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girlfriend!”
    “ Hey, Ken,” she muttered as she walked past him.
    “ How are you?” He winked at her and she detected a tiny bit of makeup on his lids. Ken had trouble holding back at times and she could understand how hard it was for him to be a very out, very gay man in a small Texas town. The original owner of the shop had fooled the town s people for years into thinking he was straight until he brought his very cute, very flamboyant boyfriend, Ken, to town. A year later, Ken’s ex had abandoned him and the town for another man and left Ken with the shop. Lenore didn’t know the entire story, but she knew that according to Ken, the former owner was a “cheating ass bitch of a boyfriend who deserved to die.”
    “ Other than seeing people eating each other on the news, I’m fine,” she answered.
    “ Eating how? Good or bad way?” Ken gave her a sly look.
    “ Bad. Like cannibals,” she answered, deftly destroying his pornographic dreams.
    “ Ugh, that is why I so do not watch the news!” Ken frowned and began teasing the customer’s hair into an eve n bigger, blonder poof.
    “ Well, it’s all over the news,” Lenore told him.
    “ Well, we just won’t watch it today, will we? It’s the E! channel all day today! Yay!”
    Lenore rolled her eyes and went to turn on the TV at the back of the shop and set it to the right channel. They had left it on CNN the night before and she felt her stomach churn as the image on the screen was instantly of a massive riot with deranged people attacking a reporter. They were literally biting her.
    “ Freaks in Houston still going at it,” she muttered to herself.
    Right before she changed the channel, she saw that the footage was actually from Boston. A shiver of fear flowed down her spine and she hit the remote control to flip over to the entertainment network.
    Standing up, she shoved the horrible image out of her mind. No time for news media crap. Time to work.
     
     

 
     
    2.
    Nothing As It Seems
     
    Despite his wide smile and exuberance, Ken was having a very bad day. The no - good ex-boyfriend had called him early in the morning to tell him he was getting married in Canad a . It had taken all of Ken’s willpower not to burst into tears and scream at him. He had pretended to be happy and chatted away as though his heart hadn’t just been ripped out and thrown out the window. What little hope he had that he would be reunited with Darryl, his lost love, had been summarily squashed.
    But he was not going to let anyone know that he was hurting. He had a business to run. A small business in the middle of nowhere , Texas , but it was his beauty shop . I t was going to be a good day on e way or the other. He had prayed that God would grant him grace and a good attitude. Maybe it was a good ol’ jolt of holy power or maybe just his grim determination, but he was smiling.
    He checked his eyes for the millionth time to make sure they were not swollen or red from crying. He was satisfied that his expert makeup job to cover up the redness was looking brilliant. He continued to tease Mrs. Chentworth’s hair into the biggest ‘do in Texas and chattered on about all the latest gossip he had read that morning on the internet entertainment blogs.
    Lenore was huffy again and that was fine by him. When his no good rotten cheating boyfriend had left him with the beauty shop and vanished for the glories of artsy Marfa, Texas, he had hired Lenore to help him build his clientele. The black population had grown since hurricanes Katrina and Rita sent evacuees fleeing into the small towns of Texas. Some had decided to stay and enjoy the good weather, down home hospitality and cheaper cost of living. Lenore was straight out of beauty school, but she was trained specifically to care for the hair of the black ladies. Since she had joined the shop, he had seen his appointment book swell. It hadn’t t a ken long for her to become his daily verbal foil. She was Eeyore to his Tigger