| |
COLORING OUTSIDE THE LINES
The anticipation of Tommy’s visit filled Lorraine’s mind as she sat, a few days later, in the coffee shop. This particular morning was sunny and she dipped her head back in the wing chair, and took a sip of her fancy Cinnamon Mist latte. The paper sat unread in her hands. Was she any better or worse here? Only time would tell.
When she was through, Lorraine rose and walked the few blocks to Guido’s. Not two hours earlier, she’d made the same walk with Pooh-Pooh. Perhaps it would be better described as a run. Pooh-Pooh had been feeling energetic. It wasn’t her first choice, but Lorraine had come to enjoy those jogs, after the initial pain, she started to like the way the muscles in her legs and her sides were tightening. Even Lorraine’s butt was reaping the rewards of the Pooh-Pooh exercise system.
And the hand gesture Matt had taught her did lend a pinch of power to her relationship with the dog; at the very least, she had an emergency break when things got insane. But the runs seemed to calm Pooh-Pooh too. He enjoyed the exercise. Not surprising after a day in an apartment, she figured. She was far from mastering the situation, but she’d come along. It was all she could hope for, Lorraine guessed. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
On the Pooh-Pooh pooh-pooh front, though, Lorraine could not quite get used to the idea that a balled-up plastic supermarket bag would be the only defense against the huge mounds of excrement that dog could produce. Worse, he always seemed to go right when people were looking their way, saying something about how cute Pooh-Pooh was, and asking his name.
Taking the walk slow and calm to the salon, she was just in the middle of thinking that she missed Pooh-Pooh, when she saw a store owner, one of Pooh-Pooh’s many neighborhood admirers, emerge.
“Where’s Monsieur Pooh-Pooh?” he wanted to know, scooping a dog biscuit from his pants pocket.
“Resting,” she said. “We had a pretty vigorous run this morning.”
“Ah, early risers,” he said, winking and waving her off for the day.
At the salon Rhonda the receptionist wore a beachy blond color, with wild messy curls. It was a little too much, even for Rhonda. “I know, please don’t say anything,” she said earnestly, like she could barely hide her disapproval. Still she held her smile strong and passed Lorraine her daily schedule.
“Aw, Rhonda, you’re all beauty,” Lorraine said in reaction to her stiff upper lip.
Rhonda smiled like she meant it now. “Thanks, Lorraine. You’re really something, you know. What’s the word? Oh, yeah...you’re colorful.”
“Never mind. I take back what I said,” she joked.
“No, really. It’s a fact. Says so, right here in the paper.” Rhoda picked up the Post open to Page Six. And there it was, the bit about “Colorful Brooklynite, Lorraine Machuchi,” doing the Guido Nails on the Princesses and Sarah Jessica. “I’m just a hairstylist from the Bay,” read the caption beneath her photo.
Great. Mixed blessings. They were beginning to be the story of her life. At least she looked hot in the photo.
Lorraine had to put the excitement aside to assist Guido, but he wouldn’t come in until noon, when his first appointment was scheduled. Lorraine had plenty of assignments to keep a colorful hairstylist from the Bay busy in the meantime.
1. Sweep and mop floor on second level.
2. Fold small- and medium-sized towels.
3. Stock color stations with foils, duck clips, combs.
4. Stock color closet with new L’Oréal shipment.
Lorraine had to keep in mind that she was on the road to success. She knew this already from how the other colorists spoke about summer homes in the country and trips to Belize. But it was still difficult to come to grips with the everyday reality of sweeping floors when you knew you could be a top colorist, watching the Belize-trippers make mistakes and perform less than perfect color jobs out of boredom. Already, she wondered how long she could handle this track until she went begging her way back to the dead-end Do Wop—a quitter who’d presented herself poorly to the media when she’d had the chance.
She told herself that in time she could give that kind of Belize trip success to Tommy, and in return he could give himself to her free of all his hang-ups, then they could have a couple of kids and live happily ever after, and she could cook him up great bowls of ziti with olive oil and a little tomato and he could laugh over how long it took to settle down. When I was young! He could say to his own kids, and the two of them would share the looks she saw between her own parents sometimes. Who knew? Maybe their whole crew would go to Belize one day.
Those kinds of dreams kept Lorraine company while she performed the mindless work she’d previously relied on neighborhood high school girls to do. And of course, there was Don.
“Ms. Finklestein would like to look more like Jennifer Aniston,” he said in between clients an hour after Lorraine came in. “I hadn’t the heart to tell her she’s much more of a Bea Arthur, although it was hard not to, the way she kept telling me I was making her look old. ‘Ms. Finklestein,’ I would like to say, ‘Mother Nature has already taken care of that.’ The woman’s at least ninety-seven. By the way, Lorraine, you’re looking so...what’s the word? I know! You’re looking so colorful today.” He spoke softly, but apparently carried a big stick.
