Chapter 2: Shaving it all off

She heard the sound of rifling papers. She half expected that he was just moving things around on his desk to give the impression of trying. Maybe she should fire him. No, then she’d just be back at square one. At least now, she had an agent. Even if she wasn’t writing anything worthwhile.

It took him a few minutes, but Charlie came back on and let out a small sigh. “You say you’re desperate?” He asked.

She nodded, knowing that he couldn’t see her. “Yeah. Desperate.”

Ian poked his head out of her clothes to give her a little bit of a look. Like he didn’t approve or something.

“I have something you could take a chance on.” Charlie cleared his throat. “It could be a quack. But there’s this guy looking for someone to help him write a novel.”

“What, like a ghost writer?”

“I don’t know. But he’s advertising in all the right publications.”

Ghost writing. It was like regular writing, only without any of the credit, fun, or originality. She almost said no on the spot. But, it was writing. And it was usually good money. Good money to write. Money she could live on. And she could put ghost writing on a resume. She could go places with a step like that. It might help.

She put her hand to her forehead and closed her eyes. “I’ll take it.” It felt like she was losing something, compromising her integrity or something like that.

Still, it was better to have a job writing than go back to staring at herself in the mirror.

“Okay,” Charlie said. “I’ll e-mail you the ad. I think you have to make an appointment to meet the guy. Can you look good and respectable for a meeting?”

Autumn turned and looked at herself in the mirror again. If she put on a shirt that covered the tattoos, then maybe she would. She probably had a shirt that wouldn’t show off her tattoos. Or her breasts. Well, maybe one that would show off her breasts. But what about the hair? How was she supposed to make that look respectable? She’d have to wash and brush the dreads out. That would take forever. And then, when that was done, she’d have to dye it again, to some sort of natural color. And only one.

“Yeah,” she said. “I can do that. No problem.”

She hung up the phone and started to pull her hair back. “Hey, Ian?” She said. “Maybe I should just cut my hair off. What do you think?”

He walked over and put one hand on his chin, looking at her like he was some kind of stylist. “That would solve the color problem,” he said.

“But would it look okay?”

“It would be very chic. You could be the artsy bald writer chick.”

She smiled. “I like the sound of that.”

Ian shrugged. “And worst case scenario, you could always just buy a wig.”

She almost agreed right then. But it had taken her eleven months to get her hair the way it was. Did she want to just get rid of it all, just like that? Gone, in the space of a few minutes? Or, realistically, a few hours?

“No one’ll recognize me.” She said.

“So?”

None of her friends. None of the people in the coffee houses, where she so often wasted her life trying to get inspired, would recognize her. Then again, “Good point.”

Ian smiled. He pulled the one chair in her apartment away from her desk and set it in the middle of the room. “Sit down,” he said. “I’ll start cutting.”

Autumn sat down and gripped the chair with all her might. She had to close her eyes when Ian started, so she didn’t see the locks fall to the floor all around her. Ian snipped away like he did this for a living.

“This is going to look so good,” he said.

“What? Don’t you like my hair?”

Ian stopped. “Well, not right now, girl. I’ve cut half of it off.”

She slapped his leg. “Seriously. Didn’t you like my hair?”

He shrugged. “It was okay. But it covered up your neck, and you have such a beautiful neck.”

“Only a gay man would care about a girl’s neck.”

“What’s your point?”

He went back to snipping for a few seconds. “Doesn’t that feel lighter?”

She shook her head back and forth. The hair was maybe three or four inches long. “I dunno,” she said. “I guess.”

“You guess,” he muttered. “You guess. Whatever. Look, you guess all you want. I’m gonna shave you bald, girl.”

She heard the clippers turn on then. Ian didn’t mess around. He started right in the dead center of her head, moving from front to back. No turning back at that point.

It didn’t take him long to finish after that point. He just kept going line by line, covering any patches he missed on the first run, humming to himself the whole time.

“There you go,” he said after turning the clippers off. “Go get in the shower.”

***

Autumn stepped out of the shower and wrapped the towel around her chest. She looked in the mirror, trying to pay attention only to the little dress like shape the towel made her. She tried to think about how that was what was making her feel vulnerable. The knowledge that only a layer of terrycloth separated her skin from the outside world. She tried to convince herself that she still felt naked, and that nudity was uncomfortable.

But her eyes traveled up.

And she didn’t feel the hair lying on her shoulders. She didn’t have to wipe it out of her eyes. She didn’t have to pull it back, or wrap another towel up around it. Just like she hadn’t needed to spend as much time in the shower. Just like her head was lighter, and she could feel the air flow over it. She didn’t need to even wipe it with a towel and nothing was dripping down her back.

It was already dry.

Ian was clapping. “It looks great,” he said.

Her hair was in clumps on the floor. The beautiful hair that no one could ever quite figure out the color of; it was gone. She’d cut it off. And why? For an interview. For a chance to get a job. And a writing job at that. A job that wouldn’t require her to go outside, ever, or to have a professional appearance. It was for a job writing. One she might not even get.

And she’d shaved herself almost bald for it.

“What’s the matter?” Ian asked. “Don’t you like it?”