s quieter, less flashy, cute in an Anne Hathaway-ish sort of way—I can say that about Bradley’s sister, right?—but
     she’s no pushover, the kind who’d tell you that you had a piece of spinach caught between your teeth, not to embarrass you
     or make you feel stupid, but so you wouldn’t feel stupid later when you got home and looked in the mirror and realized it
     had been there all night. I get the feeling if she took a little time and did herself up, she could be the sort who just might
     catch your eye. That is, if you’re the type of gent who doesn’t mind having a beauty school graduate hanging on your arm.
    And maybe it’s this combination of factors—reflecting fondly on my stint in
RosieTown
, thinking about Marie, not being such a bully toward my previously mannequin-like characters—that leads to a breakthrough
     with the writing. (This, and an excellent
Oprah
episode with Mr.
He’s Just Not That into You
himself, Greg Behrendt.) I spend Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday going at it, and with such fervor that I catch myself