Fireside by Susan Wiggs (pdf e book reader txt) 📗

much more he wished she liked him. “Nope,” he said. “The two of you are way more fun than a girlfriend, bud.”

Kim smiled. “Hear that, AJ? We’re fun.”

“Except for when you’re dragging me to a stylist.”

“You need a stylist,” she insisted.

“I thought you liked my long hair.”

“We’re keeping the long hair but we need to refine it.”

He sent AJ a look. “What do you say? You want to come and get refined with me?”

“No, thanks. I think I’ll hang out here.”

“It can’t be as bad as the dentist.” He glanced at Kim, and had second thoughts. “Can it?”

The salon smelled of perfume and hair dye and God-knew-what. Bo never knew you had to sit so long in the chair. The barber was a gay guy named Goldi (“with an i”) whose head was shaved, so there was no telling whether or not he actually knew what he was doing. Oh, and he wasn’t a barber, but a stylist. He walked around the chair in slow circles, deep in contemplation. Bo felt like a slab of marble to Goldi’s Michelangelo. It wasn’t enough to get a haircut. He had to have a style, which meant the guy spent a good half hour studying Bo and consulting with Kim.

“I can see you’re in good hands,” she finally declared. “I’m going to check with the photographer and make sure eveything’s all set for the shoot.” She sent a questioning look at Goldi.

“Threeish,” he said.

Bo checked the clock. Damn. That was two hours away. What could possibly take two hours?

He soon found out. The haircut was excruciatingly slow. Goldi concurred that they should preserve the “long look” but he was going to give it more “polish.” This meant continued circling and snipping off bits the length of an eyelash. Bo set his jaw and glowered. He wished he hadn’t drunk so much water at lunch because he had to piss like a racehorse.

The cut was only the beginning. With Goldi acting as art director, a couple of girls in pink smocks swooped in and painstakingly separated strands of his hair and painted them with a noxious substance. Then they carefully encased the locks in foil so he resembled a Star Trek extra. He was placed in a chair where—no lie—they lowered a plastic dome over his head and set it on Bake. Under the plastic dryer-dome, Bo sat there like an abductee and pondered what else his captors had in mind. He wondered when they were going to bring out the probe.

The fun never ended. His abductors also subjected him to a manicure, not just soaking and scrubbing his nails but submerging his hands in hot melted paraffin, which was oddly sensual, despite being just plain weird. The nail tech—who the hell knew there was such a thing as a nail tech?—filed and shaped his nails. Then, before he knew what was happening, she applied a coat of polish.

“Jesus,” he said, snatching his hand off the table. “Are you kidding me? Get that stuff off me.”

She grabbed his hand, slapped it down on the table. “Be still and let me finish.”

“I don’t want any damn nail polish.”

“Kim said you’d probably be a baby about it.”

“This is not being a baby. This is being a guy.”

“Don’t worry, it’s a matte finish, not a gloss.”

“Oh, well, then,” he mocked, “that’s different. Come on, we’re not taking pictures of my hands.”

“You don’t know that. You’re a pitcher. It’s all about the hands.”

So he spent the afternoon surrounded by bossy women, suffused in products that made him smell like a green-house. They lulled him into submission, painting something warm and liquid on his eyebrows. Then—yow!—they ripped the hair right out and said, “Just cleaning up the brow line.” As if that made it okay. He tried to go away somewhere in his head, a zenlike technique usually reserved for his sport. People called it different things—the zone, the mechanism, the safe place. To Bo it was a level of consciousness that took him outside himself. He’d started doing this on his own when he was a kid, desperate to escape a life that felt scary. Coach Holmes, his mentor, had taught him to put the process to good use, helping him focus on both the art and the mechanics of a good pitch.

In the salon, it didn’t help. He couldn’t escape.

The processing under the dryer turned the foil-wrapped strands of his hair almost white. Bo nearly puked when he saw it after the rinse-out. Unconcerned, Goldi wielded his blow-dryer like a warrior priming a rifle, and attacked. Bo shut his eyes against the hot wind. After a while, Goldi set aside the dryer, looked Bo in the eye and said, “I need to finger-scrunch you” without a hint of irony.

“Go ahead, I can take it,” Bo said, bracing himself. Finger-scrunching involved the application of a clear substance referred to as “product,” followed by a humiliating shot of hair spray. Hair-fricking-spray. If anyone had told Bo that a major-league career involved hair spray, he would have known they were joking. Except it was true. Hair spray.

His ordeal ended with the ritual removal of the giant plastic gown.

A few minutes later, Kim returned. She stood in the doorway, her gorgeous mouth agape. “Oh. My. God,” she said in a breathy voice, which he found incredibly sexy. “You look fantastic.”

So okay. This was cool. He grinned, hooking his thumbs into his back pockets. “I’ve been finger-scrunched.”

“You should have done it long ago.” She flew across the salon with arms outstretched. But her hug of gratitude was not for Bo. She embraced Goldi, saying, “You’re a genius. He looks like a superstar.”

“Hey, where’s my hug?” Bo demanded. “I had my cuticles pared for you.”

“No, you did that for your career,” she corrected him, then grabbed his hand and inspected it. “Marie, you’re a genius, too,” she told the nail tech. She looked up at Bo. “Your hand feels really good.” Then she dropped it hastily. “Let’s get going and hope it doesn’t