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woman smiled.
That’d be something
, she said.
Allright. It’s pretty weird, you know, but I’m a flexible person. I’m Mercedes, by the way.
She turned and looked deeply into the camera.
Mercedes Patron
, she said intensely. Her delivery gave me a little shiver. Who knew I would actually enjoy helping Kristy, ever?
    We followed Mercedes Patron and her excellent name through the salon and into a tiny back room. Along the way I trailed the camera across the incredible jungleness of the place, and got a swipe or two at some ladies getting their hair chopped. For the first time ever in my limited history of visits to Jungle Unisex, the hairdressers smiled at me. Of course they were smiling at the camera, but it was my eye that caught them.
    The back room smelled like shampoo and was hot and rumbly and loud from the washer-dryer stacks banging around a load of towels. It was hard to figure out where to cram myself to catch the best shot. I tried crouching down beneath where Kristy and Mercedes sat on aluminum folding chairs, but Mercedes waggled a bony finger sporting a curling gold
M
into my lens.
    Aaah aaah ah
, she snapped.
Too many chins down there. Shoot from above.
I fumbled to my feet, wondering if perhaps Mercedes had been a soap opera star or something. She was so cozy with the camera. I wedged myself into a corner and zoned out for most of the interview. It was pretty boring, just Kristy talking about herself and her love of hair, and Mercedes nodding and making the occasional cooing noise as she fell under the spell of Kristy’s charm.
    Well listen, Kristy
, she said at the end of a short monologue in which Kristy detailed her glee for shampooing theheads of strangers — how it must be aromatherapy from the shampoo or something because it just really relaxes her and people have even suggested she go to massage school because she scrubs their heads so wonderfully —
What if I train you, here at Jungle, and you win this television contest and then you leave? I need a commitment.
    I saw this indignant flush rise up in Kristy’s face and I had a feeling she was having the same thought I was having, roughly: you expect me to pass up a reality television career to work at fucking Jungle Unisex at the fucking Square One Mall in fucking Mogsfield? For, like, six dollars an hour? Something like that. My thought included a mention of dandruff and other scalpy bits being lodged beneath fingernails and also the general poisonous odor of the place, the perm solutions and the peroxide, but Kristy is immune to these things. I watched my sister through the eye of the camera as she took a breath and assured Mercedes that she probably wouldn’t get picked because millions upon millions of young people from all over America try out and there’s only a tiny handful of slots and really she’s applying mostly because she believes it’s good to aim high in life, even when the odds are stacked against you. Watching Kristy spin it into a platform to display her unconquerable spirit was pretty impressive. Especially because Kristy is wicked superstitious and into affirmations and positive thinking, and it must’ve just killed her to say out loud that she didn’t have much of a chance of getting on
The Real World.
Kristy believes that saying things out loud makes them true, and it’s an interesting idea, especially when you consider Ma and her hypochondriaand her illnesses.
    Lady Mercedes was quiet.
Well
, she finally spoke.
I like your energy. You come back after the weekend and we’ll get you started. You know, shampoo and sweeping, and when you pass your boards we’ll see what happens.
Then she winked, but it was mostly for the camera. I pulled back to get a nice shot of Mercedes Patron brandishing her scissors and generally making love to the camera. If nothing else, my footage could possibly be worked into a nice little commercial for Jungle Unisex. Mercedes slipped her shears into the brief apron bowed around her waist, and