Split Ends (23 page)

“Cover her completely, you mean?” My cousin looks at me over his glasses.

“If she wants to be legitimate, wouldn't that be best? You should go shopping at Bed, Bath & Beyond and get a bed sheet and fashion it into a shawl. She'll have the only outfit that's 600 Egyptian thread count.” I grab a water out of the fridge. “I'd tell her she either covers up or you'll give her back to the stylist at Frederick's of Hollywood.”

Scotty laughs at me, but he begins to nod. “You know, you're right. I'm stressing for nothing. It's her producer that she needs to impress, and he called me. I'll just threaten her with quitting, and she'll wear a curtain if I demand it.”

He's goes back to sketching ideas for shopping, planning the day out and obsessing himself silly over this poor mutant girl.

“I'm off to work.”

“Yeah, have fun.” He doesn't look up from his sketch pad. I am invisible. But I guess next to his client everything is invisible. She's like a human car accident—you don't want to look, but you have to.

I pack my cell phone, smiling at the thought that I have a cell phone. I'm so calling Kate again today, who I am sure is safely back in the reality she's created for herself in Sable. She and Ryan have had these tiffs before.

I've spent the entire morning learning the proper way to wash hair.
As if.

“Massage the fingers deeply . . . deeply. Feel the skull at the back of the ears. Press deeply . . . massage deeply.” Magnus—which sounds like a dog's name but really to a slight, white man of about thirty—makes the instruction sound lewd. I mean, there's only so much pleasure you want a client to get out of a shampoo, am I right?

“Pressure points are key.” Magnus lifts up a soapy finger. “You will study the diagram of the head tonight, and I want the name of the central acupressure points on the head. Tomorrow, each of you will give me a shampoo, and you will be graded according to proper pressure, finding the right acupressure points, and finally, an overall relaxation score. Any questions?”

In Wyoming, they told us shampooing was just like milking a cow. I never had any complaints. But I wash the fake head at least twenty times. Which is ludicrous; you can't practice washing on a fake skull. Still, I obsess like everyone else in this town, feeling for the bony parts of the plastic skull. It's as good of a diversion as anything. I think this is just a town of human ants, and there's something about being here—one has to keep moving or die.

“And now!” Magnus lifts the other soapy finger as though the crème de la crème of shampoo facts are forthcoming. “We will use
real
Yoshi shampoo, and you will work on the texture of your head and select the right products for your personal head using the information you were given in your manuals last night.”

We all look at our identical plastic heads and wonder if it's a trick question. A hand goes up, and my fellow student Angie has guts enough to ask the obvious. “How is my head different from hers?”

Magnus ignores the question and accompanies this slight with a taut jerk of his head. “If you'll all
feel
your hair and write down the products you would suggest that client, I'll take your answers before we work with real product. Once we bring out the Yoshi organics, we will not use more than necessary. Are we clear?”

My fingers are raw—the
real
shampoo doesn't come
out until the end, so we got the “texture” and “feel” of how much is needed by using bulk dishwashing detergent, purchased at “Hollar for a Dollar” by
moi
. (Don't get me even started on how many bus rides it is to the local dollar store from Beverly Hills.) My fingers are stripped of their outer layer of skin—it's a blue peel for the hands—and this is probably the time to commit a crime if I have need, since I'm sure it took my fingerprint with it. One good note: if I need to remove wallpaper, I now know a really cheap alternative, and it's all mine for a dollar.

When Magnus brings out the gentle stuff, I can almost hear the angels singing over the shampoo's halo. He puts a small bottle at the head of each shampoo bowl and large one in front of me. “You'll fill the little ones for everyone and we'll begin washing together. Put your heads away; we'll be practicing on each other.”

I hold the bottle. My first inclination is to clutch it under my arm and run away with the booty, but I take deep breath and reset—pirate fantasies notwithstanding. Washing plastic heads all day is doing nothing for my brain cells.

Opening the bottle, I head to the first shampoo bowl. Fellow trainee Gretchen has made no bones about wanting spot as the paid position, and she's done her level best to talk to the entire room about why I shouldn't be there.

“Gretchen, can you open your bottle?”

