Sugar Daddy (Travis Family #1)(17)

Bowie's was filled with mirrors and chrome and exotic styling equipment, the biting scent of perm activator hanging thick in the air. The owner of the shop was a man in his mid-thirties, with long wavy blond hair that hung down his back. It was a rare sight in South Texas, and it led me to assume Bowie must have been tough as hell. He was certainly in great shape, lean and muscular as he prowled through the shop dressed in black jeans, black boots, a white Western shirt and a bolo tie made of suede cord and a chunk of unpolished turquoise.

"Come on." Lucy urged, "let's go look at the new nail polish."

I shook my head, remaining seated in one of the deep black leather chairs in the waiting area. I was too dumbstruck to say a word. I knew Bowie's was the most wonderful place I had ever been to. Later I would explore, but for the time being I wanted to sit still and take it all in. I watched the stylists at work, razor-cutting, blow-drying, deftly wrapping tiny portions of hair around pastel-colored perm rods. Tall wood-and-chrome display racks contained intriguing pots and tubes of cosmetics, and medicinal-looking bottles of soap, lotion, balms, and perfumes.

It seemed every woman in the place was being transformed right before my eyes, submitting to the combing, painting, filing, processing, until they had achieved a well-tended glossiness I had never seen except in magazines. While Lucy's mom sat at a manicure table and had her acrylic nails filled, and Lucy dabbled in the cosmetics area, a woman dressed in black and white came to show me to Bowie's station. "First you'll have a consultation," she told me. "My advice is to let Bowie do whatever he wants. He's a genius."

"My mother said not to let anyone cut it all off..." I began, but she had already walked away.

Then Bowie appeared before me, charismatic and handsome and a little artificial-looking. As we shook hands, I felt the clatter of multiple rings, his fingers loaded with stacks of silver and gold bands adorned with turquoise and diamonds.

An assistant draped me in a shiny black robe and washed my hair with expensive-smelling potions. I was rinsed, combed out, and led back to the cutting station, where I was greeted with the vaguely unnerving sight of Bowie standing there with a straight razor. For the next half hour I let him position my head at every imaginable angle, while he exerted tension on strategic locks and sheared off inches at a time with the razor. He was quiet as he worked, frowning in concentration. By the time he finished, my head had been pushed back and forth so many times, I felt like a Pez dispenser. And long swirls of hair were heaped on the floor.

The hair was quickly swept away, and then Bowie did the blow-dry in an exercise of dazzling showmanship. He lifted pieces of hair over the long tip of the blow-dryer and twirled them around a round brush as if he were collectine strands of cotton candy. He

showed me how to apply a few spritzes of hair spray at the roots, and then he pushed my chair around to face the mirror.

I couldn't believe it. Instead of a frizzy skein of black hair. I had long bangs and shoulder-length layers, shining and bouncing with every movement of my head. "Oh," was all I could say.

Bowie wore the smile of a Cheshire cat. "Beautiful." he said, scrubbing his fingers over the back of my head, flicking the layers upward. "It's a transformation, isn't it? I'll have Shirlene show you how to do your makeup. I usually charge for that, but it's my present to you."

Before I could find the words to thank him, Shirlene appeared and guided me to a tall chrome stool beside the glass-fronted makeup counter. "You've got good skin, lucky girl," she pronounced after taking one look at my face. "I'll teach you the five-minute face."

When I asked her how to make my lips look smaller, she reacted with shocked concern. "Oh, honey, you don't want your lips to look smaller. Ethnic is in now. Like Kimora."

"Who's Kimora?"

A dog-eared fashion magazine was tossed into my lap. The cover featured a gorgeous honey-skinned young woman, long limbs arranged in an artless jumble. Her eyes were dark and tip-tilted, and her lips were even fuller than mine. "The new Chanel model," Shirlene said. "Fourteen years old—can you believe that? They say she's going to be the face of the nineties."

This was a new concept, that an ethnic-looking girl with jet-black hair and a real nose and big lips could be chosen as a model for a design house I had always associated with skinny white women. I studied the photo while Shirlene lined my lips with a rosy-brown pencil. She applied a matte pink lipstick, dusted my cheeks with powdered blush, and applied two coats of mascara to my lashes.

A hand mirror was pressed into my palm, and I inspected the final results. I had to admit, I was startled by the difference the new hair and makeup had made. It wasn't the kind of beauty I had wished for—I would never be the classic American blue-eyed blonde. But this was my own look, a glimpse of what I might someday become, and for the first time in my life I felt a stirring of pride in my own appearance.

Lucy and her mother appeared beside me. They studied me with an intensity that made me duck my head in embarrassment.

"Oh...my...God," Lucy exclaimed. "No. don't hide your face, let me see. You're so..." She shook her head as if the right word eluded her. "You're going to be the most beautiful girl in school."

"Don't go overboard." I said mildly, but I could feel a flush rising to my hairline. This was a vision of myself I had never dared to imagine, but I felt awkward rather than excited. I touched Lucy's wrist, and looked into her glowing eyes. "Thank you," I whispered.