Fiction: QUITTING FINN

Short fiction from the collection Learning to Live Indoors, published with Porcupine's Quill Press, 1998 (out-of-print, 2021)

Photo by Hair Spies on Unsplash

background:

During my time in an MFA program we had a “substitute teacher” filling in for a prof. The sub was Leona Gom, a writer and teacher with a predilection for work-stories. To that point in time and in the program, I hadn’t thought of sharing anything of my dozen years as a hairdresser, my time of growing up. In 1980, at sixteen, I rode on the bus two hours to, and two-and-a-half home (so I’d have a seat!) every day for six months—the graduating requirement of “one thousand hours.”

I apprenticed at a number of salons, from “Sears” department store’s blue-rod perm punishment to Suki’s of Vancouver—which felt like living in a cult.

And I observed. And had blue hair and sometimes purple eyebrows; it was the 80s after all.

Gom’s words about work stories pushed into my mind, and in spite of myself, a couple of tales emerged from that time, fictionalized of course. Because that’s how fiction writers work.

Anything more you want to know—about finger waves and the weird blue stuff in those jars of brushes and combs that you always see in hair salons? Or back in the day, anyway?

~~~

Over at my other newsletter, The Unschool for Writers, we are spending this summer of 2023 talking about, and creating and sharing, “work place stories.”

A Mini-Course in Work Stories

~~~

Quitting Finn

There were rumblings. Rumblings were inevitable in a shop with almost thirty employees. Stephen had heard many in his time. He considered them birth pains. So many of the hair shops that overpopulated the city had been spawned there. Almost every owner—around the corner and across town—had done their time with Finn.

The rumblings began, as most such rumblings did, in the senior staff room, where anyone who was not busy spent most of their time. Anyone who was not busy had something to grumble about, and the staff room was the room farthest from the receptionist’s desk, where she—the receptionist—played with the phone and bowed low over the appointment book, with its list of clients and contact numbers. The book was safe with her, with her curious way of rounding her shoulders, curving up and over it as she spoke on the phone, allowing just enough space to pencil the appointment onto a line. When she stood to call to the back of the shop for an apprentice—Annie! Mrs. Joyce is here!—her hand, with its metallic-pink hooks, spread over the page. There was only one time during the week when she was not there. And that was Saturday. Early Saturday morning, when Stephen was happy in spite of himself and when he forgot about getting old and the possibility of being forgotten.

He might even sing then, at least until Dermot entered the shop. Dermot would sneak in from the alley to hide in the laundry room and light a Gitane. At the first curl of smoke, Stephen ceased to sing and Saturday—real Saturday—began. By ten o’clock, he would be red-faced and wrenching his earring and refusing Dermot’s last-minute clients. Dermot’s clients were always last-minute. They were as impulsive and compulsive as he; clients always mirror their chosen one. Dermot was a thorn in Stephen’s crown, for certain, but there were others.

Finn. Finn whom Stephen loved. For surely seventeen years of working life was a form of love. The form that Stephen was most familiar with. And not for a moment had Finn loved Stephen in return. Some day he would though. The day would come when Finn did for Stephen what he’d done for no one else. Finn would love Stephen and never forget him.

And Finn would do something he’d never done for another: he would fire Stephen.

Stephen worked on, counted his thorns, raged, and at night walked Robson Street and spat on the windows of other shops so that when the time came, there would not be a road left to him n the business. He made sure that Finn knew of his midnight deeds. When Finn’s love came, it would be real and would set him free.

He couldn’t quit, though threatened to. If he quit, he would be forgotten. And if Finn’s wife—Susan—fired him… No, he didn’t want that. Susan did all of the firing; it meant nothing to her.

Then Stephen would have to pack his bag: the crochet hooks—his number ten, fine, so pointed. Stephen kept it for those who had not been highlighted elsewhere, those who did not know that having one’s hair hook-pulled through the three hundred holes of a rubber cap was not supposed to be full of pain. Those who thought beauty had a price. Finn’s clients.

And Stephen would pack his favourite tail-combs, the long-borrowed brushes, his collection of Band-Aids. No one else kept Band-Aids, and haircutters were always in need, especially the juniors and apprentices on training nights—mornings after, there was a noticeable decrease in supply. They would miss his Band-Aids when he was gone.

Finn’s wife would claim his corner of the mezzanine and redecorate with dollar-a-roll wallpaper. She would probably put in the air-conditioning he’d been asking for, for God-knows-how-long, and that would be it. Forgotten.

~

Rumblings began in the belly, and first showed with a belch. Stephen considered belching rude, except in a lover—then it was familial—and it had been some time since he had one of those. He particularly disliked belching in the monthly staff meetings.

But Dermot belched. That is, he put words to feelings that should have been left to the staff room.

He complained about the coffee deduction.

