Frederico.
No. Excuse me. Not Frederico. Mr. Frederico. That was the adopted name of Frederick Patrick Harrison. Never mind he was born and raised in Oxford, Mississippi, thirty-three years before and had never so much as stuck his big toe on Italian soil. Call him Frederick or Fred and you may end up with a shaved head and a streak of orange dissecting your scalp. Because that was his business. Hair, I mean. Though you would never have been able to tell it from the sign on his salon door:
MR. FREDERICO’S
That was it.
Not MR. FREDERICO’S HAIRCUTTERS or MR. FREDERICO’S HAIRSTYLISTS. Just MR. FREDERICO’S. Period. If you didn’t know what happened inside MR. FREDERICO’S on Madison Avenue between Sixty-first and Sixty-second Streets, Mr. Frederico didn’t want you to know. Because it meant you were one of them—the nonrich, nonbeautiful, non-famous, non-New Yorkers.
Oh, sure, you were probably all right in your way. It just wasn’t Mr. Frederico’s way. Which meant spending more money on a trim and blow dry than most people spend on food for their family for a week. All for the privilege of sitting in the cramped, crowded, way-too-hip waiting area on one of the chrome-and-leather chairs especially designed to twist your spine into a pretzel for over an hour until summoned into the presence of the great man himself, where you would be summarily scolded for failing to properly exercise your follicles. Mr. Frederico’s word for hair. Mr. Frederico never said “hair.” Wasn’t saying it now, in fact. Wednesday. Two days after Mrs. Gomez made the appointment. Which was fortunate. The appointment, I mean. Since usually you had to wait a lot longer than two days.
“Ms. Gomez?” said the woman behind the chrome-and-glass counter with the name BLAZE stitched across the front of her T-shirt. “Mr. Frederico will be with you as soon as he finishes shouting at you-know-who.”
And Mrs. Gomez did know. Everybody in the United States knew. Because, at that moment, Mr. Frederico just happened to be shouting at the highest-paid actress in Hollywood history. And, no, I can’t tell you her name. But I can tell you that her one and only response to this abuse was to smile her famous smile at this pudgy man with the ponytail who was wagging a highly buffed fingernail an inch in front of her face. Because that was another thing about Mr. Frederico’s. Every famous woman living in Manhattan or visiting Manhattan or traveling within a fifty-mile radius of Manhattan made an appointment, waited patiently on one of the torture chairs, and got shouted at equally. No exceptions. No special favors for the rich or powerful. Everyone waited. Everyone had the fingernail wagged in her face. All for under four hundred dollars. If she was lucky.
“You smile?” shrieked Mr. Frederico. “You mock Mr. Frederico? You do not take Mr. Frederico seriously?”
“I’m so sorry!”
“Humph!”
“Ill try to do better!”
“Try? You say ‘try’ to Mr. Frederico? Well, try taking that cobweb of yours to the nearest spider! Let him try to catch flies with it!”
“No! I mean, yes! I mean, I will! Do better! I promise!”
Mr. Frederico crossed his arms. He raised his chin. He pursed his lips. He tapped his silver snakeskin boot. He uncrossed his arms. He ran his index finger over his pierced right ear. He stopped. He froze. He seemed to have reached some sort of decision. Because suddenly, without warning, he tossed his hand over his head and began snapping his fingers as if he were trying to catch the attention of a not-so-intelligent poodle.
“Blaze! Blaze! Blaze!” he shouted. “Escort Ms. Movie Star to the body-and-sheen tub and submerge her scalp for at least forty-five minutes before they bring back The Wizard of Oz and force her to play the scarecrow.”
“As you wish,” Blaze said.
“As you wish, Mr. Frederico,” Mr. Frederico said.
“As you wish, Mr. Frederico,” Blaze repeated.
Blaze, as I’m sure you’ve figured out for yourself, was the woman behind the chrome-and-glass counter with the name BLAZE stitched across her T-shirt. Blaze was in her mid-twenties (of course) and thin (of course) and wore black (of course) and a barbed wire tattoo on her left upper arm (of course) and had the thickest, straightest, longest, most spectacular hair in midtown Manhattan (of course), but that was where the stereotype ended. Because, unlike Mr. Frederico, Blaze was neither snappy nor snippy She played the good cop to Mr. Frederico’s bad. They were kind of like a tag team match. Or a cat fight. He scratched. She purred. All part of the show. A show, by the way, that Mercedes Henderson had seen many times before.
Yeah, yeah. I know. That’s really a cheat. I should have already mentioned that Mercedes Henderson was seated in the way-too-hip waiting area close enough to Mrs. Gomez that the two of them could have rubbed noses. But I knew you knew Mercedes Henderson was there. Of course she was there. Why else would Kyle have put the spinal column of Ruben Gomez’s grandmother in such jeopardy?
