Roses on Mars

When I stepped into the only hair salon on Mars I had the same bleakness hanging on my shoulders as a soldier who was about to fight to the death would. Ok, maybe I was being a little dramatic.

I hadn’t realized I had paused right inside the door until the only person inside the salon said, “Be with you in a minute.” It was obviously a man, judging by his voice, but he was mostly hidden by one of those spinny chairs that I’d seen on every salon I’d been in on Earth. Looks like some things were universal. 

He had been crouching on the floor, getting hair off of the floor with an old-fashioned handheld dustbroom. I’d never actually seen one. Everyone had used robo-vacuums for the past century. Except for Mars, apparently. 

The man stood up, revealing himself to be taller and more muscled than your average Martian, and went to a trash can in the corner to dump his pan. He moved more like a fighter than a hairstylist and, unless I was mistaken, those scars on his knuckles were from punching something very hard and repeatedly. I would have pegged him as a troublemaker if not for his impeccably pressed jumpsuit and upright bearing. Maybe he had been a soldier. 

When he finally gave me his attention, his eyes went straight to my hair and he said, “What in the fracking Void?”

 I stiffened, hands instinctively balling themselves into fists. “Excuse me?” I said with every bit of politeness I could summon. 

“You’re one of those cultural exchange Earthers, aren’t you.”

That’s it. “Do you have a problem with me? Because unless I’m mistaken, we just met.”

He was visibly taken aback. Then he rubbed a hand over his face and sighed. “My mom’s going to skin me alive.”

Now I was the one feeling taken aback. “Say again?” Did I stumble into the Martian mafia, or something? 

“That’s just a figure of speech. She would never do that. What I meant to say is that she would be ashamed of how I greeted a customer. Why don’t you tell me what I can do for you?” 

It wasn’t an actual apology but it somehow still made me feel ashamed of my own anger. 

“I’d like to get my hair dyed.”

“Take a seat then.” He patted the chair. “I promise it doesn’t bite.”

Was my reluctance that obvious?

After sitting in the chair, he whipped the hair cutting cape around me with a flourish. “So, we have light, medium, and dark brown. Take your pick.” 

Seriously? They didn’t even have fancy names for the colors? 

I tried to focus on the colors in front of me, struggling to choose between light and medium brown. But the dread coiling in my gut sank it’s fangs into me and I started sweating. Actually sweating in terror. 

The hairstylist turned and swore when he saw me, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m ok.”

“Are you sure you want me to dye your hair? It seems like it’s stressing you out.”

Why did he have to be observant? “Just dye it.” If he didn’t do it soon than I was going to lose my courage. Better talk instead. And, heavens know, I needed someone to talk to. “It’s just a little overwhelming. I’ve had pink hair for years. It’s just who I am. ”  

“Why pink?”

“Don’t think I’m being condescending, but have you ever seen a rose before?”

“Definitely not. I have a feeling I would remember if I had.”

“You would,” I instantly sat a little taller and my hands came up to gesture while I spoke. “My dad used to say that if love could be a flower, it would be a rose.” He mmm-hmmed and I kept speaking. “My parents were both botanists and I grew up in a greenhouse. They were trying to make special varieties that flourish in a low-g atmosphere and they have hundreds of plants, but the ones I couldn’t stay away from were the roses.”

“It sounds like heaven.” There was a quiet reverance in his words. 

“It was. Is, I mean. It’s still there. He bred a rose for me when I was born. It’s pink is about the same shade as my hair.” I took a deep breath as he laid my chair back and began to work a cleaning solution through my hair. It would evaporate in a few minutes, leaving my hair ready to be dyed. Panic started to choke me again and I screwed my eyes shut. My breathing came harsh and fast and I dug my fingers into my palms, trying to make myself calm down. 

“Are you sure you want to do this?” His voice was quiet and considerate.

I nodded mutely. 

“Alright.” It was silent, and then he broke in with a question. “So what’s your project?”

The reminder of my roses let me begin to breathe and ignore what he was doing. “I’m here to plant roses. Special low-g ones.” I ignored the cool sensation of him painting the dye onto my hair. 

He was halfway through when the sound of something tearing rippled through the dome, followed by a horrific thud as something crashed outside. Alarms blared and the hairstylist lunged to close the door. Right as he reached the door I heard something thud into his leg and he cried out as he crumpled to the ground. I was stuck to my chair, useless, frozen with horror as I realized a strip of metal the size of an old school ruler was sticking out of his leg. 

“Shut the door,” He commanded. It jolted me out of my horrified fixation on his leg. I jumped out of my chair and raced to the door, dye splattering on the floor in front of me. The sucking noise was getting louder and the droplets were trying to leave through the door. 