When someone said something about the coffee deduction, the words had nothing to do with the drink; it did mean that the speaker was entertaining ideas of taking leave. Entertaining with champagne and red-silk robe and feather slippers on one’s feet, Stephen fancied.

~

Dermot brought up the matter and several others said, quietly, that they agreed. Cal spoke loudly against; he was hoping to be manager someday.

Coffee deduction was a five-dollar charge on each pay cheque. It separated those who were happy from those who were not. It was brilliant. It must have been Susan’s idea. To keep Finn from tossing and turning over malcontents and force him to remember her at night. Stephen shuddered when he pondered living with Susan. But he could imagine what it was to live with Finn.

This coffee thing, was how Dermot put it. Yeah, murmured three others: backup vocalists. They could have been sharing a microphone, Stephen thought. Hips to the left, hips to the right. Oooooooo.

O bloody hell—not the coffee thing. Lucille sucked on her cigarette, her cheeks hollow and artificially blushed. She’d been at the shop as long as Stephen and had no plans to leave. None that Stephan knew. She wrote to Ann Landers and often answered her own letters.

Finn sighed so gently.

Cal, manager of the future, said, Now then, the apprentice program…

So they moved on, but without Dermot and the backups. One apprentice shifted his weight as he stood against the wall so that he leaned toward the mutineers, and Stephen knew his side.

Stephen removed his glasses and peered through the lenses for dust, but really he was watching his Annie. Which was her camp? She was in those tights again—he’d warned her about those tights: black couldn’t always be counted on with thighs like hers—and she was wearing a long pirate shirt. The shirt was good, he thought. She had a ring in her nose. That was good too. Or was she easily led? Led to what? Her freedom, as he hoped for his?

Annie was making the move from apprenticing to the floor to begin to cut and style. Finn had told the receptionist to see to it that Annie had an occasional client on Saturday or on Friday night. It was the adolescent stage—a dreadful in-between thing. Like having sex with someone and having to go home to your mother.

But already Annie had had clients return. Stephen was proud. He imagined she looked like him, could have passed for the daughter he could never have had. She wasn’t flamboyant like some, but people trusted her, and that was something. Her work was solid and intuitive. She would be too, if she trusted herself.

Stephen couldn’t tell Annie that he was afraid she’d be eaten up, that she would become a cokehead in another downtown shop, and return from her weekends some time on Wednesday, or she’d own a Hair franchise in Smithers.

Annie was naturally—or unnaturally—good with understanding hair colouring. It was instinctive, and really she would have been best to pursue work as a technician and follow Stephen’s path, but when she asked him, he said no. He said it jokingly, because he knew that if he did, she wouldn’t ask again. She wouldn’t dare if she thought he didn’t take her seriously. Of course she cried, but apprentices were always in tears.

No, Annie must keep her options open, because if she specialized she would be eaten even sooner than he had predicted.

So where was she? Whose camp? He watched.

The meeting disbanded as usual. Finn climbed out of his chair—he’d had a leg over an arm of the styling chair—mid-sentence, and he disappeared into the staff room. Those who were sitting on the counter that encircled the room stood, and cigarettes were butted and hands batted the smoke in the air. The shop was officially non-smoking. The senior stylists headed down the open stairs to their clients waiting below. The juniors gathered in their room, a cluster of angry impotent minimum-wage earners. Working sixty hours a week, and paid for forty of them. Each knew that they were replaceable and each believed that at some point they would be the superior hairdresser, and travel: to London—Sassoon was still a name, though the man himself had sold it; Italy looked good; there was always Paris. Then they’d come back and show everyone in this one-horse place.

Stephen overheard and walked in on them, tossing his head, snorting, pawing the air, whinnying. And the juniors laughed uneasily. They wanted to be heard, and they didn’t. Stephen knew they feared him, and so they should. He worked for their fear as he worked for his freedom.

But the apprentices never said anything. Not anything that would matter, and not to Finn. It didn’t pay large dividends to draw their tears, though he’d done so with every one of them. But Stephen knew a bit of misery is an employee is an exponential thing. He knew numbers in his own way.

Rumblings always ended in some little sadness. He would miss Michelle—one of Dermot’s backups. But—Stephen stood at the fore of his mezzanine, watching below—he would be glad to see Dermot go.

He pondered Annie, but as he did, she passed from under his floor, and he heard her hum bars of ‘La Vie en Rose’. Not hum really, but as he himself did it, slightly opened mouth, a little rasp, do do-do-do do-do-do, and he saw her point her tow as she swept cut hair under the hinged door-flap beneath the stairs. That was his girl.

His smile turned vicious as he looked towards the front and the broad back of the receptionist. And there was Dermot skulking by the appointment book, hovering for a chance—a quarter-half-chance—to glimpse a client’s name and telephone number. He’d given himself away with the coffee deduction. Now he was blatantly trying to collect a client list. Fool. Did he think that Finn wouldn’t notice?