And just for the record:
Mercedes Henderson hadn’t uttered a peep. Not one. All she’d done since she first pushed open the chrome-and-glass door (with the name MR. FREDERICO’S etched into the glass) and crossed the white terrazzo floor (with the name MR. FREDERICO’S chiseled into the terrazzo) was park herself on one of those lovely chrome-and-leather chairs and hide her face inside a back issue of Vogue (with the name MR. FREDERICO’S scrawled across the plastic cover). It wasn’t as if she’d been chatting nonstop on her cell phone or sharing split-end secrets with Blaze. I mean, no one inside Mr. Frederico’s who hadn’t already seen or known or read about Mercedes Henderson could have told you what color her eyes were, because she hadn’t even taken off her sunglasses. And she might never have. If Mrs. Gomez hadn’t gotten in her face:
“So you’re the one,” said Mrs. Gomez.
“Excuse me?” said Mercedes Henderson.
“I guess you should excuse yourself,” said Mrs. Gomez.
“Excuse me?” repeated Mercedes Henderson.
“No need to overdo it,” said Mrs. Gomez. “Once was sufficient.”
Which was when Mercedes Henderson took off her sunglasses. And focused on Mrs. Gomez. Who, as you might imagine, was focusing right back.
“Do I know you?” said Mercedes Henderson.
“No,” said Mrs. Gomez. “But I know you. Editor of I’m Yours and He Won My Heart. And, yes, they were fine books. Excellent books. But …”
“But?” said Mercedes Henderson.
“But they were about young people,” said Mrs. Gomez.
“So?” said Mercedes Henderson.
“So all the books you edit are about young people,” said Mrs. Gomez.
“Your point?” said Mercedes Henderson.
“You’re a bright, young woman,” said Mrs. Gomez. “I’m betting you’ll figure that one out by yourself.”
As you might imagine, this conversation was not going unnoticed by the other women, with too much time and too much money, crammed into Mr. Frederico’s waiting area. Indeed, it wasn’t going unnoticed by the man with the ponytail himself. You see, it had been a while—a very long while—since anyone other than Mr. Frederico had commanded this much attention at Mr. Frederico’s. In other words, he wasn’t used to sharing the spotlight. In other words, those snakeskin boots weren’t exactly kicking up their heels with glee.
“Next!” Mr. Frederico snapped.
Mrs. Gomez didn’t move.
“Must I repeat myself?” Mr. Frederico hissed. “I said ‘next’!”
This time Mrs. Gomez did move. Not that she got up. Not even close. Instead, she turned. Or, at least, her neck did. Just enough to stare. Straight into Mr. Frederico’s aqua-tinted contact lenses.
And yawn.
Yeah, you heard me.
She yawned. Nothing subtle, either. I mean, she arched her back and stretched her arms and half sighed, half moaned so loud she rattled the floor-to-ceiling mirrored display case of Mr. Frederico’s Follicle Fresheners.
So okay. So what was happening at this particular moment in this particular hair salon may not have had the same historical significance as desegregating the South or landing an astronaut on the moon. But no one—I mean no one—had ever not leaped out of her chair the moment Mr. Frederico snapped, “Next!” It was like spitting in church. Like not offering your seat to a pregnant woman. Like refusing to curtsy when you met the queen of England.
Picture the scene:
Mr. Frederico. Scissors and styling comb stuck in his silver-studded belt, six-gun style, staring daggers through the hearts of all the women brave or stupid enough to stare back. And, believe me, there were plenty of women staring. Twelve, counting Blaze. All waiting for the six or seven zillion framed photographs of celebrities to start falling off Mr. Frederico’s walls. Or for the floor to crack open. Or for the planets to collide. Or for something equally catastrophic to happen to the woman who didn’t hop to when Mr. Frederico said hop to.
“Oh, get over yourself,” said Mrs. Gomez.
“Are you talking to me?” said Mr. Frederico.
“Yes, Frederico. I’m talking to you.”
“Did you call me ‘Frederico’?”
“You know who you remind me of?” said Mrs. Gomez, pushing herself out of her chair and strolling in Mr. Frederico’s direction. “My grandson. He’s nicer than you, of course. But he equates dribbling a basketball with being a genius. You cut hair, Frederico. It grows on people’s heads, and you cut it. Sometimes you wash it. Sometimes you dye it different colors. But most of the time you cut it. When you do a bad job, the hair grows back. When you do a good job, guess what, Frederico? The hair still grows back. And then you have to cut it all over again. I’m not saying it’s not important for people to look good. I’m not saying it isn’t nice if you can keep your more famous clientele off the ‘Ten Worst Haircuts’ list. But that doesn’t make you a tortured soul, Frederico. No one would ever accuse you of suffering for your art. You know what you are, Frederico? You’re a silly little man wearing silly little boots, who wouldn’t know a genius if W. J. Parker himself walked in here, purchased a bottle of your phoney-baloney body-and-sheen cream, and squeezed it right up your nose.”
“Did you say W. J. Parker?” Mercedes Henderson cried.
“Yes, I did, dear,” Mrs. Gomez said.