JANE MITCHELL SAT IN the pink vinyl chair, wearing a pink smock, with a fluffy pink towel around her neck. She looked at her image in the pink-tinted mirror and thought: My God, I look like some kind of poodle.
Standing behind her was Godfrey, caressing her hair with his eyes closed.
He did it for a very long time. Finally, when she got tired of staring at herself in the mirror, she said, “What are you doing?”
“I am listening,” Godfrey said, wrinkling his brow in concentration. “Listening to the message of your hair. Hair speaks to me. It is an organic, living, vital thing. It has a message for me and I want to hear it.”
“I want it cut,” Jane said. She was irritable today, hung over and irritable. She had called Richard and broken her luncheon date. She didn’t really want to see him anyway. She could have been interested in seeing Charles, but not Richard.
Besides, she had other things to do today. Things to buy, and things to change.
“It is not so simple to cut hair,” Godfrey said. He opened his eyes and examined the cut ends of her blond hair. “Who did this to you?”
“Kenneth,” she said.
“Oh,” Godfrey said, dropping her hair. “Him.”
“He’s a good friend.”
“No doubt, no doubt. And I must say he is adequate, for an American dresser.” He sighed. “I understand he has his own place, now that he’s left Lilly Daché. I’m told it’s all done in yellow.”
“Yellow is his favorite color.”
“Mine,” said Godfrey firmly, “is pink.”
“I noticed.”
“Flattering.”
“Yes,” she said.
Godfrey was a funny little man, barely five feet tall. He worked while standing on a small vinyl-covered box. He was immaculately dressed in a pinstripe, mod-cut suit. His hair was long, combed straight forward, and cut in bangs just below his eyebrows.
“I must tell you that I do not hold with Kenneth’s artiness,” Godfrey said. “He claims simplicity, but he is really too mannered.”
“I see.”
“Your hair, for example. These cut ends—like corded hemp. Arty.”
“Just cut it,” Jane said.
“Yes, yes, but the crucial question still stands—cut it how. We must cut it as the hair demands, as the message speaks forth. Otherwise it will be all wrong. Your color is lovely.”
“Thank you.”
“Real, too,” Godfrey said, in mild surprise, poking amid her roots.
“So they tell me.”
Jane was feeling impatient. Godfrey had been recommended to her by several friends as an absolute wizard, the finest in London. But she had little patience with hairdressers, especially the good ones. They were too damned gay, that was the trouble. Porsche dealers, poodle clippers, and hairdressers—hopelessly gay, the whole batch of them.
“You must have a manicure and pedicure,” Godfrey said. “At once. I cannot think while I look at those hands of yours. What do you do to them?”
“I walk on them, of course.”
“Dear me,” he said, with a little tittering giggle.
Oh, Christ, Jane thought. Another one. But she had to go through with it—she was here, and draped in all this pink crap, and Godfrey’s healing hands had already touched her unworthy locks. Besides, it was true that everyone said Godfrey was worth it. A pain in the ass, but worth it. Even Givenchy, whom she had seen the last time he was in New York, even Givenchy towering over her had announced that Godfrey was the only hairdresser in London.
A smiling, rather apologetic girl appeared and began to work on her nails. Jane sat back and Godfrey continued to stroke her hair. His hands had a faggoty kind of touch. If he didn’t stop it soon, she’d go out of her mind.
“We must be decisive,” he said. “Strong, decisive lines. Nothing frilly. Oh, no, that would be a disaster.”
“But I feel very frilly today,” Jane said, just to annoy him.
“No matter. In your heart, you are not frilly.”
“That’s very uncomplimentary.”
“Artists must speak the truth.”
“Oh.” She could barely contain a giggle.
“Now, then. Janice.”
Another girl appeared, holding a tray of scissors and instruments. She stood alongside him, handing him the instruments one by one as he called for them, like a surgeon.