Stephen thought to take a wee stroll by the desk, drop a hello to the receptionist. They had no reason not to be friends—he didn’t depend on her for clients. But she had stepped away by the time he reached the desk, though Dermot lurked still.

Subtle, whispered Stephen. He reached behind Dermot and squeezed the back of his thigh, under his cheek. Subtle.

Dermot turned away as the receptionist neared. It’s impossible, he said, and those were probably the only honest words he’d ever uttered to Stephen.

Dermot moved to the washroom, possibly for a snort, and Stephen noticed Finn stepping back from his client, scowling after him. The Finn turned and looked directly at Stephen. He smiled at Stephen as he hadn’t since Christmas Eve 1979, and that had been eggnog and rum.

Stephen, said the receptionist, sliding into her seat. She bosomed the book and Stephen kissed her cheek.

You can be anything you want to be, he said to her and waved as he left. He knew she liked it when he said that. Made her think all those night-school courses were not for naught.

It had come to him: with Finn’s smile, it had come. He two-stepped to the washroom, and there raked his nails across the door. Saturday morning, tomorrow, he whispered. Saturday, seven o’clock. I’ll scratch yours, you scratch mine.

The door opened without a sound and Dermot reached for Stephen’s belt, would have pulled him inside.

Scratch. I said, scratch.

Dermot looked confused.

Stephen slapped his hand away. There are other things in this world—there are many ways to scratch, said Stephen, his head high.

Dermot’s face smoothed. He even smiled. You’d know all about that.

Friday night the shop was open until ten. Susan came in at six and took over the receptionist’s place at the front. At nine, after the last client had come in the would take the appointment book, close it, and lock it in the shallow drawer.

Just before nine, Stephen brought his client downstairs, seated her in Michelle’s chair, slowly pulled a comb through her fresh perm. She was a nice client, he thought, idly watching her in the mirror. Plain, but nice.

Stephen looked for Michelle. He liked to hear the comments of the stylists. Wonderful curl, Stephen! Lovely colour. Such natural highlights.

Then Michelle was there at his side, looking at him in the mirror. He breathed a waft of Gitane from her—she must have been in the alley with Dermot. Her sly smile told him so even before she spoke. Dermot says we must thank you. Why you’re doing this, I can’t imagine.

How far did her voice carry? Stephen looked for Finn. Was he watching? Had he heard? My pleasure, Stephen answered her.

Finn was calling for an apprentice to see his client to the door, but from the corner of his eye, Stephen watched him and knew he’d seen, he’d heard.

A feeling rushed through him, a feeling of faithlessness and victory.

Michelle was pulling her fingers through new curls. Nice, Stephen, she said.

Yes.

In the senior staff room he was glad for the cold weather. It was satisfying to throw a scarf around his neck, over a shoulder, and don a hat.

The staff room wasn’t large, just enough for a ragged wicker love seat, four old chairs, a fridge, an orange door to an outside stairway, and a green door that led to Finn’s office. Once Stephen had been behind that door. Once, seventeen years ago, when he’d accepted Finn’s job offer. Everyone was in that room once.

Stephen buttoned only the upper buttons on his coat. He liked when the wind down Robson pushed and pulled and made the coattails billow like a great flapping sail. Then he thought about going way somewhere. As he sailed down that sidewalk in the city that was almost his, a vision, like a partner, danced before him.

The green door.

He thought to knock at it, try the knob. He walked faster, almost running, as if to plunge through the vision, and then he was in his own building, in the elevator, home, still with the green door. It was close, so close he could show it to Ms Swanson on his door in her silver frame.

Look, Gloria! Finn’s door. I’m going to go through that door. Sometime next week. Even tomorrow. And what will he say. What will he say.

Stephen was pulling his scarf from his neck as he spoke, getting the long strip of wool caught in his hat as he hurried to unwrap himself.

He mixed his usual vodka-and-pepper trick and placed a glass of wine on the empty bookshelf in front of Gloria. To us, he said, and their glasses clinked before Stephen whirled away. What will he say, what will he say. In a deepened and slow voice, he answered: Stephen, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to let you go. What you have done is intolerable.

He turned to Gloria. Will that be it? He wouldn’t dare say, You’re fired! Or, I must fire you'—no—I mustn’t even think such a thing. But, I’m-going-to-have-to-let-you-go. Oh, pillow talk. Vodka splattered to the floor as he spoke.

Stephen was exhausted. One button still kept his coat with him and he sat in one of the two big white leather chairs in the room. It will be, he murmured over and over, forgetting the woman on the wall. It will be.

