Crazy for You

  “Oh, God, Quinn, I’m sorry.” Ben’s voice rumbled again, and Zoë said, “I told you, there’s nothing wrong. Your mother-in-law’s a dyke, that’s all. Go away.”

  Quinn heard Ben’s laugh over the phone, and then Zoë saying, “I’m not kidding, but I’ll never get the details if you don’t let me talk.” Then Zoë’s voice came back clear. “You know, you have to hand it to Mom, she’s not real focused, but she does tend to get what she wants.”

  “Yes, and wouldn’t it have been an excellent idea for her to bring us up the same way?” Quinn started to pace, stretching the phone cord.

  “You sound a little annoyed,” Zoë said. “I’m still not sure how I feel about this except that it’s a little weird to find out Mom has a sex life besides Dad, but then I imagine it was a little weird for her, too, after all these years. So when did she finally figure this out?”

  “You don’t get it.” Quinn sat down on one of the counter stools, and Katie curled up at her feet, convinced Quinn wasn’t going to do anything rash for a while. “She says she’s wanted this for years.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah,” Quinn said, feeling vindicated by Zoë’s outrage. “Yeah, all that time she was shoving us down the straight and narrow and fetching and carrying for Dad, she had Aunt Edie on the side.”

  “Do you know how many times she told me sex wasn’t necessary and I should stop chasing boys?” Zoë’s voice went edgy with betrayal. “And all this time I thought she was practicing what she preached, poor boring Mom.”

  “Probably as many times as she told me I was smart for not having sex,” Quinn said. “I told her losing my virginity had been awful, and all she said was, ‘Well, that’s sex for you.’ She told me it was boring and you told me it was overrated, and between the two of you I’ve been settling because I thought that was all there was, and now I’m mad.”

  “Shut up,” she heard Zoë say, and then she said, “Not you, my husband, the comic. He says she was probably hoping we’d chase girls. I told you sex was overrated?”

  “Several times. I couldn’t figure out why you kept going back for more, and I finally decided it was to drive Mom crazy.”

  “It probably was,” Zoë said. “I didn’t really get the hang of it until I was almost thirty.” Ben said something in the background, and she said, “No, not you, but you’re good, too. Will you go away so I can have this conversation?”

  “It was bad with Nick?” Quinn felt guilty for asking but she had to know.

  “Not bad, just not that good,” Zoë said. “I was nineteen, what did I know? And God knows, Mom was no help.”

  “Well, didn’t he know? I always had these huge fantasies about what great sex you were having on the couch.”

  “Nick was nineteen, too,” Zoë said. “Most of what he knew, he’d figured out with me. The Quick and the Clueless, that was us. And all that time, Mom—”

  “So great,” Quinn said. “So just great. You end up divorced, and I end up with one boring guy after another, and Mom gets a lifelong relationship with Dad and with Edie. I’m annoyed with her.”

  “Imagine how Dad feels.”

  “Right now, he’s chalking it up to menopause.”

  “Oh, hell. Do you want me to come home?”

  “And do what? Show Dad the closet Mom just peeked out of? He’d only look for a cable hookup.”

  “You don’t sound so good.”

  “I’m having a rough night.” Your ex-husband just said no to me again. “People are thwarting me.”

  “Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke,” Zoë said. “Go get whatever you want, Q. I did, finally, with Ben, and evidently Mom has, too. So can you.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Quinn said. “Now tell everybody else to give it to me.”

  Quinn walked into the Upper Cut the next morning on her planning period looking for Darla. Debbie waved hello across four stations and three women wrapped in scarlet plastic aprons.

  “Hey, honey,” she called, looking weirdly like the late Princess Diana under her new blonde haircut. “Heard about your new house.”

  Two of the women turned to see who had a new house while the third went on describing her argument with somebody. “And then she said—”

  “Darla here?” Quinn asked as she made her way back to Darla’s station.

  “Any minute.” Debbie sprayed the confection of champagne blonde hair she’d just raised to new heights in front of her. “How’s that, Corrie?”

