An Affair to Dismember (36 page)

“NO!”

“Don’t even think about going anywhere, Gladie. You can’t get away. I’ve got you where I want you.”

“Please. I’m scared,” I whimpered. My ears grew hot, and I saw little silver spots in front of my eyes. Her voice came at me in a booming echo, as if in a cave. A cave with no exit. A cave with no exit and not enough air.

Great, now I was in fear for my life and I had suddenly
become claustrophobic. I made a play for her sympathy. “Please. Let me go. Please, I want to go home,” I said.

“No way.” She was tall and muscular, in much better shape than I was. I hadn’t exercised in months, not since I worked at the juice bar at the Phoenix Women’s Gym for ten days. What was wrong with me? Would it have killed me to hop on a treadmill or at least try yoga? Yoga. Who was I kidding? One downward facing dog and I would dislocate something important, like my spine or gallbladder.

“Don’t look at me that way, Gladie. There’s no way you can take me.”

I gulped air. “Don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me,” I said.

“Gladie, at worst it will sting a little. I need to do this. This is bigger than the both of us. Look at yourself.”

She turned my chair to give me a good look at myself in the mirror. I looked how I always looked. My hair stood up in frizzy spikes around my head, mimicking my panicked mood. I shut my eyes tight.

“Fine,” I said. “Fine, Bird. Just do it.”

My hairdresser, Bird Gonzalez, clapped her hands together and hopped on her heels. “Oh, Gladie. Thank you, thank you. You won’t be sorry. I’ve been wanting to do this for ages. You’re going to be so happy. The Ecuadoran Erect will change your life. Straight hair, Gladie. You’ll be a new woman.”

Being a new woman wasn’t entirely a bad idea. After years of moving around from one temporary job to another in one city or another, my Grandma Zelda had convinced me to settle down with her in the small mountain town of Cannes, California, and work in her matchmaking business. I wasn’t a great success in my new career. So far I had made two matches, one on my own and the other with my grandma’s help. Two
matches in four months didn’t set any records, but Grandma said I was cooking with gas.

My personal life was going at an even slower pace. There had been a burst of interest in me a few weeks before. My first client thought I was Angelina Jolie on a Ritz cracker, and the womanizing chief of police, Spencer Bolton, flirted with me nonstop, but I matched my client with a clumsy waitress, and Spencer moved on to dating half the town. My hunky new neighbor Arthur Holden took me out a couple times, even called me his girlfriend. Then he disappeared. Not totally disappeared, but he was busy every night and day and never offered me any explanations. I didn’t know where he was going, didn’t even know what he did for a living. And I didn’t think I had the right to ask him.

I knew one thing for certain. I was a woman with wild, out-of-control, frizzy hair. Maybe change needed to start at the top. In my case, my head.

Bird squirted Ecuadoran Erect solution into a bowl, added water, and stirred. The salon was at once filled with a noxious smell.

“It doesn’t cause cancer, does it?” I asked Bird.

“Gladie, you are going to look just like Kate Hudson with boobs.”

“So it doesn’t cause cancer?”

Bird painted the solution onto my hair. “I don’t think that was ever proven,” she said. I held my breath and thought healthy thoughts. It was too late to change my mind. Half my head was covered in stinky Ecuadoran Erect.

“It’s starting to sting,” I said.

“That’s normal. It will go away in an hour or two.”

Two hours later, my hair was straight as a board. Dark blond hair fell flat down past my shoulders. I was unrecognizable, unless I really was Kate Hudson with boobs. Bird was thrilled with her work.

“Uh,” I said.

“You have twenty-year-old hair. You know what I mean?” she squealed. “It’s soft and supple and luxurious just like you’re twenty years old again.”

“When I was twenty I was growing out a pixie cut. I looked like a cotton ball after it was plugged into a light socket.”

“But it was soft, right?”

“I don’t know. I was scared to touch it.”

I ran my hair over my new hair. It was soft.

“You look bitchin’,” Bird said. “Men are going to chase you down the street. Oh, speaking of that, I have something for you.”

