The eighty-thousand dollar hair…

I quickly got back into the plank pose… or tried to, at least. “Fake it ‘til you make it” kept running through my head as I tried to balance the best I could. “Um… okay,” I said in response to Chloe telling me I would be her assistant for a while. “I have a million and one things to do today,” she said, “so you can have the day off.” I drove here for this, I wondered? I immediately lost my pose again and fell face-down into the grass again.  

I stood up, wiping the random strands of grass and dirt from my face. I wanted to say, “Are you sure?” but I reminded myself that when you offer something to someone, there’s a chance they will take you up on it. And the truth was, I wanted another day off. “Okay, thanks,” I said as I started to walk back to my car. “See you tomorrow at seven,” she said. But tomorrow’s Saturday… Already, this doesn’t look good… And I know, I know… you all warned me… 

* 

The next morning, I meet Chloe at seven-fucking-o’clock in the morning. I know I should have questioned it, but a job is a job (and I was too young and naïve then to know how to say no to people in the ‘biz, for fear of getting fired; which, again, I know would have been better than getting up at dawn on a Saturday). 

She texted me to meet her at some French-sounding hair salon. Okay. They weren’t even open; a janitress let me in. “Avery, there you are!” she exclaimed. She was sitting in a chair, getting her short hair shampooed. What am I doing here?!

“Do you like my hair, Avery?” What?? “Yeah,” I say. WTF am I supposed to say to that? And, even if I don’t, how do I tell her that? “How ‘bout on a scale of one to ten?” she says. For Pete’s sake, I think. This is absurd. “It’s super cute,” I say. “I really don’t like rating things, but I’d say a nine-and-a-half for sure.” I can’t believe I’m even having this discussion… no less, at SEVEN FUCKING A.M. 

“Well, I’m about to make it above a ten,” she says. Then, as if on cue, the shampoo girl stops shampooing and her hairdresser walks in, holding long strands of blonde hair. Down-to-your-waist long. I jump back a bit, wondering why he has someone’s hair in his hand without the someone. It’s not a wig, though it’s definitely hair. “Italian,” he says in his French accent. “Feel.” He holds the hair out to me.  

I just look at it. It’s like someone asking me to pet their cute little kitten… but I find this kitten really gross. Repulsive. Chloe gives me a look, insisting I feel it. I do. “Nice,” I say. “Raphael, let me,” she says. He brings the hair over to Chloe, where she pets it like the kitten it should be. She is much more excited about this than I. Is she on drugs? If not, maybe she should be. 

“They’re Italian extensions,” Chloe says. How do they differ from American ones? “Dean’s always liked long hair, but he’s never seen me with it, so I decided to get these and surprise him. Why wait?” Yeah, I think to myself. Why wait? Why be like a normal person who does wait for their hair to grow out? 

Then Jacques, Raphael’s right-hand man, comes out, holding extensions in a more reddish color. “The strawberry, madame,” he says, holding them out to Chloe. She proceeds to pet them, too, and wants me to, as well. I try not to roll my eyes as I pet… If only my friends could see me now… living out my Hollywood dream… 

During the petting zoo (a zoo in so many ways), Chloe continually asks me which strands I like best, and I tell her (which basically means agreeing with her, as she has a way of making you do so and downplaying everything you say until you see things her way). She decides to go with the strawberry blonde ones. Horray! (Meaning, I could care less; I still resent that she can’t just wait for her hair to grow out. Besides, don’t extensions always look fake, anyway?! I mean, everyone’s going to know her hair didn’t grow down to her butt overnight.) 

I spend the next several hours (far too many to keep track of) watching Jacque and Raphael and a team of other people extend Chloe’s hair. I read every hair magazine (twice). I go get her lunch at the café next door. I return, read all the magazines again. I know I nod off a few times, too, but luckily the magazines were a good buffer between my closed eyes and Chloe’s open ones.  

When it’s all done, I see Chloe gloating in the mirror, loving her new look. I, on the other hand, am horrified: she looks like a drag queen. I am sure I cannot tell her this… It looks like she’s wearing a wig a man would wear on Halloween in West Hollywood. How much did this procedure cost Chloe, again? Fortunately (or unfortunately, as the case will soon be), I soon find out: $80,000. $80,000?!?! She could have paid off my student loans… and then re-enrolled me in college again. I am going to be sick… 

The next few days are spent with Chloe posing all over the yard, my taking pictures of her and her new hair. In one, she draped herself over the Jacuzzi… another, she hung upside-down from the girls’ monkey bars (I was surprised she’s so flexible at her age; must be all the yoga). She had turned into the model she had never quite become (at least not for a living, even though she claimed she used to be a model in Utah… hmm).  

Between flashes once, Dean walked through the yard on his way inside. Chloe screamed out for him not to look yet. He didn’t, but he and I exchanged a look — and I thought he even smiled. This is the first contact we’d had since the fire. Better a glance than nothing, right? He gave me a thumbs-up and kept going until he got into the house and never looked back. I wish I could follow him, then exit the front door and drive off, back to the Midwest. But I didn’t.  

I’m still thinking about the eighty-thousand dollar hair… the hair that brings a whole new meaning to “bad hair day” and all the bad hair days that lie ahead for Chloe… and for me, to have to look at it. And I wonder how “surprised” Dean will be…