The salon was everything I have expected at this point of time. Rush hours was already over but there were still three clients on the chairs. None of them was familiar. The staff buzzing around them however was everything but unfamiliar.
Caena was a tall and lanky woman at her early twenties and one of my mother's earliest apprentices. She had pixie cut chestnut hair and vibrant green eyes eyes that look really good with her olive skin. She has started working part time at the salon while she was still on the high school like most of the other members of the staff and went full time after completing her qualifications at the community collage. Right now she was a small partners of the salon and she worked with us a few years more before leaving to open her own business. At this point of time she was more like an older sister to us siblings than a business partner of my mother. It is ironic that I didn't stay in contact with her in any capacity after she left. Just another proof of my social awkwardness.
Emily on the other hand was a short, curvy girl with blue eyes. She had ivory skin with freckles on the bridge of her nose which look really good on her. She was taking her qualification classes at the community collage to become a nail artist. She was a comely girl good with children and my unofficial baby sitter during elementary. She was the person that thought me how to ride a bicycle a few years ago, one of my fondest memories despite beig quite a painful one. It all made more weird to realize that I had absolutely no idea what she did after leaving the salon.
Despite knowing the names of all the other members of the staff and being rather familiar with them, I knew nothing about either their current circumstances or fates after they left during the banking crisis a few years later. I was busy with my own high school drama back then and failed to understand the financial implementstions of dwindling clients and leaving stuff. I am pretty sure that the only reason we were able to barely float back then was owning the salon instead of paying rent for it.
I don't know if the flap of a butterfly's wing in Brazil can set a cascade of atmospheric events that, weeks later, spurs the formation of a tornado in Texas or not. But now that I am financially literate unlike my younger self, I know that the Dotcom Bubble Brust in Nasdaq could and did set a cascade of financial events that, years later, spur a liquidity crysis that caused multiple bank runs all around the world. Not that I can do anything about it.
The moment I enter the salon more that a few heads turned to look at the door. My mother was cutting one of the clients' hair when she saw me and immediately raised an eyebrow. She made a few fast and fancy cutting moves with her hands and talked a few words with the client. Then with a smile on her face she sent her washing with a hand gesture to the technician waiting ready nearby.
The woman was a machine that started working part time at the most famous salon of the city at the age of 7. She was a young and clever girl that did everything not to be a farmer or marry one even at that age when her peers still playing house. A few of the times when I criticized her work on my hairstyle at high school, she made the habit of hitting me on the back of the head and showing me the tricks of her line of work.
When I criticized her on giving me a bad haircut to make it fast, she hit me on the back of my head and showed me how to finish the real haircut in ten minutes and spend twenty more acting giving a haircut not to make the client feel neglected.
When I criticized her on giving me an antiquated haircut that won't look suit my face shape for years, she sent me to find my own barber. The fucking football fanatic gave me the R9 haircut without my consent in less than a week after it's first introduction. I was the butt of all jokes for an entire month untill my hair was long again but by that time the hateful thing was the the new trend and people actually paid to get it. My mother was pretty sure that my new barber, who was recommended by my high school basketball team friends, make a mistake with my haircut and went nuclear to cover it. She insisted that a buzz cut was not only timeless but also suited very well withy face. I had to beg for a week untill she took be back and gave me a long fade buzz cut with a longer fringe, a Caesar that could easily be used formally with down fringe and easily styled as spiked, messy or side swept with up fringe. I have used it for the rest of my life and all it took was a few seconds and a little gel to change from formal to informal even without a mirror.
Last but not least, she did this exact fast cutting move when I criticized her for making a mistake with the left side of my haircut. She used the scissors like lightening and made a few circular moves to correct the mistake and ask for confirmation. When I confirmed that it always okay, she hit me in the back of the head and said that the scissors didn't even touch my hair, it was all her fingers. The quick wrist movements was a trick to satisfy obsessive clients with bad eyesight that was decepted by shadows.
I couldn't help but smile when I remembered that particular memory. I was right actually, there was a small mistake she later fixed with a single move of the scissors but she still tricked me that she has already fixed it with those fancy moves just to give a lesson. I don't know what did that client do to get the move but it was a pretty funny thing when you knew the inside joke.
Unlike me, my mother was not smiling when she turned away from the client and started to walk towards me. She kneeled in front of me and gave me a hug while running through her questions in a hushed voice.
"Where is your father? Why are you here? Did you have a fight at school? Are you alright?"
I hugged her too while checking the salon again over her shoulder. My father was not inside but I assumed he was inside the apartment. Obviously, he didn't arrive yet. It was understandable when you think that I left the a school before the homeroom has ended. The questions were not in the order of importance thus so I just answered in whatever order I feel like.
"Yes, I had a small fight at school but am pretty well." I told her hugging. "It is the reason why I am here now. I need to talk to you and father in private. I suppose he is not here yet. Was there something he must do after walking me to the school?"
"Indeed. "She stood back a little and cupped my face while caressing my protruding lip with the thumb of her left hand. "But it doesn't look like a small fight, to me." She looked at me curiously.
"It was." I assured her. "Trust me. Finish your work on that client and come to talk when your husband returns. I am going to change."
I am pretty sure I was not this mature and confident in my interactions with my parents at this age. Still, she didn't show any kind of signal even if she find it suspicious. Soon, she was back to salon and I was on the other side of the two way mirrored door.