“You can open it,” she says without moving. Did I mention she looks and sounds just like Cindy Simmons?I move on to the next student and fill until all five bottles are filled, including my own. Gretchen's sits there closed and empty. Childish? Absolutely. But I am not playing. I made that mistake as a child.

“Magnus,” Gretchen says with her hand lifted. “Sarah
skipped me.”

Magnus thins his eyes at her. “Well, what do you want me to do about it, take away her crayons? Is this kindergarten? Ask her to fill it and open your cap. Did you ever think she can't fill a closed bottle?”

Gretchen looks at me with a pout as I approach her bowl. “You did that on purpose,” she says through clenched teeth.

“Did what?” I hate conflict, but this girl is getting on my nerves. As if washing plastic heads with battery acid all day isn't enough to do that.

Suddenly Gretchen bats the bottle out of my hand, and thick bubbles of Yoshi gold pour out onto the floor. My mouth just drops open.
Cindy Simmons has followed me
. My new demon is named Gretchen.

Terrified, I bend over and try to channel the shampoo back into the bottle, but it's not working, and there's a giant puddle of lavender-scented liquid oozing along the floor. I try to cup the spill with my hands, and it pushes the wetness onto my knees and soaks through my jeans. Well, someone's jeans anyway; they're Scott's.

Something makes me look up to see Yoshi standing in the doorframe. Magnus is horrified at the scene, and the entire group stares at me, then back at Yoshi. He looks relatively calm. For a looming tsunami, that is.

“Sarah.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you know how much product that is lying there on the floor?”

“Four hundred and eighteen dollars' worth?” I ask, giving my best shot at a
Rain Man
answer.

“Yes, well.” Yoshi claps his hands together. “Someone get the mop!” Everyone scurries into motion. Except me; for the moment, I am the human mop. “Sarah, stand up please.”

I do and feel the shampoo ooze from my knees to my feet. I pray this is as organic as he claims, because if it doesn't come out, these jeans are most likely my first paycheck. If not more.

“Sarah and Gretchen, you'll be washing each other's hair today. You've had more than enough practice on the heads.” He goes on to pair the rest of the class, but I don't hear any of it.

“Yoshi, I'm so sorry. It was—”

“Come with me, please.”

I follow him into his office, thankful that my shoes are not trekking shampoo with me. Thank goodness I'd filled the other bottles up before getting to Gretchen.
What was with that psycho?

I'm trying to keep my breathing quiet, but it's strained and desperate. I can't go home yet. Not without one paycheck at least. For one thing, I can't actually get there financially, and I haven't even paid off the debt to get out here to my cousin. No, this is definitely not going to work.

“Yoshi, I—”

“Sarah, you need to learn when to speak.” He slams the door behind him and settles himself at his desk chair with a good view of himself to the mirror.

“I'm sorry—”

“You're speaking again.” He motions toward the extra chair and I sit down, bracing myself for my own failure. This has nothing to do with my mother. This is mine alone.

“I can pay for the shampoo—”

“Sarah—talking again. And no, you can't. I know what I pay you.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“Gretchen wants your position, no?”

“No. I mean yes.”

“This is a cutthroat business. I can't protect you from every scheming stylist, do you understand?”

“I do.”

“But you've got to learn to play a bit dirty. You never had a catfight in Wyoming?”

My jaw drops, not because I'm surprised, but because I don't know if I have it in me to play dirty. It's hard enough putting energy into a shampoo that's more choreographed than an automatic car wash.

“Maybe one.”

“Gretchen will never make it, do you understand? I can teach anyone to cut hair, but I cannot teach them humility—that styling is not about them but the client. She will never understand that; therefore she will never work in my salon.”

“So why's she here?”

“Because there are a thousand like her right behind her, and they pay good money to be here and learn. But you need to deal with them. Let yourself out.” He says this into the mirror, but I assume he's talking to me, so I shut the door behind me.

What I wouldn't give for a good pin curl and hair tease
about now.

I spend the rest of this never-ending day making advanced espresso. If you want a half-caf soy latte with extra foam, baby, I'm now your girl. Not a bad accomplishment after being virtually espresso illiterate less than a month ago.