I saw why as I reached the door and looked up. A section of the dome above was missing, revealing an unending alien sky beyond. All the dome’s air supply was being sucked out that hole.

“Close it!” He barked. I rammed the door shut. Hands shaking, I went to him. He was breathing in controlled gasps, his jaw clenched against the obvious pain. “Uh…tourniquet?” 

“Yeah,” He rasped. He tapped my belt and I looked at him uncomprehendingly, then understood in a burst. I whipped off the belt on my work jumpsuit and tied it around his thigh, right above where the shrapnel was embedded. 

“Tighter.” 

I tightened it and he moaned. He closed his eyes, trying to fight the pain and I took one of his hands in mine. He immediately crushed it. 

“There’s…a med kit…in the back. Red cross.” I nodded, disentangled my aching hand, and slipped into the back. It took a few minutes, but I finally found the kit.   

“K, Doc…you ready?” He rasped. 

I stared at him uncomprehendingly.

“It’s a joke…whatever. Just stick… the biggest needle… into my leg. No..not there. Higher. Higher. Yeah. That’s good.”

Whatever was in the needle, it worked. He relaxed enough to come up into a sitting position and take the med kit from me, rifling through the packets till he found a black tube. He set it aside for scissors and cut off the leg of the jumpsuit above the shrapnel. Without him asking, I helped him ease the cut away portion away from his leg. Squeezing out the paste inside, he rubbed it around his wound, jaw clenching again in pain. The paste dried into a sort of second skin almost immediately. He laid back on the ground with a groan and closed his eyes. 

“Are you going to bleed out?” I asked in a tiny voice.

“Nah.” He was silent, and I was grateful to notice that he seemed more relaxed. He really was kind of attractive, now that I was looking at him more closely. I jolted a little bit, suddenly horrified. Get a hold of yourself. 

“You’re not an actual hairstylist, are you?”

He cracked an eye open to look at me and, after a second, a small, mischievous smile popped out. “What gave me away?”

Had he caught me looking? I must have blushed, because his smile widened into a grin. “You just don’t seem like a hairdresser.”

“I just help my mom out when I’m home. This is her salon. I know enough to give a pretty good buzz cut, which is all most people here want” He paused, and then said, out of the blue, “Guess.”

“Guess what? Oh, what you are if you’re not a hairstylist? A marine, I’m guessing.”

“What makes you say that?”

I bit my lip before I could catch myself. He drawled, “It’s my physique, isn’t it? Too good for a hairstylist.”

When I only blushed harder he gave a little surprised laugh and said, “Wait, I’m right aren’t I? You were checking me out earlier.”

Oh. My. Stars. If I could crawl into a hole and never come out, I would. But I was locked in a leaky dome with partially dyed hair and…oh no. Partially dyed hair. It had been almost fifteen minutes since he’d put the dye in. It only needed two.

“Ohcrapohcrapohcrap.” I jerked upright and ran to the chair. “Which one washes out the dye?”

“Green bottle.”

I slathered it on my hands and scrubbed my hair with it, hoping that my hair wouldn’t be fried from being exposed to the dye for too long. 

When I had washed it out I steeled myself and looked into the mirror. 

My hair had once been a glorious, perfectly curled pink mane. Now, half of it was the dusty brown of dead, dried leaves. I put a horrified hand up to it and watched the bottom two inches crumble at my touch.  

It was ruined. 

Suddenly, all of the anxiety and disappointment and frustration of the last two weeks that I had spent fighting against a completely foreign culture burst out of me. 

I ugly-cried. With snot and everything. 

 By the stupid stars, could it get any worse?

The ground shuddered underneath me again as the scream of wrenching metal echoed throughout the dome, and with a muffled thud, a section of the salon’s ceiling crumpled. I dove away just as the ceiling caved in. Immediately, my lungs began to cramp. I looked instinctively to the hairstylist. He had leveraged himself up by supporting his weight on a counter but his face had gone completely white. 

I wanted to help him, but I scrambled over the rubble from the caved in ceiling instead, feeling a deep and piercing cold whip through the gaping hole where the ceiling used to be. I looked around frantically, trying to find something I’d seen when I’d come back to get the med-kit. 

Aha! Right there, by where I’d grabbed the med-kit, were three oxygen masks. I grabbed two of them and darted back out. 

I struggled to put a mask over the hairstylist’s hunched form, my own breath rasping in my chest. His hands came up, secured the straps over his head, and thrust the last mask at me. 

The moment my lungs filled with oxygen I felt my mind clear and my muscles unclench. Slightly. It was getting colder and colder by the second. 

