“Really? That’s a shame. Your eyes would look killer in something purple. Oo, that’s what I’ll do then. You can have your black, and I’ll just go super artsy with your shadow.” I give a little hop and clap twice, and she lifts an overplucked brow at me. I point at her. “We had a deal. Do not even acknowledge the dorky shit that happens when I’m doing makeup.”
“Just make me look as good as you made that ho, and I won’t say shit.” She pulls her hair back in a headband and flaps over her shoulder with her long nails. “That’s my makeup. Don’t know if I have purple or not, but you do you, boo.”
She does have purple. It’s in a pallet at the bottom of her box with an assortment of other bright colors I use to accent the look. I create her some amazing brows to frame her eyes, and I go high-shine gloss on her lips. When I spin her around for her to see, her expression loses all sense of badass attitude, and she turns full-on girly excitement. “Damn, Gina! Heather, can we keep her? Look at this shit!” She turns her head this way and that, batting her long falsies and pursing her lips, and I laugh and give another little hop.
“You both look amaaazing! And the perfect canvases for me. I can’t wait to see what all I can create for you every night,” I say, and the girls’ eyes meet in the mirror for a moment, seeming to have a silent conversation between them that I hope is saying they can’t wait either, but I don’t have time to really figure it out, because a group of women who are in a heated conversation come through the door.
“They found her—”
“Ashley!” Heather calls out, cutting into their discussion, and the woman who was talking turns toward us, her eyes then meeting mine. “Our new makeup artist, Astrid,” she introduces.
“I’ll tell you later,” Ashley tells the group behind her, and she strolls up to where Heather is still sitting in her chair while Tracy gets up and walks over to the rack and starts sifting through the dresses.
Ashley leans close to Heather’s face, and Heather tilts her head from side to side, showing off her makeup in different angles. “Daaang,” she drawls. “Looking good, girl. Can I be next?” She stands up straight and turns to look at me.
I smile wide with all my teeth, unable to hide the pride I feel that these women are impressed with my abilities. “By all means,” I say, gesturing toward the row of chairs, and she sets her purse down in the station to the right of Heather and takes a seat.
I spend the next three hours doing the makeup of eighteen girls, including Crystal, able to fit in more than I thought because a lot of them could at least get their foundation and blush on, so I only had to do their eyes, lips, and a little contouring. Several had eyelash extensions, so I didn’t need to do falsies for them, and more than a few had their eyebrows dermabladed, saving me even more time. But just so Neil wouldn’t come storming inside demanding to know where his woman was, I sent him a text letting him know everything was going great but taking a little more time than I thought. He replied back saying he was parked and would wait for however long I needed.
When all the girls were finished—half of which had gone “out on the floor” when the clock struck eight—it was needless to say they were now Team Astrid. They said my work was better than any artists’ who had come through here—which made me wonder how many had before me.
I grab my purse and make my way to the foyer, keeping my eyes down, my face hot at the first glimpse of nipples in the big room across the way. I hurry to the window I’d seen earlier and hand the intimidating man behind the glass a piece of paper each girl signed her name to after Crystal got there a little after six thirty. He tallies up the eighteen names then counts out seven crisp hundred-dollar bills and a twenty and hands it to me like it’s my lunch money for the day, not even blinking at the fact that I made over seven hundred bucks in just three hours.