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 3

"Studying her column," I say.

"For language. Renee uses very specific words. Cuticle architecture. Tonal density. Color geometry. I want to be able to speak her language."

"Renee is a colorist."

"Renee is a brand voice."

I do not say anything. I drink the coffee. It is not the coffee I drink. It is from the shop two blocks farther than the shop where I drink coffee. He bought it because he thinks the farther shop is better. The cup says ROAST in dark green letters.

"The Cleveland thing went really well," he says. "I have been thinking about that. I think we leverage the awards into a regional consulting model. The Luxe method as a training program for other salon owners. I have been talking to the same digital agency about a webinar series."

"The Luxe method," I say.

"Yeah."

I tap my mother's comb against the rim of the bowl. He does not notice. He has never noticed. I have been doing it in front of him for nine years.

—

On Saturday I take Mia to the orthodontist. It is the first Saturday morning in three years that I am not at the salon. Maddy is covering my one corrective. Mia is eleven and she has the same widow's peak I do.

We sit in the waiting room and she watches me read my phone and she says: "Mom, are you working on something."

"No."

"Then can you put the phone down."

I put the phone down. She is wearing pink Crocs that are too big because she is going to grow into them. I look at her and I think about the math: forty-eight Saturdays a year, twelve years, an average of nine hours per Saturday. Two hundred and sixteen days. Seven months of my life on Saturdays in this salon under Derek's name on the lease.

Mia looks up and asks if we can get pancakes after.

I say yes.

She tells me about a girl in her class who has highlights and she asks when she is allowed to start coloring her hair. I tell her not until she is sixteen and her cuticle is fully set. She rolls her eyes the way her aunt Theresa rolls hers and tells me that is the longest answer to a question anyone has ever given her. She makes me laugh.

In the parking lot afterward I check my phone. There is a message from Renee Ortiz. It is forwarded through the Professional Beauty Association registry portal. It is one line.

I will be at the meet-and-greet Friday. I read your protocol. Bring the additive lot number.

Friday night. Eleven thirty-eight. The salon empty. Derek at his desk in the back office. The hospitality at the convention center ended at ten and he came back to the salon instead of going home. His Lexus is in the lot and the back door is propped open with a wedge. The motion light over the parking lot has been triggered three times since I left at nine, which I know because I have been driving past on the side road that runs behind the building.

Inside, Derek is at the reception desk. The desk is mine on Tuesdays and Thursdays when Erin is off. The reception laptop is open. The Google reviews page for Luxe Hair Collective is on the screen. He has been scrolling for forty minutes. There are three hundred and twenty-two reviews. He is reading them in order from oldest to newest. The cursor sits next to a review from 2019 that mentions Claire by name.

He minimizes the browser. He opens it again. He goes back to the reviews. He scrolls.

He has had two glasses of red wine at the convention center. There was a tray of small cured meats on a folded cloth. He ate three of them. He stood next to a man from a salon group out of Pittsburgh and he tried to pronounce cuticle architecture and the man did not respond. Renee Ortiz was four feet from him for thirty seconds and she nodded at him and walked to the bar. Derek did not have a chance to say his prepared sentence about tonal density.

On the reception desk, my mother's rattail comb is sitting next to a stack of foils.

He brought it from my station. He used it twenty minutes ago to slit a foil packet because the packet was sealed wrong and his fingernails are too short to grip the perforation. The yellow plastic is now smudged with the residue of an unused 7-volume processor that he opened by mistake, looking for something else. He set the comb down on the desk after he used it. He has not looked at it again.

He picks up his phone. He opens his text thread with me. It is empty for six days. He types: home soon. He deletes it. He types: are you up. He deletes it. He sets the phone down.

He looks at the comb.

He picks it up. He turns it over in his hand. The yellow plastic is the kind that is no longer manufactured. He does not know this. He registers that the comb is old. He registers that it is in his salon, on the desk, and that he does not know whose it is. He sets it back down. He does not return it to my station.