The Lodge on Holly Road. Sheila Roberts

been what some might have considered a youthful mistake, but she’d loved him like crazy. And when she got pregnant, they’d planned on getting married...until he tried to break up a bar fight and got killed for his trouble. Right before he’d been about to enlist in the army, too. Even though she’d had a child with him, his parents hadn’t bothered to make a connection with their grandchild. Hardly surprising considering that they’d pretty much written off their son.

      That was sick and wrong if you asked Missy. People could change. She would never write off her kids. They were the best part of her life, even if things hadn’t worked out with their dads.

      And boy, things really hadn’t worked out with Man Number Two, who was also out of the picture but for a completely different reason. She’d jumped into that relationship, driven by loneliness, anxious to find a father for Carlos. Man Number Two had been separated from his wife. They’d been ready to get a divorce...until wifey informed him she was pregnant. He told Missy just as she was about to break the news of her own pregnancy to him. (She’d read somewhere that condoms were 98 percent effective. Leave it to her to land in the 2-percent category!) His family was happy that he’d finally “come to his senses” and was reuniting with his wife. They’d never said anything to her face but she knew they’d never approved of her. She wasn’t about to stay around and be accused of screwing up the man’s life. So, figuring a pregnant wife trumped a pregnant ex-girlfriend, Missy had decided to let him go and stick with single parenthood. She was already raising a child on her own. What was one more? By Man Number Three, she was using more reliable birth control, but she wasn’t making smart choices. He hadn’t been good father material. He hadn’t even been good boyfriend material, the cheating rat.

      After a couple more short-lived love attempts, she wised up and realized it was better to be alone than to settle. In fact, better to live up to her own potential as a woman than to worry about meeting a man who’d make everything fall into place.

      Still, every once in a while she’d see a happy couple strolling the mall and sigh. Why were there so many Mr. Wrongs out there and so few Mr. Rights?

      That wasn’t all she wondered. Sometimes she wondered how she was going to give Carlos and Lalla the kind of life they deserved.

      But when those grim thoughts came along she pushed them firmly away. Yes, she’d made some mistakes and not everything had gone according to plan, but she had two great kids and she’d manage somehow. She was only twenty-six. She had time. Someday she was going to work at a fancy salon and be successful. And someday maybe her prince would come, ready to exchange his Corvette for a minivan, and carrying a wedding ring in his shirt pocket. Meanwhile she had...Larry.

      “Larry, you know I’m not into guys,” she lied.

      “I think lesbians are sexy,” he said.

      “Let’s soak your head, er, wash your hair,” she said.

      Larry always wanted his hair washed. That gave him a close-up view of the boobage.

      She got him all washed up, trying to keep her boobs out of range. (Larry often had to scratch his nose during the process and his hands usually got lost on the way there.) Then it was time for a cut. His hair was thinning so he kept it long and shaggy in an attempt to compensate. He always reminded the stylists that he only wanted a little trim. After the incident with Mrs. Steele, Missy was going to take off barely anything.

      She began, oh, so carefully, snipping.

      “Could you take a bit more off here,” he said, pretending to reach for his ear. Before she could dodge his pudgy paw he’d scored his first boob graze. “Oh, sorry,” he said.

      Yeah, that was why he was leering.

      Was it the final straw, or rather follicle? Had she inhaled too many fumes while giving Bessy Hart her perm a couple of hours ago? Was she going insane? Who knew? But something got into Missy. Maybe it was the spirit of the Grinch.

      She gave Larry a wicked smile and cooed, “No problem.” Then she picked up a section of hair and made a radical cut. Oh, that felt good. Let’s do it again. Another section of hair disappeared.

      “Whoa,” said Larry. “Just a trim. Remember?”

      “Trust me. I know what I’m doing,” she said with a Grinchy grin, and more of Larry’s hair vacated his head. Then she got out the clippers.

      “Whoa, stop,” Larry cried.

      Too late. She was already running the clippers up the back of his head.

      “Hey,” he protested, trying to move his head. That got him a nick in the ear. “Yow! What’s with you?”

      “Just giving you a trim,” she told him sweetly. “Like you said.”

      “That’s no trim! It’s a scalping.”

      “Oh, Larry, I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess we’d better stop.” With half his head buzzed and the other half shaggy. Hee, hee.

      “You can’t stop now! I look like a freak.”

      Yeah, it would be a shame to look like the freak he was. “Well, Larry, if you promise to keep your hands to yourself we’ll finish this.”

      “What do you mean?”

      She didn’t say anything, merely stood there, staring at him in the mirror until he actually made eye contact.

      Then he scowled. “Okay, okay.”

      She rewarded him with a smile. “You’re going to look totally buff.”

      “Buff, huh?” He thought a moment. “Yeah, buff is good.”

      When she was done, Larry’s hair was ready for the marines. Too bad the rest of his body wasn’t.

      She handed him a mirror and turned the chair so he could see the back of his head.

      He nodded approvingly. “Hey, it’s not bad. I kinda like it.” He smiled up at her. “Nice job.”

      Oh, great. She’d earned the undying devotion of Larry the lech. “Um, thanks,” she said.

      She took off the cape and Larry forgot his promise and decided to stretch. She was too fast for him this time and danced backward, away from his lecherous paws. He frowned.

      But when he paid, he gave her a ten-dollar tip.

      She watched him go out the door and sighed. “Why do I feel like a pole dancer?”

      Shiloh was next to her now. “You should be so lucky. Pole dancers make a lot more than we do.”

      Two more cuts, two more decent tips and then she left to collect the kids from the babysitter and hit the road for their Christmas adventure. So far their Christmases hadn’t exactly been something you’d put on a greeting card. Often there’d been a boyfriend involved and a fight, or a tipsy neighbor stopping in to share the yuletide cheer, drink in hand, always a scraggly bargain tree with cheap presents that broke by the end of the day or weren’t what the kids really wanted.

      She wasn’t going to come through in the Santa department this year, any more than she had last year, since Carlos still wanted a dog. It was hard to produce a dog when her landlady didn’t allow pets. “All that barking, my nerves couldn’t take it,” Mrs. Entwhistle said whenever Missy broached the subject.

      Mrs. Entwhistle lived in the other half of the duplex Missy rented and was hard of hearing. She probably wouldn’t hear a Saint Bernard barking in her ear. She sure never heard when the teenagers down the block were partying till all hours of the morning or racing their cars. Or when the couple across the street had too much to drink and started yelling loud enough to drag Missy out of a sound sleep.

      “Dogs are so messy,” Mrs. Entwhistle would add, strengthening her argument.

      So were children. Missy never pointed that out. The last thing she wanted was Mrs. E. deciding she didn’t want children living next door, either. So, no dog for Carlos. They couldn’t