Hairy Situation

Today was a good day. Today was a really, really fucking good, good day.

A new client came into the salon this morning. Pretty young thing. Thick hair to her waist. The hair was black. Coal black. But unlike coal it was shiny, healthy, glimmering underneath the lights. She sat down in the chair and swivelled to face the mirror.

“I’m looking for a drastic change,” she told Mark, looking up to his reflection.

“A girlfriend suggested a bob to me a few months back and it’s taken all that time to work up the courage to get it done but I’ve made up my mind and that’s what I’d like.” What little breath she had left after speaking the sentence was exhaled with a definitive hmph.

“We can do that,” Mark said, a smile creeping into his cheeks.

“Quick, please. Before I change my mind.” And she smiled as if somebody had just tickled her side; a genuine smile but not without a hint of pain.

Mark got to work and I watched from the reception desk through the reflection of a reflection cast by the mirrors in the room. I watched the hair as it was washed, conditioned, blow-dried and carefully held by Mark, measured between his thin fingers. Snip. Weightless hair drifted to the ground. Snip snip snip. Three more locks followed, each floating a millisecond behind the one before it.

“Leon,” said Mark. And he clicked his fingers once then pointed to the hair tufts on the ground. He liked to demonstrate status when a client was present. I think it was his way of trying to win back control over me. The gesture pissed me off but an excitement caught in my throat at the same time. The click, the calling of my name… it meant something incredible was about to take place. Like fucking Pavlov’s dog. I knew that it meant it was my moment.

I grabbed the broom with the wide base and pushed the hair across the grey-tiled floor, so well-polished it shone back a reflection. I looked down and caught myself smiling back up from the tiles. The woman was telling Mark how much she loved her new look and “wow I’m definitely going to be switching to you as my hairdresser from now on,” she said. My smile widened on the floor.

I pushed her hair behind a wall out of sight, near where the washing basins were. I pulled out a small plastic bag from my back jeans pocket and scooped the hair into the bag, handling it with care. There was so much I actually filled two bags. And then I got a strip of masking tape, wrote the woman’s name on it and stuffed it into my bag to take home.

After unlocking the front door, I scanned the living room to make sure my housemates weren’t home. Then I went straight to my bedroom and into the ensuite. I unzipped my bag and shook it upside down over the sink and watched six small bags fall into the bathroom sink, two of which revealed a dark shade of black through the plastic. I reached for them and untied the knots at the top of each bag. The good thing about collecting hair from a salon was that the cleaning part had already been done. It saved me a lot of time. And time is what I needed for the next part of the process.

In the background the Beach Boys played and I whistled along. Surfin’ USA. I grabbed a roll of masking tape from the top drawer of the cabinet and unwound a long stretch of it, relishing in the crackle of the sound. I laid the piece of tape across the edge of the basin, sticky-part up.

I took the first piece of the new client’s hair, pinching the end of it between my fingers. I brought the single strand of hair to my eye line and admired it. It was strong and it was natural. Natural hair always felt best between my fingers. It allowed for the smoothest glide across the strand.

“Incredible,” I said to nobody.

With utmost precision and care, I stuck one end of the hair to the masking tape. One hair down. A hell of a lot more to go. Once the line of tape was full I grabbed it by its ends and walked it into my bedroom. There was a gap on the wall next to Ginny and I thought the black hair would look beautiful next to hers.

Ginny has the most hair on my wall. She’s nearly covered a full column with a beautiful, walnut brown colour that I brush every day or two, and dry shampoo at least once a week. Ginny (the person) has seen Mark for the whole ten years since I started my collection, which is why I’ve been able to make such good progress on her part of the wall. It also helped that a few weeks ago she asked Mark to snip her long locks into a pixie cut.

“Do it,” she told him with tears swelling in her eyes. Mark looked uncertain but then she spoke again, this time with more punch in her voice.

“Do. It!”

Mark’s scissors cut the place of the hair he was holding and I watched it drop onto the floor with excitement fizzling in my stomach. A similar feeling to what I had felt today at the salon. Such a dramatic cut doesn’t happen often but when it does it's bliss. A bad breakup, Mark had later told me. Poor thing. But it still hadn’t taken away from my joy.

I stuck the masking tape with the new, black hair on an empty spot next to Ginny’s column. The black and brown complemented each other beautifully. I took a small comb and started brushing it through the hair, holding it on my hand as I did so. Good Vibrations started playing and I felt my mood lift further. Who doesn’t love the Beach Boys?

