Claire McNab: Kookaburra Gambit

"My God!" exclaimed her hairdresser. "I call that sexual harassment."

"Sexual harassment?" the blond said. "That's not my complaint. The SOB was just no good in the sack."

Albert gave a cry of commiseration. "Major disappointment."

Before I could hear more, Luigi, tall, thin, and with an almost unruly head of silver hair-I reckoned he was going for a Greek-godish look-finished his call and came to stand behind the chair. We both regarded my reflection in the mirror.

"By luck I had a last-minute cancellation," Luigi said. He was in his fifties, I reckoned, but fit with it, and had a charming Italian accent. "Melodie made it clear it was an emergency." He shook his silver head. "She didn't exaggerate."

"It's that bad?"

He lifted a chunk of hair, held it out from my head for a few moments, then let it drop. Sighing, he asked, "My dear! Who is responsible for this?"

"I suppose I am."

Plainly horrified, he stared at me in the mirror. I expected him to cross himself any moment. At last he got out, "You styled it yourself?"

"Of course not. But it's been a while since I had a haircut. I've been putting it off."

"We don't have our hair cut!' Luigi's tone was severe. "We have it styled"

"Fair enough. It's been a while since I had my hair styled"

After he examined more strands closely, his lips tightened as if in pain. "What conditioner do you use?"

"I don't use a conditioner. I just wash my hair."

Luigi closed his eyes. "I see." He rallied to say, "You must promise me to never, repeat never, let whoever did this to you touch your head again." He clicked his tongue. "Should be a capital offense."

I could have told him there was no way Maria would ever get within cooee of my hair again, not after what she'd done. Oh, I had to be honest. It took two to tango. Maria couldn't have led Raylene astray if Raylene hadn't fancied a tango on the side with someone other than me.

"Marta!" Luigi was beckoning imperiously to a tiny woman in a turquoise smock. "Marta! Over here. Take this woman to the basins!"

He patted my shoulder consolingly. "Put yourself in my hands," he said. "It will take all my skill, but Luigi can repair the damage."

I knew from what Melodie and Fran had told me it would also take an astonishing amount of dollars. "How much?!" I'd yelped when they'd told me. "Stone the crows! That'd cover years of haircuts back in the 'Gudge."

The two of them had also got me up to speed on the subject of tipping. Back home we didn't tip much-maybe round up the taxi fare to the nearest dollar, or put a bit extra on a restaurant bill-but here in the States it seemed you tipped everybody, all the time.

I checked that I had the tip money in my pocket as I followed Marta's diminutive form to the back of the salon. We passed through the manicuring section, full of people talking nineteen to the dozen while seated opposite each other at tiny tables. My nose twitched at the smell of acetone and nail polish. Melodie had suggested I have my nails painted with her favorite color, Dark Desire, and had even tried to give me a bottle of the stuff to take with me for my manicure. I didn't want to hurt Melodie's feelings, but it really was an awful color, like clotted blood, so I'd conveniently forgotten to take the bottle with me when I'd left the office.

Marta, with me bringing up the rear, arrived at the washing area, where a row of bright pink basins were set along one wall. All the accompanying chairs were occupied by people with their heads dangling while lather flew. There seemed to be a bit of a traffic jam; three other clients were waiting for a vacant spot. Like in the rest of the salon, everybody was talking extra loud to be heard above the music.

Marta got me a black robe to put on, then hovered like a vulture until one of the chairs freed up. The moment it did, she went in for the kill, beating another turquoise-smocked woman to the punch. "Mine, I believe," said Marta, baring her teeth as she shoved me into the chair.

In a flash she had me where she wanted me. As she hit one lever to drop the back, and another to raise a support under my legs, the chair immediately became an instrument of torture, stretching me out helpless on my back, with my neck in what felt like a plastic vice and my head hanging over the basin.

"Comfortable?" Marta inquired.

"Not really."

Marta didn't hear me, her attention being caught by the conversation at the washing station beside us. "A breast lift that went tragically wrong," the woman washing the hair of a fellow victim was saying. "Poor thing's quite lopsided."

My neck was immovable, but I rolled my eyes to see who was speaking. Oddly, as well as her turquoise smock, the woman wore a wide-brimmed hat.

"And he's supposed to be the best plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills!" exclaimed Marta.

"I've heard he's a pig," said the hatted woman's client.

"Really?" said Marta. "Where did you hear that?"

"At a fund-raiser for Afghanistan orphans. Deanna Dorrell was at the same table. Had an awful time with him, she was saying."

"Face-lift? I thought she looked tight around the eyes in her last photo."

"Botox only." The client sniffed. "Of course, they all say that."

Belatedly, Marta remembered me. "Comfortable?"

An industrial-strength blast of water spared my need to reply. "Too hot?" Marta inquired.

"Well…"

"Good."

Marta might be little, but crikey, she had hands that could tear a phone book in half. I squeezed my eyes shut as she vigorously massaged, wondering if she might actually rip my scalp from my head. Scalped in a Beverly Hills hairdressing salon? I was just imagining how I'd break the news to Mum when Marta hit me with the water again.

"Conditioner?"

Bearing in mind Luigi's shock that I didn't use such a thing, I said, "Good-oh."

"That a yes?"

"Yes."

More violent massaging. My neck was breaking, my ears were ringing, I was vowing this was the last time I'd go through this hell, when Marta announced, "There you go."

Abruptly I was returned to an upright position. Marta fixed me with a cheerful smile as she deftly wound a white towel around my head. I fumbled in my pocket and found the folded dollars. I'd erred on the generous side after Melodie and Fran had told me how much to tip the hair washer-maybe too much, as Marta's smile became quite manic.

"Next time," she said, tenderly dabbing a stray drop of water on my face, "ask for me."

Back at the station, Luigi was on the phone again, shouting in Italian-a language I knew a bit about because I'd done a course in conversational Italian. I wasn't awfully good at it, and Italian-Australians had been known to snigger at my accent, but I'd persevered, and as long as people spoke slowly, I could understand quite a bit.

Luigi appeared to be arguing with someone about the installation of a toilet suite in his apartment, but he spoke so fast I couldn't be sure. After a final yell, he slapped his little cell phone shut, snarling a few harsh words that definitely hadn't been included in my curriculum.

As he caught sight of me standing there, his expression changed to one of resolution. Then he forced a smile. "Come," he said. "Your transformation begins."

Feeling light-headed, in more ways than one, I reclaimed my generic rental sedan from a nearby parking structure. The notice at the entrance proclaimed first two hours free! but my mini makeover had taken rather longer than that, so I had to pay on my way out.

Although I'd only been in L.A. a few weeks, I'd already found driving in the shopping area of Beverly Hills held particular challenges. Herds of tourists, necks hung with cameras, wandered along, eyeballing all the famous retailers, no doubt hoping to see a celebrity popping into Gucci or being ushered out of Giorgio Armani.