thirty, a mother of the bride, when the receptionist, Brandi, stands discreetly behind Amy’s shoulder and whispers, “JP is on the phone. He says it’s urgent.”
Amy turns a fraction of an inch toward Brandi. “On the phone here? He called the salon?”
“He says he’s been trying your cell.”
“Tell him I’m busy, please. I’ll call when I take a break for lunch.” Her lunch today will be a cheddar scone from Born and Bread stuffed into her mouth in about ten minutes. Amy has been fighting to get rid of fifteen extra pounds since she moved in with JP, and though she’s tried bringing her own salad in a Tupperware for lunch, she keeps losing the battle of wills against the carbs and fat—the bagel boards, the bakery boxes, the cake because it’s always someone’s birthday—that are constantly under her nose here at the salon.
“He sounded…I really think you’d better…”
Amy shakes her head. She does not have time to talk to JP; right now, she feels what Santa Claus must feel on Christmas Eve. The client in Amy’s chair, Mrs. Scaliti, is already upset because Amy started their interaction by calling her by her first name. Now she’s giving Amy a baleful stare while her hair hangs in damp strands around her face. She needs to be at St. Paul’s Episcopal by noon.
“I’ll call him when I take a break for lunch,” Amy repeats, and Brandi throws her hands up.
There isn’t a break, not even a minute to think or sit down. Amy’s lower back starts talking to her and she needs to pee. The flower girl is allergic to the lilies of the valley that Amy weaves into her French braid crown; the girl’s neck splotches with hives. Amy tosses the flowers and sends the girl’s mother to Dan’s Pharmacy to buy Benadryl.
She’s standing at the sinks washing the hair of a bridesmaid for the big Wauwinet hotel wedding—rumor has it, the whole do cost well over a million bucks—when her best friend at the salon, Lorna (a recent arrival from Ireland), says, “God bless you, Pigeon, I can’t believe you’re still here.”
Amy laughs. “Where else would I be?”
“You haven’t heard, then? Did JP not ring you?”
“He called, yes, but I haven’t spoken to him.” Amy makes an ill-advised quarter turn toward Lorna and accidentally sprays the bridesmaid in the face as she’s rinsing; the girl sputters. She’s very nice about it, but Amy is flustered. She doesn’t have time for gossip! “Whatever it is can wait.”
“Oh, Pigeon,” Lorna says in the maternal voice she normally reserves for her Weimaraner, Cupid. “Promise me you’ll ring him back as soon as you’re finished here. Promise me.”
“Yes, yes, I’ll try, I promise I’ll try,” Amy says. She leads the bridesmaid—her name sifted in with the Chelseas and Madisons that Amy has seen already today—to her chair. She catches Brandi watching her. Jarred, working at the next chair, glances over at her. And Amy sees Molly the manicurist staring at her through the interior glass door of the nail sanctuary. Out of the blue, a woman two chairs down who is being blown out by Toni gasps and says, “Vivian Howe? The writer?”
Amy’s good mood is about to be torpedoed right into the toilet. She doesn’t want to hear about Vivi today. Plenty of times women come in here babbling about how it was reading The Dune Daughters that inspired them to visit Nantucket in the first place.
Just yesterday, a woman asked Amy if Vivi ever came into the salon to get her hair done. Amy had nearly answered, No, she does it herself at home with clippers. Instead she said, “She used to a long time ago but she switched to Darya’s downtown.” Amy didn’t add that Vivi stopped patronizing RJ Miller the same week that Amy started working as a stylist there.
Amy knew JP was married when she’d met him ten years earlier. That was back when JP was running a wineshop called the Cork out of the cottage on Old South Wharf that now houses the Cone. Amy had been unable to find a job when she graduated from Auburn and so she’d decided to spend a summer on Nantucket, a place she had become obsessed with after watching umpteen episodes of Wings. The second Amy stepped off the ferry, she saw JP’s Help Wanted sign. She marched right into the shop and introduced herself to JP. He was tall with thick dark hair, arresting green eyes, and a dimple