“Shut up.” Boy, you give people a word. Lorraine could think of a couple herself.
“You know who’s really colorful?” Don continued, “Ms. Finklestein.”
Lorraine thought Finklestein was probably a little closer to crazy.
“Her card says she likes”—he cleared his throat—“to look just like Jennifer Aniston. To be told she looks just like Jennifer Aniston. To have all beverages and chitchat the way Jennifer Aniston likes them.”
“Couldn’t you just see Rhonda phoning Jennifer Aniston’s assistant, asking, ‘Yes, how does Jennifer like to have her dog’s hair styled—straight, slightly wavy, or very wavy?’” Lorraine said and shoved a stack of towels in the cupboard behind.
But at least Finkelstein was nice, Lorraine thought after that conversation. On the whole, she’d noticed some pretty disgusting behavior from the clients at the salon. For the most part, they weren’t friendly. They had nothing to talk about unless it was a complaint. They never remembered your name. They never said thank you when you ran twelve blocks and three avenues to get them a seared tuna salad from the only place in the city that didn’t deliver because that’s where they liked to eat it. They always looked you up and down. They called the garments you wore against their tastes “cute.” They wanted Internet access, telephone access, to watch soap operas on television. They had their dogs’ hair styled just like their own (“Mini Me” was the name of the service and it went for $350 and included an assortment of Doggie DO! biscuits in a gift bag). They wanted things done quickly, or they didn’t want to rush. They screamed at people on their cell phones, and then they screamed at you when their battery died. They thought their color was too dark, too light, too brassy, not golden enough, not anything like J. Lo’s at the Grammys in that picture from InStyle they’d showed you. They were a half hour late and not wanting to wait while you finished what you’d begun working on in the meanwhile. They would leave if you were more than twenty seconds late and tell you they were going to leak the bad service to DailyCandy so you’d be ruined. They didn’t like it you were pretty, they laughed behind your back if you were ugly.
Most of all, though, they wanted to see the Princesses. They wanted to know what the Princesses had done to their hair this week, wanted to know when they were scheduled to come in so they could catch a glimpse of what they were wearing. They wanted to talk about them and say how their sister’s friend’s cousin had seen one of them at a party for the Sims DVD computer game and her hair was frizzy and she was a huge bitch. Then they would smile and go back to wondering what the bitch was wearing and how quickly Scoop NYC could order one in their own size.
Some days Lorraine counted down the seconds until her lunch break so she could just get the hell out of there and walk over to a seedier side of town where people wore no-name denim and had no arches in their eyebrows. Most of all they didn’t know she was only an assistant and therefore didn’t treat her like one (“Have the girl run and get me a macchiato,” “Send the girl to go return this to Bloomingdale’s for me before it closes”). If the girl didn’t get out of there for at least an hour a day, Lorraine was afraid she’d give one of those city beeyatches the what-for, which would hurt not only herself, but Guido, too. And she knew how quick a scandal like socking a Princess or even a Princess in Training in the jaw could spread and ruin everything for Guido. So she really tried to practice patience and focus on the future and the tips and even Pooh-Pooh, whom she was starting to really love.
When she came home at night, he was happy to see her. He wanted to lick her like crazy, which disgusting as it smelled, started to become endearing. And he needed her. He wanted Lorraine to scratch right under his neck and say, “Good boy! You didn’t eat any of the furniture today!” And then he wanted to spend some quality time dragging her fifty miles per hour around Central Park. He would look to her helplessly when she had to clean up his mountain of poop.
And he was starting to pay back, too. For instance, when Lorraine wanted to rent a movie and was really missing the idea of having someone to watch it with, Pooh-Pooh offered himself up with an understanding look, snuggled in with his enormous head on her lap, and watched a movie with absolutely no dogs in it whatsoever. It lessened the loneliness of the cityscape staring carelessly back beyond the wall-to-wall windows, between the heavy velvet curtains.
Sure, she’d gone out with Don and his friends a few times. She’d even done dinner with a couple of assistants, but she was feeling a different kind of loneliness. It felt like something was missing. And it was more than the obvious fact that Manhattan was not the Bay.
Today the thought of lazy movie time seemed like a far-off dream to Lorraine, what with the hyperactivity of Guido running behind as soon as he arrived. This happened all the time, because all of his clients wanted to be seen early.
“Why they even make appointments, I’ll never know,” Guido said to Lorraine when reception rung with the news that three of his clients had arrived and wanted to be seen ASAP.
