The woman he glimpsed through the window also had great hair, much better than her fanny, actually, but her hair didn’t make him think of Rosie. Rosie was what Norman’s mother had always called a “brownette, ” and she rarely took any pains with her hair (given its lackluster mousehide color, Norman didn’t blame her). Pulling it back in a ponytail and securing it with a rubber band was her usual way of wearing it; if they were going out to dinner or a movie, she might thread it through one of those elastic scrunch things they sold in the drugstore.
The woman upon whom Norman’s gaze touched briefly when he looked into the Hot Pot was not a brownette but a slim-hipped blonde, and her hair was not in a ponytail or a scrunch. It hung down to the middle of her back in a carefully made plait.
5
Perhaps the best thing to happen all day, even better than Rhoda’s stunning news that she might be worth a thousand dollars a week to Robbie Lefferts, was the look on Pam Haverford’s face when Rosie turned away from the Hot Pot cash register with her fresh cup of tea. At first Pam’s eyes slid over her with absolutely no recognition at all ... and then they snapped back, widening as they did so. Pam started to grin and then actually shrieked, probably pushing at least half a dozen pacemakers in the ferny little room dangerously close to overload.
“Rosie? Is that you? Oh ... my ... God!”
“It’s me,” Rosie said, laughing and blushing. She was aware that people were turning to look at them, and discovered—wonder of wonders—that she did not exactly mind.
They took their tea to their old table by the window, and Rosie even allowed Pam to talk her into another pastry, although she had lost fifteen pounds since coming to the city and had no intention of putting it back on if she could help it.
Pam kept telling her that she couldn’t believe it, simply couldn’t beleeeve it, a remark Rosie might have been tempted to chalk up to flattery, except for the way Pam’s eyes kept moving from her face to her hair, as if she was trying to get the truth of it straight in her mind.
“It makes you look five years younger,” she said. “Hell, Rosie, it makes you look like jailbait!”
“For fifty dollars, it ought to make me look like Marilyn Monroe,” Rosie replied, smiling ... but since her talk with Rhoda, she felt a lot easier in her mind about the amount she’d spent on her hair.
“Where did you—” Pam began, then stopped. “It’s the picture you bought, isn’t it? You had your hair done the same as the woman in the picture.”
Rosie thought she would blush at this, but no blush came. She simply nodded. “I loved that style, so I thought I’d try it.” She hesitated, then added: “As for changing the color, I still can’t believe I did it. It’s the first time in my whole life that I’ve changed the color of my hair.”
“The first—! I don’t believe it!”
“It’s true.”
Pam leaned across the table, and when she spoke it was in a throaty, conspiratorial whisper: “It’s happened, hasn’t it?”
“What are you talking about? What’s happened?”
“You’ve met someone interesting!”
Rosie opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again without the slightest idea of what she intended to say. It turned out to be nothing; what came out instead of words was laughter. She laughed until she cried, and before she was done, Pam had joined in.
6
Rosie didn’t need her key to open the street door at 897 Trenton Street—that one was left unlocked until eight or so on weeknights-but she needed the small one to open her mailbox (R. McCLENDON taped to the front of it, boldly asserting that she belonged here, yes she did), which was empty except for a Wal-Mart circular. As she started up the stairs to the second floor, she shook out another key. This one opened the door to her room, and except for the building super, she had the only one. Like the mailbox, it was hers. Her feet were tired-she had walked the entire three miles from downtown, feeling too restless and too happy to sit on a bus, also wanting more time than a bus would give her to think and dream. She was hungry in spite of two Hot Pot pastries, but her stomach’s low growling added