Chapter 12: Payday
He came in at four o'clock on a Friday, in his porter uniform, with his cap in his hand.
Tessa saw him through the glass before the bell chimed. George stood a moment on the sidewalk, straightening his jacket with the care of a man arriving at a wedding, and then he pushed open the door of Velour like any other customer and waited, patient and unhurried, by the marble desk.
Rosa, passing with a stack of towels, stopped. "Mr. Alden. You came back."
"I gave my word, Miss Jimenez. A man who cannot keep a small promise has no business making large ones."
"Can I get you some water?"
"You are kind. Kindness offered quickly is kindness twice."
Regina looked up. Her expression performed several small journeys and arrived at contempt.
"Oh," she said. "It is you. We are fully booked."
"I am not here for a service," George said. "I am here to settle my account."
He took an envelope from his pocket and laid it on the marble with both hands, the way you set down something that matters. "Two weeks ago I received a haircut in this salon. I paid one dollar and twenty-five cents and gave my word that the balance would come from my first paycheck. My first paycheck came yesterday. The balance is in the envelope. Fifty-eight dollars and seventy-five cents, which makes the full price of the cut."
The salon had gone very quiet. Blair stopped mid-sentence at her station. Chase turned around with his scissors open in his hand.
Regina did not touch the envelope. "You cannot be serious."
"I am entirely serious. A debt is a debt, whether it is owed to a bank or a barber."
"This is a luxury salon, not a soup kitchen till. We do not accept," and she looked at the envelope the way one looks at something found on a shoe, "payments of that kind. Take it away."
"It is United States currency," George said mildly. "It has that in common with every bill in your register."
"It is filthy money from a filthy arrangement, and she had no authority to make it." Regina pointed at Tessa without looking at her. "Take it back to the hotel, old man, and buy yourself a sandwich. Perhaps two. You look as though you need both."
Somebody at the back stations laughed, a short ugly sound, and then stopped.
Tessa stepped out from behind her chair. Her heart was going like a hammer, but her voice, when it came, was steady.
"I will take it," she said. "He is a client of this salon. He owes this salon money, and he has come to pay it. That is supposed to be the entire point of the register you are standing behind."
"Tessa," Regina said, "if you touch that envelope, I will write you up a second time."
"Then you had better get a pen with plenty of ink, because I am going to keep being worth writing up."
She came around the desk and took the envelope from George's hands with both of hers, the way he had offered it. "Thank you, Mr. Alden. Let me give you a receipt."
She opened the big ledger, the one with the cloth spine that nobody used anymore because the computer was supposed to have replaced it, and she wrote in her clearest hand: Received from G. Alden, balance of service, paid in full. She tore off the carbon copy and gave it to him.
George read it as if it were a letter from a friend. Then he folded it once, precisely, and put it in his breast pocket, over his heart.
"You keep good books," he said. "Good books outlast bad managers."
Regina found her voice again. "Are you threatening me?"
"No, ma'am." He settled his cap back on his head, and at the door he paused and looked at her, not with anger but with something worse: patience. "I am giving you advice I once gave my own staff, free of charge, which is more courtesy than you have shown me. Be careful how you treat people whose names you have not asked. You never know which chair in this world belongs to them."
The bell chimed. The door closed.
Rosa leaned against the desk beside her. "He remembered my name," she whispered. "Two weeks, and he remembered."
"He remembers everything," Tessa said. "That should frighten some people in this room. It comforts me."
"Well," Blair said to the room at large. "Somebody has been watching too many movies."
But nobody laughed this time, and Regina stared at the ledger for a long moment before she slammed it shut, and the sound it made was not nearly as satisfying as she wanted it to be.
Chapter 13: The Announcement