Read I Heart New York for Free Online

was picking at a plate of brownies on the bar by the doorway. ‘I think a cute little bob, something classic,’ she mumbled through a mouthful of pecans.
    Gina spun me around and considered my hair from every angle. ‘Great cheekbones, a bob would look good. A few highlights, maybe…’
    ‘Oh, I don’t think I’m a highlights kind of a girl,’ I stuttered, starting to panic. Highlights sounded very white jeans and glittery vest top, not very me.
    Gina looked at me sharply and then back at Jenny. ‘Is she going to give me trouble?’ she asked.
    Jenny shook her head quickly. ‘Uh-uh, just go easy on the girl, Gina. She’s been through some stuff.’ She bagged another brownie.
    I sat down in a shampoo chair and let Gina snap a ‘before’ picture on a Rapture branded camera. As she lathered me up, I mentally congratulated myself on washing it already this morning, it really had been a big skanky mess.
    ‘So, honey,’ Gina said, ‘tell us about yourself.’
    ‘Well,’ The hairwashing chair had an amazing in-built back massager that was pummeling me into soggy submission, ‘I’m a writer, sort of, I write the books of children’s films and TV shows and stuff.’
    ‘Really? That sounds fun,’ Gina said moving on to work the shampoo through. Ouch, a touch too harsh. ‘Anything we’d know?’
    ‘Maybe,’ I muttered, giving in as Gina began to knead my scalp. ‘I’ve worked on pretty much any kids’ film that’s been out in the last five years, big green ogres, radioactive spiders, talking turtles.’
    ‘Fun!’ She nodded, pushing her knuckles into my temples.
    Oooohhhh.
    ‘At first it is, but you know, after a while a job’s a job.’
    ‘So, what do you want to do?’ Jenny piped up from the next shampooing chair. ‘If you could do anything, what would it be?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ I purred, giving in to the wonderful conditioning massage. ‘I guess I’d be a proper writer, you know, write my own stuff. I just never had time for it before.’
    ‘You’ve got time for it now,’ Jenny said. It sounded as if she was back on the brownies. All I knew about this woman so far was that she was the nicest kind of bully and she ate more than anyone I knew, even though her waist was about the circumference of my left thigh. ‘You’re not on deadline now, right?’
    ‘No,’ I admitted. ‘I don’t have anything at the moment.’
    ‘So, stay, write,’ she said while Gina wrapped my head in a towel and guided me over to the styling station. ‘You’re in New York, it’s like, the best place on earth to be a writer. There are a million books inspired by Manhattan.’
    Gina snorted. ‘Name one Jenny Lopez, and I will give you a hundred dollars, right now.’
    ‘Yeah, so technically, I’m not a reader,’ Jenny made bunny ear quotations in the air. ‘But I have to immerse myself in my subject. I read a lot of self-help books.’
    ‘If you mean you buy a lot of self-help books and leave them littered around our apartment, then yes, I guess you do,’ Gina said.
    ‘So, you live together?’ I asked, trying to diffuse the daggers Jenny was glaring at Gina. Must be a fun old time in that house.
    ‘We do until Gina leaves me on Wednesday,’ Jenny pretended to sob. ‘I can’t believe you’re ditching me just to be manager of a salon.’
    Gina started to comb my hair straight down and flip the parting, centre, left, right, back to centre. ‘Yeah, sure, just some salon. Not manager of the first international outpost of Rapture in Paris. You’ll live, Jenny,’ she said, looking at me in the mirror. When she relaxed she actually looked as if she could be fun and not just some impeccably groomed beauty terrorist. ‘So, Angie, what else do you like? Music, theatre, self-help books?’
    ‘Whatever,’ Jenny interrupted. ‘I think it’s interesting that you answered the question “tell us about yourself” with information about your job. You think you spend too much time working and not