I arrived at the Los Feliz house and immediately had to start putting out so many fires that I actually forgot about James’s impending arrival.
First I came out of the shower to find Veronica chastising Pearl for being late, which, in the world of black hairstylists, is the equivalent of chastising the ocean for being wet.
“Bitch, it’s Christmas,” Pearl yelled back. “I could be at home in Mississippi right now with my family. But I’m not flying out until tonight, because of you.”
“Yes, and we’re compensating you extremely well for it. So get to work, before I decide to start docking your pay.”
Pearl was not a celebrity hairdresser, so she wasn’t exactly used to catering to folks. She stared at Veronica for an angry, hot second, then she said, “You are crazy. I’m leaving.”
She started gathering up her things from on top of Tammy’s dresser where we had set up an impromptu station for her to do my hair.
“Pearl, please don’t go,” I said.
“If you leave,” Veronica added in such imperious tones that you could have mistaken her for the Queen of England easy, “I will sue you for breach of contract. Get to work now.”
Pearl really started throwing things back into her backpack after Veronica made that threat. “Sue me,” she said with wide, daring eyes. “I don’t make that much money. Good luck trying to get shit from me.”
“Whoa, Pearl.” I got in front of her and spread my arms to bar her exit.
“Pearl, you’re right. Veronica is literally crazy in a maybe-should-be-institutionalized sort of way.” Then I said, “Shut up, Veronica,” when the older Farrell sister opened her mouth to protest.
I pleaded with Pearl. “She should be pitied, not taken seriously. But you know it is physically impossible for me to get all of this hair pressed straight and into a bun without you. And you know how much I appreciate you delaying your trip. So if you stay, we’ll reimburse you for your plane ticket home, okay?”
Pearl hesitated. On top of what she was charging for doing my hair on a holiday and the extra money she was getting for coming to us in Los Feliz, a plane ticket was hard to turn down. “Is she really crazy?”
“Yes,” I assured Pearl. “But she’s also extremely rich, so she doesn’t know that she’s crazy.”
“I don’t have to listen to this,” Veronica said. “It’s my wedding day.”
Then she huffed out of the room.
Thereby fully proving my point.
“Girl, how did you get roped into this shit?” Pearl asked. She went back to the makeshift station, and started pulling out her hair tools again.
“Girl,” I answered truthfully, “I still don’t know.”
It took Pearl longer than it should have to do my hair, because right before she was fixing to pin my newly straightened hair into a bun, Tammy came running into the room, crying.
“I hate her. I hate her so much!”
I gathered Tammy into my arms. “What’s wrong?”
“She yelled at me for taking my hem up too high. It’s only three inches, and now she’s threatening to not let me walk down the aisle.”
“Tammy, I’m sure she doesn’t mean it.”
I would’ve soothed her further, but then I saw the wedding coordinator run past the door and down the hallway in tears, so I had to leave Tammy and run that poor woman down to tell her what I had told Pearl about Veronica being crazy.
The wedding coordinator was a former actress who had parlayed her entertainment contacts into a very successful wedding and event planning service, but “I have never dealt with a client that is as verbally abusive as this one. She told me that I was the worst service person she had ever encountered and then she said since I wasn’t good at my current job and I couldn’t even make it as an actress did I really have any reason to live?”