“Other than seeing people eating each other on the news, I’m fine,” she answered.

“Eating how? Good or bad way?” Ken gave her a sly look.

“Bad. Like cannibals,” she answered, deftly destroying his pornographic dreams.

“Ugh, that is why I so do not watch the news!” Ken frowned and began teasing the customer’s hair into an even bigger, blonder poof.

“Well, it’s all over the news,” Lenore told him.

“Well, we just won’t watch it today, will we? It’s the E! channel all day today! Yay!”

Lenore rolled her eyes and went to turn on the TV at the back of the shop and set it to the right channel. They had left it on CNN the night before and she felt her stomach churn as the image on the screen was instantly of a massive riot with deranged people attacking a reporter. They were literally biting her.

“Freaks in Houston still going at it,” she muttered to herself.

Right before she changed the channel, she saw that the footage was actually from Boston. A shiver of fear flowed down her spine and she hit the remote control to flip over to the entertainment network.

Standing up, she shoved the horrible image out of her mind. No time for news media crap. Time to work.

2.

Nothing As It Seems

Despite his wide smile and exuberance, Ken was having a very bad day. The no-good ex-boyfriend had called him early in the morning to tell him he was getting married in Canada. It had taken all of Ken’s willpower not to burst into tears and scream at him. He had pretended to be happy and chatted away as though his heart hadn’t just been ripped out and thrown out the window. What little hope he had that he would be reunited with Darryl, his lost love, had been summarily squashed.

But he was not going to let anyone know that he was hurting. He had a business to run. A small business in the middle of nowhere, Texas, but it was his beauty shop. It was going to be a good day one way or the other. He had prayed that God would grant him grace and a good attitude. Maybe it was a good ol’ jolt of holy power or maybe just his grim determination, but he was smiling.

He checked his eyes for the millionth time to make sure they were not swollen or red from crying. He was satisfied that his expert makeup job to cover up the redness was looking brilliant. He continued to tease Mrs. Chentworth’s hair into the biggest ‘do in Texas and chattered on about all the latest gossip he had read that morning on the internet entertainment blogs.

Lenore was huffy again and that was fine by him. When his no good rotten cheating boyfriend had left him with the beauty shop and vanished for the glories of artsy Marfa, Texas, he had hired Lenore to help him build his clientele. The black population had grown since hurricanes Katrina and Rita sent evacuees fleeing into the small towns of Texas. Some had decided to stay and enjoy the good weather, down home hospitality and cheaper cost of living. Lenore was straight out of beauty school, but she was trained specifically to care for the hair of the black ladies. Since she had joined the shop, he had seen his appointment book swell. It hadn’t taken long for her to become his daily verbal foil. She was Eeyore to his Tigger and that worked well for them. He loved work now, and he owed it to his grumpy girlfriend.

“Do you think he’s sleeping with her?” his client asked about the latest “it” boy in Hollywood.

“Honey, he’s gayer than I am!” Ken flashed a smile in her direction and covertly checked his eyes again. He still wanted to cry, but he would not. To try and cover how much he was hurting, he did a very flamboyant pose.

“Embracing the stereotype, Ken,” Lenore drawled from across the shop as she checked in their latest shipment of hair extensions.

“This coming from the classic stereotype of the angry black woman?” Ken batted his eyelashes at her and returned to his poofing of Mrs. Chentworth’s classic Texas bouffant.

Lenore harrumphed from across the room. “I ain’t angry. I’m grumpy. There is a difference.”

“You gonna get all sassy at me, snapping your fingers and flipping your weave?” Ken teased.

She glowered. “One, I ain’t sassy. Two, the only one who snaps their fingers around here is you. Three, what I do with my weave is none of your damn business.”

Ken stuck his tongue out at her.

Lenore dismissed him with a look and went back to work.