The apartment was a large 3LDK with two bathrooms. It was an inconsistent thing with classical and modern architecture mixed together like a jigsaw. The master bedroom with private bathroom was a pretty modern thing with a secret bookcase door to the LDK whereas other parts of the apartment was pretty classical except the two way mirrors and mirrored door in the foyer. It was pretty obvious that the entire renovation budged was spent on the master bedroom and the salon and everything else was left in their original state. I am pretty sure that the original plan was the convert this place to a adjacent beauty salon with a second renovation on the main bathroom and three bedrooms. It was probably postponed due to the lack of dedicated babysitting arrangements when me and my sister were young and then completely discarded when my father suddenly returned. No other renovation was made on this place untill it was converted to a normal apartment unit after both my parents were retired. Unfulfilled potential...
It turns out, my mother was not only a famous hairdresser running for national competitions when she was young but also a famous nail artist that was recommended by multiple board-cerrtified dermatologists. It should have been obvious with that kind of client profile, famous bankers, lawyers, doctors, dentists and pharmacists, but I was not receptive enough to realize the high profile demographics of my mother's friends and clientele at that age. People with hand injuries, even from outside of the country, booked for manicure and pedicure. She even accepted men with cut fingertips with doctor referrals. I have seen her doing manicures and pedicures just shy of medical operations outside of working hours. They were pretty bloody businesses, not for faint of heart.
My room was a pretty sterile thing unlike my sister's. I had no posters on the walls, no stickers on the furniture, no toys, no games, no books. As soon as I graduated from elementary, my mother forced me donate everything that belong to my younger self. I still don't know what was she trying to do with that one . If she was trying to tech me the spirit of giving it definitely didn't work. I still blame my lack of attachment to that particular memory. It was a devastating thing to lose especially my teddy bear and boy's leather cowboy vest. Despite donating countless books, toys and cloth items, only losing those two items made me want to cry, and cry I did.
There was a great hype around collectibles that time around, mainly football and baseball cards together with tazos. Boys were playing with them, winning or losing at every corner, so much that they were banned from schools. Those collectibles were also the victim of this donation spree, but thrown out instead of being donated due to containing gambling elements. I was one of the most successful players around the neighborhood and thousand of collectibles in the trash cans caused a big commotion around the neighborhood. Tens of boys fighting in and around trash cans would have been a great sight if only they were not fighting over my hard earned fortune. Many of them were grounded after that incident yet I still regret not thinking to gather photographic evidence of the thing in all my mourning.
Gambling together with alcohol and substance addiction was on the rise in the city that time around and I think it was her way of preventing me from developing dangerous habits. Let me tell you, it backfired in a phenomenal way. Before that incident, I was a dedicated student who work hard but play hard too. I was a nerd with social life and literally spent no time other than sleeping in my room. After that incident though, I evolved into to a completely different breed of nerd. I bought my first game console with my full time summer work that year. It was some kind of PS1 knock off that runs NES games. It was a pretty stupid thing to do considering PS2 and SNES was just around the corner and it was also the first of my impulsive shopping incidents of outdated electronics. The time I spent in arcades and later internet cafes increased exponentially after that point of time and by the time I was at high school I had a few pro-gamer friends that daily train their first person shooter skills on me. I was mainly a real time strategy and role playing game person after all and spent at least four hours a day in front of screen.
I washed my hands and face again, and changed out of my middle school uniform. The school dress codes were not a thing untill I graduated from high school and East Middle was the strictest school of the city when it came to the school uniforms and the rules around them. I wore into a comfortable blue short and white t-shirt combo and started rummaging through my wardrobe and bookcase.
I didn't care much about what I was wearing before high school and my wardrobe was clearly of my mother's taste. My bookcase on the other hand was an entirely different beast. Unlike my mother's which was filled with novels, mine was filled with school books and encyclopedias. I wasn't into reading any type of novels before high school and illustrated encyclopedias was my favorite when it came to reading. My father didn't read anything except daily newspaper and my sister was mainly a romance novel and poem reader.
I had no personal radio or music player in my room. My taste in music was a weird mixture between my father's Elvis Presley and Bryan Adams and my sister's Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys. I didn't find my own taste in Metallica and System of Dawn untill a few years later and by the time I graduated from high school, my taste in music was an abomination ranging from classical of Vivaldi, and rap of Eminem to pop of Shakira and alternative of Linkin Park. I pretty much listened anything but brutal death metal as long as it was good and had a great CD library. This time in the past however, I had no cassettes or CD's in my room due to not having a music player. My sister had a Sony Walkman and a cassette player. There was another cassette player in the LDK and a radio in the salon but nothing to play CD's. Similarly there were no VHS tapes or VCD's in my room due to not having a movie player in the house. My mother preferred to watch movies at theaters and take me and my sister regularly, thus we saw no need to buy one. I was going to but a DVD player in my freshman of year high school together with a small TV for my room by using the money from my full-time summer job.
All in all, my room was a pretty spartan thing with only a bed, desk, chair, bookcase, and wardrobe. Even my comforter was a plain blue things with geometric "flowers" on it, definitely my mother's taste again. It really looked like I had no personal belongings except school books and clothes. I can't even remember what was I spending my allowances on during middle school years.
Soon, I heard the opening of the mirrored door and turned towards the foyer to see who was coming in. It was going to be a busy day with lots of talks and experiments and I was pretty much dedicated to see the end of it in spite of everything that hangs over my head right now.