Hysterical Blondeness (4 page)

Her scalp felt all tingly as she bent to smear baking soda toothpaste on her Sparkle Plenty toothbrush. She scratched at the top of her head and raised up to check her teeth in the mirror as she brushed. Two days ago she’d noticed they were a bit yellow. She’d have to get some funky strips to whiten them if she kept up this self-improvement gig.

Her eyes still foggy, she felt like she was looking at a negative of herself in the mirror. Whoa. She put down the toothbrush, spit, and splashed water in her eyes and mouth. She rose up again. Surely the ghost of herself had vanished from the mirror and her newly slim face would stare back at her.

She gasped.

She stared.

She screamed.

She raked her hands through her hair.

She screamed again. Little odd multiple screams.

Pinky slid her side of the bathroom door open.

She stood there for a moment, then her mouth just dropped open. She raised her arm and pointed, but no words came out. Then she moved toward Patricia until she stood behind her. Her fingers slowly combed through Patricia’s hair, feeling it and looking at it. Pinky stared over her shoulder into the mirror.

“Wh-what have you done?” she stammered.

“
Nothing!
I woke up and there it was,” Patricia answered.

“Meow.” Asta sat on the old-fashioned bathroom tile and stared up at them. He didn’t care
that Patricia’s hair had turned stark raving platinum blonde. He just wanted canned chicken livers with a side of kibble.

“It must be the drug.” Pinky held up Patricia’s hair like a deranged hairdresser, checking the roots for signs of reversal. Patricia did the same thing from the front.

“It must be.”

“Has to be. We’re both seeing this, right?” Pinky asked. “You see blonde. Snowflake blonde. Blonde as Jean Harlow. Blonde as Dagwood’s Blondie. Oh my God, you are Kim Novak in
Vertigo
. We have to get you the gray suit and the black cocktail dress and take you up to the tower.”

“No tower!” Patricia shrieked.

“Look! Look at your eyebrows. They match.” Pinky came around to her side and pointed at her eyebrows.

No wonder she thought she’d seen a negative in the mirror. She
was
a negative. Patricia had a very, very strange thought. “Oh my God.” She threw off her flannel granny nightgown like it was on fire, then stared down between her naked legs.

They both screamed.

Complete blondeness.

“How much weight did you lose?” Pinky asked, still staring at Pat’s bottom half.

“Four pounds.”

“Get on the scale, you look thinner.”

Patricia obediently shuffled to the scale and stripped off Paulie’s thick white socks. She climbed on and watched the red LCD numbers search for a total. Always a chilling moment.

“Ohmigod, I’ve dropped ten pounds! Ten pounds in one week.” She put her fists to her mouth and squealed like a guinea pig.

“What’s all the screaming?” Paul came thumping down the stairs, ran straight to the open bathroom door, and stared. He’d gone through all the possibilities as he dashed down the hallway: spider, mouse, maybe a live bird that Asta brought in for a visit.

Instead he saw a strange woman standing naked in the bathroom with Pinky. She turned slowly toward him, almost like slow motion.

Paul took in her body from one tip to the other, like any startled healthy male would do. Her breasts were full and shapely, and her nipples were hard from the cold morning air. Her legs
were long, her waist curved in like a smooth, beautiful sculpture. Her hair was that baby blonde color—like sunlight had haloed her head.

He gathered all of this in, his breathing on hold. He looked into her cat’s-eye amber eyes. He sucked in his breath quickly—so quickly his head snapped backward and hit the doorframe. He’d know those eyes anywhere. It was Patricia.

She looked as surprised as he felt. They both froze. Well, she froze. He rubbed the back of his head where he’d hit it. Pinky grabbed something off the floor and threw it to Patricia. Paul watched as she gracefully raised her arms and slid her nightgown over her head. Rose floral flannel covered everything.

Then he felt something he’d never felt in regard to Patricia. He felt a pure heated rush of arousal. He was completely absorbed in the vision before him.

“She’s blonde. All over,” he said.

Pinky walked right into him and shoved him through the doorway into her own bedroom, sliding the pocket door closed behind them. Pinky also noticed his boxer shorts.

“Cool it, tiger. We’re in crisis mode here. I’ll explain later. Go take a cold shower.”