He chattered on to his customer as he worked and ignored the TV playing in the background. He always felt happier when he was working in the shop. He may have received it as a goodbye gift from his rich ex, but he had decorated to make it his own. The walls were a deep burgundy and decorated with lots of swanky artwork depicting hairstyles and fashions over the ages. Fresh flowers were tucked into hand-painted vases and soft trip hop music played in the background. He may have gotten stuck in Podunk, Nowhere, but he was doing the best he could to make it work.

When he finished with Mrs. Chentworth’s hair, he took her check gratefully, waved to her as she walked out the door, tucked the check into the cash register, and burst into tears.

“What’s wrong?” Lenore asked from across the shop.

“That bastard is getting married in Canada!”

“Oh,” Lenore said, and then added matter-of-factly, “But he’s no good for you.”

“I know! I know! But all I wanted was a good husband, a nice home, my own beauty shop and...and...”

“One out of three ain’t bad,” Lenore reminded him.

Ken sniffled a little and shrugged. “I just thought he was the one.”

Ken was always looking for the one. He had hid that he was gay quite successfully all through his childhood and into his teens until he had fallen madly in love with the student council president. On impulse he had written the boy a love letter. The next day his crush had read it over the school intercom and outed him in the most vicious manner possible. Ken had tried to sneak out of the school, but the jocks had found him, beaten him senseless, and sent him off to the hospital.

When he’d woken up, his father had been sitting at his beside with a grim expression on his face. His father had stared down at him for a long moment, then said, “Serves you right for being queer.” Standing up, the man who had once given him piggybacks around the backyard while Ken shouted giddy-up! had walked out of the room and out of Ken’s life.

When Ken was released from the hospital, he was sent to live with his grandmother in San Antonio. His father still wasn’t talking to him and wouldn’t until he “straightened up.” His mother called him in secret and sometimes sent him gifts, but his childhood had ended at seventeen and so had his relationship with his parents.

“The ‘one’ ain’t going to ditch you for some bitchy queen and run off to Canada and get married,” Lenore chided him. She put one hand on her plump hip and glared at him. “You should know that by now. If they love you, they stay by you.”

Ken wiped a tear away and some of his makeup came off with it. “I know! I know! But I gave up everything I had in Dallas to move here to be with him and he left me for some stupid peroxide blond with a fake orange tan!”

Lenore rolled her eyes. “He has bad taste.”

“Hey!”

“I meant with whathisface. Not you. You’re adorable.”

“Really?”

Lenore frowned and said reluctantly, “Yes, for a melodramatic princess.”

Ken gave her a pout, then shook his head. “I’m not melodramatic. He ripped my heart out. Tore it out and flung it away, then ran after it and stomped on it, then ground it into the dirt and...”

Mr. Cloy pushed open the door and peered in at them. “Y’all hear what’s going on in Austin?”

Ken set his chin on his fist and shook his head. He tried to tone down his Nancy Boy inclinations when around the men in town. They were actually quite nice to him and one had even told him that “for a queer boy, you’re okay.” But he was also a businessman and he tried not to cause a stir among potential clients. There were enough stupid rumors about gay people in the world that he did not want anyone painting on him.

“Nope. What’s up with Austin?”

“Got riots there, too. It’s really getting crazy. It’s like all the big cities are just going nuts,” Mr. Cloy said, letting the door slam shut behind him. It was a heavy wood door with a leaded glass window set into it. Thick black velvet curtains with gold thread brocade covered the two big bay windows in the front of the store and kept out the hot sun.

Lenore broke down the box the hair extensions had come in and sighed. “Something bad going on. Maybe some bad crack or something.”

Mr. Cloy scratched his chin. “It’s on purpose. I know it. Someone has put something in the air or in the water. You know that old guy on public access is always going on about that stuff.”

Ken knew exactly whom he was talking about. The geezer would come on public access once a week to ramble on about the government creating clones to do their dirty work. Back in the day, Darryl had watched it religiously. Of course, that was before Darryl hit his midlife crisis, sold the house without telling Ken, got himself a bimbo boyfriend, and hightailed it out of town leaving only a note on his pillow telling Ken he had to move out and that the shop was his.