She handed me a box. “Chinese tea,” she explained. “Special diet tea. Imported. Shh. Don’t tell anyone I gave it to you. I’ve got a waiting list.”

“Diet tea?” I sucked in my stomach.

“Don’t give me that face, Gladie. You told me before you wanted to lose a couple pounds. I know what you’re up against in that house with your grandma and her junk food habit. The tea works. Trust me.”

She was right. I had turned a little soft in the four months I had been living with my french-fry-loving grandma.

My hair swished against my shoulders as I stuffed the tea in my purse. I paid Bird, emptying my bank account with the one check. Ecuadoran Erect and Chinese diet tea did not come cheap. I would have to make another match, quickly. Luckily I was on my way to see Belinda Womble. Belinda had curly hair and heaps of disposable income, and she wanted me to match her.

BLISS DENTAL was located in the old Cannes Small Animal Hospital building on Pear Lane just outside the historic district. Dr. Simon Dulur had bought
the building about twenty years before and transformed it into a cutting-edge dental practice.

I had a phobia of all things medical. I couldn’t even watch medical shows. So I never set foot in the Bliss Dental building. The idea of X-rays raised my blood pressure. The idea of a routine teeth cleaning made my gums bleed. No way was I getting near any possible root canals. But now I had no choice. Belinda Womble, the receptionist at Bliss Dental, was my new client. A job was a job, and Belinda had requested me as her matchmaker. It was my first request. Normally clients wanted my grandma, and why wouldn’t they?
She
knew what she was doing.

I had to overcome my fears, overcome my sympathy pains every time I was near suffering or disease. Successful matchmakers didn’t imagine they had tuberculosis every time someone near them coughed. Successful matchmakers didn’t imagine they had leprosy every time their foot fell asleep.

Sure enough, two blocks away from the Bliss Dental building, a searing pain shot from my upper right bicuspid through my nerve endings and into my brain. I grimaced in agony and gripped the wheel, swerving into traffic.

I narrowly missed a Toyota Camry and a Chevy Malibu, driving my ancient Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme up onto the sidewalk and coming to a screeching stop inches away from a fire hydrant and a group of backpackers, who were walking down the street wearing tin pyramid hats and T-shirts with
ALIENS, TAKE ME FIRST!
written in neon pink.

I stumbled out of my car and closed the rusty door with a creak. I gripped my face, willing the pain in my tooth to subside.

“You’re breaking the chakras of the path.”

The head backpacker tugged at my sleeve. He was tall
and good-looking, about fifty years old, and smelled of old money. His T-shirt was tucked into perfectly tailored slacks, cuffed over Prada loafers. He wagged his finger at me, his wrist wrapped in a gold Rolex watch.

“Excuse me?” I asked. The pain in my mouth cooled to a throb. The backpackers gathered in a group around us, the better to hear what their leader was saying.

“The chakras of the path. You’re in the way. You’re blocking the chakras and putting the arrival in jeopardy,” he said.

“The arrival,” echoed several of the backpackers.

“I’m sorry?” I said. “Did I hit you with my car?” I looked over at my Cutlass. The front bumper hung at a weird angle. That didn’t mean anything. My car was built during Clinton’s first term. It was a miracle it still had a bumper. I would have sworn I didn’t hit anything. Besides, nobody was bleeding, as far as I could tell.

“The energies of tomorrow,” shouted one of the backpackers.

“The arrival,” the others said.

“The arrival?” I asked.

The hair on the back of my neck tingled, and my palms got sweaty. I took stock of the situation. I was surrounded. Strangers speaking in unison had me cornered between the fire hydrant and Andy Gilmore’s closed hardware storefront. Cannes was a very small town. The only strangers were tourists who came up the mountain to hunt for antiques, sit in tea shops, and eat apple pie in the fall. We didn’t get a lot of strangers wearing pyramid hats, shouting about chakras of the path and the energies of tomorrow.

“Did you hear?” the leader demanded. “You’re blocking the chakras. Chakras. It’s simple.”

“The arrival!” the others announced a little more forcefully.