Mark doesn’t actually. He never lets me choose the music in the salon. He said the Beach Boys doesn’t fit the upmarket energy he’s going for. We’ve worked together for about ten years now and he’s a little judgemental about my proclivities but overall, he’s not too bothered by it. Mark is gay and I’m not just bringing that up for the sake of it. It adds insight into the type of relationship we have. It’s not just anyone who would allow a man to work for their small business and keep the hair from their clients to take home. There’s always been a sort of one-sided flirtation between Mark and I. And I know that Mark knows I’m straight and that nothing would ever happen between us but it doesn’t stop him from sneaking a look in the large, rectangular mirrors every so often, or from leaving his hand on my bicep for a few seconds too long once he’s greeted me, and it doesn’t stop him from staring into my eyes a little more intensely than a typical boss should.

I ripped off another stretch of masking tape. Good Vibrations ended and the sound of a jaunty keyboard signalled the start of God Only Knows. A classic. I hummed along to the tune as I pulled the cap off a permanent marker with my mouth and wrote ‘Lola’ on the tape. Then I stuck the label above the new hair, stood back and smiled at a job well done.

*

Today was a bad day. Today was a really, really fucking bad, bad day.

I’d just arrived back from work and dumped my yield into the bathroom sink when I heard two knocks at the door, hard and in quick succession. I froze to make sure I had heard correctly.

Knock knock

Fast and hard. It was impatient. Demanding. Definitely not my housemates.

I placed the hair back into the bag with care and walked to the front door, making sure to close the door to my bedroom as I passed through it.

Knock knock knock knock knock knock.

“Coming!” I shouted. I picked up my pace. At the door, I opened the latch covering the peep hole and pushed my face to it.

Policemen. Two of them. Or should I say a policeman and a policewoman. A muscular, short woman and a tall, gangly man looked serious through the fisheye glass.

“Open up! Police,” the woman half-shouted.

My lungs compressed in on themselves with panic. I’d been found out. Who told them? My housemates were barely ever home and totally respected my space. And I’d done well to move everything out during the odd rental inspection.

“We have a warrant,” the man said.

The only other person it could have been was Mark. That motherfucker. He dobbed me in. He’d had enough of our toxic relationship and decided he’d finally act on his resentment borne from the one desire he could never have.

“If you obstruct us it will count as a criminal offence,” the policeman added.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

I moved away from the door. The door knob rattled. The police must have sensed me walking away because the rattling and shouting became more intense. I made a mental plan of attack in my head. Back door. Backyard. Back fence. Back street. Return at night for Ginny and Lola and the others and then start fresh in the city.

Just as I’d turned around to put my thoughts into action I heard a third voice at the door. Polite discussion ensued and then the slide of a metal key into the keyhole sounded, piercing my ears. The door creaked open and I froze and Lily’s eyes met mine. A look of bewilderment shot through the air between us.

“Leon. Why wouldn’t you let the police in?” she asked.

Out of all the fucking times for one of my housemates to be home early it was today.

“Sir, we’re going to have to ask you to sit and wait here while we search the place,” the policewoman said, stepping into the house. “Which is Leon’s room?”

Lily pointed to the closed, brown door. The police entered my room.

I took a seat on the couch in the living room and counted seconds to slow my breathing down. One. Two. Three. Four. Hold. One. Two. Three. Fuck this. I let my breath do whatever it wanted.

There were murmurs coming from the room and the rustling of plastic bags and the crackling of masking tape being pulled from the wall and I sprung up from my seated position.

“Careful with that!” I shouted into the other room.

Lily, perhaps intrigued by my reaction, stuck her head into my bedroom and clasped her mouth with both hands.

“Leon, what the fuck?”

I started sobbing, burying my face in my hands.

“You don’t get it,” I said. “It’s not like what you think it is.”

The police came out of the room and walked between us, breaking the tense energy that had formed. They carried bags with my hair in it.

“Son, best you come to the station with us,” the man said. I cried all the way there.

At the station, they took me into grey room, void of any décor or personality, and asked me all sorts of questions at a simple, wooden table.

“It’s not a sex thing. It’s nothing nefarious I swear. I don’t know how to explain it but it just brings me comfort,” I told them. “It always has.”

The detectives looked at me like I was deranged but I didn’t sense any anger from them. One of them let out a long sigh and looked me in the eye.

“You’re free to go for now but we may call you back in at a later time,” he said.

“I would recommend you stop what you’re doing with this.”

Fresh tears streaked my cheeks and I nodded and stood up and nearly tripped on the leg of the chair as I left the room.

*

Today was a fresh start. Today was a new fucking fresh start.

