Three Days in June

by Anne Tyler

It was a tiny salon. One chair. No wonder I’d never noticed it before. And not a person to be seen. “Hello?” I called. Footsteps approached from the rear of the shop, and out came a youngish woman with very brightly dyed pink hair that hung to her shoulder on one side but was slashed off above her ear on the other side. “Oh,” I said. Then I said, “I don’t actually have an appointment…” I was backing toward the door as I spoke. “Maybe I’ll phone later and—” “That’s okay; it so happens I’m free right now,” the woman said. “What did you want done?” “Um, some kind of…um, fluffing? For my daughter’s wedding? But I really—” “I can do that!” she said. “When’s she getting married?” “Tomorrow. Plus today there’s a rehearsal dinner.” “Oh, cool! Have a seat,” the woman said. She waved toward the chair, and I got into it. It had been years since I’d been to a beauty parlor, but I seemed to remember that first there’d been a sort of settling-in process where they took my purse and stashed it someplace close at hand. Not here, though. I sat erect with my purse standing upright on my knees, and I felt more like an applicant than a customer. Meanwhile, the woman was circling me. She picked up one strand of my hair and then let it drop, as if it hadn’t quite passed inspection. “What do you think: a little trim?” she asked me. “No!” I said. Not only had Max implied that my hair was too short as it was (jaw level, more or less), but also I worried that this woman might chop it off asymmetric...