Jack and Susan in 1953 by Michael McDowell Page B

though it had a flock of its own specialists. Money earned this way bought Susan hats, the prices of which were in reverse proportion to their size—and hats this year were very small indeed. The work kept her atomizer filled with Duchess of York perfume. And once every two weeks, the translations paid for a trip to the hairdresser’s.
    She’d already made an appointment for late Saturday afternoon at Monsieur Marcel’s—a new shop on East Forty-eighth Street—when Rodolfo asked her to accompany him on Saturday night to dinner at the Cuban consulate. Susan had been to the United Nations and had seen diplomats, but she had never sat down to table with a consul. She decided that she would ask Marcel to cut her hair in whatever was the newest fashion, no matter how peculiar it looked.
    She cut her last tour short so that she could get to her appointment on time. The group of fifteen—from the Midwest, mostly—never realized that they had missed two large galleries of Florence and Siena…
    Marcel’s, from the street, consisted of a tiny door and a tiny window with two bewigged wooden heads staring sullenly out—as if the blades they were advertising were guillotines rather than scissors. Directly inside the door was a small reception area occupied by a red-haired receptionist, a young dragon-in-the-making, who was a martinet about tardiness and never let in anyone who hadn’t had an appointment. It was rumored that the dragon was in frantic and useless love with Monsieur Marcel.
    The layout of Marcel’s shop was distinctive; it got bigger as you went farther back. And the place went so far back, that by the time you ever got to see Monsieur Marcel himself you had the feeling you’d already crossed Forty-seventh Street and were burrowing on toward Forty-sixth. First there came two long corridors of changing rooms, where smiling women with cold hands took your coat or your jacket and whatever else you were carrying, gave you a check for them, and then helped you into a large, loose, green smock with large green buttons down the front. (It had been recently reported that these green smocks had now been seen at Palm Beach, as quaint cover-ups for bathing costumes.) The corridors widened into a large room filled with sinks and hair dryers and the sound of rushing water and the thunder of blowing hot air and women talking, talking, talking. A dozen ill-paid female assistants with pruned fingers massaged the scalps of a dozen women in smocks while a dozen more women sat beneath dryers reading about Mamie Eisenhower’s plans for redecorating the White House and other such articles of absorbing interest.
    Then finally, behind absurdly large double doors of oak, was the inner sanctum of Monsieur Marcel himself. A half-dozen tall raised comfortable chairs were arranged in a circle, facing outward—like some sitting-room Stonehenge—and a half-dozen women, staring at themselves in the mirror-lined walls, were all taken care of simultaneously by Monsieur Marcel and a single assistant. (Monsieur Marcel was a tall man and didn’t like to stoop when he was designing. Designing was Monsieur Marcel’s own word for what he did.) Monsieur Marcel wore black trousers, a white shirt, and a black silk tie. His skin was very white, and his hair was black and slick. Monsieur Marcel looked like a black-and-white photograph. Monsieur Marcel’s assistant looked as if he might be a younger, adoring brother, who tried his best to look and act exactly like his elder sibling. The assistant had red cheeks, however, which gave him an air of health, but spoiled the resemblance.
    Susan arrived half an hour before her appointed time. The dragon eyed her suspiciously, checked the appointment book twice, answered the telephone and tried to make it appear that Susan herself was the object of the conversation, and finally allowed Susan to pass through the narrow door behind her desk.
    Susan