Neighborlies

Two Korean ladies live next door, and they have a little salon.  For about four months, they've been remodeling and updating with white walls, white tiles, and light blue accents.  Very suave.

When I pass to or from work or town, we wave and say hello, and that is the entire extent of our verbal communication.

Still, I periodically poke my head in the door, make snip-snip motions at my head, and get either waved in or a shake of the hand.  

One of the two will wave me to chair that was once shiny chrome and a harvest gold vinyl but is now a tan chrome with vinyl polished shiny.  A terry towel around the neck, a fresh-laundered cotton sheet over it, and she gathers tools: an electric shaver, a comb, and a straight razor.  For about six, maybe eight minutes there's a flurry of back-and-forth with the razor and shaver, and it feels like she's trimmed around the edges.  But then there's a pause, and I realize she's leaning in close and minutely touching up the edges with the straight razor, and I realize my head's a different shape: she's already clipped... everything.  Still, the cleanup takes half again as long as the clipping, and just like I never catch her getting my bangs or anything on top, she ends up getting my sideburns without me actually realizing it.  

I can accept that I miss how she gets the top in all the flutter, but I'd like to think I'd be acutely aware of someone waving a straight razor in my face and scraping it down my cheeks.  But no, no, somehow she gets the peachfuzz without me catching her in the act.  

Maybe 15 minutes elapse before she waves me up, and just like every other time, I look and think, "Damn, she does a good job!"

Is the secret just walking in and sitting down?  Would that have changed any of the times I left thinking, at least it'll grow back and reminding myself not to think of the cost, even after I found the $10-$15 cheap cut places?

And here's the kicker: Now that I'm a regular, the cost is 60 TB--just shy of $2.