The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose

Beulah’s jaw dropped. Clients sometimes said unexpected things, especially when they were flat on their backs with their eyes shut and their heads in the shampoo sink, which tended to reduce their inhibitions and divorce them from their everyday realities. But in all the years she had been asking her how’s every little thing question, nobody had ever answered it quite that way. She was awfully glad she had sent Bettina to the back room to fold the towels and that there was nobody else in the shop to hear what she’d just heard.

Especially because she didn’t believe it. Artis Biggs had finished sowing his crop of wild oats before he got to be twenty-one. Now fifty-something, he was a man of upstanding reputation, a deacon in the Four Corners congregation, a former mayor, and the manager of Darling’s best hotel. If this story got out, and whether there was anything to it or not, the scandal was going to rock Darling to its very foundations—not to mention what it would do to Four Corners. Hank’s father, the Reverend Dr. Trivette, would be shattered. He put his faith in all his deacons.

What’s more, Beulah felt strongly that Mrs. Biggs shouldn’t go around saying such things, right or wrong or somewhere in the middle. What went on between a woman and a man in their bedroom should be held sacred and not told to anybody, not even to the woman’s beautician in the privacy of the shampoo sink at the Beauty Bower. And if Mrs. Biggs was telling this story here, she could be telling it anywhere. Everywhere, for that matter, and to everyone. To Mrs. Hancock at the grocery, or over at Mann’s Mercantile, or (heaven help her) to Mrs. Adcock, Darling’s most notorious gossip.

“I am downright sorry to hear that,” Beulah managed. “I hope it turns out for the best.” She changed the subject hurriedly, saying the first thing she could think of. “Bettina just got back from the Mercantile a bit ago. You should see what she bought—three yards of the prettiest pink cotton you’d ever hope to see. She’s going to make new smocks for us, with The Beauty Bower embroidered across the front in old-timey letters. When we get through with your shampoo, I’ll have her show it to you.”

But Mrs. Biggs was not to be distracted by pink smocks or old-timey letters. “He’ll regret this,” she cried fiercely, her eyes squeezed shut now, her pudgy fingers clutching the arms of the shampoo chair like swollen claws. “Soon as I catch them. They’ll both regret it!”

Beulah pulled in her breath, feeling unsure and helpless in the face of such wrath. “Well,” she ventured, “maybe it’s not what you think. Appearances can be deceiving sometimes. People don’t always—”

“Not this time!” Mrs. Biggs cried, smacking the flats of her palms on the arms of the chair. “I have seen him with my very own eyes, Beulah, coming out of those rooms. They do it on the second floor, you know. Every chance they get. Every morning.”

“Oh,” said Beulah, and began to hurry with the rinse. Maybe a little splash of cold water would cool Mrs. Biggs down and make her think twice about what she was saying. But the lady was so heated that even a little rivulet of cold water dripped on her forehead didn’t dampen her fires.

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Biggs said fiercely, clenching her fists. “Oh, yes, Beulah, oh, yes, yes, yes. The awful truth is that men are lecherous and treacherous by their very natures. Their natures, mind you, deep down in the depths of their souls! And not just Mr. Biggs, either. Why, do you know, when I went into the Dispatch office this morning to leave an advertisement for the hotel menu, Mr. Dickens tried to kiss me!”

“Kiss you?”

Hastily, Beulah squeezed the water out of Mrs. Biggs’ hair. She was seized by an unaccountable and nearly irresistible urge to giggle. Charlie Dickens was a confirmed bachelor who never displayed any interest in women—although Beulah had heard that he might have his eye on Fannie Champaign, who owned the hat shop on the square. And of course, she knew that Mr. Dickens and Mrs. Biggs had been high school sweethearts. But that was decades (and eighty or ninety pounds) ago.

“Yes, kiss me!” Mrs. Biggs kicked her heels against the stool. “Why, the man was so passionate, he nearly knocked me off my feet. I swear, Beulah, it was all I could do to escape from the place with my virtue intact. As soon as I am pinned up and dried and combed out, I am going straight to the sheriff and swear out a warrant against Mr. Dickens for assault with attempt to molest. I’m sure Bessie Bloodworth will testify to what happened. I bumped into her as I was running away from him this morning. She saw how terribly upset I was.”

“Oh, dear,” Beulah said faintly, looking down at the sink. The drain was clogged with a large clump of Mrs. Biggs’ hair and the water wouldn’t go down. She turned off the faucet.

“Oh, dear is right!” Mrs. Biggs was shrill. “And then I am going back to the hotel and wait for that husband of mine to go prancing up to that second floor. I am going to catch him in the act. In the very act, you just wait and see if I don’t.”

But Beulah wasn’t listening. She was staring in horror at the clogged drain, at the hank of wet hair she was holding in her hand, and at the large and clearly visible bare spot on Mrs. Biggs’ shiny pink scalp.