Wet-haired interview witness

It didn’t look like an interview was in progress from where I was sitting.  Otherwise I would have knocked first, which is very hard to do when your hair is being shampooed by your favorite hair stylist on the island (make that the world) who is simultaneously having a coded exchange with an aspiring stylist about her plans to enhance the hair of a targeted customer.  My immensely talented hair stylist, the owner, was offering brief pointers but also sizing up the formulas cited by the outsider who was now very much of an insider for the time being in the popular shop.

The outsider operating as a quasi-professional was being “interviewed” I was informed, which I suppose made me a wet-haired interview witness.   Sensing my alarm that her candidate’s interview involved a real head of hair and not one of the mannequin prototypes that sometimes joined us in the front row for apprentices to practice on, the owner set to work convincing me that this arrangement was safe and sane and nobody would end up with a monstrous cut.

My soapy eyebrows must have been on high alert as she calmed me down by citing the interviewee’s credentials. She’d worked in one shop on the mainland for 12 years and came to Hawaii armed with excellent references, and the two had already covered all the specifics extensively. Her skills were not in question, I was assured, more it was a live trial to see how she blended in. As I walked newly reassured from the sink to my stylist’s chair, the interviewee was hugging one of her specimens, who looked superbly coiffed.

No longer fearing that my fellow salon visitors were in harm’s way, I  immediately began rooting that the candidate would soon win a chair of her own, a page with her name on top in the appointment book, and a lovely new salon to call home.