Lorraine shook her head, rolled her eyes, and said, “Listen, Guido, whatever you need, I’m your girl.” He hadn’t said a word about the Page Six write-up. That pissed her off. Was it against his religion to be happy for someone? Or was it just part of the Guido Method? Where she came from, you congratulated people on their successes, maybe even claimed a piece of it for yourself, just by knowing the person. But she shoved that aside.
The pair flew through two clients: a chestnut and a honey. But the queue for Guido was gaining strength. Lorraine eased things by taking drink orders, having a couple of women get washed, and extending deluxe complimentary conditioning treatments. But things were tense. These women didn’t like to wait.
Normally, Lorraine knew Guido might give the ladies the option of having another colorist do their hair if they were in a huge rush, but everyone else was jammed. So, instead he did whatever he could to have Lorraine speed things up with the three women—he’d have her get sections ready while he was painting others, mix the colors, check when to rinse, apply the gloss.
“Guido, when do you think you’ll be able to color my hair! I’ve got a meeting in an hour and a half!” None of this was a question. Ms. Stevensen wanted her hair colored an hour and a half before her appointment, and there was no negotiation. Colorists in New York City were magicians. There was no disputing that. They worked miracles every day.
Lorraine and Guido were halfway through a breathtaking young model—all legs and arms scrunched in like a beetle—who’d been instructed to “get a new look,” and was currently all red in the nose and eyes from crying. “And what if they let me go? And then my family back in Rrrrrussia have no-ting and I’ll lose my green card—and I’ll have to work in the caviar farm and izz so cold zere! So cold!”
Lorraine and Guido were trying to calm her. “That will never happen to you. You are beautiful. They do this all the time. It’s all cosmetic. The look has nothing to do with cosmetics—and you, my dear, have the look.”
The model looked from Guido to Lorraine, teary. She let one leg extend gingerly, made small circles with her toes.
“He knows. He’s seen it all, honey. You do. You have the look.” Lorraine thought how nothing was what you would imagine. Maybe modeling really was hard. Boy, Lorraine would have to retract a lot of commentary if that were true—basically ninety-nine percent of what she’d said from 1994 to 1998.
They gave the model a fabulous look. The team hadn’t spoken of what exactly should be done, but Lorraine had gone and mixed the colors she knew in one glance would be perfect for the gorgeous young Russian, and Guido had just started applying exactly where Lorraine was applying on the other side of the head, natural and quick and magically. Neither of them really noticed Lorraine was actually coloring the model’s hair, or that it was she who’d initiated the look they were applying. Instead, she soared through the hours. She was the President of the United States. She was Hayden Christensen on the cover of GQ (but smiling). She was on top of the world.
It was only later that she realized the implications. And when she did, Lorraine felt the way she imagined men and women did after they’d seen each other across a room and a half hour later realized they’d just lusted themselves into an affair that would ruin both of their marriages. She’d been swept away in the moment.
But this was different—it was a Guido colorist rule that had been broken. And that was something you just didn’t do. By the time they both realized it, Lorraine was already halfway through applying the color on Ms. Stevensen’s crown, adding a little bit of auburn to the current mix, and Guido was finishing the next client who wanted her hair done five minutes ago.
Guido and Lorraine caught each other’s eye in the mirror. Ms. Stevensen was yapping on her cell phone, “Sell! I said sell, you good for nothing bastard! We’ve already gone down ten points in the past twenty minutes!” She put her hand over the receiver and whispered sweet as could be, “Yes, can I have a water, Louise?”
“Sure,” Lorraine was saying. The spell had been broken and she wasn’t sure how Guido would react at all. On her way back from Juan’s, Lorraine decided this must be a good thing. In fact, she should have thought of it before. It was exactly the sort of chance she needed. This was the first time in Lorraine’s life she’d been permitted to color someone exactly as she thought she should. It was obvious from Guido’s lack of attention to the infraction that she’d done a great job. Better than great. It had felt like the most natural thing in the world. Lorraine working side by side with one of the world’s great colorists, deciding for him what should be done.
Everything was more vibrant—the water in her hand was colder than it normally was, the crystal glass more beautiful. She’d never noticed how fabulous the lighting in the salon was. Lorraine realized life could be so...alive! She smiled with the thought of it. Wow, she’d really done the right thing, coming here, giving up everything familiar. She could see that now.
“Oh, thanks, Louise,” Ms. Stevensen was saying. Lorraine didn’t even care about the name being wrong, about being colorful, or just a hairstylist from the Bay. She was so happy to have had this opportunity, which she felt would change her life forever. She’d read about how people got discovered. It was always something just like this, something out of the ordinary that happened and gave someone their chance to shine. And that’s just what she had done.
She took Ms. Stevensen to the sink, and decided she’d blow out her hair herself. She wanted to show Ms. Stevensen how to optimize the look of the face-framing highlights she’d applied. And there was no mistaking the final effect. It was one of those moments in a salon that doesn’t happen every day. One of those times when everyone gathers around and looks in awe at the dramatic change in a client’s look.
