David had come over and was watching Monsieur Jean stir a large glassful of the shampoo with a wooden spoon. "I have the shampoos made up with castile soap," the coiffeur said. "It's warm. Please come over here to the basin. Sit forward," he said to Catherine, "and put this cloth across your forehead."
"But it isn't even really a boy's haircut," Catherine said. "I wanted it the way we planned. Everything's going wrong.
"It couldn't be more a boy's haircut. You must believe me.
He was lathering her head now with the foamy thick shampoo with the acrid odor.
When her head had been shampooed and rinsed again and again it looked to David as though it had no color and the water
tunnelled through it showing only a wet paleness. The coiffeur put a towel over it and rubbed it softly. He was very sure about
it.
"Don't be desperate, Madame," he said. "Why would I do anything against your beauty?"
"I am desperate and there isn't any beauty."
He dried her head gently and then kept the towel over her head and brought a hand blower and began to play it through her hair as he combed it forward.
"Now watch," he said.
As the air drove through her hair it was turning from damp drab to a silvery northern shining fairness. As the wind of the blower moved through it they watched it change.
"You shouldn't have despaired," Monsieur Jean said, not saying Madame and then remembering. "Madame wanted it fair?"
"It's better than the pearls," she said. "You're a great man and I was terrible."
Then he rubbed his hands together with something from a jar. "I'll just touch it with this," he said. He smiled at Catherine very happily and passed his hands lightly over her head.
Catherine stood up and looked at herself very seriously in the mirror. Her face had never been so dark and her hair was like the bark of a young white birch tree.
"I like it so much," she said. "Too much."
She looked in the mirror as though she had never seen the girl she was looking at.
"Now we must do Monsieur," the coiffeur said. "Does Monsieur wish the cut? It's very conservative but it's also sportif."
"The cut," David said. "I don't think I've had a haircut in a month."
"Please make it the same as mine," Catherine said.
"But shorter," David said.
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"No. Please just the same.
When it was cut David stood up and ran his hand over his head. It felt cool and comfortable.
"Aren't you going to let him lighten it?"
"No. We've had enough miracles for one day."
"Just a little?"
David looked at Catherine and then at his own face in the mirror. His was as brown as hers and it was her haircut.
"You really want it that much?"
"Yes I do, David. Truly. Just to try it a little bit. Please."
He looked once more in the mirror and walked over then and sat down. The coiffeur looked at Catherine.
"Go ahead and do it," she said.
Chapter Ten
THE PATRON WAS SITTING at one of his tables on the terrace of the long house with a bottle of wine, a glass and an empty coffee cup reading the Eclaireur de Nice when the blue car came up in a rush on the gravel and Catherine and David got out and caine walking down the flagstones to the terrace. He had not expected them back so soon and he was nearly asleep but he stood up and said the first thing that came in his head as they were opposite him.
"Madame et Monsieur ont fait decolorer les cheveux. C'est bien."
"Merci Monsieur. On le fait toujours dans le mois d'aout."
"C'est bien. C'est tres bien."
'That's nice," said Catherine to David. "We're good clients. What the good client does is tres bien. You're tres bien. My God you are."
In their room a good sailing breeze was blowing in from the sea and the room was cold.
"I love that blue shirt," David said. "Stand there like that in it.
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"It's the color of the car," she said. "Would it look nicer with out a skirt?"
"Everything on you looks nicer without a skirt," he said. "I'm going out and see that old goat and be an even better client."
He came back with a bucket of ice and a bottle of the champagne that the proprietor had ordered for them and that they had drunk so seldom and he held two glasses on a small tray in his other hand.
"This ought to be fair warning for them," he said.
"We didn't need it," Catherine said.
"We can just try it. It won't take fifteen minutes to cool."
"Don't tease. Please come to bed and let me see you and feel you.
She was taking his shirt up over his head and he stood up and helped her.
After she was asleep David got up and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. He picked up a brush and brushed his hair. There was no other way to brush it but the way it had been cut. It would disarrange and muss but it had to fall that way and the color was the same as Catherine's. He went to the door and looked at her on the bed. Then he came back and picked up her big hand mirror.
"So that's how it is," he said to himself. "You've done that to your hair and had it cut the same as your girl's and how do you feel?" He asked the mirror. "How do you feel? Say it.
"You like it," he said.
He looked at the mirror and it was someone else he saw but it was less strange now.
"All right. You like it," he said. "Now go through with the rest of it whatever it is and don't ever say anyone tempted you or that anyone bitched you."
He looked at the face that was no longer strange to him at all but was his face now and said, "You like it. Remember that. Keep that straight. You know exactly how you look now and how you are.
Of course he did not know exactly how he was. But he made an effort aided by what he had seen in the mirror.
They ate dinner on the terrace in front of the long house that night and were very excited and quiet and enjoyed looking at each other in the shaded light on the table. After dinner Catherine said to the boy who had brought their coffee, "Find the pail for the champagne in our room and ice a new bottle please."
"Do we want another?" David asked.
"I think so. Don't you?"
"Sure."
"You don't have to."
"Do you want a fine?"
"No. I'd rather drink the wine. Do you have to work tomorrow?"
"We'll see.
"Please work if you feel like it."
"And tonight?"
"We'll see about tonight. It's been such an arduous day."
In the night it was very dark and the wind had risen and they could hear it in the pines.
"David?"
"Yes."
"How are you girl?"
"I'm fine."
