He walked back to the office building at three, and found the boys had gone off again. They had to deal with the messengers and mules, who kept arriving in town at intervals known only to the family. Tracy liked to have the boys and their helpers handle buys and payoffs and exchanges away from the building in hotels and apartments, and then bring her only the proceeds.
Tracy was not visible in the Crestview Wholesale office, so he sat down in one of the guest chairs in front of her desk and pretended to wait patiently and politely while he listened for sounds coming from the other offices.
After about ten minutes, he heard Tracy’s distinctive shriek and cackle, then another, softer female voice. They seemed to be coming closer. A door opened at the end of the big room, and Tracy came in. She was wearing a different outfit, this one a business suit with small white gloves of the sort that women had not worn for a generation. She tottered forward on her spike heels, the hoops hanging from her earlobes bouncing as she came. “Here we are, sugar,” she said. “Right on time!” Varney didn’t bother to correct her, because he could see she was aware of what the clock said.
The door opened again. A young woman he thought of as foreign-looking, with long, thick black hair, and wearing a white lab coat, appeared. She lingered in the open doorway, looking in his direction.
Tracy clutched his arm to make him stand up, and held it tightly to her bosom as she conducted him past the rows of empty desks toward the door. “Honey, this is Mae. She’s an expert cosmetologist and hair stylist, and she’s going to handle everything you need for your makeover.” She released him at the door. “I’ve got to go out, but I’ll be back around seven to see how you look.” He felt her hand settle in the space between his shoulder blades and give him a push, then heard the pock-pock-pock of her heels taking her out to the hallway.
The woman she had called Mae smiled faintly and held her door open for him to enter. As he moved past her, he got a very close look at her. He judged that she was what Tracy had said. Her skin was extremely smooth, but her makeup was elaborate and, he supposed, artful. She wore silver-blue eye shadow and dark mascara that made her eyelashes long and curved upward. He had noticed before that the women who worked behind the cosmetics counters in department stores seemed to work there just to be near the stuff, and to get the first shot at the latest shipments. His impression that she was foreign had been from her eyes, which from a distance had looked like the almond-shaped eyes of Egyptian women in ancient paintings, but that he could see now had simply been shaped by the use of some dark pencil at the corners, and by her cheekbones, which had been accentuated with some kind of coloring. Now that he was close, he could see that the eyes were blue, and the expression in them was amused and maybe a little contemptuous. He tried to analyze it, and realized it was the attitude girls in school had shown who were a couple of years older.
She had a soft, musical voice, but the pronunciation was in the local accent, and he suspected that if she had wanted to, she could still scream at a football game. “Sit down over here,” she said, and pulled a swivel chair away from a desk.
He sat down and looked up at her. “Do you do Tracy’s makeup?”
“Shit, no,” she said, and her accent seemed to become more pronounced. “I wouldn’t do that to anybody. I just get the white out of her hair and glue on the nails.”
He decided that he didn’t mind the fact that she wasn’t impressed with him. It was part of being a couple of years older. “What I’d like—”
She interrupted, but she did it by putting her hand lightly on his shoulder near his neck, so he didn’t mind. “I know what you need. I’m going to strip your hair and dye it, and then I’m going to style it differently. Have you ever worn glasses?”
“No.”
“Good. We’ll pick out some for you later. Then we’ll work on some other things.”
He looked around the room. There was a counter with a sink like one in a kitchen, a hand-held hair dryer, and a large mirror. There were barber’s instruments, and a collection of bottles and jars and packages on the counter. “What is this place? The door says it’s a travel agency.”
She looked around her as though she were looking at it through eyes that had never seen it before. “I don’t know what they use it for when I’m not here. It’s where she gets herself done up. The boys get haircuts in here, too. That sort of thing. I’ve cut hair for a few of their road men in here, too.”
“Road men?”
“Those guys who travel around and do . . .” She hesitated, as though searching for terms but finding nothing. “Whatever it is they do.” She combed his hair quickly, with darting movements.
“Tracy hates it when they don’t look nice—you know, like they’re supposed to be traveling salesmen. Meeting the public, and all that. One time I had to fit one with a wig.”
“What for?”
“Oh, she was pissed!” said Mae delightedly. “He walked into the office, and his head was shaved. She was expecting him, so she started talking to him before she looked up from her desk. So it was like, ‘Put it right over there, sugar.’ ” Mae perfectly imitated the high, saccharine voice. “And she looked up, and without even taking a breath, she goes, ‘You dare come into my office looking like skinhead trash!’ ” Mae managed to reach a tone an octave higher. “ ‘You get your sorry ass right in that room and stay there until I figure out what to do!’ Then she turned to me. All I could do was measure his head and go buy a hairpiece for him. It was about four thousand bucks, and she deducted it from his pay.”
“What made him shave his head?”
“It was really hot earlier this summer, and he said it made him feel better. But then he had to wear the wig, and it was worse than his own hair. Another one got a tattoo this spring. Him she didn’t even bother with. She made Nicky pay him off and fire him. Come over to the sink. Bring the chair.”
She wrapped towels around Varney’s neck, leaned his head back against the sink, and washed his hair. He listened to her words, but only so he could keep responding and prevent her from falling silent. He liked the sound of her voice. He liked even better the feel of her fingers massaging his scalp and the smell of her perfume.
He was aware that a long period of time was passing, but he liked it. He was only half aware of what she was doing to his hair, but was always aware of her person—when a hip brushed against his shoulder as she moved to the counter to get something, or a thigh touched his when she leaned close to snip his hair. Finally, she looked at him sharply, stepping around him to see him from every angle. Then she turned him around in the chair and let him look into the mirror.
He was shocked. His hair was light brown and short, but the brown was not uniform, like a dye job. It had some lighter highlights and some darker parts, like the real hair of a man who spent some time outdoors. “That’s something,” he said. “I really look different.” He had seen men who looked like him. He had seen hundreds of them. It was like looking into the mirror and finding that he was invisible.
“Do you like it?” she asked, trying to seem indifferent.
“It’s . . . perfect,” he said, looking at her in the mirror.
She was behind him, and their eyes met in reflection, but hers lowered to avoid his. She put both hands on his shoulders and began to turn him around. “Oooh,” she breathed.