The week before Christmas you can barely turn around. Colour under the foils, the door opening again. A 10:15 that would leave two scraps on either side does not get in. A colouring that pays, and can be walked to eleven so it sits against the next chair — that one does.
You are in the doorway. The floor is loud. The book is keeping up.
Two weeks later, things could not be more different.
A walk-in at 10:15 sits down. Kim’s morning stays colour, the visits that already know her. Same shop as Christmas. The pretty hours can wait.
A call, not a grid
She wants colour and a cut, before Friday. Nobody sends her a grid. One question — all with Kim? — and then:
Kim can colour, Lara can style, and you will still be out by 4:30.
While the dye sits, a blow-dry takes the gap; then the rinse, then Lara, and she is out the door knowing how the afternoon went. Your people never left the chair to puzzle it out.
The visit actually fits.
Tomorrow at 12:30
Mrs Chen calls in the afternoon. She can only do 12:30 tomorrow — it is her lunch, and she is not moving it. Kim usually eats then too. Stella looks at tomorrow: Kim is also free at half past one. So Mrs Chen gets the chair at 12:30, and Kim’s sandwich waits until 13:30. Mrs Chen hangs up pleased. The cut is on the book.
Thursday’s two o’clock
A message lands in the afternoon: she can’t make Thursday, something at school. Stella tries Saturday morning with Kim, and that works, so the colouring simply moves. The two o’clock is empty for a moment, then it isn’t — someone who has been waiting for a colour this week takes it. You never picked up.
Kim texts Stella at 7:15. She is sick.
You see it a minute later: Kim is out, and Stella is already on it. Her morning is still on the book — a cut at nine, another at ten, a colouring at half eleven. The nine o’clock can come at quarter past; Lara has a gap. The ten o’clock would rather Thursday. The colouring is the one people wait for, and by twenty to eight that chair has a person on it again. The lights go on to a morning that still pays. You were pouring coffee.
That is a full week, the kind you opened with. The empty one — Lena and Noor, the book half full, the walk-in at 10:15 — you already know. It is the same floor. The street outside had simply gone quiet.