Let Down Your Hair (11 page)

The exhaust fumes from the taxi took a long time to fade. The rain had stopped, but an icy wind fluttered the sleeves of my thin linen shirt. I shivered and folded my arms across my chest, wondering what to do next. Go home and get some rest, the policeman had said, but the place I’d known as home belonged to Andrea, and I’d just handed back my key. My stomach grumbled loudly, reminding me I hadn’t eaten since midday. Down the road was a lighted retail strip, so I headed there in search of somewhere to eat.

The cafes and shops were starting to close, and people dressed for dinner were spilling out and heading for their cars. I saw a small cafe still half-full of people, and ducked inside, relishing the sudden sense of warmth.

A ponytailed girl of about sixteen leaped up, pen poised. “Table for one?”

“Yes, thanks.”

I followed her swishing ponytail among tables of emptying plates to a glass case full of cakes.

“Our kitchen’s just closed,” she said, “but you’re welcome to
anything
in our dessert cabinet. Pay at the counter, and I’ll bring it straight over.”

I thanked her again and selected a random dessert.

“The apple cake? Ooh, good
choice
,” she said, with perky conviction. “That’ll be eight dollars, please.”

I reached into my bag for my wallet and my fingers hit bottom. Pulse rising, I peered inside, wormed my hand through the maze of books and papers, and then upended my bag onto a table, producing two journal articles, my mother’s letter, a textbook on feminist art and a battered copy of my optical prescription.

With sudden, sickening clarity I remembered the last time I’d seen my wallet. I’d opened it to get out my student ID a second or two before the paramedics disinfected Ryan’s face. When I ran to him, I must have left my wallet on the desk, or dropped it on the floor.

My pulse pounded until I felt it in my eardrums. “I’m really sorry,” I said, “but I think I’ve left my wallet in the office.”

The girl’s dimples faded. “Oh.” She glanced nervously at the man behind the till, but he was serving a customer. “How close is your office? Could you go back and get it?”

It wasn’t far, maybe fifteen minutes’ walk. But to enter the Humanities building at this hour I’d need the swipe card in my wallet. And the key I’d given back to Andrea.

My mouth went dry. “Um, not really,” I said, cramming my things back into my bag. “Thanks anyway.” I hoisted my bag on my shoulder and fled, crashing into two tables on my way out.

I sank onto the doorstep of the shop next door and rested my forehead on the window. A patch of fog grew and shrank on the glass, growing larger as my problem unfolded. Semester break had started, which meant swipe card-only access to the building for the next two weeks. With ID, university security might let me in, but all my ID was in my wallet, as was the card I needed to access my bank account.

A bubble of panic formed under my ribs. Trying to swallow it, I closed my eyes. Andrea’s tearstained cheeks filled my head like a terrible ghost. By now she’d be home, organizing another flight. With her own swipe card safe in her wallet, and the key to her office on her big jingly keyring.
When you’re weeping on my doorstep in a month’s time, don’t say I didn’t warn you
. If I went to her now, my bid for independence would have lasted barely an hour.

I pushed the image of her face away, but her voice wouldn’t stop.
So where are you going, Sage? To Ryan?
Ryan was in hospital. Shell might take me in, but I didn’t have the train fare and I didn’t know how to get to his place on foot. And at night, the university and surrounds had the highest rates of assault and rape in the city. Andrea always quoted the statistics in her classes in Women’s Self-Defence.

The bubble in my chest began to expand, crushing the air from my lungs. A passing man glanced at me, and I shrank further into the doorway, dislodging a stand of business cards. I picked one up.
Roy
’
s Wigs
it read, in a flourishing typeface.
Quality wigs, extensions and hairpieces in every style and color. We use only real human hair
.

Still holding the card, I rose and peeped through the window of Roy’s Wigs, tapping my bun of waist-length real human hair.
Inside, a man in velvet trousers lounged on a stool beside the open cash register, chewing something as he counted the day’s takings. The wall behind him had two rows of shelves, on which sat blank wooden heads wearing wigs. The sign on the door read
Open
.

How are you going to support yourself?
Andrea had sneered.
Sell your body?
I pushed the door, and antique bells jangled over my head.

The man looked up, and I caught a whiff of fennel. “Sorry, darl,” he said in a drawling voice, “I’m closed.” He took a pinch of colorful seeds from a bowl on the counter and popped it in his mouth.

My stomach somersaulted, but my body didn’t move. “Your sign says you’re still open.”

With a world-weary sigh, he plonked the sheaf of bills on the counter, swept past me and turned the sign over. “Ten o’clock tomorrow,” he said, pointing out at the street.

He tried to close the door but I caught it. “I want to sell my hair.” I yanked the hairnet off my bun and shook my head to uncoil it. Thick, silky hair fanned over my back.

