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I figured out she was using her toes to turn the chair. I started raising my chair higher, so her toes couldn’t touch the ground. She still managed to turn the chair. I started locking the chair so it wouldn’t move, which was inconvenient for me because I had to do a lot more stretching and reaching for my tools. Finally, I had to have a conversation with her.
“Ms. Elaine, I appreciate your continued support of my business, and I adore you as a person, but as a client, not so much.”
She knew she was the captain of team too much and wasn’t even offended by my comment. We’d now come to an agreement that she would hold a hand mirror instead of moving my chair, which still grated my nerves, but it was a lot better than it was before.
“Good morning, ladies,” I said while putting my things down at my station.
“Good morning,” Macy, the newest stylist in the shop spoke. She’d recently completed all of her hours in cosmetology school and was working to build her clientele. She specialized in color; more specifically, color matching. She was a whiz at choosing hair colors for women that suited them perfectly.
“Morning,” Nuri, the other stylist and the one least likely to smile in the morning, spoke.
Nuri started working at the shop about two years after I started. She was our resident naturalista. She specialized in styles like twist outs, dreadlocks, with a focus on overall hair health. I’d seen her bring some destroyed hair back to life. She’d developed her own hair care line that she only used on her clients. We’d tried more than once to get her to distribute it, but she was not ready.
“Hey, Cam,” Tweet, the shop’s manager, spoke. “I see you have your coffee cup with you. It must Ms. Elaine’s day?”
Tia “Tweet” Phillips and I met in cosmetology school. She was a beast with the scissors and I held my own with weave. We made a pact to work extra hard to get finished with our required fifteen hundred hours early so we could graduate from school and start making some real money. Tia’s sister Tori ownedWhip N’ Fade, so we both had booths to rent once we’d finished school. We pushed each other through school, graduated ahead of our classmates, and started our careers as stylists.
Tweet was doing a great job managing her sister’s shop, but she wanted something that was her own and so did I. We’d talked about having our own businesses since we were in cosmetology school. We decided to work together to create our dream salons but open them in different locations, almost like a franchise.
Instead of a traditional salon, we planned to open salon suites. Beauty professionals could rent their own private spaces in our suites as opposed to just chairs. All of the rooms would come with top of the line equipment, but each professional would have complete control over the look and feel of their space. We decided to name the salonsSuite Dreams. Tweet’s location would be in Washington, DC, while I would own the one here in St. Louis.
“Hey, Tweety. And you know it,” I responded while taking a sip of my coffee.
“What kind is it today?” Tweet asked, motioning towards my coffee mug.
“It’s the Ethiopian brew I got from around the corner atKahawa.”
“Oh, I haven’t tried that one yet. I got the Kenyan blend from him the last time I went,” Tweet said.
“They have whole bean coffee at that shop?” Macy asked.
All the stylists atWhip N’ Fadeshared an affinity for good coffee. When Kal, the owner ofKahawa,first opened his coffee shop, he came intoWhip N’ Fadeto introduce himself and caught all of us drinking store-bought ground coffee. He educated us on good coffee and brewed us some freshly ground coffee that changed our lives.
“He has a whole back room with coffees from different places. My plan is to try every one of them, but some of them are so expensive. I told him he needed layaway,” Nuri said.
“Okay!” Tweet laughed. “My client gave me some Guatemalan coffee. I went to get more after I drank it all. I saw the price of that crap. I was like no ma’am, no, sir!”
“Kal is sweet though, he always gives me a neighbor discount,” I noted.
“He is, and he does, but some of that coffee will still break the bank,” Tweet countered.
We laughed.
“I have the espresso because no one would survive me getting up this early,” Nuri said before taking a sip from her cup.
Nuri was one of the sweetest people I knew after she’d had a cup of coffee and woke up completely. She indeed was not a morning person. Her clients were usually not scheduled before nine-thirty. Every so often, she had an early client, and we all prayed that she and the client made it through the appointment unscathed.
“And I wouldn’t make it through Ms. Elaine without this coffee for real!”
“Ms. Elaine is like Tandy, my one client that I have to constantly ask to get off the phone so I can do her hair. She has the nerve to want to rest it between her ear and shoulder while I am trying to style her hair,” Nuri complained.
“Ain’t nothing that important that it can’t wait until after you get done,” Tweet said.
“Exactly. And I have to ask her all the time! Like girl! I shouldn’t have to say the same thing every time you come in here!” Nuri griped.
“I had a client that used her phone but wanted to have full-on conversations on speaker,” Tweet said.
“Oh, I remember her. My client said something to her about how loud her conversation was and she got offended,” I recalled.
