"I'm going to have to hurry you" she said, with a cheesy game-show host smile.
"Black" I said.
"Black it is" she said placing a hand on my shoulder. She walked away into the storeroom and came back a few minutes later with a mixing bowl and a strong chemical smell in her wake.
I won't bore you with the details of the colour, let's just say that it gave me time to gather my thoughts. The conventional woman who walked in to the salon had gone. Cut away and coloured away. Although I hadn't seen the finished effect, I was not sorry that I had done what I had done, with more than a little prompting of course. I should have done it a long time ago.
Paula had gone off to do something in the office while the colour developed, but she was back now to rinse me off. I sat up from the basin and she wrapped my head in a towel so that the suspense would last a little longer. Once we got back to the styling station she whisked away the towel theatrically. There I was. Black. Bald. A bit of both. It was really me staring back from that mirror.
