One Endless Hour by Dan J. Marlowe Page A

total."
        She raised her arms, put her hands over her ears, and lifted. What looked like about forty-five pounds of hair rose straight up in the air, disclosing a nude, polished skull. Oddly enough, the revelation didn't materially damage her sexy look. "Rheumatic fever got mine," she said, lowering the wig into position again.
        "Mine was a chemical explosion."
        She winked at me. "We guarantee that our hairpieces will restore your sex life to its former level."
        Her voice was low and throaty. With the wink, it made me suspect the whole thing was a put-on. I started to reply that on the basis of restoring my sex life to its former level several million red-blooded American men would feel themselves shortchanged, and then I stopped. "Did anyone ever tell you that you look like Mae West?"
        She nodded. "Thousands." She gave me a bright smile. "I did right by them all."
        "It's your shop?" I asked for lack of something better to say.
        "Yes, it is. You've already seen that I'm acquainted with the problem. Oh, sure, half the wigs I sell are to dizzy dames interested in seeing if a color change will add an inch to their boyfriends' muscle, but it's a challenge like yours that I try to do right by." She strolled over to me and studied my features. She had a rolling gait like a sailor's. "What people who need prosthetic hairpieces don't realize is that makeup is just as important as the hair," she went on.
        "Makeup?"
        "Exactly. I teach you how to use television makeup so that you can blend your face with your new hair so that only a makeup expert can tell it's not your own."
        I had used up the supply of healing cream I had smuggled from the hospital during my first month at Blind Tom's. The healing had been well along by then, but I was still conscious of the visibility of the scars. "How long would it take you to teach me?"
        "Half an hour. The practice necessary to do it correctly takes longer, of course." She moved away from me, behind the counter, and began rummaging in drawers. "Was your hair brown?"
        "Before it turned gray."
        She looked up at me. "You want gray again?" There was a definite twinkle in her saucy-looking eyes. "You don't need it."
        "Thanks. I'll leave it up to you."
        "That's the boy," she approved. "I'm glad you're not the type who comes in here sniveling because his face was burned. 'Why, man you've got it made,' I always tell them. 'Your face isn't going to change. You'll look exactly the same twenty years from now when every woman you know is envying the hell out of you.' " She removed a hairpiece from a drawer. "Come sit over here."
        I moved behind the counter and sat down on a three-legged stool placed before a mirror with angled wings that showed the sides of the head as well as the front. The well-endowed proprietress sat on another stool slightly behind mine after enveloping me in a barber's apron.
        " 'Course most men who come in here are afraid they're never going to make it with a woman again," she continued in her free-wheeling fashion. "And I can understand that. When I lost my hair, the first thing I thought was that I'd never get to do the split on my back again." In the mirror I could see her bright smile over my shoulder. "It didn't work that way. I even experimented. A few times I took the wig off just to see what would happen. Some guys just shriveled, but it turned on a few Johns like you wouldn't believe."
        While talking, she had arranged a makeup tray beside me. Stubby tubes numbered from one to eleven rested in troughs along with three different kinds of powder in jars. "First the clippers on the back of the neck to blend the hairline," she said. I flinched at the cold touch of the steel, but she clip-clipped away, unheeding. "I recommend not wearing a hat," she went on. "Ninety percent of the trouble in wig wearing comes from hats and the complications