When he’d gone, Jaynie slid down in the chair and closed her eyes. Lady Jessica stood behind her, her hands on her friend’s shoulders. She plucked out Jaynie’s hair grips, placed them in her lap. Then she gathered Jaynie’s hair together and flipped it over the back of the chair, smoothing it down so that it fell like a curtain. ‘You look like you’re waiting for a shampoo and set,’ she said. ‘I could style you right now, baby, just to cheer you up.’ Her voice sounded high, forced, determined not to succumb. She pulled a hairbrush out of a box. But Jaynie sat forward, looked at the salon equipment all about her. It took up the full breadth of the sidewalk and already passers-by were stepping round it, looking on with curiosity. Jaynie was quiet for a minute. She looked up at the overhead electric cables that ran from the municipal pylons to each shop and house on Esperanza Street. Lady Jessica watched her, her eyes narrowing as she broke slowly into a smile. ‘Wicked girl,’ she said. I left to return to the boarding house as Lady Jessica fell into feverish discussion about circuits and insulators and voltages.
I went straight to Aunt Mary. I told her about Eddie Casama with his balls in his ears. She smiled mischievously at me. She marched over to the telephone, picked up the receiver. I heard her greet Connie Casama. ‘Is Edgar back yet from Manila? No? An emergency? No, not really, Well, perhaps. Did you know the Beauty Queen salon is in trouble? I see. Yes, he plays basketball. Is there any chance that Edgar might … Yes, and a keen swimmer too. Yes, he still paints. Yes, yes. Well then, I mustn’t keep you.’ When she hung up, her face was dark with anger.
Almost immediately, Aunt Mary sent me back to the beauty salon. By the time I returned, the municipal cable had already been breached and, soon enough, a compact version of the Beauty Queen parlour offering a select range of its usual services was up and running on the sidewalk. I helped Jaynie push the unused equipment to one side to be wheeled away later a piece at a time. ‘If we’d tapped it after the electric meter,’ said Lady Jessica peevishly, ‘Eddie would’ve had to pay for the juice.’
The rains were still intermittent and the electrics were a worry. Jaynie and Lady Jessica rigged up a tarpaulin to keep the wiring dry, but after a while Jaynie unplugged the big dryers, clipping a single hand-held dryer onto the waistband of her jeans like a gunslinger.
Like food vendors they touted for custom, but people stepped past and the salon chairs remained empty. Finally, to demonstrate that the parlour was still in business, Jaynie offered to cut Rosaline’s hair for free. Rosaline, the owner of the noodle joint next door, usually had her hair cut by her sister at home over the sink with dressmaking scissors.
As I stood watching Jaynie at work, imagining Dub in the seat under her expert hands and wondering what it might feel like to have one’s hair blow-dried, a moped swung into the kerb. The policeman cast his eyes over the scene before dismounting. He beckoned to Jaynie but, her hands still engaged with Rosaline’s hair, she twitched her brow at the empty chair next to her, inviting him to sit. The cop stayed where he was. ‘I didn’t come for a haircut, miss,’ he said, jovially enough. Over the course of the afternoon, Jaynie’s mood had steadily hardened and now she wore a look on her face that made the man hesitate before he moved in closer. ‘You have a permit for street-trading?’ he said, carefully.
‘That’s my salon,’ Jaynie pointed with her scissors.
‘Not what I heard, ma’am,’ but the cop had caught the coolness in her voice and was aware, no doubt, of how many people were about, while he was there alone. Jaynie and Jessica were popular in the street and the extrusion of the salon onto the sidewalk had displaced to either side the barbecue vendors and lottery and cigarette stalls that usually thronged it and now, in this tight-packed space, the cop’s conversation with Jaynie was the focus of everyone’s attention. The cop looked about him, his eyes narrowing as he caught sight of me, lingering over my bruises.
‘How about a free cut, officer?’ Lady Jessica purred the last word. She stepped forward, her broad frame between me and the cop. I saw the forested dome of his head move behind her as he tried to see past her but she shifted her weight from heel to heel and soon enough he gave up. ‘I can see it’s been a while, officer. No ring on your finger. And so trim in that uniform!’ She pulled a chair out for him, patted the seat. The cop appeared to consider, then he sat down. When he did, the tension in the street seemed to abate. The other vendors went back to their business, glancing back at him curiously now and again as he sat, quietly, a salon apron across his breast marked with the words Beauty Queen.
The cop’s hair had been cut and he was part-way through being manicured when Father Mulrooney arrived. I wasn’t surprised to see him; his walks often took him past the salon. He looked dismayed now, as I had been at the sight of the salon furniture out on the street. He looked at Lady Jessica, at me; he nodded gently at the healing bruises, glanced at the dryers and the chairs, at the boxes of combs and brushes and curlers and then, finally, delicately, at Jaynie. She was watching him, waiting to look him straight in the eye and when she did he flushed deeply and broke his eyes away. ‘Come on, Father,’ she said softly, her hand resting on the back of a chair, ‘be my first paying customer.’ Mulrooney looked at the cop, frowning slightly. The cop raised his free hand in greeting and smiled up at the priest. ‘Afternoon, Father,’ he said cheerfully.
Mulrooney sat down. He arranged his robes self-consciously as Jaynie floated an apron, a plain one, down over him and fixed it about his neck. She ran her hands through his hair. He closed his eyes for an instant. I wondered if she’d ever touched him before. She watched him in the mirror as she asked what he might want her to do with his hair, all the while her hands playing through the thick sandy curls. She cut his hair slowly, carefully and, unlike Lady Jessica, who besieged the cop with conversation, remained silent as she worked. It seemed there was something private that enveloped the two of them then, surrounded as they were by the noise of the traffic, the calls of hawkers, the gulls circling up from the jetty. It was a public place and yet I felt it was an intrusion to watch them, but I did nonetheless, with everybody else; when she’d finished cutting his hair and run her hands through it for the last time to watch it fall properly into place, I was sorry for both of them that she was done. Jaynie removed the apron, untying the strings of it carefully from behind the priest’s neck. Mulrooney got up to pay, pressed some notes into her hand, refused to take them back, refused any change. She smiled at him — sadly, I thought.
The cop stood up now too, held out a hand, fingers splayed, nodding in acknowledgement of Lady Jessica’s fine work. He’d had his free haircut and manicure and now, he knew, it was time for him to withdraw. He looked about him at the street vendors, at me leaning against the doorpost of the salon. His eyes remained on me for a while. He looked at Father Mulrooney, whose haircut had accentuated the angles of his cheekbones, his high brow, and brought out the handsomeness still alive in his face. The cop dug into his pocket and dropped a few coins into Lady Jessica’s palm as a tip. ‘Don’t be here tomorrow,’ he said, as he turned to leave. On the way back to his moped, he paused to tap on the lid of the cigarette vendor’s tray. The man held up a cigarette, a Champion, and the cop took it, tucked it behind his ear and mounted his moped without paying for it. He gunned the engine and waited while the exhaust fumes drifted up through the crowd, casting a last look round without catching anyone’s eye. His meaning was clear enough: if he had to return, he wouldn’t come alone.