Beyond the Bridges A Story by Susan Jennifer Polese

Carmine stands silently beneath a mammoth black and white, chrome-framed photograph of a no-nosed beauty with a blunt cut in the back room of his salon. A pie slice of a building gilded in white wrought iron swirls, Mr. Carmine’s Beauty Palace stands between a pastel-colored dog grooming shop and a dimly lit deli/bookie-joint/pizzeria on a street corner in downtown Yonkers, New York. With yards of crushed velvet, flowing script lettering hand-painted on the double plate-glass doors and layers of gold leaf Mr. Carmine, himself, resides over the first, overstuffed, red velour chair. He sports an expensive, loose fitting khaki jumpsuit, and a pair of Italian, olive-green, eel skin loafers as he begins the day. Hazy sunshine filters through the mauve miniblinds as disconnected images fill his mind: business, past lovers, today. He sighs.  He hears his first customer enter the shop.

 “Where’s my Carmine?” he hears a girl cheerfully ask Donna, the receptionist. 

 “In the back. Have a seat,” replies Donna despondently, chewing on the end of a pencil.

 “It’s time to smile, play the confidant, the advisor—the quintessential hairdresser. It’s so easy to please women,” he decides with one long sip of hot, sweet coffee.

 “I want one thing out of life,” explains Manfred Slomanson to the attractive, young woman sitting next to him on the train. His voice is slow, Southern and gravel. “I want to reach out and grab the future. The past, hell, the past is over. But the future is yet to be—it is becoming.”

She’s silent, studying his face, his clear green eyes and noticing the many copper bracelets in the shape of snakes curling about his wrists; looming, mask-like pendants decorating his slender neck; silver chunks of rings containing real wolves’ eyes dotting his long fingers. His platinum blond hair sits long and slicked back revealing a high tanned forehead leading to a precise nose and a soft, relaxed mouth. She likes his mouth.

 “After all,” he continues comfortable in his seat and with a woman’s attention, “what is life but pure…action?”

They smile together and Manfred can feel his oddness as, once again, nothing but an asset.

He’d like to know this woman, free this woman from the chains of normality and acceptance, but the train has jerked to a stop and he’s just run out of funds. Stepping onto the train station platform he pushes his buckskin knapsack onto his shoulder. The heavy summer air moistens his brow as he squints into the day. 

“Trust me, really, Jenna…can you find the strength to trust me? You’d be much better off with a soft body wave and nice highlights around the face!” Carmine advises Amy, a young patron who recently did the unthinkable; strayed into a different salon. Amy takes a drag off her Kool cigarette, her eyes diverted, ashamed. She bites her lower lip nervously, tosses her head in confusion. He addresses her firmly; he is a guru: “You need something FULL! Something that says, ‘Hey! I’m somebody! I have a SOUL!’”

To Janine, nail and haircare are just tips and a paycheck. She wears this simple fact along with a thick layer of aggravation on her face as she saunters through the salon’s glass doors, twenty-five minutes late for work as a manicurist.

“Hey, where were you and Domenic last night?” asks Donna, her frosted lips set in a smirk which fades as she notices a light bruise above Janine’s left eye. She shifts her weight in her seat.

“We were busy. So, what?” answers Janine, bending over and leaning her slender arms on the gold-dusted reception counter.

Donna lowers her voice and quickly replies, eyebrows arched:

“Ya know, you don’t have to take that.”

“Take what?” asks Janine, wide eyed and agitated.

“The guy’s an ape.”

“At least he pays attention to me. Your Jerry is like he’s in a coma or something. I mean, can the guy even get it up?!” asks Janine with a solid smirk of her own.

“Shit, yea!” laughs Donna running her fingers through her kinky blond hair.

“That’s all that matters!” smiles Janine, bringing her face close to Donna’s feeling relieved that the conversation has lightened. Her bruise pulses steadily and for a moment she closes her eyes hearing the clicking of scissors, smelling the aroma of hair drying and tasting the permanent-wave lotion fertilizing the air.

Carmine looks up from his work shooting Janine a long, sharp look. Her face with its wide-set, dark eyes protectively lined in thick charcoal; her pursed lips caked and then glossed in mauve; and her crinkled, matte-finished nose all say, “What’s with you?” her wrist resting on her hip says “Yea, so?” Her stance, her perfume, her tattoo of three black roses on her upper, left thigh each scream that she could do whatever she wants whenever she wants. Secure with this, if nothing else, she responds, “How ya doin’, Carm?” flinging her overly stuffed purse over her shoulder.

