her packages on the floor at the front desk and smiled at the unshaven desk clerk. "Cuscino?" she asked.
He regarded her through half-lidded eyes, then snaked his gaze toward me and sniffed the air unpleasantly. "Si."
She made a gimme gesture with her hands. "Per favore."
Looking put out, the clerk heaved himself off his stool and shambled around the counter toward the lobby. "What's he getting?" I questioned.
"I asked him for a telephone book. We need to find a listing for hair designers and get you to a salon pronto."
I watched the clerk disappear down the hall and heard a creak of hinges as he opened a door. I eyed Jackie skeptically. "Shouldn't 'telephone book' have the word 'telephone' in it someplace?"
" 'Phonebook' is an idiom."
"So?"
"So Italian idioms don't sound anything like what they mean. Just relax. I have the situation under control."
No cause to worry there.
A moment later the desk clerk rounded the corner by the staircase and with a churlish look on his face handed Jackie a bed pillow.
I rolled my eyes. Obviously, not the right idiom. "Tell you what." I dug my key out of the pocket of my shoulder bag. "It looks like you might be a while down here, so I'm going up to my room, and when you're done, give me a holler. Okay?"
Jackie stared at the pillow. "But cuscino is the right word. I know it is."
I trudged up the stairs, brightening a little when I saw the heap of clothing piled in front of my door. All right! Did I know how to get results, or what? I unlocked the door and shoved it open an inch, then hunkered down and scooped my clothes off the floor. My black silk cardigan. My rosebud dress with the ruffled hem. My lemon yellow sundress with the thin shoulder straps. Capri pants. Blouses. Looked like a pretty good haul! Straightening up, I shoved the door wide with my hip and --
"Hi, Em."
"EHHH!" I spun around to find my mother propped up on my bed, surrounded by orderly piles of paper, a modest stack in her lap. "Mom!" I screamed, my heart in my mouth. "What are doing in here?"
"You've been shopping," she announced, marking the clothes in my arms. "But it would have been nice if they'd given you sacks for your purchases. Looks like you bought quite a bit."
"How did you get in here? The door was locked!"
"The light's so bad in my room, Emily. I was about to go cross-eyed reading all these manuscripts. So I went down to the front desk to ask if I could borrow your key to see if the light in your room was any better, and no one was there, so I wiggled your key off its hook and let myself in. And I'm so glad I did. The light really is much better in here. I hope you don't mind."
"You wiggled my key off its hook?" I dumped my clothes onto the bed.
"It's not very hard. All the keys are hanging on the wall right there in the open by the front desk."
It certainly made me feel secure knowing that if the front desk was unmanned, our rooms would be accessible to anyone.
Mom wrinkled her nose. "My goodness. What's that awful smell?"
"Me," I said, dragging myself around to her side of the bed. I sat on the edge and twisted around so she could see the back of my head. "I had a run-in with a Zippo lighter. Other than smelling awful, does it look really bad?"
"Tilt your head back a little, Emily. That's good. Oh my!" I heard a little intake of breath. "Well, to tell you the truth, it burned in a real pretty pattern. Kind of like one of those English crop circles. And the ends of your hair have an attractive crinkle to them now. Much prettier than the split ends you sometimes get. And I bet if you pin your hair up in a French twist, no one will ever notice that semi-bald streak down the center of your head. It's nice the sides are still long. If you could only do something about the smell. Maybe room deodorizer would help."
I patted the back of my hair for the first time, my hand freezing in place when it grazed a patch of roughened bristles where corkscrew curls used to be. "Oh, God."
"It looks far better than the hairdo your grandmother came home with from Ireland."