Devonne Brown

“I was sorta hoping you’d include me in your plans. You shouldn’ta moved your head so fast, now look what happened. You look better with longer hair,” she said. It seemed she was a little bit on the crazy side. “I’m Isabella. Everybody calls me Z for short. Want me to be your date for the wedding? I have a long dress with puffy sleeves. It’s perfect to wear to weddings.”

The hunk of hair she chopped out was right out of the top. I was lucky I had thick dark curls and you really couldn’t see it. I jumped right out of the chair before more damage could be done with the scissors or heaven forbid she grabbed the electric clippers. I yanked off the barber’s cape.

“Z, I don’t mean to hurt your feelings or anything, but I already have a date for the wedding and I just needed a trim. Looks like you did a fine job, just needed a little off the top.  How much do I owe you?”

Z’s eyes filled with big tears and began to sob. She grabbed her shears and threw her them at me and I felt the wind from them whizz by my left ear. I was lucky to keep it.

“You’re all the same. Only out for one thing and one thing only. Do you care about a girl’s feelings? No. None of you do.” she wailed.

I had a vision of me wearing a Vincent van Gogh ear patch and a tux seating people at the wedding. I threw a twenty on the cash register and ran as fast as I could, got in the car and pulled away from the shop. When I looked in the rear view mirror, she held my hair in one hand and the twenty in the other, waving and screaming in the middle of the road. 

I was lucky to escape with most of my hair, my dignity, let alone my life. No wonder the sign on the door said “Walk-ins Welcome.” For all I knew she had one stew pot in the back for walk-ins and one for appointments. I shuddered to think about it.