The Ninth Wife (40 page)

“Bullshit.”

“Okay, I admit, it was a longshot. But I also thought it might be cathartic for you to see Lorraine.”

“Like hell you did. You just
love
drama, don’t you. Can’t get enough. How is it that I let you manipulate me
again
, after all this time?”

“Hey, Bess was the one who found her. I was just along for the ride.”

“And yet I don’t see Bess here. Do you?” he yells. He turns at that moment and sees Lorraine and her coworkers through the window watching them argue.

“Why waste an opportunity, is how I look at it,” says Maggie as he grabs her elbow and pulls her toward the fudge shop.

“An opportunity for
what
?”

Maggie takes her elbow back and runs her fingers through her hair. “To say you’re sorry.”

Rory checks to see if they’re still in the window and can’t see them. He turns back to Maggie and takes a deep breath to calm himself down. He counts to ten the way Steven in Seattle had taught him to do when he couldn’t think straight or felt angry or impulsive. “I don’t hear
you
saying anything like that,” he says.

For the first time today Maggie looks sad. She leans against the shop window and wraps her arms around her waist. Rory can tell he has finally pierced her tough exterior. Her fortress has a drawbridge and it’s lowering before him. “I’m sorry,” she says, softly. “I really am.” It sounds like she’s apologizing for bringing him here today, but he knows by her stare that it goes deeper than that.

His nod is subtle, enough to let her know his fury is abating. Is it his curse in life to be attracted to complicated women? “How do you know I have something to apologize for with Lorraine anyway?”

“She told me.”

“Who, Bess?”

“No, Lorraine. She came looking for me right after you left her, only she was so high I was banking today on the fact that she wouldn’t recognize me.”

“What did she want?”

“Beats me. I think she thought you and I were getting back together.”

“Jesus. I feel like I’m in a Dickens nightmare.
The Ghosts of Wives Past
.” He rubs his face. “I wish I didn’t feel obligated to stay now.”

Maggie stands and motions toward the salon. “C’mon, Ebenezer. I think you could use a haircut.”

“What, are you kidding? I’m not letting her get near me with a pair of scissors.”

“Now who’s being dramatic? I’m guessing she could use the business.”

Rory reviews his options. He could try harder to reach Bess. He could drive back to the hotel and take a nap. He could tour Chicago. He could head home.
Bloody hell
, he thinks.
What am I doing here?
He doesn’t know why, but he feels like staying. Maybe everything already seems so bizarre that he might as well finish out the day. Or maybe, now that he’s seen Lorraine, he’d like to know what her life has been like the last two decades. “Fine,” he says. “But you’re paying.”

Lorraine is blowing the hair off her chair and around her station with a hair dryer that she shuts off when Rory and Maggie walk back in.

“Everything all right?” she says.

“Yes, sorry about that. If you have time for a quick trim, that’d be great.”

She holds her hand out triumphantly toward the back sink. “Have a seat.”

Lorraine leans over to wash his hair so that he is inches from her bosom and can smell the familiar scent of her skin, can see that her tattoos are decorative butterflies and flowers. Whereas he remembers Maggie’s whole body, how it fit with his, with Lorraine he remembers her meaty, malleable breasts and thighs. He is hyper aware and halfway turned on by the femaleness in the salon with all the exposed skin and curves around him.

“Too hot?” says Lorraine.

“Excuse me?”

“The water,” she says, massaging his scalp slowly and deliberately.

“No, it feels good,” he says with his eyes closed and then blushes when he hears her laugh and opens his eyes to see how close her face is to his. Her cheeks, he notices, are the texture and colors of an urban sidewalk. He clears his throat. “So you live around here?”

“Five minutes away. Remember my parents died, right? Well, my uncle got drunk one night and told me I was adopted.
No shit
, I said. So I went looking for my birth mother. Found her right here. I take care of her now. She introduced me to my boyfriend, Russ.” She wipes her hands, walks to her station, and comes back with a frame holding two photos. “That’s him.” She holds it up so Rory can see. The photo on the left shows a large man in black leather on a motorcycle, a small American flag attached to the back. The one on the right shows a boy in his late teens with a cowboy hat riding a bull.

“Very nice. And who’s that?”

“My son. He’s down in Texas with his daddy.”

“I see.” Rory wipes suds from his eyelids. Lorraine is chattering on like all the hairdressers he’s ever known and it’s making him feel more at ease. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all. He wants to ask about her son, but he opts for a topic of commonality. “You know,” he says, “I was in Toledo yesterday.”

