An Indian and His Tide (ManxMan)

1: When Opportunity Knocks

Shawna erupted with laughter, yanking her customer's hair a little, yet the customer roared too. "GIRL BYE!" Shawna screeched obnoxiously. "I wish somebody would! I really do, they gon' find out the hard way." She sassed.

Everyone in the salon laughed harder as well. "Aint that right Ranny?" Shawna continued, wiggling her dark eyebrows at him.

"Preach!" Ranil said in agreement, still the only one to be paying more attention to his customer's hair.      

It wouldn't sound like it from the sidewalk outside, and it would take you looking at the sign shaped like a pink dollop of foam, to know that it was a hair salon. They were the most popular hair salon on the street. Waves of people came in everyday and Ranil always got tired feet. The salon itself was huge. Ms. Yolanda was making bank and she deserved it too. Ranil remembered seeing the salon in its early days, as a boy. It was shabby, built up of crumbling bricks, linoleum tiles that had splatters of God knows what, and only locals dared step foot in there. You'd think it was a quarantine zombie facility before you'd think people got their hair did, let alone washed, in there. Ranil was twelve then. Now, Herbs & Urban: Holistic and Haute was the place for any person to be if they wanted their hair did right.

Ranil was always... outside of the box, much to the dismay of his traditional Indian parents. Instead of Hot Wheels cars, he wanted Barbie styling heads. Instead of playing on the jungle gym, he wanted to braid flowers into his female classmate's hair. And when he went to college, he went for cosmetology, hair and beauty. With his stunning looks and knack for hair, he easily landed a job at Herbs and Urban. But he wanted to take it one step further. Actually, maybe, two. Firstly, he wanted to win Bolder and Bunson's Nationwide Hair Tide. Which was the annual Bolder and Bunson hair competition. It was literally the Olympics of the hair world. If you won, even if you placed in the top five, you've made a name for yourself in the hair world and could even win a benefactor. Secondly, after placing top five (he did have pride after all), he would open up his own salon. He would call it, Ranil's.    

Er, well, perhaps not as self centered as it led some to believe. The details could be worked out later.   

Ranil looked around and saw that Shawna was talking about something, loudly as usual, her bright face bouncing off her station's mirror. The interior of the salon was black and olive with some gold here and there. Ranil loved it. There were fourteen stations total for the Urban half of the salon, and another fourteen for the Herbs half. That's right. The salon was divided into two, one of the most massive in the state. The Herbs side dealt with people who had natural hair wishes, while the Urban dealt with everything else. Every station had a spacious black counter top that held everything from the sanitary solution to hot comb ovens (a bit on the archaic sides, but there were customers who still asked for it so), then there were drawers filled with different kinds of curlers and straight irons. The customer got to sit on the most comfortably padded salon chair with padded rubber mats under their feet (though those were also for a hard working stylist).

Ranil was one of the three stylists that could switch between the two because he was licensed in natural hair care. However today he was on the Urban side. He was all booked up too. He had cruddy check, around eight bucks an hour, luckily though he charged forty more bucks a customer, which also could be more or less depending on the actual thing the customer wanted. However, he only worked four days out of the week. He wouldn't ever say he was rich.

He finished up her hair, spraying one of their herbal products on the finished result. It kept hair nice and sheen. All herbal products were made in the greenhouse outback. He was glad he had a natural license because since all the herbal products were made from scratch, it made the hairstyles cost more.