Wild Fiction

Another twenty minutes passed and Gunther reappeared. His face hung and his arms drooped next to his body, like an old orang-utan that was tired of performing circus tricks. He walked past the girls, stood by Pelolina at the window, and spoke to her. When Gunther returned to them, Genevieve noticed that his eyes were puffy. She smiled at him. Pelolina joined them and in silence, they returned to working on the girls’ hair.
‘Are you okay, honey?’ Genevieve asked looking at Gunther in the mirror. She pulled one of her hands out from under the plastic poncho and placed it on his hand, which was resting on her shoulder.
‘Everything’s fi-ne,’ he said his voice wavering on the fine.
‘Who was that?’ Genevieve asked.
‘Just someone, nobody important.’
Genevieve heard Rebecca draw her breath in sharply and looked across at her in the mirror. Rebecca was looking straight toward the back of the salon. Genevieve swivelled her eyes without moving her head and caught her breath. Closing the door behind him was Retir W. Doog. He marched across the salon ignoring them and walked out the door. In his hand was the same bag the stranger had entered with almost an hour earlier.
Gunther drew in his breath in a series of small whimpers of someone who had previously been crying. A tear appeared on his cheek and then another one. Pelolina pulled a fistful of tissues out of a box and handed them to him as he sobbed. She put her arm around him and led him over to the sofa where he sat down. Genevieve and Rebecca pulled their plastic ponchos over their heads and joined the two of them on the sofa. Genevieve took hold of Gunther’s hand and squeezed it.
‘You need to go home,’ Pelolina said. ‘I’ll take you home.’
‘No, someone needs to watch the salon.’
‘We can take him home,’ Genevieve volunteered.
‘Thank you,’ Gunther said. ‘I think that’d probably be better. We’d better get those face masks off though and that stuff out of your hair.’

Chapter 59

No one spoke on the way back to Gunther’s flat. Between sharp breaths and occasional sobs, Gunther blew his nose and went through four packets of Handy Andies. Rebecca pulled a bottle of small blue pills out of her handbag and broke one in half. She handed it to Gunther. He held it between his finger and looked at it.
‘Take it,’ Rebecca said. ‘It’s five milligrams of Valium. It’ll make you feel better.’
‘What are you doing with these?’ Gunther asked.