“Oh, Guido, this is unbelievable. I don’t even recognize myself, yet it’s not anything that different. This is exactly the way I should look. Oh, I love it!”
“Oh, Edie, I am so glad. You are gorgeous, stunning!” Guido held his chin so high, Lorraine wondered if he could see in front of him.
Ms. Stevensen left a hundred-dollar tip for Lorraine. When she passed through the gold doors, Lorraine asked to take a lunch break.
Guido told her that would be fine, why didn’t she go down to the café and put it on his tab? She’d been so helpful he wanted to show his gratitude.
It was eerie, the way he hadn’t said anything, the way he was treating her to lunch instead. She didn’t know what to make of it, but she told herself what was done was done. Lorraine ordered herself a frisee salad with lardon croutons and Roquefort cheese and apple slices like half-moons. For dessert she had a molten chocolate cake with a perfectly circular dollop of crème fraiche. She thought how she’d never even known these delightful treats existed a few weeks ago. If she and Chrissy thought fries and gravy were good, well, this was amazing! While she ate, Lorraine read a book one of the clients had recommended to her. She’d never really read any historical fiction before. Normally she just went for the paperback bestsellers. But this book was great. It was about a girl in a famous painting and how she’d come to sit for an artist.
When she’d finished her cake and took her first sip of yet another kind of coffee drink, Lorraine looked around at the neighboring diners and for the first time she felt part of them.
“Goin’ on Guido’s tab?” Sandy, the waitress, asked her.
“Yeah, isn’t that awesome?” Lorraine asked.
“I’d say it’s a good deal. How’s the book, by the way?”
Lorraine held up the back so the waitress could skim the summary. “It’s really, really good,” she answered while Sandy read.
“All right, doll, don’t forget to leave me a fat tip.” She smiled—from one employee to another—and winked before she turned to take Lorraine’s dishes to the back for washing.
Back upstairs at the salon, Lorraine was really starting to feel good about her city life. She snapped her black assistant robe over her outfit, washed her hands, and went back to Guido’s chair to find out who she’d be working on next.
“Lorraine, didn’t Rhonda give you a list of things to do today?” He was twirling a brunette’s hair up on one side with a large silver clip.
At first Lorraine didn’t understand. Wasn’t he booked solid? Weren’t these tasks for downtime? Besides, she’d finished most of them this morning anyhow. She tried to make sense of his comment.
All she could come up with was that this was all a joke. Like he’d stick her back on those crappy assistant duties! She was Hayden Christensen, remember?
“Ha ha. Okay, really, who’s next?” She looked at Guido, willing him to see things the way she hoped he would. As if she could make him do that by looking at him hard enough. She realized she was clenching her jaw.
“Lorraine, you know the rules,” was all he said, his chin on the rise.
Folding towels while enduring mortifying demands from city beeyatches was bad enough when you thought it was the only way to reach your goal. But folding towels after you thought you were done folding towels and were now going to be coloring hair like nobody’s business—well, that was unbearable.
The rest of the day dragged on. Lorraine was in a terrible mood and tried to block the world out thinking about Tommy’s arrival in a couple of days’ time. At five-thirty, when Lorraine had just one hour of torture left, her cell phone beeped to signal she had a message. And that message made her rotten mood even worse.
“Lorraine, Tommy.” Her heart froze and then dropped down to her toes. She sat down in the color closet where she was listening and trying to hide from everything she couldn’t stand just then. “Not gonna be able to come to the city after all. I’m sorry, beautiful.”
She would not cry at work. There was no way she was giving in to this day like that. She would wait until fifty-five more minutes passed, and then she would leave and, with those nails they all loved so much, scratch the eyes out of anyone who so much as looked at her on the walk home.
PATTY POODLE: Can you describe the beginning of your
Relationship with Lorraine?
POOH-POOH: Roof, roof, roof, roof, roof, roof, roof,
Roof, roofffffffffff. Roof, roof, roof, roof,
Roof, roof, roof, roof.
Rrrrrroooof, roof, roof, roofffffffffff, roof.
PATTY POODLE: and how about Lena Horne?
POOH-POOH: Roof, roof, roof, roof, roof, roof, roof,
Roof, rooffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff-
Fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff.
____________________________________
eBay auction block #7
Description: Transcript of interview with Pooh-Pooh on Pet TV, dated October 12, 2005, “Brooklyn Week.”
Opening bid: $55
Winning bid: $250 by Ienahorne@bgirl.com
Comments: Yelp! Yelp, yelp, yelp—yelp, yelp, yelp, yelp. Yelp!! Yelp, yelp, yelp. Yelp?