The hairstylist motioned towards the back room. I nodded, knowing he wouldn’t be able to hear me over the screaming wind if I tried to speak. He squared his shoulders and began to move forward on his good leg. I slipped myself under his shoulder, wrapped an arm around him, and helped lift him up.

Finally, we were in the small room and I helped him lay down, then shut the door. It felt immediately warmer. I looked around for anything resembling a blanket and found an extra apron thing. I draped it over him. He motioned with his hand for me to lay down next to him. 

Oh. Sharing body heat would help.  

I carefully, oh so carefully, eased into him, careful to not jostle the shrapnel still sticking out of his thigh. 

We lay there in silence for a while, and then I realized something, “Hey, I keep forgetting to ask what your name is.” It was weird, but it felt like we were already good friends.

“That’s confidential.”

I poked him in the side lightly and said, “What, are you some super secret assassin?”

He was completely silent. 

“Oh. My. Stars.” I took a second to think about that and laughed in disbelief. “I am cuddling with a space assassin on Mars after nearly being floated out to space and dying my hair brown.” I broke into helpless laughter. 

“You know, most people would have run away screaming by now.”

“There isn’t anywhere to run.”

“Ok, scooted away. Screaming.” 

“Not going anywhere.” I said.”You’re too warm.” 

“Using me. What a jerk thing to do.” I couldn’t help but giggle again. “Hey, be serious!” I just giggled harder. 

“Hey, ok, just listen. I’m not an assassin. I’m like the Martian Congress’ swiss army knife. I have a unique skill set that makes me useful in a lot of situations. I don’t kill people for money. Not that I haven’t killed people, but it’s…that’s not all I do. It’s not who I am.” 

I nodded. “I get it.”

He was silent for four hearbeats. “You know, the weird thing is, I actually think you do.” I glanced up at his face and smiled at the baffled look on his face. 

“So this means I never get to know your name?”

“I’ll make an exception. But, tell anyone and…”

“You’ll kill me. Yeah, I know.”

“No. What? You’ll get deported. Not killed. Good heavens, woman, what is wrong with you?”

I tried to hold my hands up in mock surrender as best as I could in the position I was in. “Sorry.”

He shook his head in mock censure, but there was a smile on his face. “It’s Peder. Peder Brams. Yours?”

“Don’t laugh?”

“How strange can your name be?”

“It’s Corisande Romero. But, um, I go by Coco.” I winced, waiting for him to laugh. Even other Earthers thought it was a little much. 

“Figures.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing.” He sounded entirely too smug. I lifted myself up so that I would be higher than him, a hand still on his chest. 

“What?”

He caught the hand on his chest in his own and looped his fingers through mine. “It just suits you.” 

Somehow, even though I was the farthest from Earth I had ever been, I felt like I was home. I could have stayed there for forever, laughing and talking with him, but scuffling noises came from outside the door and I looked up. Someone on the other side was calling, “Anyone here?”

Help had arrived.

—————

It turned out that two asteroids had somehow snuck past the Martian radar system and slammed into the domes. Earth’s embassy didn’t let me leave until it was absolutely certain that the domes were stable, but by that time Peder was out of the hospital when I went to check on him. I had felt weird even doing that, since I had only known him for a few hours.

Finally, I went back to the salon. I didn’t just want to see Peder again. I wanted my hair to be one color. My head looked like a neapolitan cheesecake. 

When I got there, a woman who looked like Peder’s mother welcomed me in. 

“Oh, look what my son did to your hair. He mangled it! Don’t worry, I’ll fix it for free.” She set the same dyes in front of me to choose, but she added one more to the counter in front of me that had a yellow swatch of color. She added, “This is something Peder found from an ‘old friend’. I’m pretty sure he means the black market, so you should probably check inside first to make sure it’s not frog guts or something. If you’ll excuse me, I’m just going to the back room for a second while you decide.”

That was strange. Shouldn’t she be the one to check it out? I opened it and understood when I saw a note nestled inside. Had she wanted me to give me privacy while I read it. I unfurled it with excited fingers and read-

Coco~

I went by the embassy, hoping to see you again, but you weren’t there. I figured the least I could do for ruining your beautiful hair would be to find you a new dye. I wish I could have found pink, but it turns out that the guy I got this dye from only had one color. 

Don’t leave Mars just yet, ok? I really want to see you again.

Peder

My. Stars. I reread it again and again, only setting it down when Sammy came out from the back to wash the rest of the dye out of my hair. 

“I’m going to turn you around now.”

With a theatrical whoosh, she turned the chair around. My jaw dropped. 

It would be wrong to call the color blonde. It was like golden liquid sunshine framing my face in a soft, curling cloud. I had never felt more beautiful.

I teared up. 

Besides the rose my father had given to me, this is the best gift I had ever received.