it, she hesitated before saying, “That’s right. I’ll tell everyone what you guys did to me. Without my permission, I might add. I mean, come on. Monitoring police bands and hospital radios? And scooping up the first almost-dead person you find and infecting her with God-knows-what? Who does that?”
“We do,” he said. “Check our charter.”
“I’ll—I’ll call a press conference and—and you’ll be toast.” As if she had the slightest idea how to call a press conference. Maybe she’d just take a jaunt down to the Star Tribune offices and do a demonstration for them. Then they would call the press conference. Right? Right.
The Boss was laughing at her. His eyebrows had smoothed out, but his face was still an alarming shade of brick. “Tell!” he gasped, waving at her. “Tell!”
“Excuse me?”
“Tell whomever you want. Tell Stacy. Tell your mailman. Tell your landlord. Tell the president, that fucking moron. We don’t care.”
“Well, why don’t you?” she asked, nettled.
“Caitlyn, dear child—”
“Do not call me that.”
“—what would they do? Even if they believed you? Do you think Stacy would tell the world even if she had the faintest idea how? Do you think your mailman gives a ripe shit? I’ve got a little test for you—tonight, when you’re out having drinks or premarital sex or whatever it is you do to pass the time, yell to the bar that you’re the product of a secret government experiment. See what happens.”
“But…” She was totally floored. She had figured the Boss was evil—he wore too much brown—but she never would have guessed he was suicidally careless. “But in the movies, blowing your cover, that’s always a huge disaster. It—”
“Sunshine, do you see a movie set anywhere?”
“Do not—”
“This is real life, and let me tell you something about your fellow homo dumbasses: they’re too wrapped up in their own problems to give a fuck about anything that may or may not have happened to you.”
“I’m sure that’s not right,” she said stiffly.
The Boss shrugged.
She stood abruptly, resisted the urge to grab him by the ears and pound his head into the desk for ten, maybe twenty minutes, and walked to the doorway.
“Don’t screw up next time!” he called after her.
“Blow me next time,” she muttered.
She thought she heard laughter when she headed into the stairwell, but though she strained, she couldn’t make it out. She decided it was her imagination.
Chapter 9
As she stepped into Mag, she overheard some of her regulars playing her all-time favorite, Mother-in-law Jeopardy. She grinned as she hung her coat in the back, then hurried over to her chair, where Jenny had already sent her first customer of the afternoon.
“I’ll take ‘you did not just say that to me’ for two hundred, Alex,” her client, Lydia, was saying, dropping her purse on the floor and waving to Caitlyn.
“The answer is ‘Where your son will spend eternity.’”
“The question is ‘What is hell,’” Lydia replied promptly, “because he doesn’t go to Sunday school.”
“Ding-ding-ding-ding!” Caro, Robbie, and Barb all clapped. Robbie, the game-show host, added, “Very good, Lydia, and that puts you in the lead.”
Caitlyn smirked and started combing out Mag’s running Mother-in-law Jeopardy champ. Squeaky clean, as usual. Lydia had a thing about never coming to the salon with hair that needed to be washed. Her mom had done heads back in the day and would have skinned her alive if she’d shown up at a salon with greasy hair.
“Lo, Caitlyn. Alex, I’ll take ‘things that caused my mother-in-law to freak out for no reason,’ for four hundred.”
“The question is ‘What your son had for breakfast one day.’”
“Um…what is cereal without milk?”
“Ennnnnnhhhhh! I’m sorry, Lydia. Barb?”
“What is toast?”
“Ding-ding-ding! Good job, Barb. And the board goes to—ouch, Dara, not so hard.”
“Sorry,” Dara replied, easing up with the comb.
“I’ll take ‘you told your mother I’d do what?’ for six hundred, Alex.”
“Something you swore you’d never do.”
“What is host Easter?”
“That is correct, Barb!”
“You guys,” Caitlyn said, shaking her head. “C’mon, married life can’t be that bad.”
“Talk to us when you’re married,” Barb said. “Love the highlights, by the way.”
“Thanks.”
“Why don’t you keep them for a while?”
Caitlyn blinked, confused. “Because I don’t know what tomorrow will bring?” she guessed as if it were a riddle.
“You have ADD hair,” Robbie pointed out. She was younger than Caitlyn, a PhD candidate at the U of M. A nerd who cared about her appearance…a rare and wonderful thing. “I’m here every six weeks, and you never have the same hair color twice in a row.”
“I try to match my hair,” she explained, “to what the situation demands.”
“Medical boards,” Robbie said.
“Dark brown with reddish gold highlights, wire-rim glasses.”
“But you don’t wear glasses.”
“The lenses,” she explained, snipping Lydia’s bangs, “are clear.”
“Dinner at the White House.”
“Dark blond hair, red lipstick.”
“Uh…job interview.”
“Brown hair, bangs, minimal makeup.”
“Class reunion.”
“Which one?”
“Uh…tenth.”
“Bright red hair, lots of makeup.”
“But, Caitlyn,” Lydia said, “isn’t your natural hair color that gorgeous white blond? Marilyn Monroe blond?”
“Yes.”
