What the Mirror Hears

Saturday is the worst day in any salon, and a party Saturday at the Palmline is the worst of all.

The first customer was at the door at ten to seven, before Blessing had finished sweeping: the aunt of a bride, who needed "something that will make the bride's mother feel small." By noon there were four women on the bench outside waiting for braids and two men inside pretending they were not waiting at all. By three, Tara's feet had stopped speaking to her. At four, the hostesses and bar staff from Prizm came in as a group, the way they always did, smelling of hair oil and nerves, talking about the Saturday crowd and which guests tipped and which ones only promised to.

At six, the boys in black came.

There were two of them that week. Tara did not know their names and did not want to; in her head she called them by their hair. Low Cut was the older one, with a good memory and the soft voice of a man who carries messages for a living. Waves was younger and liked the sound of himself. They wore black T-shirts, black trousers and earpieces that, as far as Tara could tell, were connected to nothing but their confidence. On party nights the Warden inspected his boys before the doors opened, and a boy with a messy line-up was a boy who stood at the back gate all night with the mosquitoes.

Waves took the chair. Low Cut sat on the bench behind him, where Blessing was supposed to be sweeping and was instead sweeping the same square foot of floor, very slowly, in their direction.

Tara put the cape on Waves and switched on the clippers. The boys talked. People always talk in the chair, and boys in black are people, whatever the Warden would like them to believe.

They talked about a guest who had fallen into the pool in his shoes. About the policewoman at the gate who had sent back her envelope. Waves said that was a mistake she would understand later. Low Cut said nothing, which was worse.

Then Waves said, "And the London boy."

The clippers did not stop. That is the first thing a hairdresser learns. The clippers do not stop.

"Iloro House," said Waves. "Room 3. The one who pays the gate fifty naira at a time."

"A thousand," said Low Cut. "Sometimes five. He's serious."

"Chief likes him." Chief was what the boys called the Warden when he could not hear them, because he could not hear them. "You saw him shake the boy's hand at the door? Chief says a man who says yes to two and a half million will say yes to anything, if you show him a shortcut."

"Chief says a lot of things."

"Chief says the errand needs an accent." Waves laughed. "London accent, nobody stops him. Nobody even asks what's in the..."

"Ehen." Low Cut said it softly, the way Lagos says that's enough without saying anything at all. He was looking at the mirror.

Not at himself. At Tara, in the mirror. Their eyes met in the glass, just by the crack shaped like the River Niger, and he smiled at her, politely, the way you smile at someone across a church.

"Aunty," he said. "You didn't hear anything."

"I heard his hairline begging me for mercy," said Tara. "Head down."

Waves put his head down. She finished the line-up, straight enough to rule paper with, brushed him off and held up the hand mirror behind him, and he admired himself from four angles. Low Cut took his turn in the chair and said nothing at all for twelve minutes. When they left, he folded five ₦1,000 notes and laid them on the shelf beside the combs. Two line-ups were two thousand.

"Aunty, he overpaid," Blessing said, the second the door closed.

"No," said Tara. "He paid exactly."

She did not touch the money. She left it on the shelf, where it watched her for the rest of the evening.

The rule

Blessing, of course, could not hold it in.

"Aunty, the London man is in your house. AJ. Room 3. They want him for something, you heard them, they said errand, they said..."

"Blessing."

"But Aunty, this one is different. This one is..."

"What the mirror hears," said Tara, "the mirror keeps."

Blessing's mouth closed. Her eyes did not. They stayed on Tara for a long time, and there was a question in them that Tara did not like, because it was a good one.

She worked until eleven. Her last customer was Leye from the gate, who asked whether a line-up came with food and was told no, as he had been told every Saturday for two years. Joe-Izzy's set had started at nine, and every few minutes the crowd on the Prizm rooftop roared, and the purple light came all the way down June 12 Street and in under the salon door.

She swept up, left the five notes where they were, and locked the door.

At the gatehouse next door, Sarge was behind his window with his radio and his crossword. He passed two tablets through the hatch without being asked.

"You look," said Sarge, "like a woman carrying something heavier than a clipper bag."

She could have told him. Sarge was the one person on this street her rule had never quite applied to, because Sarge was a mirror too. He would know what to do. He would also do it, in his calm soldier's way, and then AJ would hear it from somebody who had not actually heard it.

"Just my feet, Sarge."

He looked at her the way he looked at the weather. "Feet," he agreed. "Good night, Tara."

The officers let her through the gate. Nobody charges the woman who cuts their hair.

The bench

AJ was on the veranda bench at Iloro House, because of course he was. He sat with his elbows on his knees and his face turned up the street toward the music, and in the purple light his line-up had grown out into something soft and careless. It had been three weeks. He had still not paid for the first one.

"You're late," he said. "Mr. Akin's been out twice to tell me the time."

"Mr. Akin can come and do braids from seven in the morning." She sat down beside him, and the bench creaked. Behind them, through the wall of Room 8, Danger and Benny were having the fan argument again, in whispers, which they believed was quieter.

She looked at the side of his head. "Your line is growing out."

"I'm saving up."

"You're saving up for a gate." She unzipped her bag, took out the clippers and checked the battery. Half. Enough. "Turn round. Face the road."

He turned round, grinning, and she started on the line the way she had on his first night, with the generators grumbling and the music rolling down the street. The clippers did not stop. Her hands knew exactly what they were doing. It was the rest of her that was arguing.

Thirteen years she had kept the rule. Through marriages and debts and fights and secrets. Through officers' confessions and the boasting of the Warden's boys. The rule was why the gate trusted her, why Prizm's staff trusted her, why the boys in black sat in her chair at all. The rule was the chair. Break it once, and she was just another mouth on a street full of them.

And the boy in black had looked at her in the mirror and smiled, and left five notes by the combs, so that she would know he knew she had heard.

She finished. She brushed the hair off AJ's neck and held up her hand mirror behind his head, so he could see the back.

He did not look at his hair. Neither did she. In the little mirror, over his shoulder, at the far end of June 12 Street, under the purple sign, a man in black was standing very still, looking at Iloro House.

Tara lowered the mirror slowly.

"AJ," she said. "Do you know the first rule of my salon?"

"No."

"Good." She put the clippers in her lap and turned on the bench to face him. "Because I'm about to break it."