Scissors and Second Chances

The rain was coming down sideways when I pulled into the gravel lot at Tide, and I sat there in my Corolla for a good two minutes just staring at the Victorian house through the windshield. I'm fifty-four, the Corolla is going on twenty, and I was about to interview for a job I badly needed at a salon I couldn't afford to get a haircut in.

My ex-wife Diane would've said I was stalling. She said that a lot, and she was usually right, which is probably part of why she's my ex-wife. We finalized the divorce last spring, after twenty-one years, and the whole thing was so civilized it made me want to scream. No shouting, no lawyers throwing papers, just two adults in a kitchen in Newport dividing up a life like they were splitting a restaurant check. She got the house. I got the Corolla and my scissors.

So. New town, new start, Seaside Cove, population not very many, especially in late November when every taffy shop on the main street is boarded up for the season. The ad in the industry listing had said "Senior Stylist, established coastal salon, VIP clientele, salary plus commission." I'd been cutting hair in Newport for over twenty years and I was ready to be the big fish somewhere, even if the pond was mostly retirees and a handful of rich Portland people with beach houses.

I grabbed my portfolio and my kit bag and jogged through the rain to the front door.

The salon took up the whole first floor of the old house. Floor-to-ceiling windows, fogged up from the cold, rain streaking down the glass. It smelled like lavender and salt air, and the lights were low and warm, and I remember thinking, okay, this place is legit, this is a step up. Then the person behind the reception desk looked up from the schedule book and my stomach did something it hadn't done in twenty years.

"Mack," Joel said. "Wow. Okay. Hi."

Joel. Forty-six now, and the gray at his temples only made him look more like a man who owned a beautiful salon in a town where nothing bad ever happens. He'd been twenty-four when I'd been thirty-two, and we'd dated for two years, and then we'd ended it over coffee on his back deck, amicable as anything, because I'd been terrified of what my family would say and he'd been tired of watching me be terrified. A year later I met Diane. Twenty-two years ago this month, more or less.

"Joel," I said. "You own Tide."

"I own Tide." He set down his pen. "The listing didn't say."

"The listing said established coastal salon. I didn't put two and two together. Seaside Cove's got what, two salons?"

"Two. The other one's a clip joint by the pier." He came around the desk, and I will admit I checked whether he was going to hug me. He wasn't. He put out his hand, and we shook like businessmen, which somehow made it worse. "You look good."

"You look good too. Is this going to be weird?"

"Probably," he said, and grinned, and there it was, the same grin, and I hated that my stomach was still doing the thing. "Do you want to be weird, or do you want the job?"

"I want the job. Diane took the house, Joel. I need this one."

His face did a small thing at the mention of Diane, but he let it go. "Then sit down and let's do the interview."

* * *

Here's the funny part. The interview itself was completely normal. He asked about my book, my color work, my retail numbers. I showed him photos on my iPad, before-and-afters, a wedding party of nine I'd done in one morning back in Newport. He nodded along and made notes in that same schedule book, and for about forty minutes it was just two professionals doing professional things, and I let myself think, hey, maybe this works out fine, maybe the past stays in the past.

Then he closed the book and laced his fingers together on the desk and looked at me, and I knew the normal part was over.

"The job's not really about cutting hair," he said.

"It's a senior stylist position."

"It is. And the technical bar is high, and you're over it, we both know that. But what the job actually is, is lead stylist for our VIP list." He tapped the desk. "I've got eleven women and four men who come every six weeks, rain or shine, some of them flying in from Portland. They've been coming to me for years, and half of them are coming as much for the experience as the haircut. They trust this place. They trust me. Whoever I put in that chair is going to be alone with them for ninety minutes at a time, hearing things about their marriages and their money and their surgeries. I need someone I can trust absolutely. Not mostly. Absolutely."

"Okay," I said. "I've had a book like that. My regulars in Newport, half of them cried in my chair over the years. I know how to keep my mouth shut."

"I know you do. That's not the part I'm worried about."

"What's the part you're worried about?"

He looked out the fogged window for a second, at nothing, because there was nothing to look at, just rain and a dead street. "Honestly? Whether you still have the fire. You were the hungriest stylist I ever knew when we met. Somewhere in the last few years you got careful. Careful reads as flat, Mack, and my clients can smell flat from the parking lot."

I wanted to argue. I sat there and tried to think of an argument, and the truth was I didn't have one. Careful was a pretty accurate word for my last few years. Careful at work, careful at home, careful right up until Diane sat me down and said the word divorce in her calm voice and even then I'd been careful about it.

"So here's what I'm proposing," Joel said. "We close at six. Stay after. I'll give you a second round."

"A second round of what?"

"The interview." He stood up and straightened his shirt, like the matter was settled. "Tonight, after close. Nobody else here, just us. Wear something you can work in."

"Work on who?"

"You'll see." And he picked up the schedule book and went back to it, and that was my cue to leave.

* * *

I drove to the one motel in town that stays open all year, checked in, and sat on the bed with my kit bag open, staring at my shears. I called my buddy Ray, who cuts hair back in Newport, and told him the whole thing, the job, Joel, all of it.

"Your Joel?" Ray said. "Salon Joel? The one from before Diane?"

"He was never 'my' Joel exactly, but yes, that one."

"Dude. That's either the best thing that's ever happened to you or a car crash in slow motion."

"Thanks, Ray. Very helpful."

"Which one do you think it is?"

I thought about it. "I genuinely don't know," I said, and that was the truest thing I'd said all day.

At ten to six I walked back through the rain. The OPEN sign was already off and the door was unlocked, which felt like a statement of some kind. Inside, the salon had changed. Joel had