“Terribly sorry about your chakras,” I said, sweeping the ground with the bottom of my shoe to clear away any bad chakras. “I’ll just be on my way.”

I enunciated each word slowly. I took two steps backward and smiled.
No sudden movements
, I thought, easing into the car. I waved goodbye, bounced off the sidewalk, and made my way toward Bliss Dental. In the rearview mirror, the backpackers were studying the spot where the Cutlass had run off the road. From their expressions, I must have flattened the path’s chakras, and tomorrow’s energies would come at least a few hours late.

THE BLISS Dental waiting room smelled like Lysol, dental putty impressions, and fear. Two women sat on plaid upholstered chairs, busy texting with their phones. Belinda Womble, my new client, manned the front desk, separated from the waiting room by a sliding window.

Belinda was busy reading through patient files. I caught her eye and gave her a wave. She scowled and stuck her index finger up in the air, the international symbol to wait, and then pointed toward one of the plaid chairs.

I checked the time. Ten o’clock. Right on time. I had two hours before I was supposed to bring Grandma back a bucket from Chik’n Lik’n for lunch. Grandma usually wanted fried chicken after her Tuesday morning Second Chancers singles meeting, which I was missing to meet with Belinda.

I picked up an old copy of
People
magazine to catch up on reality show gossip. Matchmakers in training don’t have a lot of downtime, and my grandma didn’t have cable. I was reading about a real housewife’s new breasts when one of the women in the waiting room screeched.

“What a jerk. I mean, what a total jerk.”

She flashed her phone at the other woman, who grabbed it to study it. Whatever was on the screen made the woman’s eyes bug out.

“What a jerk,” echoed the second woman.

“I have never seen anything like it. Not even at the zoo.”

I craned my head, but I couldn’t get a good look at the phone.

“Turns out he was screwing most of the town,” the first woman said.

“And telling them all he was in love with them, no doubt.”

“Well, obviously. Otherwise they wouldn’t go around talking about him like marriage was on the horizon.”

“Men are dogs,” the second woman said. “He made eyes at me, too, you know.”

The first woman looked doubtful. “Me too,” she said after a moment. “But I saw through his charm and good looks right down to his little mercenary heart.”

I craned my head a little more, but I was still getting nothing. I was about to change seats, when Belinda opened the sliding window. “Do you have an appointment?” she asked in my direction.

“Yes, ten o’clock,” I said.

“With who? Dr. Dulur or Holly?”

I broke out in a sweat. I stumbled over to the sliding window. “No, Belinda. I don’t want to see the dentist. My teeth are fine. No dental work needed,” I said, flashing her my toothy smile.

“That’s what they all say. It’s called denial. I see it all the time. Whatever. It’s your mouth. But there’s a fifty-dollar fee for cancellations on such short notice.”

I didn’t have fifty dollars. All I had in my purse was three dollars, a maxed-out Visa card, a Hershey bar, two lipsticks, and a mascara wand. Besides, I didn’t
have a dentist appointment. What was Belinda talking about?

“Belinda, what are you talking about?” I asked. “I don’t have a dentist appointment. Don’t you remember?
We
have an appointment. You and me. You called me.”

Belinda squinted and leaned forward. “Gladie? Is that you?”

“Of course it’s me. Who did you think it was?”

“I didn’t recognize you. You don’t look like yourself.” She pointed at me. “Your head. It’s your head. Your head is different.”

“I had my hair straightened. Do I look that different?”

“You look like you got a new head. Not a Gladie head at all.”

I pictured someone taking my Gladie head off my shoulders and replacing it with a non-Gladie head. Maybe having a non-Gladie head would be an improvement. I flicked my soft hair back. It swished against my shoulder, falling in a cascade before returning elegantly to its original position. Oh, nice. It was like a commercial for bouncing and behaving hair. My Gladie head would never have done that. It would have poofed out at some weird angle with renewed frizz, making me look like the bride of Frankenstein.

“Come on back, Gladie. We’ll chat.” Belinda pushed a button, and the door to the back buzzed open. Belinda sat behind an L-shaped desk that stretched along one wall. The other wall was covered from floor to ceiling in patient files.