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I sighed. This is an entirely different kind of business,
Dylan. My customers might not feel comfortable talking
freely with a little boy around.
Dylan frowned.
I mean with a young man around, I corrected. It
might interfere with their girl talk.
Girl talk?
You know, beauty secrets, gossip, complaining about
men. I had wanted to say bitching about men but I caught
myself in time. Anyway, if the ladies who come to the
salon around Flea Market time aren t able to speak their
minds freely then, well, their heads might explode.
You won t get many tips fixing hair in a town full of
headless women. Dylan laughed at his own joke.
You see my dilemma, then, don t you? I gave my son a
kiss on the nose, then dropped the quarters into his out-
stretched hand. Go get yourself a soda and some gum
from the machine, then go see if you can help your
grandma. She s been hinting that she needs someone to
pitch in and clean up around the garage.
Can I work on the Starliner? She says she almost has it
running.
You know how I feel about you working on car en-
gines.
He stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets. Then maybe
I ll go across to South Winds and ask if I can work there in-
stead.
Don t you even think about it, young man! It came out
too fast to pass off as a simple motherly directive, so I tried
L ove and a Bad Hair Day 61
to cover. There s all kinds of construction stuff over there.
I don t think they allow youngsters around that kind of
thing.
You won t let me do anything fun.
Believe me, there is no fun to be had over at the South
Winds as long as Ryman O Malley is there. Now there was
a mantra I needed to repeat to myself a few hundred times
a day.
You won t let me work on the Starliner and now you
won t let me go over to the South Winds. Why can t I ever
do the things I like to do? I m not a baby anymore, you
know. He flung the door open and charged out seconds
before Sorrel Wyatt came through the door, humming
brightly.
Bye, sw son. Morning, Sorrel. I flapped a gold-and-
pink plastic cape with a crisp pop.
With one well-aimed hip check, I spun around the chair
in front of the sink and stood behind it, smiling all the while
til my cheeks ached. I figured Norris had told his wife
about finding me and Ry together the other night. Unless I
stayed on top of the conversation I might just find myself
the topic of some of the pre Flea-Market gossip fest.
Morning, Jolie, honey. The tiny woman stood on tiptoe
to hang her purse and sweater on a wall peg. You have any
trouble getting around those trucks over at the South
Winds? As far as snooping for information masquerading
as a legitimate concern went, hers was a pitiful attempt and
we both knew it.
No, not one bit of trouble.
That s good.
Since early Monday morning, trucks and cars and even
62 Annie Flannigan
delivery vans had come and gone on a pretty regular basis
to the business across the street. Not that I monitored the
goings-on there.
I didn t stand at my shop door and strain to read the lips
of the workmen. I didn t listen for the telltale sound of jack-
hammers breaking up concrete or for the tortured metal cry
I expected when the old sign came tumbling down.
Just like I didn t stand at my open bedroom window at
night and try to imagine what Ry was doing in his lighted
room just across the way. Like hell I didn t.
It didn t help that Emma teased me mercilessly about
finding creative ways to convince Ry to come around to my
way of thinking. Or that in unguarded moments, I found
myself dreaming about those very things in vivid, heated
detail.
Looks like your customers are scarcer than hen s teeth
today. Sorrel s halting accent always seemed at odds with
the decidedly Southern expressions she delivered with the
ease of a mountain native. Right odd for Thursday before
Flea Market.
Despite its name, the Every Second Saturday Flea Market
and Jamboree actually started on Friday mornings and ran
until Sunday afternoon, complete with a bingo game Friday
night, music and dancing Saturday night and a nondenom-
inational church service Sunday morning. This meant the
regular attendees had to get their hair done up for the big
doings a day ahead of time.
Joke was that Thursday before Flea Market was the most
chaste night of the month in Verbena on account of all those
women refusing to risk having their hair mussed up.
Norris Wyatt must have found a way to cope with that
L ove and a Bad Hair Day 63
inconvenience, though, because his wife of thirty-two years
had come to have her hair done every Thursday since I first
opened shop. Mrs. Wyatt had presented quite a challenge
back then as she insisted her stiff, ginger-colored hair was
God s doing and not some semipermanent magic straight
from a box. Moonlight Platinum 104 applied to the Filipino-
American woman s jet black tresses had done the trick,
though. I had spotted it right off. Gossip that got all the way
back from Asheville, where Sorrel s oldest daughter lived,
confirmed the purchase of six months worth of dye from
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