Chapter 10
Not even Etta’s reputation and money could get them a Monday appointment. That worked out for Etta, who had important work to do that day anyway, but for Jamie, it meant more days of torture.
Instead, the earliest she could get in was Wednesday afternoon.
For Jamie, all of this meant her life might change in ways she had never anticipated, let alone while still in her twenties.
She maneuvered through uncharted waters like an old explorer on a sinking ship.
The more she secretly looked things up, the more convinced she was that somehow, her genetics had launched an attack against her whole body.
Her life. And the fact that it was making her confront things she never knew about herself – like how she might want to be a mother one day – only made things more heartbreaking.
But for Etta, it meant something had gone wrong: like someone, somewhere had cursed them for their happiness.
The stress was so intense that Jamie didn’t tell anyone else.
And while Jamie didn’t bring it up much, she overheard Etta on the phone with doctors who knew what to expect with a cancer diagnosis.
This is it. This is what tests us like nothing else.
On Monday, Jamie had a hair appointment downtown. Normally, she would drive herself, but her nerves were so delicate that she called their driver and asked him to drive her in the Town Car.
“Jamie!” cried Raul, the man she had entrusted with her hair for over a year.
He and his husband Tim ran the exclusive salon.
With only the two of them cutting, dyeing, and styling hair, Jamie needed her girlfriend’s name – and money – to not only score an appointment but afford it as well.
They were well worth the money, however.
Since Raul took over as her stylist, people constantly commented on Jamie’s wavy black hair that bounced with every step and was as soft as the most sought-after silk.
“So good to see you! You don’t come by often enough. ”
Once a month isn’t often enough? Jamie knew of rich women who went every two weeks if not every week, but they had more upkeep they didn’t want to deal with on their own.
The most Jamie got were professional washes, trims, and the occasional curl if something special was coming up, like Monique’s wedding.
This was her first time returning since then.
“It’s good to see you too.” Jamie stepped into Raul’s chair.
His workstation was cordoned off by a rice paper partition hand-decorated with cherry trees and Japanese kanji characters.
Jamie didn’t read Japanese – or Chinese, for that matter – so she imagined it saying something like, “And then Tom said unto Gladys: ‘Look at those freakin’ trees. They are pink.’”
This partition meant she couldn’t see Tim’s workstation on the other side of the room. She could hear him, however, as he greeted a woman who walked in right after Jamie.
“Kathleen!” Both men spoke fluent hairdresser, intonation and all. “Was starting to wonder if you were caught up in that awful traffic on the other side of town.”
“Isn’t it awful?” she replied, heavy heels clacking against the floor. “I took a cab like I usually do, but we were hung up between Harris and 3rd for a good twenty minutes.”
“Well, you’re here now.” Tim continued to talk while Raul fished out his cape and swung it around Jamie’s chest. She glanced in the mirror and saw a head of blond just outside the partition.
Tim walked back and forth, picking up his supplies and staring at Kathleen in the mirror, his hand sometimes fluffing the strands on top of her head. “What is going on here?”
“I know! It’s a fucking mess. I swear I am losing hair.”
“Oh, honey…” Tim plucked a comb off the shelf and parted the hair on Kathleen’s scalp this way and that. “I’m sure it’s not that bad. Maybe some stress. Genetics? Let’s hope not. You don’t seem to have folliculitis. If you did, I’d be screaming.”
Raul silently parted Jamie’s hair as well, but he wasn’t looking for infected follicles.
Instead, he picked her hair with a comb, making sure it was nice and ready for any work he did shortly afterward.
Jamie ignored the prickling pain on her scalp and eavesdropped.
It was better than obsessing over what was going on in her body.
“It’s probably my partner,” Kathleen said, following it up with a snort. “They’re making all my hair fall out. Probably making it turn gray, too.”
“Trouble in paradise?”
“Hardly. Just… this morning they sent me a text out of the blue saying I was being disagreeable and a pain in his ass. Out of the blue!”
“Whaaaat?”
“Turns out she meant that for someone else. Or so she swore in another text following it up five seconds later. Until then, I was ready to go to their condo and throttle her. I would show her disagreeable.”