“Oh really.” Lorraine has been rinsing his hair but now lets the water rest on one spot.

“Yeah, you’ve been back?”

“Uh-huh.” That doesn’t sound to Rory like an answer. He wonders what exactly she seems to be remembering.

“What was that song you liked, that Phil Collins sang? The one you used to sing all the time?”

She shuts off the water and turns her back to him. “ ‘You Can’t Hurry Love.’ ”

“That’s it.” He sits up. She hands him a towel. Maggie is swiveling in Lorraine’s chair, chatting with the other stylists. Rory and Lorraine seem to both take notice of her at the same time.

“Your sister’s pretty, but she don’t look like you.”

“She looks like my dad’s side,” he manages to say.

“And this was her idea?”

“To come here? Yeah.”

“How’d she find me?”

“You’ll have to ask her.”

She fixes her bra strap and walks toward Maggie. “Follow me,” she says to Rory. Rory can’t help noticing her laborious gait, how her weight, particularly her sizable rear end, shifts from side to side with each step. Maggie gets up and moves chairs. Lorraine takes a comb and scissors from her drawer and pumps up Rory’s seat. She wraps him in a smock and Velcros the neck so that it’s almost too tight. The other two hairdressers in the salon have finished with their clients and are up front, accepting payment.

“So,” Lorraine says to Rory, “you married?”

“Nope.”

“Really? That’s not like you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you like to be married, right?”

“Sure.” Rory is trying to keep his eyes on the scissors, which she wields recklessly when she gestures.

“So it’s kind of strange that you’re not married again.”

Again?
Rory looks questioningly at Maggie.
Beats me what she knows
, her look says. Rory can see little pieces of his hair falling to the floor.

“Not really,” he says. “Guys like their freedom, right?” He smiles to let her know he’s just making small talk. The other clients leave and one of the hairdressers disappears into the back room. The other takes out a cigarette and steps outside.

“No,” says Lorraine, tilting his head so she can get closer to his neck. “Not you. You like to be tied to a woman, don’t you. Am I right, sis?”

“Right,” says Maggie.

“Yeah, you like being married, but they just keep getting away.”

What is she talking about?
She is tugging a little harder on his hair with the comb. He finds the
snip snip
of the scissors unnerving. Maggie stands to survey Lorraine’s work. She lets Rory know in the mirror that his hair is okay in back, not to worry.

“Women,” Lorraine continues, “they just keep dying and moving away and going loco, don’t they.” At the word
loco
she circles her ear to show the common symbol for craziness, only she’s circling the scissors in the air and it’s making Rory nervous. “I mean,” she says, back to cutting, “I wouldn’t have left you. I don’t do that. Give you an example, I had a boyfriend once. He cheated on me so bad, but I stuck with him. I knew he loved me, you know these things, even though he used his fist to show me, but he had a problem with his anger and I understood that. I stuck with him. Until he died. Then I buried him.”

Rory’s heart is racing, trying to watch the scissors. Why is Maggie being so quiet? She hasn’t said two words since he sat down.
Calm down
, he says to himself. So Lorraine knows about his other ex-wives. Maybe Bess told her. After all, she told Maggie. “By any chance,” says Rory as pleasantly as he can, “have you spoken with my girlfriend?”

Lorraine stops what she’s doing. “You have a girlfriend? Why didn’t you tell me? What’s her name?”

“Holly,” says Maggie before Rory can answer. “A very nice girl.”

“She pretty?”

“
I
think so,” says Rory.

“She pretty?” Lorraine asks Maggie.

“Sure,” says Maggie.

Lorraine walks behind Rory and leans in toward his ear. “Does she like dogs?”

Okay, this is too much
. Rory shifts in his seat. “Are you almost done?”

Lorraine runs her fingers through his hair. “Almost. I’m a perfectionist, I got to get it right.”

“Okay,” says Rory, breathing heavier. He admits, looking at his reflection, that the cut isn’t bad. “It’s just that we have to go pretty soon.” He appeals to Maggie for help.

“Yes,” says Maggie. “Rory and I have early dinner plans.”

“I gotcha. Just want to see if it’s all even.” She takes a can out and sprays something musky on his hair. “So,” she says, examining her work, “I didn’t hear your answer. Does she like dogs?”