“Cold shower,” Paul repeated. “She’s beautiful.”

“Men,” Pinky huffed. She left him there and slipped back through the bathroom door.

“She’s blonde,” Paul repeated to himself as he walked back up to his own room. “Blonde.”

So quick bright things
come to confusion.

Shakespeare

Paul was playing opera on the
Bose stereo. That was always a sign he was upset about something. Puccini rattled the windows of their house. Puccini was the worst sign of all.

But Patricia had bigger problems than
Madama Butterfly
this morning.

“I can’t go to
work
like this,” Patricia wailed. She lay prone on her bed. Pinky perched on the edge of a chair, staring at her like she was an albino monkey at the zoo.

“First, it’s Saturday. But when Monday rolls around you can’t
not
go to work. Paychecks trump all personal hair color problems,” Pinky reminded her. “Although your hair is truly the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. Are you feeling okay otherwise?”

“Fine, really, my scalp tingles a little.” She sniffled.

“When you signed your life away to these quacks, did they mention this side effect?”

“Not really. The papers just said there might be certain reactions they weren’t aware of.”

Pinky snorted. “Certain reactions. Good one.”

“They scratched me with all sorts of needles to check for allergies. I looked like I’d tried to give Asta a bath.”

“Well, get up, girl. You can’t lie around crying in your soup all day. Paul put on Puccini and he’s cooking some huge breakfast. You’ll probably gain back those ten pounds in one sitting.”

Patricia grumbled, pulled herself up, and caught sight of her reflection in the dressing table mirror. “Oh
God
, what have I done?” she squealed.

“You
are
thinner. Pull something out of your thin clothes pile and get dressed. I want to see
you in the light of day.” Pinky patted her leg. “We’ll figure out what do to with you.” Pinky rose up and left Patricia to her own thoughts.

Good old Pinky. She was so practical. No matter what bad thing befell them, she’d make the best of it. When Patricia had to pay some overpriced dentist to fix her cracked tooth and she ended up short on rent, Pinky sold some of her vintage clothes collection and filled the gap. When they started having trouble with the water pipes, Pinky dated a plumber for three whole months. Talk about sacrificing yourself for the cause. Of course, that plumber was pretty cute.

Patricia got out of bed, slipped on her glasses, and sat in front of her vintage dressing table. The aging mirror cast strange spots over her reflection, but she could clearly see how shockingly different she looked.

She rearranged her hair into different styles and tipped her head from side to side. Maybe if she washed the hell out of it her own color would come back. Ha. Maybe it would all fall out and she’d be bald and thin. That would be more her luck.

It didn’t look so bad, though, being blonde. She had a little Marilyn Monroe moment in
front of the mirror, puckering her lips, twisting herself fashion-model-style. Her usually round cheeks looked slightly more angular. She almost felt…pretty. She looked a little like her younger sister Heather, the pretty one, with the reddish hair and the constant parade of boyfriends.

Patricia ran to the closet and dug around for a sweater she hadn’t worn in years. A black beaded vintage thing she’d “grown out of,” so to speak. She slipped it on and added a bias-cut knit black skirt from the far back of the closet where clothes she used to fit into dwelled in the darkness so they couldn’t torture her with their taunts—
You used to fit into me, fatso!

She’d need a better bra, but she looked pretty damned good. Patricia had a moment. A tingling goose-bump moment, which was different from the Marilyn moment. A rush of excitement zinged over her. She felt a strange, uninhibited freedom slide into her mind.

She was no longer the unnoticeable little brown bird. She was an exotic creature. She was beyond her sister Heather or even her sister Carol. She was beyond Myrna Loy. She was a blonde bombshell.

Paul slathered butter in the hot skillet and rolled it around till it melted and coated the pan. He threw in the chopped leftover corned beef and mixed it up with cooked potatoes, onion, and beaten eggs. He felt like his ordinary Saturday morning corned beef feast was slightly off-kilter.

Or was that just him? An image of Patricia, naked and blonde, flashed through him faster than butter melting in a searing skillet. Puccini swelled in the background.