Godfrey worked in silence for several minutes. Jane looked down and saw her hair falling to the floor.
“Don’t move your head!”
“Sorry,” she said meekly.
“Don’t ever move your head while I am working!”
She sat rigidly, staring forward into the mirror as her hair was cut off. As he had promised, Godfrey worked decisively, pausing before each cut, then lunging forward with scissors gaping. The hair fell away in long clumps.
“It’s taking shape,” Godfrey announced. Jane looked at her hair, which was ragged and formless. She looked like a refugee from a fire or a bombing raid. “Taking shape nicely. Very nicely,” Godfrey said. He patted her head reassuringly.
“Glad to hear it.”
He continued to work, and she lapsed into her own thoughts. Peter Dickerson had called her earlier in the day, to keep her abreast, as he said, of the developments. Peter Dickerson was very pleased with the developments, and obviously very pleased with himself. He had been full of mumbo-jumbo about that stocksy-bondsy crap. Something about the Dutch wanting this, and the English wanting that.
Jane understood none of it. And she didn’t want to understand. It had always seemed odd to her that anyone could get very excited about money. True, you got excited when you had a lot, or when you had very little. But in between, who gave a damn?
There were people, she knew, who really liked money. Not what it could buy, or even what it could do—what power it could give you. They just liked money. Plain and simple. They liked to play with it, to invest it, to buy and to sell and to make it grow.
Rather like gardening, she thought. Watering your money every day, tending it, feeding it, pruning it.
Gardening was also dull, she thought.
“Ah,” Godfrey said. “Beautiful. Can you see it happening? I always find this exciting, these changes, this living sculpture, right before your eyes. Exciting!”
“Yes,” she said.
Godfrey chattered on, still cutting, his tongue working as fast as his scissors. But in the end, when all the sprays and goos and lotions were finished, she had to admit it was astonishing.
She stared in the mirror for a long time, unable to speak. She looked different. Her hair was short, curled tight, falling to just below her jawline. It somehow made her look hard and tough and self-sufficient
Godfrey paused, then said, “You like it?”
She grinned, trying the grin on her new face, her new self. It was a tough, confident grin. A good grin.
“I like it,” she said.
On King’s Road, in the endless boutiques, she searched out what she wanted, and finally settled on half a dozen dresses. She had to have new dresses; hers were all New York length, too long for London.
She bought them as short as she possibly could. She realized that if your cheeks didn’t peep out underneath, it just didn’t count. One of the salesgirls tried to dissuade her from one purchase.
As Jane turned in front of the mirror, the girl said, “Well, frankly…”
“I like it,” Jane said.
“Yes, but the cut is wrong. It’s made for a less busty girl. You pull it up too far, if you see what I mean.”
“I like it.”
The girl looked quizzical. “Makes sitting a bit drafty, ducks.”
“Then sell me some pants.”
They showed her pants. All kinds of pants. Frilly pants and silvered pants and rubber pants and bikini pants. They were all pretty bloody awful. Finally they showed her a pair of white lace panties with LOVE written in vertical letters right down the front. And another with an embroidered cherry.
God, they were awful. The most vulgar things she bad ever seen.
“I’ll take them,” she said. There were other things to buy. Purses—you had to have the sling-over-the-shoulder, drawstring type. Or you were nothing. A watchband as thick and bulky as you could find. Kinky shoes.
She did the complete thing, head to toe, top to bottom. And finally she stopped off in the salesroom and ordered the last straw. The man said they could deliver in two days’ time, and she gave him a check.
Walking out, back into the sun, with the cool air on her legs and that delicious sense of half-nakedness, and her hair short, she felt better. Much better than she had felt in a long time.
As she went back to the hotel she found herself wondering if Charles had called and left a message for her. She asked at the desk.
He hadn’t.
Well, what the hell, she thought. No point getting uptight. Not about him. Not about anything. And swinging her new purse, she went to the elevator and up to her room.