Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Just Another Small Town

My suitcase is still in the car. And the cooler is on the kitchen floor still full of apples, peanut butter, and old yogurt, Greek. At the bottom of the stairway rises Mt. Laundry, five days of dirty clothes,  We have no milk no bread no nothing in the refrigerator. There is a stack of mail to deal with and the stack is marked urgent. I lost my hairbrush somewhere between Clinton and San Francisco, so my hair hasn't been brushed since Kentucky. 


It is clear, on this first morning back in San Francisco, I need to take the bull by the horns.  I step over the cooler and unopened mail and one sock and Christmas to-do lists and head down the hill to Pink Pearl, an all-purpose hair salon on Geary Avenue.  Time to get my fingers and toes in shape for Christmas.  Maybe a little hair color, too.
Hair Babylon, San Francisco


Things can change a lot in six months. The shop seems all new. Lisa and Karen are still there, though, and they look at the condition of my feet and say something in Vietnamese, I know it is complimentary.  Then, working as a team they paint my nails a tasteful cream and go all out with Holly Jolly Red for my toes.  The result is spectacular.  But my hair.  Where is Kim?  In fact, where is the cut and color section of Pink Pearl?  It has gone away.

Lisa balances the nail dryer on my lap and tilts the toe dryer on the end of the spa-chair. As I struggle to keep everything aligned I gaze out the window of Pink Pearl and follow the traffic. Priests from Holy Virgin, the Russian Orthodox Church nearby, make a slow parade down the sidewalk, their long beards and robes blowing and filling like black sails. A storm is brewing. But I am lost in thought, knowing something has to be done to my hair at this very moment.  It is an urgency understood by all women.

I walk out of Pink Pearl in my flip-flops. The temperature is hovering around 50, damp and cold in a San Francisco way. In the distance, black clouds continue to build over the Marin Headlands and Golden Gate Bridge.  Maybe if I swing by Walgreens and buy some hair color? With boxes in the floor and Christmas cards to write and the car still not fully unloaded, that idea is not appealing. As I am walking home and studying on this, I almost run into a small, beautiful Vietnamese woman in front of the UPS Store.


"LEES!" she says. It is Kim.  Yes, KIM!!  She is beaming, and explains that she is working at a new place further up Geary.  She will do my hair right now, before her 2:30 appointment.  Kim shoves me into her car, throwing bags and packages into the back seat, and we drive a couple of blocks to the new shop.  We find a parking place right in front, another Christmas miracle.

Inside Hair Babylon, it is clear that Kim, too, is just moving in. She seems to be working out of her bag. She opens this drawer and that, looking for the plastic cape and gloves and....a hairbrush.  She starts to brush my hair and frowns.  I explain that my hair has not been brushed since Kentucky.  She has to hunt for the style book, with its shiny blunt-cut hair samples in a hundred different colors. The shop is empty except for a barber far in the back whose wing actually faces 22nd Avenue. He is snipping and speaking Cantonese.  

The sky is dark and the rain has begun. Kim pulls a plastic bag from her gigantic purse and it is filled with packages of hair color, maybe 20 half-used tubes.  Everything but 7A,  the color I need to make my hair and the day itself just a little brighter.

"Just one minute Lees," she says.  I need to run to Citi-Hair and get 7A.  She is at the door in a flash, then turns and says, "Don't leave!!"  

Thirty minutes later I am eating Jolly Ranchers from a bowl on the front desk, and fiddling with my phone, hoping somebody has sent me a text or an email.There is no one in the shop, but the door is wide open, facing the traffic on Geary. I return to the swivel-chair and study the tinsel draped across heating pipes on the ceiling of Hair Babylon. There is a little Christmas tree on Kim's counter in front of me. It's raining in torrents now, red and green lights across the street are just a blur.


Kim Nguyen
Thirty minutes later Kim reappears, soaking wet.  She holds up a brand new tube of 7A.  She is smiling. I am perplexed.

"I had to go to Citi-Hair, like I said."

"Kim, where IS Citi-Hair??" I ask.

"Across the bridge in Mill Valley.  No big deal, not that long if I don't have to wait at the toll gate."

So, after driving to Mill Valley for 7A, Kim is making my blah color just a little bit more glossy, and covering every trace of gray.  The rain has dialed up to a 10.  You can't see the Dim Sum place across the street, and Wells Fargo Bank is fully lost in the downpour.   Kim offers to take me to my car, since my hair, at this moment, looks spectacular.

I look at her for a minute before I reply.  
"I walked, Kim," I say.  "My husband will come and get me."  I am now tapping in Ira's number, which goes directly to voicemail. I look in the mirror at both of us, knowing what will come next.

"Lees, I'll drive you home."   

Merry Christmas Kim. Merry Christmas, San Francisco, just another small town.  Merry Christmas Margaret and Irvin in Clinton.  And to anyone here or there who has quietly gone the extra mile today.


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