May 11, 2005
Dellaspun the chair around with a whoosh, and Mattie found herself facing a familiar image in the salon mirror.
"Now then," Della announced. "You're presentable." Presentable. Why did that word grate on her nerves? It was true, that was why. Presentable and totally boring, though she'd broken out the most alluring thing in her closet today. But from her mouse-brown hair to her white slacks and aqua twin-set, she was merely…presentable.
Mattie touched the freshly cropped ends of her hair, causing the bob to swing at chin level. "Do you think I should let it grow out a little?"
"Why would you?" Della asked, obviously confused. "It would just make it harder to care for. As it is, you can wash it and be presentable in ten minutes."
There was that word again. Normally Mattie didn't spend much time fretting over her appearance, but today was different. Or was it? She wondered if anyone else would remember the reunion date. She met Della's eyes in the mirror but couldn't detect anything out of the ordinary. Disappointment settled in her chest. Della had forgotten. It was foolish, but she'd carried the scrap of bar napkin in her billfold for twenty years. Lately, though, it seemed to serve more as a reminder of her failures than her fantasies.
"I guess you're right." Mattie responded to Della's comment and was rewarded with a satisfied smile. Della liked to be right.
The world could begin spinning again. Mattie Harold, spinster bookstore owner, wasn't going to let her hair grow out. Much less let it down. God forbid.
Mattie wrote out a check to Della and resisted the urge to dot her name with a smiley face as she'd done as a teenager. Her eyes stung. She was feeling ridiculously nostalgic today. Blinking away the tears, she glanced around the salon.
Della had hired a new stylist named Kimee. With jetblack hair cut in a geometric bob and more piercings than a pincushion, Kimee needed no introduction to Haddes's youth. She was the poster child for the generation gap, hired, as Della said, "to bring in the teens and their allowance." And bring in the kids she had. Teenage girls lined the waiting area, sitting two to a seat and giggling in nervous anticipation of their Kimee makeover. She was currently stroking fuchsia eyeshadow on a young girl of about fifteen. Her red hair had been cut frighteningly similar to Kimee's and now sported a streak of white down one side. The girl looked like she'd won the lottery. Her mother looked like she'd just swallowed one of Kimee's nose rings.
Just say no, Mom, Mattie thought. But obviously Mom was more interested in making her daughter happy than asserting her parental rights.
Several of the salon's patrons, all over sixty, were obviously waiting to see Della. Mattie sighed. It didn't look as if Della could get away even if Mattie reminded her.
Which she refused to do.
Mattie tugged off her cardigan as she left the air-conditioned salon and entered the Georgia heat. May had arrived with confidence, chasing away the cool air. Already the heat was pooling against the asphalt, swirling and rising against her ankles and sandaled feet.
She lifted her face to the sun, a little sad that her wrinkle-busting, age-defying youth-radiating foundation had an SPF of 30. She hadn't had an honest-to-God tan in a decade. Back in the good old days, they'd slathered themselves with baby oil mixed with iodine, plopped down on a quilt and fried like teenage eggs. No guilt involved. She forced herself to stop frowning and rubbed the furrow between her eyes. Maybe she should just ditch the wrinkle-defying foundation and zap any intruders with Botox. She'd been thinking a lot about Botox lately. She'd been thinking about a lot of things like Botox lately.
Mattie sighed. Too much thinking was bad for the soul, not to mention the complexion.
She tried to clear her mind as she began the three-block walk to her duplex but her thoughts circled back with a will of their own. It seemed like some cosmic joke that she was pushing forty and still single. In her mind she'd freeze-framed her age at about twenty-three. But lately she'd been catching reflections of herself in unexpected places — the window of the drive-thru lane at Hamburger Heaven, the mirrored tile behind the florist's counter. And the woman who looked back at her was definitely not twenty-three. More often than not, the woman in the reflection was scowling. Mattie touched her forehead again and massaged away the tension.
It suddenly occurred to her that she'd drifted through life like someone drifting through a supermarket, perusing aisle after aisle with an indefinable craving.
Despite the encroaching heat, which would soon rule Haddes during the summer months, it was a picture-perfect day. A few residential areas remained downtown, snuggling comfortably against the businesses as they had for decades. Not much had changed in the nearly four decades she'd lived here, but the few changes she'd seen were for the better. Old homes were being renovated by enterprising early-retirees, morphing into quaint tearooms and antiques shops.
The shops in the original part of the little city were old two-story brick buildings that shouldered one another along Main Street, causing shoppers to wedge their SUVs in side alleys and narrow parking spaces. Mattie took it all in, both content and discontent to walk the same path she'd walked all her life.
But then she spotted the bookstore and the doubt melted away. Something in her chest swelled with recognition and pride. Looking at the bookshop was like looking in a mirror but actually liking the reflection. Or maybe it was more akin to looking at your child, an offshoot of yourself of which you could unabashedly be proud. She wasn't sure. But nothing and no one else belonged in that store.
She'd created it and it was hers alone.
Continues...
Excerpted from Hell's Belles by Kristen Robinette Copyright © 2005 by Kristen Robinette. Excerpted by permission.
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