Three Fates

“And from the looks of this . . .” He fingered a lock of hair that had come loose from its knot. “It’s not a moment too soon.”
    “I really don’t think I need—”
    “Let me be the judge of what you need.” He took one of the wineglasses Louise brought in, handed it to her. “When you go to the doctor, do you tell him what you need?”
    “Actually, ha, yeah, I do. But—”
    “You have lovely eyes.”
    She blinked them. “I do?”
    “Excellent brow line. Very nice bones,” he added and began to touch her face with smooth, very cool fingertips. “Sexy mouth. The lipstick’s wrong, but we’ll fix that. Yes, it’s a fine face we’ve got here. Dull, outdated hair.” With a couple of tugs, he had the pins out and the heavy weight of it tumbling free.
    “It doesn’t suit you at all. You’re hiding behind your hair, my Tia.” He swiveled the chair around so she was facing the mirror, and his head was close to hers. All but cheek to cheek. “And I’m going to expose you.”
    “You are? But don’t you think . . . What if there’s nothing particularly interesting to expose?”
    “I think you underestimate yourself,” he chided. “And expect everyone else to do the same.”
    While she was blinking over that she found herself being shampooed by one of the slender shop girls in one of the glossy black sinks. By the time she thought to ask if they used hypo-allergenic products, it was too late.
    Then she was back in the chair, facing away from the mirror with a glass of very nice white wine in her hand. He talked to her. Asked her what she did, who she dated, what she liked. Every time she gave a noncommittal answer or asked what he was doing with her hair, he asked another question.
    When at one point she made the mistake of looking down and seeing the piles of shorn hair littering the floor, her breath began to hitch. Little white dots danced in front of her eyes, and from a distance she heard Carrie’s alarmed voice.
    The next thing she knew Julian pushed her head between her knees, holding it there until the roar of her heartbeat slowed. “Steady, honey. Louise! I need a cold cloth here.”
    “Tia, Tia, snap out of it.”
    She opened her eyes to find Carrie crouched on the floor in front of her. “What? What?”
    “It’s a haircut, okay? Not brain surgery.”
    “A traumatic event’s a traumatic event.” Julian laid a cool, damp cloth on the back of Tia’s neck. “Now, I want you to sit up slowly. Deep breath now. That’s the way. Now another. There now, tell me about this Irish guy Carrie mentioned.”
    “He’s a bastard,” Tia said weakly.
    “We all are.” The scissors began to snip again, frighteningly close to her face. “Tell me all about it.”
    So she did, and when his reaction was shock, fascination, delight—so very different from Lowenstein’s—she forgot about her hair.
    “Incredible. You know what you have to do, don’t you?”
    She stared up at him as he clicked her chair back. “What?”
    “You have to go to Ireland, find this Malachi and seduce him.”
    “I do?”
    “It’s perfect. You track him down, seduce all pertinent information on the statues out of him, then you add that to what you’ve dug up, and you’re ahead of everyone. We’re going to put in a few highlights, jazz it up a bit, especially around her face.”
    “But I can’t just . . . go. Besides, he isn’t really interested in me that way. And more to the point, it’s not right to use sex as a weapon.”
    “Sweetie, when a woman uses it on me, I’m usually grateful. You have wonderful skin. What are you using on it?”
    “Oh, well, right now I’m using this new line I read about. All natural ingredients. But you have to keep the products refrigerated, which is a little inconvenient.”
    “I have something better. Louise! BioDerm, full skin care treatment. Normal.”
    “Oh well, I always do a patch test before I use another new—”
    “Not to worry.” He dipped a flat brush in a small bowl and came up with a dab of pale purple goo. “You just lie back and relax.”
    It wasn’t easy to relax when a strange woman was rubbing creams on your face, and your hair—what was left of it—was full of goop and aluminum foil. And no one would let you look in the mirror.
    But he gave her another glass of wine, and Carrie stayed loyally within arm’s reach.
    Somehow she was talked into having her eyebrows waxed and dyed to give them more definition, then after her hair was