Chapter 11
Susanne thought the evening would never end. But when it had and Henri had driven her home, then suggested he come up for a moment, she assented eagerly.
In the apartment he set about building up the hearth fire, arranging chairs and eventually going to the kitchen to prepare coffee, as one accustomed to such tasks.
Again Susanne wondered. Her aunt must have had him up often, that he should be so familiar with these homey tasks.
"Henri," she began abruptly when he had served the coffee, "what does this style change mean to us?"
He literally shrugged his body. "Who knows? Our particular clientele is inclined to follow the mode. There will be the few wise older women who dare not risk the severe styling. They will perhaps compromise with the smooth coiffure, but-"
He spoke then of the many changes their profession had faced. Some salons had fallen; some had carried through and created finer establishments.
As for the new look, who knew how long it would last, and what effect the duration would have on the Hair-After.
A great comfort he had been, she thought when she closed the door after him. Yet what could he have said without false optimism?
She tossed about quite a bit that night, then awakened to fog as dense outside as it was in her thoughts.
Four months to go. She could sell within four months. Oh, fine. Having had a taste of the Hair-After, what could she do after selling? Go quietly mad with her program of club work in a small town?
"Maggie," she cried at the breakfast table, "just why do things have to keep changing-styles, hairstyles, particularly?"
Maggie neatly placed a dish before her. "It is too bad. Now there was a time when cave women didn't even have to wash their hair.
"Then I mind the time when I was a girl. Come winter, hair washing meant an all-day stay in the house sitting by the stove or you'd catch your death of dampness."
"I suppose you mean a change in styles is indicative of general progress. Then how about changes in dress and of shoe styles? Think of the fortune shoe manufacturers made when they brought out the pointed toe."
"And me thinkin' the chiropodists thought up that change."
"You watch. When they're sure nobody has a blunt-toed pair in the attic, that no store carries a supply in a back room, they'll switch back, and the pointed toe will be as tabu as the square has been."
Maggie filled her own coffee cup and sat down on the opposite side of the table. "Could be, though even pinched toes aren't too much to pay for all the work that change of styles bring men and women.
"A body wonders if the same style stayed in, if maybe we'd stay the same for all time, never getting any forwarder. Have to try out a change to find out if it's worth keeping. If it isn't, it goes back down the drain."
Susanne nodded. She was afraid the Hair-After could go down the drain because of the new hairstyles coming in.
Susanne walked the four blocks from parking area to salon, resenting the fog, the distance, the necessity of having to walk. Ridiculous. She'd walked farther from sorority house to campus for four years without minding. Wherein lay the difference?
She reached the salon without bothering for a pickup glance at the mirror, intent upon her problem.
Through the door she saw Henri step forth quickly, and when she reached her office he was there.
Perhaps dinner tonight at some quiet spot? They could discuss the future of the salon, should it be affected by the change in half styling.
Susanne shook her head. Another dose of Henri's negative thinking, and she'd be tempted to take the alternative Aunt Mary's will had made possible.
"Another time?" she suggested.
Inside, she found a note in Henri's handwriting. Would she call Mr. Bert Leehoff?
Estate business? The morning newspaper had carried a rather ribald front-page story on the great change about to descend upon the heads of women; a story even men would read.
But if he dared say one word about the Hair-After not being able to survive the change, she would inform him that she, a woman, knew more about hair and women than he.
Bert's opening gambit wasn't at all reassuring. "Susanne, would you take pity on an overworked attorney and have dinner with him tonight? A purely selfish invitation."
When were men ever anything but selfish? Take Danny yesterday morning, Henri last night-
"I've been working on a case that comes up in court on Monday," he continued. "Principals were due in this evening. I just received a wire they've been grounded by fog and are switching to a train, so I can't see them until tomorrow.
"Now if I stay home, I'll keep on going over this affair until I'm rattled. I've learned when I am with you, I can't think of anything else."
Susanne grabbed the desk. At last! One man had seen her as a woman.
"It's too foggy to go out," she temporized, "and I'm so tired after last night's banquet, nothing but a tray dinner before the fire appeals to me. Would you mind leftovers?"
"Ah," came a sibilant sigh of relief, "I prefer them. If you're tired, we'll make it early. Shall I call Maggie?"
The day improved immediately, except that Henri seemed overly solicitous when asking if she had been able to reach Mr. Leehoff.
I wonder, she mused, if he had a motive in suggesting a date this evening before telling me about Bert calling. Yet why shouldn't he want her to date Bert? And how could he guess it wasn't estate business Bert wished to discuss either at her office or his?
Poor darling, she thought, as he turned away, defeated, he had gained nothing from adroit questioning. It must be maddening to be- practically running a place of business and not know what might be going on behind one's back.
Suddenly Susanne swooped into her office, closing the door behind her and wishing it were the back alley door and a way of escape lay ahead.
Ranalee Graton had come in, determination in every sharp step.
Now her voice sang out imperiously. She wanted Henri immediately. Her want being met with alacrity, she demanded of Henri a hair-styling such as she had read about.
Henri made soothing sounds Susanne couldn't decode. Ranalee's voice came again. "I suppose, though, you had time to style her hair. Oh? Not the type? As though that would bother her."
Again Henri's murmur, and again Ranalee's rebuttal. "I know, I know, but that appointment will be cancelled any moment now. I shall take her place. I've a most important engagement this evening."
The telephone buzzed, Henri answered, and a moment later Ranalee's voice picked up again. But Henri was content. Judging from what Miss Graton was intimating, Miss Susanne would not be seeing her attorney that evening. He was more than happy to turn Miss Ranalee into the most bewitching gamine his clever fingers could contrive. She was the type.
