Chapter 3
Henri, always the diplomat, soothed his client with carefully chosen words. Miss Susanne had come but recently from the small town, from college. She had found here such a burden of work she had not had time to have so much as the shampoo.
"But wait," he intoned, "until I am through with her."
For hadn't his fingers itched since the first moment he'd laid eyes upon her?
"A good head," he informed the woman he was rapidly turning into his idea of an upper-class society matron. "She will make of the Hair-After much."
With his assistance, he might have added, and did imply, she would allow the artistes more leeway than had Miss Mary.
Susanne waited for Henri's lunch break, then signaled Henri to prove his craft on her own hair.
When he was done Susanne spent a while staring at the reflection in the mirror. Really nice-looking. She wondered who she was. She twisted a little to see if someone else had come into the booth and was handed a mirror for the side view.
"You mean-well, of course-" And then she cried, "But I don't look weird."
Her hair, gleaming with soft tan lights, fitted her head like a comfortable cap, two swirls softening the line of her cheeks. Why, she looked like all the girls she'd admired. Now she was one of them.
"Voila! Tomorrow the clothes. Maggie will tell you where Miss Mary she found the best."
"Henri, thank you." Susanne's guard was down. Henri had done this for her.
Even Maggie approved.
"You're beginning to look like yourself," she commented.
Susanne carried that thought around
"like a plate full of water," something liable to spill and be lost.
How could Maggie know Susanne's self when Susanne herself didn't? And what was Danny going to say?
Having ruined her appetite at lunch, she now ruined her dinner. Danny. She knew only too well. One look and then: "Come on; you look all right."
She wondered if he had ever seen her in those quick glances?
Maggie came in with a cup of coffee and sat down opposite her. "Stop kicking yourself around the table," she ordered. "Eat up. You're going to need strength the next few days."
"More than I've been needing?"
"You've just skimmed the surface. You have to get acquainted with yourself first, naturally, then with each of the employees, then with your regular patrons. Yes, there is more to running a beauty salon than sitting in the office toting up the profits."
With that many persons to consider, thought Susanne, she'd better make short work of herself.
She laughed a little. She had really scorned her inheritance. Anyone could run a beauty salon. Imagine a girl with her education wasting time on one, especially when there were so many really worthwhile projects begging for her services.
Yet think what she had learned about herself within the last twenty-four hours. Why, she might have gone on through life believing her good works' more than made up for her dowdy appearance.
Maggie smiled at her. "If you're thinking what I'm thinking you're thinking, cheer up. Took me a year to find Maggie. I had the old girl all mixed up with a put-upon bear; you know, the kind that has to snarl and claw because it feels it isn't getting its just due."
"What happened to awaken you?"
"I got my just due," she replied dryly. "We all fall into our own traps, given time. I'll tell you someday. Now how about clothes?"
She needed some to match the new person she was becoming. "Have I the right to spend money on myself?" she asked anxiously.
"You're not. You're spending it on the salon. Wouldn't quibble if it was new wallpaper, would you? Or fixings? You and the way you look right now are more important.
Folks got to know things is going to keep on running right."
Susanne looked up, her eyes shining. "I've never really let myself go," she confided.
"Then do, at Julienne's. Value for the money," she added a bit lamely. Henry did have good taste. As much as she resented him pre-choosing Miss Susanne's clothes, she would cooperate this time, until the girl learned.
Susanne would have to write Danny that evening if she were to catch him at his next stop. She went into Miss Mary's thinking room, sat before a small gold and ivory typewriter, and just stared at it.
Danny, the complete love of her life. What could she tell him? How much of what had happened to her in the past two days would he understand?
Why, she couldn't even let him know she'd had her hair cut without him thinking she had let herself be sold on "all that doodling up rot."
For a few moments she rattled away at the keys. Figures he would understand. She would tell him how much money she had at her disposal; about the auditor; a little, very little, about Leehoff.
And then her fingers crashed on the keys. This was dreadful. Not only was she seeing herself in a different guise, but Danny from a different perspective.
How long had she been withholding the absolute truth from him; how long substituting such facts as she felt intuitively he would approve? Oh, poor Danny. She hadn't been fair to him at all.
Maggie tiptoed away from the door, looking wise.
Susanne, chin in her hands, stared at the girl in the mirror beyond the desk. Oh, drat the house, the salon. Every place she turned there were mirrors, like so many consciences.
She should write Danny and, if typewriter keys could weep, cry, "Danny, I'm not at all the girl you think you love. Right now, if I had to make a choice between a date with you and going shopping tomorrow, I'd choose shopping first."
Eventually she wrote a brief note to be airmailed.
Awakening at dawn, Susanne decided she hadn't felt like this since her tenth Christmas morning-excited, eager, wondering what delight would be found under the tree.
She managed a calm appearance at the salon, where the staff expressed admiration of her hairstyle, each in his or her own fashion.
"Now you look like you belong to us," said the silver-blond Nelsa.
"Don't you feel you've had a load taken off your head?" cooed Dove. "I went from braids to a shingle in one hour and nearly took off into outer space. I mean, even my feet felt light."
Lurline swept a wise glance from Susanne to Henri and remarked a conservative change was advisable, and this style was so adaptable.
Bettine came out with a frank, "Me, I like it. Are we ever glad Miss Mary chose you!"
Susanne almost tiptoed into Julienne's. She sailed out. She had never encountered such a person as Julie. She had made no more than a single purchase, but she needed no more at the moment.
Fortunately she wasn't driving. The only apparent casualties were one wide-brimmed hat tipped over the owner's indignant nose; one pair of heels trod upon.
Susanne didn't plan an entrance at the Hair-After, but she achieved one. A patron leaving still clung to the inner door to talk over her shoulder to one who had just entered.
"I don't know, and neither does he," she was saying. "Check with Henri. Imagine an evening watching the goon girl. Bert will writhe."
Susanne fixed the girl with her best patronizing look.
"Oh, sorry," said the girl, and moved on quickly.
"Considered," replied Susanne, and left her baffled. Had she meant she would consider the apology or consider its source?
"Who is she?" the girl whispered.
Bettine couldn't resist replying, "The goon girl."