Wednesday Briefs: Stan and Ollie #11

I hope everyone had a wonderful New Year's Eve! Here we are, it's 2013, and time for the first flash of the new year! This week's prompts were: "If I thought you would..." or use: pestilence, sigh, wrath or "He laid his hand upon my..." or use: train, cow, platitude or use a Pokemon or a pocket monster in your story or "When did you get to be so..."

This week, I return to my continuing story of Stan and Ollie, after a two week hiatus. Last seen, they were at Aunt Hettie's, soaking up the atmosphere and some food, now they're on to another source of information, aka the beauty parlor. After visiting with them, don't forget to see what all the other Wednesday Briefers are up to. Their links follow my tale. Enjoy!

Stan and Ollie #11

After dinner, we returned to our hotel, picking up Miss Nasty along the way. Unfortunately, she had nothing to report, so we turned in for the night.  Our room at the Shadee Rest is surprisingly comfortable.  I need no alarm to wake me in the morning; I have Ollie for that, with his daily ritual. As I feel him stir, I rise on up one elbow, watching him, becoming aware of a lump at my feet. Frowning, I glare toward the end of the bed at the cat with the self-satisfied smirk.

“Get the hell off of there!” I snarl.

“Stan, be reasonable.” Ollie’s already at my side of the bed, bending over and caressing my lips with his. 

“You didn’t want to get a second room and you couldn’t expect her to sleep in the carrier, surely?”

I guess it could have been worse; I try to put a good spin on it, for Ollie’s sake. At least she stayed in cat form.

However, I can’t resist getting the last word as Ollie heads into the bathroom. I eye her as I pull on my clothes. “If I thought you would cooperate, I’d do it in a heartbeat.” She pays me no heed, and licks at one paw before running it across her face in obvious disdain for my words.

“Bitch,” I mutter. But not too loudly.

We decide to take breakfast at the hotel restaurant. Does everything on the damn menu have to come with grits? I permit Xylina to join us (in human form, of course), a concession to my lover that pleases him greatly. When she isn’t looking, I dump my grits on her plate. Childish? Maybe. Satisfactory? Completely.

Our first stop of the day is the hair salon our waitress of the night before told us about. Miss Jane’s, over on Magnolia. When I suggest to her majesty that maybe she should come with us, she could use a touch-up on her roots, she takes her indignant ass somewhere else, saying she’s going to keep searching for Consuelo—which was my intent all along. I know, I’m a cheeky bastard. And I love it.

As I’d hoped, the beauty parlor is filled with a lot of the local women. It seems to be a gathering place for them, gossip being exchanged freely along with haircuts, manicures, and dye jobs. There’s a definite generation gap that makes itself manifest here, but also shows the range of the stylists—everything from bouffant beehives to sassy pageboys to whatever you call the newest trends. I just call them hot messes.

We check in with the receptionist who smiles at us in the professional way such ladies have, tells us to have a seat and someone shall be right with us. It doesn’t take long—thank heaven, as the only reading material available is of the purely sensational variety of the kind where the most titillating part of the story is on the cover and the rest is pure dribble—before we find ourselves sitting in adjacent chairs. Ollie’s stylist is young and trendy, her close-cropped hair laced with blue and purple highlights, while the woman who stands behind my chair is older, has dark hair with blonde roots. I’ve never understood why anyone born a natural blonde would want to cover that up, but apparently some of them do, while other people are more than happy to get the same result from a bottle. Go figure.

Luckily, Ollie doesn’t carry through with his threat to get highlights. I can’t help but eye his stylist with suspicion as she runs her finger through his curls and squeals. That’s the effect he has on women, and I knew it going in, but it doesn’t mean I want to see it.

Suddenly, as she rotates his chair so that he and I are eye to eye, he blows me a kiss, putting our relationship out there for everyone to see. Far from discouraging the girl, whose name is Mindi, she squeals excitedly, still fingering Ollie’s locks.

Score one for us, I guess.

First order of business is having our hair washed. I hadn’t really planned on doing that, but when I open my mouth to tell Myrtle so she’s already hustled me to the washing station, covered me with a sheet of plastic, laid my head backward and begun to hose me. I wisely keep my mouth shut at that point. It doesn’t take long, as I keep my hair cut fairly short, and I’m back in the chair followed, moments later, by my better half. His normally blond curls are dark and damp, yet he still manages to look sexy while exuding the aura of a wet pup.

At least I can hear better now.

“I saw you last night.” That’s Mindi, talking to Ollie as she eyes him critically and takes small clips of his hair. I know he’s only asked for a trim, but my heart’s in my throat in a reverse Sampson and Delilah as I watch him get shorn. “You were at Miss Hettie’s, weren’t you?”

“Yes ma’am, we were.” Ollie rewards her with a big smile. I can feel the heat of her excitement from here.

I’m about to comment on the food, perhaps to stir up further conversation, when the matter is introduced for me, without my intervention.

A woman in a nearby chair sniffs loudly. “Did you see him carrying on like…. Like someone half his age?”

“I know,” Myrtle comments. “And that hussy, no better than she should be. Little tramp.”

Her words are taken up and echoed, and I can see head bobbing in the mirror, as I survey the room behind me.

“What do you expect from Northern trash?” More nods of agreement.

“Damn Yankees…”

You’d think the Civil War was fought just yesterday.

“It’s a disgrace, that’s what it is.” The first woman again. “Especially in her condition.”

All heads swivel to the source of this shocking revelation.

What?

to be continued

Now go check out the rest of the Wednesday Briefers:

Chris T. Kat  m/m

Nephylim     m/m

Tali Spencer    m/m

Cia Nordwell     m/m

MA Church     m/m

Elyzabeth VaLey      m/f

Victoria Adams      m/f

Until next time, take care!

♥ Julie