She has colored hair for twelve years. His face is on the billboard. Her elbow kept her awake last night and she had three clients today anyway.

Page 2

The peer reviewer was a master color educator named Renee Ortiz. I have never met Renee. I read her column in Modern Salon Pro the way other women read horoscopes. She wrote a one-paragraph summary of my protocol in Issue 7. She praised the precision of the developer ratio. She used the word elegant.

She is the guest judge for the Regional Bridal Beauty Awards live color category, three weeks from today. The award is held at the convention center forty miles south of here. Luxe Hair Collective is competing for the third year in a row. Derek registered us. I will be the colorist on stage. The model is a twenty-two-year-old engineering student named Beatriz who is moving from level two black to a level seven copper-bronze balayage in front of a live audience and three judges in eighty minutes.

I will be putting the violet shift in the root melt.

Renee will be six feet from the chair with a blacklight wand in her bag.

She does not know my name. She knows the protocol number.

I drop the brush back in the bowl. The timer reads 02:47. I tap my mother's comb twice against the rim. Lauren's eyes are closed. The next section is already lifted.

I have not told Derek about the registry.

Two weeks before the awards, the model walks in for the first consultation.

Beatriz has hair to her clavicle, level two virgin black, never colored, never heat-damaged. She is twenty-two and has a chemistry degree from the state university and she spent fifteen minutes on the phone with me before the appointment asking the right questions about porosity. I liked her on the phone. I like her in the chair.

Derek is in the consultation room with us. He is leaning against the wall and he has not introduced himself. He has been on his phone for the first nine minutes. He is texting someone with both thumbs. The phone is in a leather case.

"So we're thinking copper-bronze," he says, looking up. "Warm undertone. Movement through the mid-shaft. The Luxe method, right Claire?"

"There is no Luxe method," I say, before I have planned to say it. "There is a developer ratio for a virgin level two. There is a sectioning grid. We are doing both."

Beatriz looks at me in the mirror. She does not turn her head. Her eyes find mine and stay there for two seconds before they slide back to the swatch ring in my hand.

"Right," Derek says. "Right. The Luxe method." He looks at his phone again. "I'll let you take this."

He walks out and closes the door.

I put the swatch ring down. I get out the formula card I made on the phone last Tuesday after Beatriz answered every question correctly. I show her the card. The numbers are in pencil. She reads them and asks about the cuticle softening time. I tell her thirteen minutes for her hair, not the fifteen the manufacturer suggests, because virgin black has a tighter cuticle than the manufacturer assumes.

"You're going to lift me to a level seven in eighty minutes on stage," she says. "On live judging."

"Yes."

"How."

"Sectioning. Three rows of six. Every section gets a different processing time depending on its placement under the lamp. The section closest to the lamp processes thirty-eight seconds shorter than the section farthest. I will be moving constantly. I will not be talking. The judges will think I am improvising. I am not."

"Have you done this on a stage before?"

"No. I have done it in this chair eleven times. The eighty-minute version is the same protocol, compressed."

She nods. She puts her phone in her bag. She does not take it out for the rest of the consultation.

When she leaves I sit in my chair for a minute. The salon is quiet. It is six-fifteen and the last appointment cleared at six. I open the second drawer. I take out the registration letter. I take out the formula card for Beatriz. I take out a clean piece of paper.

The competition rules require the colorist to submit a written protocol three days before the event. The protocol becomes part of the live record and the judges have it on a clipboard. The protocol is what they cross-reference against what they see on the model.

I write the protocol in pencil. I include the developer ratio. I include the sectioning grid. I include the toner formula — and at the bottom, in the line for proprietary additives, I write: 0.005% violet-base direct dye, registered PBA-TR-2024-0312, peer-reviewed Modern Salon Pro Issue 7.

I do not show the protocol to Derek.

—

The next morning Derek brings me a coffee. He has not brought me a coffee in eight months. He sets it on my station and says we have to talk about the awards.

"The judges' panel is doing a meet-and-greet on Friday night," he says. "Wine and hors d'oeuvres. I am the registered representative for Luxe. I will be there. The colorist is welcome to come if she wants but it is for owners primarily."

"I am the registered colorist on the entry form."

"You are. The hospitality is for owners."

"Renee Ortiz is a judge."

"I know. I'm preparing for that. I have been studying her column for three weeks."

I look at him. He is wearing the navy shirt I have not seen before. He has had a haircut. He has been to a tanning bed. He smells like a cologne I do not recognize.