I'm a little buzzed after all the taste tests, though. I should be thoroughly on fire for Ann's mentoring group, since sleeping is probably not in my immediate future. And since I think a mentoring group is the secular world's answer to Bible study, I'm anxious to hear what intellectual stimuli I might get from Hollywood employees in the know.

chapter 17

You can only sleep your way to the middle.
You have to claw your way to the top.
~ Sharon Stone

I
last ate at seven a.m. when I had an energy bar. No wonder everyone's skinny here; there's no time to eat. What I wouldn't give for a hot dog or a chicken sausage from Jody Maroni's. If you're only going to eat once a day, why not make it something in the sausage family?

“I'm starving,” I say aloud, thinking too hard about Jody's. I place my hand on my stomach, hoping to soothe its empty cry.

“We'll eat at mentoring group.” Ann is spritzing her long, luxurious blonde hair, though I never did see one strand out of place. She has the kind of beauty where it's like her hair wouldn't dare misbehave. “Someone's in charge of bringing dinner; it's usually Rock because she pinches it from the leftover catering trays for whatever movie she's on.”

I think about questioning this, but I decide it's just better not to know. I'll eat whatever's put in front of me, provided by Rock, Tree, or whomever.

“Are you ready?” Ann is perched at the door, waiting for Yoshi to extricate himself from the premises. She still looks as fresh as a daisy, as though these hours have effect on her beauty. She spent most of her day doing color. There has to be a serious lack of hydrogen peroxide in this town because everyone's blonde! You think that's a myth about LA, but nope, everyone's a blonde, unless they're Asian or African-American. Weirdest thing ever because, quite frankly, not everyone has the coloring for blonde.

Oh, wait, there are a few bad redheads too. Ann said there were more now that the
Desperate Housewives
redhead
and McDreamy's ex-wife on
Grey's Anatomy
came to the forefront. This phenomenon has brought out the control freak in me. I just want to pick them up off the street and bring them into Yoshi's for a real dye job. Even worse than an olive-skinned blonde is an olive-toned redhead.

Of course, I wanted to kidnap people in Sable, too, the world of blue and pink hair dye, which is actually difficult to purchase in this day and age. Sable seems to have a lifetime supply in someone's warehouse. There are only so many things in life you have control over.

“I heard you spilled shampoo all over the floor today.” Jamie walks up with a giggle. “Did Yoshi totally spaz or what?”

“He was really nice about it, actually.”

Jaime's smile straightens. “He was? I hope you don't get fired tomorrow. I think I'd rather have him spaz.” She looks at Ann and they nod, convinced of my imminent departure.

I spend all day with these women, and they're like two cardboard cutouts. In our salon back in Wyoming, the whole day was social, a virtual gabfest, but there's a serious nature to this environment—as if we're performing surgery and solving global warming, all at the same time. The fate of the universe rests in our organic hands.

I miss relationship. I miss Kate and Mrs. Gentry and Mrs. Rampas telling me what to do. I miss someone caring about me.

“So what's our topic at mentoring group?” I ask, changing the subject.

“Securities,” Jaime answers. “But we don't need a topic; our topic is mentoring. Whatever we have to share with others.” She rolls her eyes with a, “Duh.”

Not having biblical thoughts at the moment.

Jaime has a mass of natural curls that blossom from her head and dangle in spectacular ringlets like clinging vines. Jenna says Jaime's father is black and her mother is Puerto Rican, so she has this exotic look with creamy dark skin and blue-green eyes. Needless to say, she makes the blondes envious, but it makes me wonder if those curls aren't pulling on some vital brain cells.

“The girls will be at the house at nine,” Ann says. “So we have to run.”

A group that starts at nine. I just can't get over how weird that sounds. I've got my Bible tucked into my bag; I've decided to act like this is a Bible study. Maybe I can mentor someone in the Word while I'm there. Or maybe meet another believer. Being here, I've found my life compass is way off. I don't know which way to turn. Admittedly, I haven't had any trouble meeting men for the first time in my existence, but discerning exactly what they're up to is proving difficult.