  Corrie Gerber’s wizened little face peered out from under a pile of frozen curls, looking like a mouse caught under a Baked Alaska. “Perfect, Debbie, just like always.”

  “We try to please.” Debbie whipped the plastic apron off Corrie, brushing little bits of hair from her shoulders. “There you go, honey. You be careful on the way out. The floor gets slippery here.”

  Corrie eased herself out of the chair and stood, not even five foot tall, checking the top of her head in the mirror. Over her shoulder, she caught sight of Quinn, who’d been trying hard not to stare at her, and said, “Heard about you. Went and dumped the coach and now you’re living in that old house out on Apple. What’s wrong with you, girl?”

  “I’m a feminist,” Quinn said. “We get irrational urges.”

  Darla blew in behind her, in such a tense hurry she was almost on top of Quinn before she said, “Whoa, what are you doing here? Hey, Corrie, looking good. Is my eleven-thirty here, Deb?”

  “No,” Debbie said. “But then it’s Nella, so no big surprise. What’s with you? You’re wound today.”

  “Work me in,” Quinn said to Darla. “I want a haircut.”

  “Sure, what the hell. You could use a trim.” Darla waved her toward the chair, brittle as hell, and Quinn said, “You okay?”

  “Later,” Darla said. “Trim, coming right up.”

  “No,” Quinn said. “A cut. Cut it all off.”

  All three of them turned to her.

  “Honey, no, not that beautiful hair,” Debbie said.

  “You turning into one of them lesbos?” Corrie said.

  “Are you sure about this?” Darla asked.

  “Yes,” Quinn said to all of them. “Lop it off.” She sat in Darla’s chair and skinned her hair back from her face. She looked like hell but she looked different.

  “Well, not like that.” Darla smacked Quinn’s hand until she let go, and then fluffed her hair a little around her temples.

  “Shave it off,” Quinn said.

  “Something I should know about here?” Darla said.

  Quinn looked in the mirror at Debbie and Corrie, listening avidly. “Later.”

  Darla turned to them. “Anything else we can do for you, ladies?”

  “Just lost her mind,” Corrie said and went tottering off to pay for her hair.

  “I’ll just clean up my station,” Debbie said. “Won’t be in your way at all.”

  “Yes, you will,” Darla said. “Give us ten minutes. Go get a Coke.”

  Debbie got the same look on her face she used to get when Darla wouldn’t let her play with the big girls, and Quinn would have bet she was going to whine, “That’s not fair,” just as she had a thousand times while they were growing up. Instead, she sniffed and flounced off to the break room.

  Darla pulled open her drawer and got out her scissors case. “Now give or I don’t cut.”

  “Nick kissed me last night. A lot,” Quinn said and saw Darla smile behind her in the mirror, relaxing a little for the first time since she’d hit the shop.

  “Excellent. Now explain the cut.”

  “Then my father came in, and he used it as an excuse to just stop.” She clenched her teeth just thinking about it. “He just stopped.” Quinn met Darla’s eyes in the mirror. “I said, ‘Listen, I’ve changed,’ and he said, ‘You look the same,’ and when he was gone I looked in the mirror and I do. I wore my hair like this in high school. It was a little longer but just like this, parted in the middle. I want to be new and this will be one w
ay to show everybody that I’ve changed, and I’m not going back. Cut it off.”

  “Come on back,” Darla said. “I’ll hose you down and then we’ll do it.”

  “Wait a minute,” Quinn said. “I forgot to ask. Did the earth move last night?”

  Darla’s face was like stone in the mirror.

  “Oh, just hell,” Quinn said. “What is wrong with them?”

  “What’s wrong with us?” Darla said.

  Their eyes met again in the mirror, and Quinn said, “Cut my hair. Cut it all off. Make it as different as possible. Make it so different I can’t ever go back to where I was before.”

  Darla nodded. “You got it.”

  “Not yet,” Quinn said. “But I’m going to.”

  Nine

  When Nick hit the bank at ten, the place was almost empty, so Barbara’s voice echoed a little.

  “Nick!” she said, smiling like a bank president. “It’s too early for the deposit.”