“That kind of stuff ends relationships. The text, I mean.”
“You’re telling me.” Kathleen sighed. “No, if anything is stressing me out enough to make my hair fall out, it’s definitely the charity I’m trying to start up.”
“What charity is this? You’re always doing something or other.”
“No, I help out other charities. This time I’m trying to start one. Do you know what a legal fuckall it is?”
“I can bet. What are we raising money for?”
Raul told Jamie it would be a second before the wash station was ready.
“I’m trying to launch a new pet shelter. Not just any kind, either. The idea is that it’s not only no-kill, but it’s out in the country, with lots of acres for running around. Give the cats and dogs and whatever else a happy life even if they’re not adopted.”
“That’s pretty sweet.”
Another sigh. “Yes, but I’m gonna have to look into finding some volunteers to help me. Need to start making some calls to people who owe me big after I helped them.”
“Uh-huh.”
Jamie was led to the wash station and couldn’t hear anything more over the sound of rushing water all around her ears.
By the time Raul was finished massaging her head and making sure every black strand was properly washed, Kathleen was also at a wash station, and nothing more about her charity came up while Jamie was there.
Maybe I should do some volunteer work. That’s what Jamie thought as she walked out of the salon and got back in the Town Car.
She checked her phone for messages from Etta – nothing.
She was still in meetings. Jamie thought about swinging by her office to see if she could do lunch but decided against it.
Jamie didn’t want to be reminded of their current issue until it was sorted out.
She instead asked her driver to take her to a restaurant she liked near downtown. He dropped her off just in time for her to beat the lunch rush.
Jamie liked coming to these sorts of establishments for the atmosphere – the “real people” feel, where she didn’t have to watch her manners as much and where people didn’t shoot her dirty looks because they heard she was Etta Coleman’s floozy.
People at this restaurant had no idea who she was and didn’t care – unless she came in wearing super designer clothing and carrying her favorite bag.
Today she carried Michael Kors, and nobody cared.
Since she was dressed more for comfort than style, Jamie settled in a booth, ordered some tea and a sandwich, and pulled out a notebook she always carried in her bags.
“Volunteering,” she wrote in the top margin. Beneath it, she jotted a list of numbers.
What could she do? Well, there were schools, homeless shelters, and of course the cute fuzzy animals.
Jamie circled that last one because she was an animal lover first and foremost, if her cats were considered.
She liked dogs too. And bunnies! She even liked animals that weren’t considered “cute,” like reptiles and fish.
She got used to them growing up with hippie parents.
They went from having a cute two-bedroom house with a backyard full of chickens and pigs to spending her high school years living on the outskirts of a co-op plantation.
After she graduated and went off to college? Her parents fully joined as residents.
Maybe I should call my mom… Talk to her about the whole… thing. Except Jamie rarely talked to her parents. They had so little in common! Etta hadn’t even met them yet!
Besides, Jamie didn’t want to think about any of that until after Wednesday.
After lunch, Jamie tackled retail therapy.
She went to the nearest mall, a place that was a far cry from the shopping neighborhood she went to in Miami.
Back when she was a poor girl working temp jobs and living in a veritable pit of Hell, this was the place she came to so she could window shop and dream of spending a hundred dollars on a dress or bag.
She didn’t buy much that day, though. Nothing really caught her eye, aside from a few pieces of jewelry in a place that sold cubic zirconia and fake gold.
She stood in front of the pet shelter that was there once a week and cooed at the kittens piling on top of each other – while there, she made a considerable donation that brought all the volunteers out to thank her.
Let’s just say my rent used to be that much.
Jamie also bought some handmade catnip toys to take home to her furry squad.
No, what killed her on that trip wasn’t the pet shelter. Nor was it fresh pretzels. Nope. What shot her right in the heart was a toyshop.
Excited kids running around, picking up train sets, dolls, puzzles, model cars, and planes, franchises that were both familiar to Jamie and new. Things sure have changed. A boy pretended to have a tea party with his baby sister while a girl rolled around with a water gun.
“Do you think they have anything appropriate here?” asked a woman behind Jamie. She saw the reflection of a heavily pregnant woman and someone who was probably her mother in the window. “I’m not familiar with this place.”