He sucked his breath in and felt heat course through his body. The curve of her hip, the way she stood there without covering herself, her full, round breasts, and that blonde, blonde hair filled his thoughts. He flashed on what it would be like to have her beautiful nakedness next to him. To run his mouth over that curve of her hip and…

“Yum, looks fabulous as usual, Paulie. Smells fabulous, too, but I think it’s burning, buddy.” Pinky put her hands on Paul’s shoulders.

Paul jumped awake, scraped his turner against the skillet, and saved the hash from burning. “You scared me,” he said.

“It’s a scary morning. Pretty soon it will be Halloween,” Pinky said. She nabbed a stray
piece of corned beef and stood next to him, nibbling, eyeing him as if she had a preview screen into his recent fantasy.

He didn’t look at her. “Looks like Halloween started early in this house. What the hell happened to Patricia?” Paul stirred his corned beef and sipped coffee at the same time.

Pinky went to pour herself coffee. “Shall I make toast?” She was stalling. He knew these women so well.

“Why don’t you ask
me
?” Patricia’s voice came from behind him.

“I’d be glad to. And I’m sorry about the naked thing. I didn’t think.” Paul answered without looking at her. He needed to not look at her until he regained his reality base.

“Hey, we covered that in our rental agreement, remember? The ‘See You Naked’ clause? We all agreed to just move on back to normalville if it ever occurred. Naked happens.”

“I remember.” Paul also remembered the other things they’d written. No sexual adventures on site without prearrangement, no getting involved with the housemates on pain of eviction. But today he realized they’d left out a few things. Like realizing the woman who’s been living in your
daylight basement is actually a sexy, desirable creature.

“Wow.” Pinky uttered but one word.

He heard Patricia pour herself coffee. He heard the spoon tinkling against the sides of the cup. He kept his eyes on his corned beef.

“Make toast, Pinky,” he commanded her.

“Yes, sir.”

He caught a whiff of some kind of citrus scent and followed it with his nose. He couldn’t not look. He had to look. He twisted off the burner knob and moved the skillet off the heat.

“Wow.” He repeated Pinky’s word. Patricia leaned against the counter and sipped her coffee as if she didn’t look stunning in that black beaded sweater and clingy skirt. As if her new blonde hair didn’t swoop like Veronica Lake hair across her cheek and curl up in a sexy wave against her shoulders. He drank her in like fine red wine. “Rye or wheat?” he asked oddly.

“Paulie, it’s the same me, I’m just suffering a very odd side effect from an experimental drug I took, being of less than sound mind.”

“You took an experimental drug? Why? Are you sick?”

“No, I’m just fat. Or I was, anyway. Or am,
sort of. I still need to take a good ten pounds off, but this is a good start.”

“That’s just crazy. You were fine before. I liked you before.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t get a hard-on every time you looked at her before,” Pinky blurted out.

Paul looked at her with all the insane I’m-going-to-kill-you-now emotion he could gather into his face and send her way. Death by nonverbal glare.

Pinky laughed at him. Patricia sputtered in her coffee. Both women laughed openly. In his kitchen. Why should he make these women meals? He should just send them to their rooms and make them eat Pop-Tarts from their own kitchen.

“Breakfast, anyone?” He straightened his glasses and grinned with his teeth gritted.

“I made sourdough toast. Let’s plate it up, people.” Pinky pulled Paul’s fat white restaurant china out of a drawer and handed out a plate to each person. “Get it while it’s
hot
,” she joked.

“How can a man keep his dignity with you two?” Paul piled his plate with hash, turned around for Pinky’s toast, and grabbed silverware for all of them out of the drawer.

“Dignity is overrated,” Pinky answered. She went over to his Bose stereo and turned Puccini down to a dull roar.

The three of them sat around the vintage Stickley table they’d scored at an early morning garage sale, eating and talking about movies, trying to remember any movie they’d seen that had been made in the last five years. Of course, the whole Middle Earth deal, the Harry Potter deal, and the Matrix series descending into horrid visions of earth in the future, but that hardly counted, being of the epic variety and required for everyone to see.

For some reason Patricia’s mind kept wandering to that morning they’d found the table, painted white, dirty, covered with dust and mason jars. She and Paul had declared it too ugly to live.

Pinky, their resident antique expert, had freaked out, handed Patricia her paper Starbucks cup, thrown herself under the table where the wood hadn’t been painted, crawled back out covered with dirt and cobwebs, and told them to keep their mouths very shut for a few minutes, but not to leave that table for anything.