He stalled, and my heart gave a hiccup of hope. He scanned my hair from root to tip, his pupils dilating. Long seconds passed. Then, with a single, lofty gesture, he swiveled the sign back to
Open
and beckoned me inside.

“Roy of Roy’s Wigs,” said the man. He issued a limp handshake, returned to his stool and crossed one languid leg over the other. “You sure you want to do this, darl?”

Was I?
Images battered the inside of my skull. Ryan twitching on the carpet, Andrea’s face streaked with tears. The dark streets outside, filled with rapists and muggers.

I squared my shoulders. “Yes.”

“Then I’ll ask you some direct questions, if you don’t mind.”

His fingers delved again into the tiny bowl of seeds. An Indian restaurant I visited with Ryan had a bowl like that on the counter, for cleansing the palate after meals. I turned my attention back to Roy and realized he was waiting, none too patiently, for my response.

“OK. That’s fine.” I flattened out the creased Roy’s Wigs card in my hand to dodge his eye.

“Do you take drugs?”

The card clattered to the floor. “Pardon?”

“Drugs.” His fingers ran through a series of gestures, indicating smoking, snorting, shooting up and dabbing a tab on his tongue. “Marijuana, ecstasy, cocaine. They leave traces in the hair.”

“Oh.” Jess had taken ecstasy, and some of Andrea’s friends smoked dope, but I’d never tried anything myself. “Uh, no.”

Roy looked as though he doubted this, but he let it pass. “How often has it been washed?”

My scalp tingled. He was speaking about my hair in the past tense, as if it no longer belonged to me. “A couple of times a week.”

“What products have you used?”

Andrea bought organic shampoo from the local co-operative, where she decanted it from a vat into recycled bottles. When I explained this to Roy, he stared as if unicorns were sprouting from my head.

“No other products? Wax, spray, coloring?”

“No.”

“How often have you heat-styled it?”

“Heat styled?”

“Blow-drying, straightening, hot rollers.”

“Oh.” I flushed at my ignorance. “I … I’ve never heat-styled it.”

Roy lifted a long, pale hand. “May I?” Without waiting for an answer, he took a lock and rubbed it between his fingertips as if it were a sample of fine fabric.

“Looked after it, haven’t you?” His drawling tones were tempered with a faint hint of awe. “Most girls come in split to the ears from straighteners and spray.’ He looked up at me. ‘So what’s the rush?”

“The rush?”

“You’re pushing in at two minutes to nine. You want a quote tonight, don’t you?”

A
quote?
The streets loomed up again, waiting to devour me. I looked back at Roy. He was ogling my hair again, and the gleam in his eyes woke a calculating hip pocket nerve. Roy
wanted
to buy my hair. All I had to do was state my terms. I set my jaw. “No. I don’t want a quote. I want to sell it now. For cash.”

For the first time since I’d entered his shop, Roy’s poise faltered. “
Tonight?
”

I fixed him with an unwavering eye. “How much can you give me for it?”

He ran a clawed hand through his own wavy hair. “Look, darl,” he said at last, “I’m happy to buy your hair, but I don’t do cuts here. If you want me to recommend a stylist, I—”

“
How much?
”

He hesitated, fingers still hooked through his hair. “Six hundred dollars. Without seeing it in daylight.”

“Fine.” I didn’t know whether this was fine or not, but it was enough. “Do you have a pair of sharp scissors?”

Roy gaped. “You mean—”

I held out my hand. Taut with horror, Roy opened a drawer and took out scissors and a sheet of paper headed ‘Disclaimer’. I reached for the scissors, and he whipped them away. “If you’re going to do this to yourself, darl, you sign first, OK?”

I skimmed the disclaimer, signed, and held out my hand again. With an expression like a first-time executioner, Roy handed me the scissors and produced a hairband and ziplock bag. “Tie it back and cut it just below the band.” He averted his eyes.

I scraped my hair into a ponytail, remembering with a pang how Ryan had stroked it in the park, and made a sunburst on the futon round my head. Growing my hair had been the first thing I’d done in defiance of Andrea’s wishes. It seemed ironic to sever it on the day I severed my ties with her. Gathering my hair and my courage, I twisted it into a rope, placed it in the jaws of the scissors, and cut.

Roy took the zip-locked bag of hair, counted six hundred dollars into my palm and showed me out. Jagged ends tickled my neck and chin. I felt light, as though a weight of more than hair had come off, leaving me unburdened and clear on what to do. I pocketed the money, dug out my mother’s letter and raised my hand to flag a taxi.

In the glow of the street lamps, the hotel had a luster, as if built from blocks of gold. The driver pulled into the curved driveway, joining the line of taxis and limousines approaching the entrance. I sat and stared as uniformed staff ushered guests in lush coats through shimmering glass doors into a lobby the size of a ballroom. The ceilings inside were hung with giant chandeliers, that glittered like galaxies through windows ten feet high.