  “Max’ll bring the deposit in later,” he said and watched her face light up. Jesus, Max had troubles. No wonder he’d been so cranky all morning. “I need some help here.”

  “Of course.” Barbara switched off the light in her face and became Bank Barbie again. “What can I help you with?”

  Nick cast a quick look around the bank but nobody seemed to be listening. He leaned forward, and Barbara leaned, too, evidently caught by his aura of conspiracy. “Quinn’s bank loan got turned down.”

  She straightened. “It couldn’t have.”

  “Shhhh,” he said, and she leaned forward again.

  “It couldn’t have,” she whispered. “Her credit is good. Who told you that?”

  “Quinn,” Nick said. “Could you look—”

  “Wait here,” Barbara said and marched off.

  His approval rating of Barbara shot up. Of course, what she was doing was entirely unethical, but it was in a good cause, Quinn’s cause. Not that he was involved with Quinn.

  Nick leaned against the counter and solidified his noninvolvement while he waited. Quinn could be responsible for herself, but the refused loan thing seemed fishy, the kind of thing a friend would look into for another friend, and therefore not real involvement at all. He wasn’t anywhere near her, no touching, no thinking about her underwear—he thought about how soft the flannel of her shirt had been last night, how much softer she must have been under it, how she’d turned under him and tilted her hips and how he’d almost lost his mind—he was definitely not going near her again until this heat streak he was going through had passed.

  Barbara came back, bright red spots high on her cheeks from what turned out to be outrage. “They changed her loan status,” she said. “They didn’t turn her down, they just asked for a twenty percent down payment. And she doesn’t have it.”

  “Why’d they change it?”

  Barbara leaned closer, her lips pressed together. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but they shouldn’t have done it, either. Her boss wrote a letter that said she was acting crazy, ‘unstable,’ he said.”

  “Bill,” Nick said.

  “No, her boss Robert Gloam,” Barbara said. “I saw the letter.”

  “Yeah, but Bill put him up to it.” Nick’s last vestige of sympathy for Bill vanished. “How much is the down payment?”

  “Fourteen,” Barbara said. “But she’d already put down seven.”

  “I’d like to transfer some funds,” Nick said.

  “To Quinn’s loan?” Barbara shook her head regretfully. “I can’t do it. It’s in her name and—”

  “You want them to win?” Nick said.

  Barbara bit her lip.

  “She doesn’t deserve this,” Nick said.

  Barbara thought for ten long seconds, and then she nodded. “You’re right, she doesn’t. Where do you want it transferred from?”

  “I have some CDs in the safe deposit,” Nick said. “Nobody needs to know about this, okay?”

  “This is really nice of you.” Barbara smiled at him approvingly, a bank teller’s smile, remote and uninvolved.

  It was a relief after Quinn.

  “You’re supposed to take care of your friends,” Nick said, and Barbara stopped.

  “Yes, you are.” She looked at him with real warmth for the first time. “You certainly are.”

  “Right,” Nick said uneasily.

  Barbara beamed at him.

  Darla sectioned Quinn’s damp hair and thought about Quinn and Nick and change and Max. One thing about Quinn going short: people would finally see those great cheekbones. And maybe Nick would finally see Quinn, which would be a good thing. Maybe.

  She looked over Quinn’s head to her own neat French twist. Much neater than Barbara’s version of it, which was softer, sexier.

  Hell.

  “Since high school,” Quinn had said. Well, that’s how long she’d been growing hers, since senior year when she’d caught Max looking at some junior cheerleader and all he’d said was, “I like long hair.” Instead of saying, “I don’t, and you look at her again, you’re dead,” she’d stopped cutting hers.

  “Darla?” Quinn said, and Darla said, “This is a good idea.”

  She cut Quinn’s hair in a layered cap, parting it on the side to de-emphasize the roundness of Quinn’s face, amazing herself with how much Quinn changed with each snip of the scissors. She looked older when Darla ran a comb through her hair for the last time, but she looked better, too. Sharper. Faster. Sexier. So much for long hair having sex appeal. “What do you think?”

