Awake in Hell (13 page)

Everything
is going to be different, starting today!

The
walk to the salon is short, which is good considering what I’m wearing. Not
because of discomfort, but because of the looks I’m getting from my fellow
Hellions. Remember, how competitive we are down here when it comes to our
closets? Yeah, well, today’s outfit might just get me cut up. So I’m more than
a little relieved when I see the salon sitting before me just 2 blocks from my
apartment. I glance across the street at the coffee shop where I found the
original notice for the agency. I stop for just a moment and get a little
nostalgic. It seems so long ago since I reached out and took that note of
destiny, although in terms of real time it’s only been a few days. I feel like
I’ve lived a lifetime in these limited hours. I reach up and brush away just
the hint of a tear. ‘There’s no time to cry now,
ya
big baby!’ I say to myself. ‘It’s time to make a few others cry!’ and I stride
into the salon.

The
second I walk in, I feel at home. I am going to assume that the short, portly
woman standing in the middle of the room cussing everyone out is the owner. My
eyes go wide with combined surprise and admiration as I watch this diminutive
woman put everyone in their prospective places. She’s wearing a housecoat,
probably not intended for use outside of the home for the living, but for us
it’s all fair game.
It’s
bright yellow with a huge
print that suggests something has been spilled all over it, but the changing
colors that are depicted say, ‘no, somebody did this on purpose and called it
fashionable.’ On her feet are a pair of lime green high tops, a couple sizes
too small, so she’s cut out the toes and let her
piggies
free. I think I may have found a mentor down here. I say this because as all
these thoughts and observations are occurring to me, I have also heard her drop
the f-bomb at least seven times. And when she says it, the word sounds like ‘
fook
’, because she has a very pronounced British accent,
kind of like
Deedie’s
, only she sounds more like the
Queen. Well, the Queen if she hung out on the docks, but nevertheless.

“You
must be Louise, right?” she finally gets to me within her tirade. “You ready to
get to work?”

“Yes
Ma’am,” I say, respectfully. I do not want to be on the other end of one of
this woman’s fits.

“Who
the fuck are you calling Ma’am?” she says. “Do I look like the fuckin’ Queen to
you?” This makes me laugh out loud since I was just thinking about the Queen.
But suddenly I remember that this woman’s disposition is probably not going to
improve if I just burst into laughter every time she says anything to me so, I
stifle any more.

“I’m
sorry.  I just didn’t catch your name?” Yes, I realize that I’ve become a
bit sycophantic, but what can I say? This broad is
kinda
scary.

“Name’s
Lottie and as of right now, I’m your worst nightmare.” She sticks out her hand
and I take it while trying not to laugh again. I’m guessing this will not be my
worst nightmare, no matter what she may think. ‘Really?’ I think to myself.
‘Come take a walk through my brain some night.’

“So,
Lottie,” I start, trying to convey a friendly and conversational demeanor to
her. “Are all these people here for a haircut?”

Her
voice suddenly became docile and almost polite. “Well, this gentleman would
like to hear the lunch specials and that woman over there is here for a kidney
transplant.” Obviously, Lottie is a master of sarcasm. Then the old Lottie came
back with a vengeance. “Of course, they are all here for
foockin
haircuts! Blimey, what did
Deedy
send me this time? A
fookin
mental?”

Okay,
so maybe she is scary, but I also think I just might be a teensy bit in love
with her. Not in a lesbian way, more like a ‘this is who I want to be when I
grow up’, way.

“Come
here newbie, and I’ll show you how we make
fookin
magic.” she says with a guffaw-type laugh. “Welcome to the most fun you’ll ever
have in Hell, cookie!”

