It's a process you can seldom recall enjoying. The crackle and static of busy voices, the chandeliers that always have one or two globes blown, the too soft voices in the mix, so you nod at every word uttered towards you, or pull a thoughtful face hoping you'll be able to hear at least once sentence clearly so that you can warmly reply, "Yeah. Short at the sides and what do they call it now? High and tight?".
And the oversized mirrors; four feet by three that do not give you the opportunity to turn away, turn off. Never completely anyway.
From a face you've never ... Not liked, necessarily but never really trusted. Never felt entirely at home with. The laughter lines don't genuinely reflect to the world a life of laughter. They reflect an over-eagerness to please, if anything. A face that isn't entirely honest the way you see the faces of most people around you. A face that begs like a broken puppy for love and attention. No, you can't in all candour say you like this face but at least you've had the good sense down through the decades to hold an uneasy peace with its disingenuousness.
You correct this thought as the hair starts to come away in clumps. You like the bags beneath the eyes, now that you've taken your glasses off. The bags speak of books and book people, of quietude over multitudes, of blind and selfish kindness over hate. The pouches are good.
Like the fingertips. The best your body could offer inasmuch as at least they could play instruments that may or may not bring pleasure to one's self and, on a good day, to others besides.
Sara cuts delicately the hair at the front, so now the eyes must close and the self-absorption must cease for a while. Another temporary truce.
Immediately the fate and fortune of a young Napoleon, uncertain even as evening falls in 1790 as to whether he will survive the night having associated with this faction and that. Having fought and commanded artillery for this cause and that.
Sara asks something that you can't quite understand and you say, "No, that's terrific." She seems professionally satisfied with this response.
The eyes shut again.
They've changed the piped music to hits from the '80s. For whom, I do not know. Your immediate thought is, "I hope it wasn't for me. That could just be a deal breaker for my returning patronage." And then you listen - in what seems like the first time in forever - really listen to Tina Turner's timbre and richness and the staccato switch up on the bass in What's Love Got To Do With It? Somewhere, your heart that was so bitterly certain mere moments ago, is now leaping with delight at the purity of these achievements. And the miracle of you recognising these things above the sound of a busy Saturday hairdresser.
Here comes the peroxide.
Eyes opened briefly, eyes closed again. An inverted augenblick.
And into the pit of the Greek Civil War ('43-'89). How the Communist/Stalinist EAM-ELAS took up arms against the Allied backed EDES. And how, as with all other conflicts since the dawn of time, there was soon nought but screaming from the innocent and guilty alike, sand and brick and stink and drying blood and viscera in the face of the ugly human condition that invariably occupies the uncomfortable, complex spaces between the best and highest of ideals and often the ever-present, profoundly petty vengefulness at the heart of both the victors and the vanquished. The rancour and recrimination that to this day define and constrain whole communities, the sons and the daughters of the sons and the daughters of ...
The eyes open.
The war ceases, Napoleon dies under mysterious circumstances, Tina Turner has long since walked out on you.
Sara smiles triumphantly. You catch a last glimpse of the bags before looking at your fingertips, for fear of holding her gaze too long.
You mutter thanks over and over again as you pay.
And you walk out into Saturday's rain.
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