  Quinn nodded, her face a little bleak but determined. “It’s a shock, but I like it. Once the shock’s over, I’m probably going to love it.” She shook her head back and forth. “I used to be able to feel my hair swing when I did that.”

  “Those days are over,” Darla said. “Want a blow-dry?” But then Nella came in, half an hour late, and said, “I’m not late, am I?” and Quinn stood up, dumping swathes of coppery hair as she did.

  “Not at all, Nell,” Darla lied. “Sit down. Be right with you.” She followed Quinn out to the counter and said, “That one was on me. Call me later.” When Quinn was gone, she went back to the break room to find Debbie.

  “My twelve o’clock here?” Debbie said, her voice a little frosty.

  “No. Can you cut my hair later?”

  Debbie’s jaw dropped. “Your hair?”

  “Yeah,” Darla said. “I want it short. Pixie short.”

  “Oh, my God.” Debbie’s frost thawed at the news. “Max is going to kill you sure as look at you.”

  “It’s my head, not Max’s,” Darla said, and went back out to do Nella before Debbie could point out that Max was the one who had to look at it.

  That was his problem.

  Quinn sat in the car outside the station, trying to get used to her new haircut. She stared into the mirror on the back of her visor, twisting her head from one side to the other, but all she could think was short.

  Well, the hell with it. She had a good cut, Darla didn’t do bad ones, so she’d be fine. She flipped the visor up, took a deep breath, and went in to talk to Nick.

  He was deep in conversation with. Max, both of them frowning, and she had the distinct impression that they weren’t talking about cars. She let the back door slam behind her, and they both turned and lost their frowns in surprise, but Nick got his back again in a hurry.

  “What did you do to your hair?” he said. “Are you nuts?”

  “No,” she said. “And you can stop saying that. I’m grownup. I’m thirty-five.”

  “That would explain the maturity you showed last night,” Nick said.

  “Last night?” Max said.

  “Your brother made a move on me last night and then told me I wasn’t the type to pet,” Quinn told him.

  “I don’t want to know this,” Max said, and retreated into the office, slamming the door behind him.

  “Nice,” Nick said.

  “Listen, the last time you pulled this on me, I was polite,” Qui
nn said. “But you just used up all my polite. What the hell are you doing to me?”

  Nick tensed even more, glaring at her. “I don’t know. I just know I’m not going to do it again.”

  “Well, why not?” Quinn walked closer so she could smack him or jump him, depending on how the conversation turned out. “I’m all for it, or I will be after I get finished wanting you dead.”

  “You’re important to me,” he said, and her anger evaporated.

  She swallowed. “Oh.”

  “I don’t want you to be just another…” He searched for the word.

  “Bimbo?” Her anger began to condense again.

  “I don’t get involved,” he told her. “I don’t do responsibility. I like my life the way it is, and I like you in it, but you stay a friend because that way I can keep you around forever.” He didn’t look happy about his plan, but his jaw was set. “Having sex with you would be wrong, it’s not the way we are. So I’m not going to do it.”

  “Then why did you kiss me?” she said.

  “I was stupid,” he said, and she felt deflated.

  Really, what could she do? Force him to make love to her? She wasn’t even sure she was ready for that. She’d done about all she could. At least she’d confronted him. The sensible, safe rationalizations piled up and buried her resolve.

  “Okay, fine.” She backed up a step.

  He looked miserable. “I don’t want to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you. I’m really sorry, Quinn.”

  “Not a problem,” Quinn said. “I’m not the sensitive type. Sturdy. Competent. Dependable.”

  “Quinn—”

  “No need to get involved at all,” she said brightly, backing toward the door. “I’m completely responsible for myself. So we’re fine.”

  “Don’t do this.”

  “So I’ll be seeing you.” She bumped into the door and felt for the handle. “Best of luck in the future.”

  “Quinn—”

  She met his eyes and playing fair lost its appeal. “You are not going to forget me,” she said, her chin up. “I don’t give a damn what your plans are, you still want me. Just don’t expect me to sit around waiting until you get your commitment problem worked out because I’m getting a brand-new life with this haircut, and it’s going to include a brand-new sex life, too. Sorry you won’t be joining me.”