A smile twitches on my lips as her mouth opens in horror. Great. Now she thinks I’m laughing at her. I’d better go over and say something.
“Kenny?” I ask in the off chance it’s another coed who’s mortified to see me.
She closes her eyes, and a tiny whimper escapes her throat.
“Have I mentioned I’ve never been to a salon before?” She squeaks.
I can see why, but don’t say a word.
“So”— she looks around as her eyes glitter up—“tell me about school.” She presses her lips together, presumably fighting off tears.
A nervous laugh beats down my chest, and it takes everything in me to suppress the crap out of it. The truth is, I’m taken by her even in the Halloween garb she’s currently imprisoned in.
“I’m a graduate student,” I say, pulling up a chair. “I’ve got my sights set on a fellowship, next year, with hopes to teach at Garrison some day.”
“Really?” Her eyes glow a beautiful iridescent and my body feels as though it’s just fell through a trap door, landed in a place where it’s just Kenny and me on the other side.
“Really,” I say. “Either that or I’ll run the bed and breakfast.”
She licks her lips, inspecting me. “You don’t happen to know any computer languages, do you?”
Computer languages? “I know some Java Script, C plus plus, and C, but mostly that was for programming when my solitary goal in life was to become the world’s most wanted hacker. That, and trying to rob my father blind of his millions, but in my defense, I was thirteen and he said no when I asked for a new bike.”
She belts out a lusty laugh, and soon, I don’t see the circus around her beautiful features. All I see is Kenny and the light that shines like a beacon from inside her heart.
“So you know three.” She relaxes for the first time. “I actually don’t know any, so your father’s millions are safe from me.”
“How about you? What are you studying?” An animalistic wave overcomes me, and I have the urge to do her right here in the salon under the red-hot spot lights brewing from above, tinfoil and all.
“Well, I’m on the five year plan, plus I took a year off. Outside of striking a name for myself as campus bimbo, I’ll be taking up airspace in the liberal arts department. In fact, I was supposed to have received my schedule this week, but I keep forgetting to check my emails. I’m hoping I got all the classes I wanted. Art, English 102, Finite math, and a class on gender relations.”
“Study of men and women in society?” I perk to attention.
“That’s the one.” She darts a freshly polished fingernail in the air, and I imagine diving the digit deep in my mouth, grazing over it with my teeth.
“Bradshaw teaches it,” I say, trying to drag myself out my sexual stupor before I find myself in a hard situation. “He’s a good guy. He’s been sick, so they’ve got a T.A. covering it.” I don’t tell her that I’m the T.A. That I’ll be structuring a syllabus for the class later this afternoon because Bradshaw had a lobe of his lung removed last month.
“I just took it because it sounded like an easy A.” Her eyes flicker like mirrors in the sun. “But with a T.A. holding down the fort, I’m sure I won’t even have to show up.”
Not show up? Sounds like she might be on the fifteen-year plan.
“Oh, I’m sure he’ll make you work for your grade.” I blink a quick smile. “In fact, I hear he gets inventive. He really likes to personalize the syllabus for each student’s individual needs.” Not really but the idea came to me, so I run with it. I think I’ll get started on her syllabus right away. I might even throw in a liability waiver—a hold harmless agreement for the more acrobatic requirements she’ll need to participate in if she intends on achieving that “easy A.”
A half hour later the buzzer goes off, and about twenty minutes after that, Boppy drags her tail in from her break.
“Holy shit!” She snipes while scratching to remove the tin from Kenny’s hair like she were stomping out a kitchen fire. She throws her under the sink with half the foil still glued to her scalp and starts sending up a string of prayers to the patron saint of fucked-up hairstyles.
After a good span of eternity, Kenny finally makes her way to the counter, or at least I think its Kenny. Her face is scrubbed raw, with her eyes pink and watery like someone poured in vinegar, but it’s the hair where the real trauma lies.
“Oh shit,” I whisper.
“Oh shit is right.”
She’s good and pissed, and well, incredibly irresistible even if she does look as if she’s magically aged about fifty years. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t in the market for grey streaks when she came in.