Free Mummers' Curse by Gillian Roberts Page B

mourning.
    The night we’d all gone with Vincent to Melrose Diner for coffee, I had remarked on her luxurious black-brown hair, more out of awe than admiration, although I didn’t say so. I was rendered momentarily silent by how high and wide it flung itself, like a self-contained organism, an other that accompanied her, not something that grew out of her head. She was a small, delicately made, and fragile-looking woman—until you factored in the hair, which added a good half a foot to her height.
    She had a natural flair, a gift, she said with innocent pride. And she could make my tresses just as bouffant as hers. Dolores, it turned out, was a hair stylist at a place called Salon d’André. The name had stuck because it seemed to combine a lot of pretension with no imagination. I envisioned André in a pencil-thin moustache and a beret.
    I assumed it wouldn’t be difficult to find his salon.
    It wasn’t, particularly after I finally looked it up in a phone book and got on a bus. That came after a half hour of cold and aimless wandering.
    It wasn’t until I reached the store that I remembered it was Sunday.
    But the shop was, miraculously, open, with a small handlettered sign taped to the window. “For the convenience of our loyal customers, we will be open Sunday, January 2nd until lunchtime.” Although I felt as if the day was already 50 hours old, it was not yet lunchtime at André’s.
    “Hi, there. Help you?” A woman in a bubblegum pink smock and Jean Harlow hair flashed a smile as she worked the chair nearest the door. Then she turned back to her client, scissors in one hand. “Your ends are a mess,” she told the owner of the hair. “You’re not conditioning like I said, are you?” Her client mumbled apologies and lowered her eyes.
    There were four other work stations, three other operators clipping, blow-drying, and hair-setting, respectively. There did not appear to be a receptionist, so I walked over to the pink lady who’d hailed me. “It’s last minute and all,” I said, “but being as it’s after New Year’s, all the parties over—” as if I’d just completed an exhausting round of silver-spangled galas. Aside from the Mummers, I’d had a spangle-free vacation.
    “I thought, maybe, I could be worked in.” Winding up with a hair high-rise seemed a fair admission price. I was counting on clichés being true, on the neighborhood salon being the epicenter of gossip.
    “Dunno,” the woman said. “I doubt it, today. This is only, like, emergencies. Being as we were closed and we’ll be closed tomorrow, Monday, too. Still, let me take a look.” She flashed another smile. She had a deep and appealing dimple, and I suspected it caused her to smile whatever her mood. “Be one sec,” she told her client, who looked unhappy.
    “You have gorgeous hair,” the pink lady said to me. “Great color. That auburn looks almost natural.”
    “It is natural.”
    “Could use styling, though, a little oomph.” She strode to a small desk and checked the appointment book. “I’m Andrée,” she said as she flipped pages. “Two e’s, accent on the first one. Andrée Jansheski. Left the second e off the sign. It was easier.”
    It appeared that I, not Andrée, was the one with too little imagination. How silly to have assumed that the cross-naming phenomenon was limited to my sister’s friends on the Main Line. Was it a fad I’d missed? An underreported aspect of the women’s movement that I could pretend to write another article about?
    “You’re in luck. I have a noon with Marty. Right now.” She twinked another Andrée smile. It was a most impressive dimple. “Depending on what you want, how long it would take.”
    “Darn, I wanted Dolores,” I said. “I met her awhile back and told her I’d be in for an…um…a styling.”
    Andrée turned dark-circled eyes toward me. “I’m real sorry, hon, but Dolores isn’t available.”
    “Should I make the appointment for later in the