I
rush over as she escorts an older woman into the hot seat. I feel excited as
the woman says, “Just about a half inch off. That’s all.” Lottie looks at me
and gives me a wink. I start to get excited. I actually start bouncing on the
balls of my feet like a child waiting to see what’s behind some visiting
relative’s back. She began her lesson with, “The first thing you do is listen
carefully to the customer.” Then she grabs an enormous pair of shears and lops
off a huge chunk of this woman’s hair from the back. “Then you do the exact
opposite!”

I
was born for this. I can do this job for eternity. And eternity is exactly how
long I’ve got. I immediately turn to everyone waiting and say “First victim,
step right up!”

The
next 8 hours fly by. People keep coming in. I don’t understand why. I mean,
really... we’ve already collectively asked why they initially come in. But then
not only do they come in to groom something that doesn’t really exist; they sit
there and watch us butcher every single person’s hair before them. It’s like
those breathers that drive super slow by a car accident because they can’t
resist seeing the carnage and possibly a body part or something else really
gross. But the part that astounds me is that still, after everything, they get
up and get into my chair. Every single one of them tell me, sometimes beg me,
not to do to them what I did to everyone else, even though a part of them has
to know that that is exactly what I’m going to do. People left my chair in
tears, or screaming at the top of their lungs. One guy actually took a swing at
me! What a day!

Of
course once they get back to their domiciles and sleep, 90% of them will wake
up looking the same as they did the day they arrived, which might be why they
come in. Their curiosity and sense of boredom outweighs the risk of being
scarred forever.

The
best part is, that it’s practically the end of the day, and I haven’t screwed
up! I do a little dance as I sweep hair off the floor. It’s going to be
officially named heretofore my ‘I made it through a day of work without getting
shitcanned
’ dance. Lottie also has decided that she
thinks I’m the shit. We are chatting and laughing and having a generally
surprising good time considering where we are in the big picture, when the bell
on the door rings. “Looks like one more for the day. You up to it, newbie?”
says Lottie. “Of course!” I answer right away. “I’m a natural!” Lottie laughs
low and soft. “Yeah, I think you just might be.” she agrees.

I
look up to see who will be next in my chair. Standing in front of me is a frail
girl, who looks like she may be in her early 20s. Her face was stunningly
beautiful even without make up. I could describe how thin, yet still curvy and
feminine she was, how striking her gray eyes were, how she seemed to be dressed
in tights, bike shorts, and a puffy shirt all in contrasting colors. But, no
one walking down the street or running into her would have noticed any of that.
All they would see is her hair. Her hair was awful, and keep in mind I’ve been
giving people bad haircuts deliberately all day. This was worse than anything I
had done in the last 8 hours. “You poor thing.” I say breathlessly. “You seem
to have already gotten a haircut today!”

She
looks at me and gives me the most emptiest of smiles. “Yeah.” she said in a
childlike voice. “I did this to myself. I do this every day, and every morning
I wake up and
it’s
back. Can you help me?” When she
said the last part it was almost pleading. This girl doesn’t need help with her
hair. She just needs help.

I
sit her in my chair and put the smock around her shoulders, squeezing them as I
do. “So tell me...” I say and sit in the chair next to hers “why would you do
this to yourself?”

“I’m
here, aren’t I? Not here in the shop. I mean here, here. I’m obviously not a
good person. I may as well look as bad on the outside as I seem to be on the
inside.” She looks so sad, I once again find myself wondering about this crazy
place and how so many of us ended up here. I stand behind her and run my
fingers through the mess that is her hair. While I do that I say, “You want to
tell me about it?” And for a minute I feel like
Deedy
,
making someone come to terms with their own damned soul. That thought makes me
a smile.

And
so she starts talking, and while she talks I’m snipping away at her hair like
I’ve been doing this all my life. Stopping occasionally to look her in the eye
from behind her in the mirror and offer an, “Uh Huh” or “Yes, I know,” so that
she’ll continue.