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"Let me feel your hair girl. Who cut it? Was it Jean? It's cut so full and has so much body and it's the same as mine. Let me kiss you girl. Oh you have lovely lips. Shut your eyes girl."
He did not shut his eyes but it was dark in the room and out side the wind was high in the trees.
"You know it isn't so easy to be a girl if you're really one. If you really feel things."
"I know."
"Nobody knows. I tell you so when you're my girl. It's not that you're insatiable. I'm satiable so easily. It's just some feel and others don't. People lie about it I think. But it s so nice just to feel and hold you. I'm so happy. Just be my girl and love me the way I love you. Love me more. The way you can now. You now. Yes you. Please you."
They were dropping down the slope toward Cannes and the wind was heavy as they came onto the plain and skirted the deserted beaches, the tall grass bending and flattening as they crossed the bridge over the river and picked up speed on the last stretch of fast road before the town. David found the bottle, which was cold and wrapped in a towel, and took a long drink and felt the car leave the work behind and move away and up the small rise the black road was making. He had not worked this morning and now when she had driven them through the town and back into the country, he uncorked the bottle and drank again and offered it to her.
"I don't need it," Catherine said. "I feel too good."
"Very well."
They passed Golfe-Juan with the good bistro and the small open bar and then were through the pine woods and moving along the raw yellow beach of Juan-les-Pins. They crossed the small
peninsula on the fast black road and passed through Antibes driving beside the railway and then out through the town and beyond the port and the square tower of the old defenses and came out again into open country. "It never lasts," she said. "I always eat that stretch too fast."
They stopped and ate lunch in the lee of an old stone wall that was part of the ruin of some building hard by the side of a clear stream that came out of the mountains and crossed the wild plain on its way to the sea. The wind came hard out of a funnel in the mountains. They had spread a blanket on the ground and they sat close together against the wall and looked out across the waste country to the sea that was flat and scoured by the wind.
"It wasn't much of a place to come to," Catherine said. "I don't know what I thought it would be like."
They stood up and looked up at the hills with their poised villages and the gray and purple mountains behind. The wind whipped in their hair and Catherine pointed out a road that she had once driven into the high country.
"We could have gone somewhere up in there," she said. "But it's so closed in and picturesque. I hate those hanging villages."
"This is a good place," David said. "It's a fine stream and we couldn't have a better wall."
"You're being nice. You don't have to be."
"It's a good lee and I like the place. We'll turn our back on all the picturesque."
They ate stuffed eggs, roast chicken, pickles, fresh long bread that they broke in pieces and spread Sovora mustard on and they drank rose.
"Do you feel good now?" Catherine asked.
"Sure."
"And you haven't felt bad?"
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"Not even about anything I said?"
David took a drink of the wine and said, "No. I haven't thought about it."
She stood up and looked into the wind so that it blew her sweater against her breasts and whipped her hair and then she looked down at him with her black brown face and smiled. She turned around then and looked out toward the sea that was flattened and wrinkled by the wind.
"Let's go get the papers in Cannes and read them in the cafe," she said.
"You want to show off."
"Why shouldn't I? It's the first time we've been out together. Do you mind if we do?"
"NC), Devil. Why would I?"
"I didn't want to if you didn't."
"You said you wanted to."
"I want to do what you want. I can't be more compliant than that can I?"
"Nobody wants you to be compliant."
"Can we stop it? All I wanted to be was good today. Why spoil everything?"
"Let's clean up here and go.
"Where?"
"Anywhere. The god damn cafe."
They bought the papers in Cannes and a new French Vogue, the Chasseur Francais and the Miroir des Sports and sat at a table in front of the cafe out of the wind and read and had their drinks and were friends again. David drank Haig pinch bottle and Perrier and Catherine had Armagnac and Perrier.
Two girls who had driven up and parked on the street came over to the cafe and sat down and ordered a Chambery Cassis and a fine a l'eais. It was the beauty of the two who took the brandy and soda.
"Who are those two?" Catherine said. "Do you know?"
"I've never seen them."
"I have. They must live around here somewhere. I saw them in Nice."
"The one girl's handsome," David said. "She has fine legs too."
'They're sisters," Catherine said. "They're both nice looking really."
"But the one's a beauty. They're not Americans."
The two girls were arguing and Catherine said to David, "It's a big row, I think."
"How did you know they were sisters?"
"I thought they were in Nice. Now I'm not sure. The car has Swiss plates."
"It's an old Isotta."
"Should we wait and see what happens? We haven't seen any drama for a long time."
"I think it's just a big Italian row.
"It must be getting serious because it's quieter."
"It will flare up. The one is a damned handsome girl."
"Yes, she is. And here she comes over.
David stood up.
"I'm sorry," the girl said in English. "Please forgive me. Please sit down," she said to David.
'Will you sit down?" Catherine asked.
"I shouldn't. My friend is furious with me. But I told her you would understand. You will forgive me?"
"Should we forgive her?" Catherine said to David.
"Let's forgive her."
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"I knew you would understand," the girl said. "It's only to tell me where you had your hair cut." She blushed. "Or is it like copying a dress? My friend said it was more offensive."
"I'll write it down for you," Catherine said.
"I'm very ashamed," the girl said. "You're not offended?"
"Of course not," Catherine said. "Would you have a drink with us?"
"I shouldn't. May I ask my friend?"
She went back to her table for a moment and there was a short and vicious low-pitched exchange.
"My friend regrets very much but she cannot come over," the girl said. "But I hope we will meet again. You have been so very kind."
"How about that?" Catherine said when the girl had gone back to her friend. "For on a windy day."