She and Paul had obediently sipped coffee and stared at Mason jars as if they were Roseville originals. They’d been caught in the excitement of Pinky’s treasure hunt. Pinky had come back with a huge grin on her face. She’d ordered them to unload the mason jars and hustled Paul through loading the thing into the trunk of his Volvo sedan, secured by bungee cords.

Once they were all safely in the car, she’d squealed and ranted about the Gustav Stickley mark on the table.

She showed them books with pictures of similar tables back home, and after Paul had stripped and sanded and stained the beautiful grained oak, it was a piece to behold. Pinky would often flip up the homespun linen runner they kept on it and show people the joinery and construction.

This table was their most excellent find of all times at a steal of a price. A beauty hiding beneath ugly paint and dirt. Maybe that was
her
as well.

“Patti, are you there? I hope that stuff hasn’t affected your brain.” Pinky poked her arm.

Paul finally stopped talking about Stephen King’s
The Shining
and blurted out what he
was undoubtedly thinking but hadn’t said out loud.

“How could you do such a thing? It could damage you.”

“No animals were harmed in the testing of this drug. They just got skinny enough to slip through the bars and escape,” Patricia joked.

“I want you to stop taking this stuff.” He pounded his fist on the table. “And I want to know everything there is about it. I have a right to know what you’ve done to yourself!”

Now, Paul had never done such a thing before. Patricia and Pinky stared at him. Sure, he’d had animated moments during the last election and some table-pounding had occurred, but since they were all in agreement on their social philosophies, it was more punctuation than demando commando.

“Dude,” Pinky said.

“Patricia, I mean it.” he stood, pushed his glasses up, grabbed his empty plate and coffee cup, and stomped into the kitchen. After a few moments of clanging dishware, he stomped right outta there and headed for the master suite—his “fortress of solitude” room, as they called it.

“The master has spoken.” Pinky looked at her
with big, surprised eyes behind her big round black-rimmed glassed.

“Geez, what’s with him? I only have a few weeks to go. It’s a three-week trial.”

“Hey, I actually agree with him. What if you get other weird symptoms? What if you lose too much weight?”

“I could lose thirty pounds and still be considered normal-sized. I don’t want ribs showing or anything, I just want to be able to wear Ann Taylor and have Brett Nordquist stop in his tracks when he sees me.” Patricia raised her hands to the sky in a dramatic gesture. “This is
every
woman’s dream. Just look at the new Ann Taylor ad in the October
Martha Stewart
. It’s Brett and me and our dog and two lovely daughters, and I am wearing Ann Taylor, damn it!”

“Honey, put down your hands, because I think you accomplished stop-in-his-tracks already. You look stunning. Do you think the hair will change back when you stop taking the drugs?”

“It could, but this stuff is some new DNA-altering deal where your genetic tendency to pile on the pounds might actually be, um…erased?”

This time Pinky threw her arms up. “You took a DNA-altering substance? I want you to give me all the paperwork and let me read it, too, as long as Paul is insisting. Also, I am personally escorting you to that lab for a little checkup Monday morning. Let’s see what they have to say about the alterations of your pigments.” Pinky sat back and gave Patricia the once-over slowly. She sipped her coffee and looked thoughtful.

“What, did my eyes change to blue, too?”

“No, but your hazel eyes look green today. The blonde really makes them stand out. I was thinking…” She took a great pause, which made Patricia slightly nuts, so she fidgeted with her napkin.

“Stop fidgeting. Now, listen. Even though you might turn green next, or lose your entire head of hair, we have this small window of opportunity. We’ve got the tie promotion, we’ve got the striking new you, let’s make this count. We’ll redo your wardrobe, get some contacts, because damn, girl you look like a librarian in those glasses.”

“Marilyn Monroe wore glasses in
How to Marry a Millionaire
, and she was quite a strudel in them.” Patricia rearranged her silverware on her plate.

“You are not Marilyn Monroe. But you are quite a strudel now. I’m going to have to alter some of my vintage dresses and get you fixed up. So we’ll see how early that lab can take you, then make a late afternoon appointment with Brett to talk about the NFL tie promotion. Pattikins, what man can resist talking about football with a gorgeous blonde?”