Baltimore Noir - Laura Lippman [53]
“Now Jordan, I know this is way more than you’re used to handling,” he had told me at our last planning session, picking pieces of lint from the oversize sweater he wore. These Bill Cosby throwbacks were Miles’s trademark, an odd choice given the fact that his salons were so ultra-chic. The joke around town was that he did it to reinforce the image that he was straight because no gay man would ever allow himself to be seen looking so unstylish. Maybe so, but the things were dust and dirt catchers, picking up more stuff than a Swiffer.
“I’m on top of it,” I said. “I’ve got Cathy Hughes’s local radio stations on board and you’re going to be on Larry Young’s talk show on 1010.”
“You’re doing fine locally.” Pick, pick, pick—the sweater and me were both getting raked over. “But we have to pull this thing off with class. So no ghetto fashion shows or tacky discos. Think high-end. See if you can get the D.C. stations and maybe Philly to cover this. You have to reach beyond your usual comfort level.”
Just who did he think he was talking to, I seethed. Whose marketing plan had landed us Hair Dynasty? I may have been only twenty-three, but it was my brainstorm to send crab cakes, Utz potato chips, and gallons of “half-and-half” to the organizers. Half-and-half is a local concoction, a mix of iced tea and lemonade, and it is pure ambrosia. I was positive that it had sealed the deal.
Half-and-half is a good analogy for hair shows—you didn’t have to grow up in a black neighborhood to get it, but it sure helped. Black hair care is big time, a billion-dollar-ayear business these days. But a hair show is more three-ring circus than sedate gathering of professionals, with every stylist scheming to steal the show. Demure chignons and sleek pageboy cuts were not the norm at Hair Dynasty. You’d be more likely to see a woman with the Statue of Liberty rising from her hairline, woven from suitably patriotic red, white, and blue hairpieces. Or a model strutting the catwalk in an haute couture “hair dress” that started at her temples, crisscrossed around her neck, and extended down her body to form a sweeping floor-length gown. The overall effect made the wearer look like a slightly less hairy version of Cousin Itt.
Wefts of hair were sewn or glued in, blow-dried, sprayed, teased, and pinned. There were perms and curls, braids and weaves, and more dyed-color combinations than they have at Sherwin-Williams. People still talked about the year a Chicago stylist sent out a model with a weave designed to look like a satellite dish and a television. The thing actually worked and got pretty good reception. We never figured out how he pulled it off without showing any wires or electrocuting the girl who had to balance it.
And now the whole circus had come to Baltimore, whose motto could be: A Small Town With Big Hair. We take hair very seriously in my hometown. I’d taken the credit for getting the show here and now I had to take responsibility for making it a success. It was all going according to plan—until Miles’s body was discovered.
It was late morning on the first day of the convention and I felt I looked like quite the young professional in my cream-colored linen suit. Sure, almost everyone else would be in basic black, the calling card of the beauty business, but I wasn’t working any heads that day so I thought I could afford to dress up. Besides, as publicity chair, I needed to be camera-ready. Just because I was barely 5’4” and about wenty pounds overweight didn’t mean I couldn’t be fly.
I walked the exhibition floor with pride, enjoying the happy buzz of a convention in full swing—flamboyant demonstrations of new styling techniques, salespeople hawking the latest shampoos and conditioners absolutely guaranteed