Unease shrank my stomach to the size of a fist. Had my mother really stayed
here?
Or had she put down this address to pretend—to me, to Andrea—that she had the life of those opulent women in the foyer?

I tilted the envelope into the light and checked the address one more time. Weeks of being carried in my bag and re-read had creased and softened the paper. This was definitely the place.

The driver looked over his shoulder. “Cash or card, Miss?”

I peeled a note from my fennel-scented wad. Hotels always asked guests for their contact details at check-in. Maybe, just maybe, if I showed them this letter, they might give me a forwarding address.

As I stepped out of the taxi, I noticed a large muddy splash on my pants. I gazed down at my wrinkled, rain-spattered shirt and then back at the glamorous guests. No staff at this hotel would give me anything looking like this. I turned to call the taxi back, but it was already driving away.

The clarity that had struck as I left Roy’s Wigs crumbled into exhaustion. I limped up the street, away from the entrance, and sank onto a nearby bench. Hugging my shivering body, I bullied my half-starved brain into weighing up options. Hail another cab. Find somewhere to eat. Look for somewhere cheap to stay the night.

A woman clacked past, swipe card in hand. She carried a briefcase, and her face looked tired and harassed. She opened a glass door at the side of the hotel, so close that a puff of warmth stroked my knees. Behind the door was a small lobby, with palm trees in pots either side of a lift.

The woman turned left and took out a key. Only when she re-emerged with a sheaf of envelopes did I register the grid of locked private mailboxes covering both sides of the foyer.

Adrenalin spiked in my blood. I jumped up and scanned the numbers on the boxes, my breath fogging the thick glass wall. Then, with a twinge like a key turning inside me, my gaze fell on the number on the back of the envelope. It wasn’t the number of my mother’s hotel room, as I’d thought. There were permanent apartments in the building, and this number was the one where she lived.

I thumped on the glass, hoping the woman would let me in, but she ignored me and swept into the elevator. As the doors closed, I saw the sign in the middle of the foyer:
Guests of residents please enter through main foyer. Note that appropriate dress standards are expected in the hotel at all times
.

Appropriate? My stomach buckled with dismay, but my feet headed straight for the entrance. While my letter wasn’t enough to get details out of staff, it might well get me through to that elevator.

Holding the letter like a security pass, I strode through the shimmering doors. Two steps into the foyer, a man in red and gold uniform appeared in front of me, appraising my attire with a smile that managed to be both apologetic and condescending. He opened his mouth to speak and I thrust the letter under his nose.

“Excuse me,” I said, in my best academic lecturer voice, “could you tell me how to get to this apartment?”

Caught off-guard, the man took the letter, and the condescension faded from his smile. “That’s a suite in our residential wing, ma’am. Are you visiting one of our residents?”

“My mother.” The word ‘mother’ sent a shockwave through my veins.

“Right this way, ma’am.” He gestured me through a door with an unfurled hand. On this side of the glass, the world outside was hidden by the dazzle of the lighting. The palm trees and central heating made the room feel artificial, as though the designer had tried to recreate the tropics in plastic.

Wobbly with fear and hope, I crept to the keypad on the wall beside the elevator. It was silver, with a tiny camera peeping from the top and a button embossed with a bell in one corner. As I read the instructions on how to call a guest, the elevator opened and an expensively dressed elderly couple stepped out. Their conversation stopped mid-sentence.
Who let in this scruffy pauper?
said their faces.
Should we call Security? What’s the point of dress standards if they don’t enforce them?

As they hurried out, I saw my reflection in the window and almost turned myself in to Security. There was a spider web of creases and wet patches on my linen shirt and pants, patches which grew progressively muddier from collar to hem. My hair was an inch longer on the right side of my head, but there were two stray strands that straggled almost to my shoulders on the left, and a strange dip behind my right ear where the hair was much shorter. Andrea’s 1980s spectacle frames hid most of my face. I looked homeless and half-crazed. And my mother was a
fashion model
.

Clammy with fear, I scuttled to the other side of the palm tree to hide from the camera’s pitiless eye. My mother was chic and sophisticated, even at seventeen. What was she like now? How could she afford to live
here?
Maybe her modeling career had been massively successful. Maybe she’d become a famous actress. Maybe she’d gone into business and made a fortune. She was a multi-millionaire high flyer, and what was I? A half-hearted PhD student, on a grant that paid less than the minimum wage. A nobody.

On the verge of walking out, I looked back at the envelope and remembered the last time I’d despaired at my reflection. The day Ryan had asked me out, and I’d stood in front of the mirror in the toilets, looking at the loser Caitlin had mocked in the karaoke bar. But I’d gone anyway, dressed much as I was now, and he’d bought me lunch, listened the way no one had listened to me before, and stroked my hair when I cried. And, just this afternoon, he told me I was beautiful.

