Apparently, Simone’s space was the room at the end. It was spacious, elegant, and pink with dashes of gold inlay and white furniture. It should have made one feel like they were drowning inside a bottle of the liquid heartburn medicine my grandmother used to take, but it wasn’t like that at all. The design of the room was stylish, smart, and palatial.
I sat in the chair she designated and accepted my cup of tea in its dainty pink-flowered China teacup with a gold handle that perfectly matched the tea pot she’d just poured it out of. For a moment I felt like I was in the musical I’d seen with my grandma about a young female named Gigi. She was being groomed to be proper and drank tea nervously from a dainty teacup held with an upward posed pinky. Of course, I remembered then that she was being groomed to be a mistress for rich men, but that’s not what happened, so . . .
Simone had sat in the chair opposite me and was staring brazenly. “You really are quite pretty, you know,” she said with that refined British voice of hers.
Either she was lying or she was . . . well, lying. I didn’t have a pretty bone in my body. As Granny used to say, “I was a workhorse, a sturdy, no nonsense type of individual. ”I’m not sure whether Granny was complimenting me or putting me down when she said that. I think she just meant that I was just me and came the way I came. Solid was good, anyway. But as to pretty?
I hadn’t spoken. I guess my face reflected my feelings on the matter. Simone put her cup down and reached over to place her hand on mine.
I wanted to withdraw. I’d never been a touchy-feely kind of girl. In fact, it made me apprehensive when someone did that, like an invasion of my space. But Simone was an extension of Judy. I may have wished to withdraw my hand, but I didn’t.
Her eyes were still watching me, studying me as an artist might. I guess that’s what a hairstylist was, or at least they wanted to be. But they had to work with the blob that walked through their door. They couldn’t carefully select the raw material they wished to carve into a masterpiece.
“You have an imp inside you,” she said suddenly.
What did one say to that? What did she even mean with such a statement? I remained silent thinking about it.
“You do not know yourself, I see. Then today, I will do more than cut your hair. I will reveal what is deep inside you.”