“Not for nothing, but your first appointment is in less than fifteen minutes.”

She laughs, coughingly, collapsing into a light blue manicurist’s chair. 

“Then I’m early, huh?” She lights a cigarette and inhales deeply.

She lays sprawled on the chair smoking, thinking and fiddling with the top button of her jacket. Her outfit serves as a second layer of skin, not because of its tightness, but because it is a part of her beginning at her thin ankles which are supported by high, white leather pumps with spurs on both heels each simultaneously giving birth to a cascade of silver tassels which stop, teasingly, just short of hitting the floor. Her shapely legs are opaqued in white and dotted in black. Her jewelry is silver, her leotard black, topped by a rhinestone studded bolero jacked and a black felt cowboy hat hanging around her neck by a string, dangling down to the center of her back. Donna glances at her friend, envying her outrageous sense of style and wishing her own waist was as thin.

Manfred bounds down the train station platform with his hands in the tight pockets of his worn jeans gazing at the large Broadway play posters set in a row. Filthy and littered with graffiti, he considers them a pleasant gateway into this city. He realizes it has been years since he’s been to a Broadway show and he can barely recall which one. Real life is dripping with drama, whether real or imagined, it is infinitely more interesting than make-believe, he muses to himself. Reaching the end of the platform, Manfred drops his knapsack with a sudden thud, puts his hand on his hips and scans the area for a bar. A shot is needed to welcome him to this town and the people he will eventually meet. They were lucky, these people, these nameless, faceless people because they will change having met him. Grinning at this truth, Manfred’s eyes rest across the busy street on Carmine’s Beauty Palace. Intently reading the door he thinks that this place is not beautiful, this place is not a palace. It is, however, a place that he must see. 

Manfred paces through the double doors with a tooth-filled smile that tells anything and everything about him but what Donna notices first and foremost is that his grin shouts that he is handsome, and that is that.

“H-how may I help you?” inquires Donna dreamily watching his face closely for every nuance of his response.

 “Well, first of all I have to use your bathroom. If I may. I don’t want to be pushy, but I’ve been on a train for hours and the bathroom was down. Uh, broken. Darndest thing!”

Delighted with his accent, his cheek bones, his boyish charm, even the mere fact that he needs to use the toilet, Donna shows him to the tiny bathroom behind a red crepe curtain. Returning to her reception desk, she suddenly feels fat and unattractive. She frowns. Carmine calls her twice before she hears him.

“What?!” she moans looking down.

“Who was that guy” he asks turning from his cut and blow-dry.

“Hot stuff, hah?”

“N-n-n-! But wad’ he want? Just to use the bathroom?”

“That’s it, Carm. What’s he gonna want?!…you?!”

Manfred appears from behind the curtain, his face freshly washed and buffed with curiosity. A solid sense of purpose fills him as he breathes a sharp breath deciding that his help is needed here. Still smiling, he drops his knapsack by the desk embarrassed that he hasn’t introduced himself.

“Manfred Slomanson, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” he offers, extending his hand to Donna. She blushes.

“I’m Donna Zapone and this is Mr. Carmine, the owner of the shop,” she explains, her eyes unmoving.

“You have a heavenly accent,” exclaims Carmine, “Where are you from? The South?”

“South Carolina actually…”

Manfred elaborates fully on where he is from and where he has been, but Carmine hears only the lyrical rhythm of his accent. His enthusiasm, his innocence, everything about him reminds Carmine of every one of his past lovers and although it is an odd and painful reminder, he finds himself not wanting Manfred to stop talking and especially not wanting him to leave. Overhearing the animated conversation, Janine sashays to the front of the shop. Her clothes. Her makeup. Her attitude. Never in all his travels has Manfred seen such a thoroughly tortured person. He wants to help her. He wants to touch her. He extends his hand.

“My name is Manfred Slomanson.”

As Janine takes his hand, Carmine’s voice recedes and Donna all but disappears. Janine tilts her head looking into his eyes, feeling as if she’s falling. Of one thing she is certain, this is not love.

Susan Jennifer Polese

Image by andy Jimenez from Pixabay – Hairdressing scissors and comb on a black background.