The memory infused me with warmth. Then an image of him clutching his face filled my mind. Was he OK? By now he’d be in hospital, having the Mace flushed from his eyes. I pushed the image away, telling myself he’d be fine, and that I’d talk to him in the morning.

I returned to the keypad and punched in the number of my mother’s suite. Then, with a shaky but decisive finger, I pressed the button embossed with a tiny black bell. The keypad made a gentle
brr-brr
and I waited, heart pounding.

“Hi-iii!” said the speaker in the keypad.

A woman’s voice, with a chirpy quality that turned the word into a two-note song. The sort of voice used to advertise pantyhose and small pink cars. I gaped at the keypad, my mind a total blank.

“This is Suite 451, babe. Were you after someone else?”

There’s a camera above you, Sage. You’re gaping on her screen. Say something. Say something!

“I … I … yes. No. I was … I’m looking for Emmeline. Emmeline Rampion.”

The speaker fell silent for so long I wondered if she’d gone. I was double-checking the suite number when the voice returned, the chirpiness replaced with a wary cool.

“No one calls me that any more.”

My stomach lurched. It
was
my mother. I was listening to
my mother’s voice
. And if I didn’t convince her of who I was soon, I might never hear it again. I perched onto my toes, peering at the lens as if I could climb through it into her suite.

“I’m sorry I called you that, I just … I wasn’t sure what—”

“Did my
mother
send you here?” The chirp was gone now, replaced by a tight, icy tone that filled me with panic.

What could I tell her? What?
“Andrea didn’t send me; I came myself.” As soon as Andrea’s name left my mouth I realized I’d made a terrible mistake. “I mean, it’s got nothing to do with her, I—”

“Oh, it
hasn’t
, has it?” The voice was blistering now. In a few seconds she was going to slam down her intercom phone. I suddenly knew what I had to say.

“Well,” she snapped, “seeing you seem to be on
first-name terms
, you can—”

“I’m
Sadie
.”

Her speech stopped as if cut off by a guillotine. The tiny metallic hum of the intercom filled my ears. “Sadie?” she said at last, in a hushed, shaken voice.

“Your daughter.” Somewhere in our conversation, my hand had crushed her letter. I smoothed out the creases as best I could and held it up to the camera.

“Oh my God.”

Behind the hum of the intercom I heard shallow, shivery breathing, somewhere between the breathlessness of shock and the shuddering that comes after grief. I stared intently at the camera as if she might leave if I blinked.

“Oh my God,” she said again, her voice cracking. “Oh my God. I’m just … I don’t know what to say.”

Did she not want to see me? “I’m sorry,” I said, fresh tears erupting down my cheeks. “I should’ve warned you. Should I … do you want me to leave?”

The words hung in the air. Then, striving to restore her earlier chirpiness, she said, “Oh
babe
, I wouldn’t do that to you! Come on up. Suite one, forty-fifth floor.”

The elevator doors glided open. Inside, the walls were mirrored, with soft golden lighting that reminded me of candlelight. Beside each button was a description of what was on that floor. I skimmed past the restaurant and retail levels, bypassed the gym and swimming pool and followed the unmarked numbers to number 45. Beside it were the words
Penthouse Level
.

Heart-shaped hot tubs and weird erotic sculptures pinwheeled through my mind. I pressed the button and tried to think sensibly as the round lights by the floor numbers lit up one by one, as if a golden coin of light was climbing the mirrored wall. Penthouse wasn’t just a magazine. It meant top floor luxury apartment. In a hotel like this, one of those would cost seven figures. Maybe even eight.

The golden coin rose higher and higher, and my spirits sank lower and lower. The doorman and residents didn’t think I was good enough for the lobby, let alone the penthouse. The thought of my mother looking at me with that same condescension and distrust made me sick. The elevator reached the top with a gentle
toong
, and I held down the
Close Door
button. When I’d pushed the sick feeling a little further away, I released the button, and the doors glided open again, filling the lift with the smell of exotic flowers.

I stepped out onto dense cream carpet, and the elevator closed behind me. On ornate tables either side of the elevator sat porcelain vases filled with orchids and lilies and fronds of fern. The ceiling was high and domed, like the ceiling of a cathedral, and the arched windows opposite were taller than me. From here, the city was a console of tiny, winking lights that seemed far more remote than their backdrop of star-peppered sky.

The doors to the penthouse were opposite. The one on the right was closed and bore a gold number “2”. The one on the left was ajar.

Heart pounding so hard I could feel it behind my eyes, I approached the left door, the carpet swallowing my footfalls. As I raised a hand to knock, it swung slowly inward. And there in the entry hall, with her hand on the doorknob, stood my mother.