I dragged my suitcase through the living room and placed it in the boot of my car which was nearly overfilled. When did I become such a hoarder? I had so much shit to move. Less now that the hair was gone though.

The drive to the city would take a few hours and I went back inside to do one last strategic piss before I left. Lily was sitting at the kitchen bench, hunched over a bowl of cereal, reading the newspaper. She hadn’t acknowledged me all morning.

“Hey, I’m about to head off,” I said. She didn’t look up. “I just wanted to apologise again for everything. For being a bit of a weird housemate and all.”

“A bit weird?” she said into her bowl. “Understatement of the year mate.”

I sighed. “I get that,” I said. I walked to the bathroom, pushed up the seat and forced out a leak. I flushed the toilet, washed my hands and checked my teeth in the mirror. I picked up my car keys and made for the front door. I wasn’t going to get a goodbye from Lily. It was all too strange. Too uncomfortable.

“Hey mate,” she said as I reached for the door knob.

“Yeah?”

“You might wanna read this.” And she handed me the newspaper, folded in half.

“Sure, thanks,” I said.

“Have a good life,” she said.

The car was warmer than I’d expected for this time of the year. I blasted the air conditioner, buckled my seat belt and turned on the engine. Fuck. I’d need more petrol soon. Can’t afford this shit. Especially without a job now. I took a sip of my water bottle and threw it onto the passenger seat where the newspaper was. A headline caught my attention.

Hairy Situation For ‘Crime of Passion’ Murderer.

I turned off the engine and picked up the paper.

A Colac woman has told a court she “felt as though her life had ended” after finding out her late husband, whom she murdered, was having an affair.

Thirty-nine-year old Virginia ‘Ginny’ Merrick pleaded guilty to the murder of Jonathan Merrick on October 18, and will face a life sentence without parole.

Forty-one-year-old Mr Merrick was found dead in his Elliminyt home on July 29 with 17 stab wounds to his torso.

Judge Meyers described the murder as a “crime of passion.”

The prosecutor presented evidence to link Ms Merrick to the murder through a DNA match from a single strand of hair found at the scene.

Ms Merrick said she had made every attempt to remove traces of her DNA from the scene before leaving town, but admitted she was in a “state of shock” at the time and “might have missed some things.”

The DNA was matched with hair found at a local salon after Ms Merrick received a haircut there a week prior to the murder.

Holy fucking shit.

I had to see Mark. Had to talk to him about this. I punched the address for the salon into my phone. The traffic on the way was horrific. The ‘10 minutes until destination’ on my phone doubled. Unusual for a small town. Cars backed up for a while. I waited for the traffic to edge forward and finally made it to the salon.

There were news crews there. Reporters. Camera operators. Photographers. Police. A red ‘closed’ sign was visible through the glass door at the salon’s entry. Mark was nowhere to be seen.

I parked the car and dialled Mark’s number. The first two calls rang out. A third attempt and then I heard his voice on the other end.

“What do you want?” he asked, tone frosty. It’d been a few months since we’d spoken. I’d confronted him about tipping me off to the police after the search. If that wasn’t enough to end a friendship then an argument and a subsequent firing was.

“Mark! What’s going on outside the salon? What happened?” He let out a frustrated groan like I was a child who was not understanding a simple equation.

“The Merrick murder case? I’ve had to close down because of you and all this. Bloody journalists started connecting the dots and sniffing around to figure out why we keep hair weeks and months after cuts. It’s not normal, you know.”

“Yeah, but they have no proof of anything. The police didn’t tell. At least I don’t think they did. What I did isn’t illegal.”

“Lola,” he said.

“What about her?”

“It was Lola.”

“Okay?” I asked.

“Last week Lola stumbled across your little bags when she couldn’t find the bathroom. Seems like you’d forgotten to finish your sick little job,” he said, vitriol bleeding into his voice. “Made her uncomfortable so she talked.”

“Mark, I’m so-“

“Don’t,” he said. “I’ve been so tolerant of your freaky little habit and all the weird shit you do. I never even asked what you did with it all. What, is it some sort of sex thing?”

“No, it’s more complicated than that.”

“You know what? I don’t want to know,” he said. “Just go. Just fucking go somewhere else. I don’t want to see you in this town again.”

Three dull beeps sounded from my phone. I released the air from my lungs until my throat tightened and I started coughing. Then I breathed in a deep breath. I reached for my phone and scrolled through my music library until I found the song I needed to hear. God Only Knows. I closed the app on my phone and opened the maps app. In the destination box, I typed the name of the city. A different one than what I had planned this morning. A city interstate. A city that was further away from this place.