The Second Silence by Eileen Goudge Read Free Book Online Page B

ones. If the lights were with her, she’d make it in less time than it would take the cabbie to find out if Mike Stanton was going to strike out Sammy Sosa in the bottom of the eighth.
    She was rounding the corner onto Madison, panting hard and praying her antiperspirant would hold out, when she spotted the Channel 2 News van. Her racing heart carried her the last dozen yards in what felt like a single bound.
    Ernesto Garmendia was the hottest hairstylist around and the current flavor of the month; she’d already booked him for makeover segments on Today and Live with Regis and Kathie Lee. But negative publicity on this gig could make him a pariah—for which she would ultimately be held responsible. It had been Mary’s bright idea, after all, to celebrate the opening of the uptown branch of his chic SoHo salon, Ne Plus Ultra, with an all-day ‘hair-a-thon’—open house to anyone willing to donate two hundred dollars for a haircut, with proceeds going to St Bartholomew’s pediatric burn unit. Mary had gotten Petrossian to supply caviar and blinis, and Sokolin & Co. the champagne. There was even a door prize: two tickets to the András Schiff concert at Carnegie Hall.
    Everything was set, the date locked in on her calendar. Then two days ago an author client, on the road promoting his somewhat unflattering Elvis Presley biography, had arrived in Memphis to find scores of angry Elvis fans picketing the store at which a signing had been scheduled. Several TV stations had canceled as well. Mary had had to fly out at the last minute to smooth her client’s ruffled feathers and calm skittish producers, after which her return flight had been delayed, putting her into JFK with less than an hour to spare before Ernesto’s event. Now this …
    At the red-carpeted entrance Mary pushed past the crush of press and paparazzi gathered in anticipation of the celebrities due to arrive any minute, reporters whom Mary normally had to beg and cajole into covering an event, and whom her assistant, standing guard outside the plate glass door, was at the moment fending off. Brittany stood out like a torch amid the teeming horde, her pale cheeks flushed and her red hair flaming in the harsh glare of camera flashes and handheld lights. When she spotted Mary elbowing her way through the crush, her look of intense relief said it all: The marines had landed.
    Mary clapped a cheerful expression in place. Holding a hand up to the reporters, she called out brightly, ‘Be patient, guys! Just two minutes, I promise!’ Turning to her assistant, whose pretty young face wore the sheen of desperation, she whispered fiercely, ‘Hold them off a little while longer. I’ll see what’s going on.’
    Inside, Mary encountered a scene that would have struck her as funny had it been in a movie. A plump middle-aged woman held center stage in the elegant Louis Quinze-outfitted salon, her wet hair dripping onto the short black kimono cinched about her ample waist. She was shrieking at the top of her lungs.
    ‘You call this a perm? I have third-degree burns on my scalp! I know lawyers who sue for less. You’ll be hearing from mine, don’t kid yourself.’ She waggled a crimson talon at the staff lined up motionless before a bank of baroque gilt mirrors.
    Mary darted a glance at Ernesto, who was doing his best to calm the woman but who clearly had his dander up. His narrow nose was flared, and one hand rested on a slim hip that jutted in a stance bordering on insolent. ‘Senora, what you say ees … impossible. Never, never, never, never would such a theeng happen in my salon!’
    Mary felt a fresh jolt of adrenaline kick in. If this tempest weren’t brought under control, immediately, the lady’s hair wouldn’t be the only thing burned. At the end of it Ernesto would be lucky to have a single client left, and as for the account, well, Mary could kiss it good-bye.
    But twenty years in public relations had taught her a thing or two, all of which could be