The memory of the first day they met is vivid in Rory’s mind now. She was eerily persistent then, too, with her questions about dogs.

“I don’t know,” he says halfheartedly, then he senses that isn’t the right answer. He’s been looking at Lorraine’s handbag hanging off her mirror like a dead raccoon, noticing something shiny and silver poking out. He is suddenly sure he knows what it is. “No, what am I saying, she loves dogs,” he says, speaking quickly. “Of course she loves dogs.”

Lorraine is brushing stray hairs off his shoulders and smock, tilting her head, almost lost in thought. “That’s good,” she muses. “Because the one in Colorado, the crazy one? She didn’t like dogs. I think that’s why she was crazy. You got to like dogs, right? The Asian chick, she liked cats but that’s just not worthy of you, Rory. You’re a dog lover.”

Rory jumps up. He pulls the smock off. “Okay, great. Looks great. Thanks so much. Fantastic. How much do we owe you?” He walks toward the hairdresser at the front of the salon who has come in from her smoking break.
Human shield
, he’s thinking.

Lorraine looks at him curiously. “Don’t worry about it,” she says. “On the house.”

“No it ain’t!” says the cheerleading hairdresser. She and the other woman have been hanging around the salon, pretending to be busy. “Man’s haircut is twenty-five dollars.”

“Don’t you want me to dry it?” says Lorraine.

“Nope, I’m good, thanks. I love it just the way it is.”

“Here,” says Maggie, placing two twenties on the front counter.

“Right, then,” says Rory, almost to the door. “Lorraine, good to see you. Take care. Say hi to your boyfriend, your son. Ladies,” he says to the two other hairdressers who are now watching him, “thank you. Maggie? Let’s go.”

“Maggie?” says Lorraine, moving toward him.

“Shit,” whispers Maggie behind him. “Mary,” she says to him. “Mary.”

“Mary, I’m sorry. Mary. Sorry.” He feels like he’s shouting. He is nearly out the door with Maggie right behind him, but he turns toward Lorraine and for an instant, for a quick moment he imagines her the way she was, the good parts anyway, the quiet, eager-to-please, charitable parts. “I’m sorry,” he says. “For everything.”

C
alm down,” says Maggie as Rory pulls out of the parking lot. “You’re going the wrong way. Turn around up there.”

Rory smacks the steering wheel with his palm. “How did she know their names? How did she know Dao had a cat? Can you tell me that? How could she possibly have known Olive Ann didn’t like dogs?”

“I don’t know. Stop yelling.”

“Did you see what she had in her bag? A pistol, Maggie! A gun!”

“She had no such thing.”

“I saw it. It was silver and shiny.”

“That was a curling iron.”

“No, you’re wrong.”

“Rory, I saw it. I know what it was.”

“Did you hear what she said to me when she first saw me?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You’re alive.”

“It’s something people say.”

“I should call the police.”

“And tell them what? A woman assaulted you with conditioner?”

“Maybe she killed her parents.”

“Listen to yourself!”

Rory takes a deep breath. He counts to ten.

“That’s better,” says Maggie. The highway traffic heading back to Chicago is slow-going. A truck in the next lane inches into their lane and moves ahead. “I can see,” says Maggie calmly, “that she must have kept tabs on you, and that’s pretty creepy. But I think she’s ultimately harmless.”

“Why would you think that?”

“I talked to the other girls when she was washing your hair. They seemed willing to talk about her behind her back. They don’t like her boyfriend, said he’s loud and obnoxious. They don’t like how she tries to mother them. And they don’t seem to think she’s pulling her weight work-wise. But other than that, they say she’s okay. She takes care of her mother. She bakes cookies.”

“Yeah well,” says Rory, running his hand through his newly cut hair. Lorraine didn’t take too much off, but he could feel the difference. “Serial killers usually appear harmless.”

Rory sprays wiper fluid onto his window to try and get the dead bugs off. The wipers swish several times and then stop. He feels Maggie’s stare. “What?” he says, glancing at her.

“She gave you a pretty good haircut.”

My God
, he thinks,
am I dreaming?
He doesn’t want to talk about his hair. Why did he listen to Maggie? Why did she get so quiet, watching him like a play? Why did she put him through that? He feels dirty. He wants to take a hot shower and crawl into bed and watch
M*A*S*H
or an old movie. He wants to talk to Bess. The sun is setting, the air is cooler, the day needs to end.