And so here Lily sat, swilling beer in the morning, waiting for Sheila and Tracee to come get her.
If Ben hadn’t already taken Mimi to Jeanie’s, she’d be tempted to grab her daughter and flee, before theperoxided pod people could turn her into one of them. She disposed of the empty beer bottle and went tothe bathroom to brush her teeth. Just as she was spitting, she heard the horn of Sheila’s Lexus.
Lily had hoped that the stylist at the Chatterbox would be a gay man—a Faulkner County queenwho, out of allegiance to his family, had chosen to live and work in Versailles. Lily had no such luck.
Instead, the Chatterbox was run by a creature who called itself Doreen and who worked with the theorythat one could make more money in the beauty industry by undermining the self-esteem of one’scustomers.
When Sheila and Tracee presented Lily to Doreen, she shook her head and mumbled, “My, my,my. Look what the cat drug in.”
Not that Doreen looked that hot herself. Her straw-textured hair was dyed neon orange, and hereyelids were shadowed with bright turquoise. But the most fascinating thing about Doreen was hereyebrows— or her simulated eyebrows.
The old lady (how old was impossible to tell beneath the layers of pancake makeup) had pluckedor shaved her naturally occurring brows and painted on violent black slashes that began at the bridge ofher nose and ended up at her hairline above her temples. If this was the woman who was in charge of hermakeover, Lily thought she was more likely to end up looking like an extra from Star Trek than anordinary wife and mother.
Doreen turned Sheila and Tracee over to her assistant for their trims and root touch-ups. Shelooked at Lily, stubbed out her cigarette, and said to no one in particular, “Well, I reckon I’ll have to rollup my sleeves to deal with this one.” When she finally addressed Lily directly, she ordered, “Sit down,honey. And get comfortable. This is gonna take a while.”
Lily tried to sit still while Doreen yanked on her hair. “Never seen so many rat nests in my life,”Doreen muttered, her cigarette clenched between her teeth. Lily was fairly sure she felt a few ashes dropon her head.
She knew her hair was a mess. She hadn’t done anything to it except wash it since Charlotte died,and her once-funky white-girl braids had turned into mats and tangles. Doreen pulled and combed so hardthat Lily was sure her hair was being torn out by its roots. Tattoos and body piercings were painlesscompared to this torture.
“Well, I reckon I got it combed out enough to wash it anyway,” Doreen said finally. When Lily