He sipped vodka and pepper, and as he raised the glass to his lips, he smelled ammonia, realized he’d almost stopped smelling it. Peroxide and perm solution. Next week his body would be begin to expel the dreadful stuff. It had been with him for so long. He dipped his fingers in the vodka and slowly put each to his mouth.

~

Dermot and Michelle waited for him at the front door next morning, stamping their feet in silly shoes. Do you shop together too? Stephen asked as he put his key to the hole. What about the others? He reached for the main switch.

We’ll get the names for all of us, Michelle said. They were already huddled over the desk, waiting for him to fetch the book from the drawer. He had that key as well.

He unlocked the drawer and moved away, to the far side of the desk, lest Dermot take it into his head to thank him in a form other than words.

Thanks, said Michelle, and Dermot smiled like an evil thing.

Stephen hurried upstairs remembering the words, It will be, and he didn’t sing that Saturday morning, though he hummed snippets of something from his head.

The early apprentice came in and began to fold towels for the day. Stephen shouted for him to make coffee instead, and then sat at his own desk. My last Saturday. Maybe I will never work another Saturday in my life. I will be like all those other people who don’t work Saturday. He opened the drawers, one at a time, and closed them in quick succession. Except the last two stuck. He wiggled them as only he knew how and slammed them shut. Next week.

He checked his watch. Twenty minutes to eight. Finn would come through the staff room door any time between quarter to and the hour itself. Time to keep watch. He went downstairs for the cup of coffee that the apprentice had forgotten to bring him, circled the desk—I’ll be on guard—and marched up the stairs, where he hovered in the staff room, waited for Finn’s footfalls outside the entrance door. He touched the intercom button for the front desk, then moved to the vantage point of his mezzanine as Dermot and Michelle hurried to close the book, shove it back into the drawer, lock it. Deed done.

Did Finn catch Stephen’s wide and satisfied smile? He could only hope. Finn had seen Michelle’s sly look of the night before, Stephen was sure of it.

Now.

Finn couldn’t miss Michelle slipping the key back into the pocket of Stephen’s loose cardigan.

How much more did he need? Finn was a man of subtlety—that was why he’d never had to fire anyone. They did it to themselves.

The shop was filling now. The receptionist took her place at the front, apprentices came in. There was Annie, in black empire-waist. Good. Stephen nodded at her. He lifted his apron from the back of his chair and brought it down over his head, around his neck, tied it in back, and hurried down the stairs to see to his first client. One of Finn’s, she was. One who wanted natural highlights.

Go easy with the crochet hook, Finn said softly as he passed.

So Finn knew the thing that Stephen did with his crochet hook. A think sliver of ice slid into the centre of Stephen’s vertebrae. Where his spinal cord should have been, was the thought that passed through his mind. How could Finn have seen that broken skin, perhaps inflicted more pain wth his comb, how could he have discovered, and not fired Stephen then?

The client went home, shoulders stiffened with tension, and with an unmarked scalp.

It was an odd day, even more so for a Saturday. Employees were gentle with each other, shared bits of their lunches. Michelle gave enough tip money to an apprentice to buy bottles of iced tea for the apprentice as well as herself. Stephen watched from his mezzanine. He had time to watch. Dermot didn’t have any last-minutes for him that day.

Just as misery was an exponential thing, so too was the ease that came with knowing one had not long in an unhappy place.

Stephen looked to the front desk. The chair was empty. The receptionist on a rare excursion to the loo? There’d been times Stephen wondered if she had a bladder.

There was Annie. At the desk, with a hand on the book. Pointing, he could see. To Dermot beside her.

The ice sliver was in place.

He would have lost her anyway, he consoled himself. He would be gone for this place by next week, and he would have lost her anyway. What was the difference if she stayed or if she left? What did it matter to him?

He checked his watch. Four forty-six. Lucille could take his last client. He would ask her. She owed him. He’d never asked her for anything.

She said yes, and he went to the staff room for his coat. There was no one there on that Saturday afternoon and he approached the green door. How he would have liked to lay a dusty footprint into it, or a fine globule of spit. He’d have to wait until next week for his time on the other side of the green.

He did not leave through the upstairs entrance, but rather plunged down the front stairs. He stopped midway to call to Annie, Rinse my highlight cap and don’t forget to powder it. She was too busy attending a client, with two more in chairs waiting for her. She turned wild—even angry—eyes to him as he called. He did not look at her again as he crossed the length of the shop and he made a show of wrapping his scarf around and around his neck and his elbow struck Finn even as he had the bloody piece of wool over his face. He pulled it down, into its place, and pushed his hat on, met Finn’s smile. Finn leaned into him, scissors and comb held to his chest. Finn rolled his eyes in Dermot’s direction and opened his mouth. Stephen tasted his breath, of no lunch and too much talk.

Glad you’re with us, he said.

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