She
tells me about how beauty was her obsession in life. So much so, that she was
unable to function sometimes. She dabbled in drugs, but not to get high,
usually to stay thin or because she needed to stay awake to exercise more. She
spent all of her disposable income and a lot of other people’s too, on the
latest laser treatment,
botox
, or some kind of spa.
She always had perfect hair, perfect teeth, and perfect nails. And whenever
anything started to fall, she’d be in her plastic surgeon’s office getting it picked
up or made bigger, smaller, or tighter. At the end, she didn’t even recognize
herself in the mirror anymore. And, no one else did either. She talked about
how boyfriends would leave her when they couldn’t take her constant need for
validation any longer. How all of her friends thought she was becoming
unhealthy and so they would drift away. She died alone, leaving a corpse that
was more silicone than actual body parts. She made a joke about not needing to
be embalmed because there was nothing organic left and I forced a laugh. Then
she woke up here and found that she had not brought any enhancement with her.
She was at point zero. She looks younger then she was when she died because she
was so young when she started trying to re-engineer her looks.

I
look at her with amazement. “This was you before you did anything?” I say
incredulously.

“Yes.”
she says sadly, as if I’m looking at the most wretched thing ever placed on
earth.

I
turned her chair around and made her face me. “You realize you are absolutely
beautiful. I would kill to look like you! And I’m a person that others describe
as self-assured... to say the least.” I’m continuing to snip at her hair as I
talk. “From what you have told me, you believe it was your vanity that brought
you here. So, now you are trying to pay penance by trying to erase any signs of
your ego, at all. What if you still haven’t gotten it right?” I stand back and
look at my handy work. I have actually managed to fix most of the damage. And
I’m not a real hairdresser! However, her gorgeous face is now framed in a cute
bob. I start to brush it out to make it shine as she asks me her one question.

“So,
how am I supposed to get it right?” she looks at me with hope in her eyes. I
know what this means, but my heart begins to ache with the need to provide her
with something to hang onto down here. So I finish brushing out her hair, I
whip her chair around so that she can see her reflection, and I say “Understand
that you’ve been beautiful the whole time.”

Tears
well up in her eyes as she runs her fingers through her now perfectly cut hair.
I can’t help but feel just a tiny bit proud of myself. Then she stands and
gives me a long, tight hug. “I may not be able to do it today. But, knowing
that someone out here thinks I’m pretty is already enough for now.” I squeeze
her back and just enjoy the human contact for a moment. Then, as she leaves the
shop I collapse into my chair. At least, it will be my chair for five or ten
more minutes until Lottie gets a hold of me. I cringe at the thought of that.
But suddenly I look up and Lottie is staring at me with complete wonder.

“What
have you done, luv?” she asked quietly.

“I’ve
apparently lost another job,” I say back, and smile at her through my tears.

I’m
slouching in
Deedy’s
comfy chair like a sullen
teenager. 
Deedy
is looking at me from behind
his desk with a bemused expression, as usual. That whole boyish charm thing
that made me feel so welcome when I first got here is starting to get on my
nerves. After about five minutes of nothing but that smile, since I told him
all about the girl in the shop, I just look at him and roll my eyes. To which
he responds by leaping forward in his chair and placing his chin on his folded
hands and says, “I think there is an American expression, Louise, so you’ve
probably heard of it. Something about practicing what you preach?”

“Here’s
another American expression,” I retort, “Shut up!”

Deedy
laughs. “Now, no need to be
temperamental darling girl.”

“Apparently
not,” I say with an almost smug tone. “Because, from what I’ve been able to
gather about The Second Chance Temp Agency, it’s not about the jobs but about
my uncanny ability to lose them.”

“That’s
almost profound,” he says, and again adopts his
Deedy
-is-so-amused
face.

“I’ve
made another observation, while we are having this discussion. Every time I
have come in here, there’s not been a single other client. Are there more
people that come here or is it just me?
Deedy
adopts
his infomercial voice and says, “The Second Chance Temp Agency has helped
hundreds of thousands of people just like you find their true purpose in the
afterlife.”