The Blondes Read Online Free PDF Page A

if your hair is a bird’s nest of tangles.”
    • “Combat dry hair with a beer rinse.”
    • “Your hair is your family’s crowning glory, so invest in a good conditioner.”
    • “Rub mink oil into your hair to add shine and sparkle.”
    • “A touch of olive oil will curb your dandruff problems.”
    • “Head massages stir up circulation and improve the scalp for a healthier head of hair. If the skin is tight it usually means you are rundown or tense.”
    • “Instructions for washing: Rinse with warm water. Rinse and rinse again. When you’re positive you’ve got all the soap out, rinse again. Rinse until your hair squeaks.If the hot water won’t last out through all these rinses, be brave: the last rinse can be icy cold—which gives more shine.”
    I was never sure how an eco-girl was supposed to cope. As for scalp massages, if my head was any indication, it seemed I was always rundown and tense.
    “Colour it,” I choked to the stylist. I took off my glasses and laid them over my knee. I wiped one eye with my fist, and some mascara came off on my knuckle. I wiped my knuckle on my jeans. I put my glasses back on. “Colour it,” I said again, stronger. I tilted my chin at the stylist as if daring her to object.
    “Oh-kay,” the stylist said, as if thinking,
It’s your funeral
.
    My hair has always been slightly bushy, with a coarse, brittle texture, and it was this, I thought, more than the colour, that she was reacting to. White people’s hair is supposed to be fine, like cornsilk. My hair came from my father’s ancestors, who, although I never knew them, were apparently as Scottish as border collies. It was sheepdog thick.
    The stylist went to a cabinet and took out that book all salons have, the one with loops of hair in a myriad of colours: black velvet, ebony, sable brown, umber, chocolate, walnut brown, ash brown, mahogany. I used to love playing with them when I was a kid in my mother’s hair shop. The stylist flipped quickly through the browns. Then came auburn, orange-red, ginger, copper, radiant red, flame, deepest scarlet, merlot, purple orchid, violet, plum, indigo, azure, and even flamingopink. And then there were the blondes. Though I’d never been one, I knew the names by heart: sahara, desert ochre, dark blonde, goldenrod, luminescent blonde, honey, chamomile, chardonnay, silver blonde, white blonde, and finally, platinum. Back and forth the stylist flipped the book.
    “Brown,” I told her, sheepishly. “Just a mid-brown. This colour.” I showed her the ends of my hair. The roots, on the other hand, were the shade of spaghetti marinara.
    I had never seen a woman over forty wrinkle her nose, but this woman did exactly that as she looked at me in the mirror. I watched her hold up the book and select a rusty strand to hold next to my roots. “This one,” she said, and nodded.
    I craned my neck to look her in the eye. “Brown,” I insisted, but even I could hear some hesitation in my voice.
    The stylist next to us looked over. She was younger than my stylist. She said something in Korean. Then she looked hard at me and said, “Go back to your natural colour. It’s right for you.”
    I didn’t say anything more. The stylists had won.
    The older woman whipped around and started mixing up the colour on a side counter. She threw a vinyl smock over me without even a glance at my face.
    She was going to strip out the colour that I’d put in. At least the bleach burning my eyes meant I could cry in public if I wanted to. I had lots of reasons to cry: Karl Mann wouldn’t leave his wife. We had slept together only five times. Karl and his wife had slept together how often? Fifty-five times, three hundred and five, one thousand and five, ten thousand andfive? I imagined them fornicating into infinity. I saw them floating nude through the chamber of their clean white bedroom, like astronauts untethered from gravity, stray limbs tangling like ribbons, indulging in upside-down acts