Susanne sat listening with clinical interest. She wondered if people ever realized how much of their characters was revealed by their voices when the hearer's attention was not distracted by another sense-sight, for instance.
Ranalee would have tossed her head, flashed her eyes, used her shoulders seductively as she talked, thus concealing the arrogant self-will the voice alone revealed.
Poor Ranalee, she mused, immediate victories won as she won them were never lasting or satisfying. She wondered which friend she had talked into giving up an appointment with Henri, and with whom was her date.
Fast on that came the answer. Who but Bert Leehoff would have brought forth that note of triumph?
She spent the rest of the day waiting for a call canceling their evening's engagement, then drove home expecting word would await her there.
Instead Bert was waiting, one of Maggie's mammoth aprons belted around the middle and flaring at his shoulders like ruffled wings.
"Come in, come in," he greeted her. "Maggie was called out on a do-good mission and turned the kitchen over to me. Wait till you taste this turkey a la czar. It has authority. How about getting into something easy?"
"Such as you're wearing?" she laughed.
"We're eating in the kitchen," he warned. "Choose your garments."
She returned in a soft shirt and pedal pushers, and they sat in the window embrasure looking down on a fog blanket blurred with light.
"Know something?" He had removed the apron but hadn't donned his coat or tie. "The Romans had something. Now we doll up in stiff clothes, sit on stiff chairs and eat with one eye on the clock. I'm all for easy does it when that's possible."
Susanne tried to conjure up people such as those at the previous night's banquet lounging on divans, reaching for a leg of mutton, a goblet of wine, a full roast chicken, and laughed.
"Wouldn't I hate to clean up after such diners!"
He guessed that that relaxed format had gone out with slaves, but TV trays were offering a modern substitute. His only reason for suggesting the kitchen and the tiny table was the aftermath. He had no sisters. He'd been brought up to dry dishes until he'd grown old enough and earned enough to make the down payment on a dishwasher.
"I let Dad take over from there on."
They spent a companionable hour, with Bert washing dishes and she drying them; then came the inevitable move to easy chairs before the fire.
Warily she had waited for some special subject to be broached, something which would reveal his real reason for wanting to spend the evening with her. When there was nothing forthcoming, she could wait no longer.
"Did you want to see me about something special?" she asked.
"Susanne," he leaned forward a little, "there are times when I regret I am your attorney. I can see you as just the kind of a girl I want to be with, but all you see in me is a briefcase. Right?"
She couldn't defend herself by telling him how little experience she had had with men. Once she was isolated by Danny, both high school and college boys had kept away from her.
Bert watched her. What a change since she had come to Leesburg. Probably the hair-styling. There she sat, one foot folded under, short curls giving her a small-child look; an adorable small child, he amended.
He thought of her as she had been when he had barged into her at the salon entrance that first day: completely self-assured, definitely superior in attitude. There had been condescension in her willingness to take over the Hair-After that first hour; later, a fighting determination to meet a challenge.
Remembering the tilt of her chin, he shook his head. Maybe the hair-styling was only an outward symbol of an inward change. The girl across from him was no longer convinced she knew all of the answers to everything.
"A briefcase with legs, especially one who can cook," she was replying gravely, "is quite an asset. I enjoy having it around. And you must admit our contacts have been more or less confined to legal business."
"That's inevitable even on a social occasion. Things can crop up, but not tonight."
They talked of other things until Susanne mentioned her dread of the long walk from parking area to salon when winter storms started.
And Bert was off on his favorite subject. The Green Light committee on customer parking had made initial surveys. They'd chosen the ideal spot. Had she noticed an old church in the center of town?
"Churches, too, are having parking problems," he confided. "This denomination has purchased and is erecting a new edifice on the outskirts, with adequate parking space."
The committee had taken a "right of first refusal" on the land a year ago. They had bought up other small pieces of property within the block. They were and had been negotiating for the old Morrison Building for months, but had run into a snag.
The old Morrison Building was part of an estate, and some interest held an option through one of the heirs. That heir was holding out for such a preposterous price that the eventual buyer, the city, wouldn't consider it.
"Do you know which of the heirs?"
Leehoff threw up his hands. "There are a dozen, and none of them are talking. Naturally, their attorneys are equally silent. We're stopped cold." -"Is this block the only one available?"
It was the only one with buildings old enough to warrant destruction: two houses, the church and the ancient Morrison Building, covering half a block, once the pride of the city.
Once they had cleared with the heir and managed to force the sale of one lot, unfortunately in the center of one section, the city would take over; the parking palace, as it was to be called for some inane reason, would be started.
Susanne sighed. What a joy that would be to her and to the Hair-After: a spot right in the center of the city's core where patrons could leave cars and not worry about parking violations.
They had the backing of chain stores. They were tired of maintaining parking strips where, while tickets had to be validated by purchase, many people parked for hours for fifteen cents, crowding out actual buyers.
"Now," said Bert as he finished, "how about telling me your problem?"
"How did you know I had one?" Susanne cried, sitting up.
"It's hiding behind your eyes but peeking out occasionally. Something wrong at the salon?"
Her story poured out: the banquet, the style show, the reaction of those present and Henri's gloom upon their return.
"He even intimated I might have to discharge most of our regular help to install specialists," she concluded indignantly.
Back went the Leehoff head, and laughter rang out. "Susanne, did you sit still and let him sell you a line like that? Now listen."