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“I’m not mocking you. In fact, I think it’s rather prudent.” Diane says of her change of clothes, which includes Sam’s plaid shirt. For emphasis she drops her voice to grave depths, “Lord knows how much beer has been spilled in this place.”
Sam’s shirt is warm and dry, and is much better to brave this January night with than is her dampened blue dress. She doesn’t bear to think of certain implications. Besides, you spend half your life in a place, it’s bound to eventually house one’s belongings. The this-and-thats of the everyday. (Even those water guns remain on his shelf like unaddressed relics.)
He smiles small, and cuts to the chase. “You know, Diane, that was a lousy thing you did. Bringing in some phony spy to make everybody all paranoid like that.”
"Oh, it was just a little experiment. Besides, revenge is – a bucket best dumped cold.” She swiftly lifts her chin, displays her smirk, because the sweetest revenge may well be an initiation into the club – puerile rituals notwithstanding.
He laughs once, self-and-crew-congratulatory, “It was rigged up there pretty good, wasn’t it.”
“Yes, well, at least I have never believed a patron a spy.” She banters with ease. “Twice.”
He places a hand over his heart, “Yeah, well, I’ve never clucked like a chicken up on the TV.”
Diane rolls her eyes, nods at how she expected this riposte. She puts a stop to their exchange before it can really begin by holding her palm high. “Okay.”
Sam grins, relaxes some. After all, Woody had been right: It was a darned good impression.
And, heck, she even let herself let loose to achieve it.
As they lapse into a lull, he looks at that hair of hers. Customarily buoyant and perfectly primped, it is now wet and dripping onto the plaid of his borrowed shirt.
Tonight’s one of many firsts in Diane Chambers appearances. He’s damned if he admits that he’s tickled, and damned if he doesn’t.
Instead, “You’ll grow icicles for ears if you leave here like that. Come on, get over here.” He pats the leather of his desk chair.
Uncertain but curious, “I fear to tread.”
“Come on,” He repeats, quieter, in his for-serious, I’m-serious way, knocks at the chair. “Dry as a bone.”
“What do you have planned? If this is another puckish prank…”
But sit she does.
He yanks out a desk drawer. All thud, clunk, and jangle. Diane watches his pursuit with knit brows. What Sam retrieves from the bottommost, deepest reaches of his desk may well be his prized pearl from the lowest levels of the Atlantic: A turbo hair dryer; along with a round brush, packed away in a styling kit of sorts.
Diane’s grin comes out to play. She laughs loosely. “Sam Malone, are you going to blow dry my hair?”
“Please.” He scoffs. “You kidding? Any ding-a-ling can wave around a blow dryer. I work Mayday magic.”
She stares at him with incredulous awe. She stares ahead at the couch with incredulous awe. This feeling is not because Sam keeps handy such styling tools (of course he does), but why he’s just now thought to use them. Diane ponders this as part of a newly emerging pattern: he had praised her as the hero of the alleys, Gary’s major contender; he had let himself enjoy her Hemingway.
The letting is half the challenge.
“Alright. It’s – judicious.” She rationalizes. “Given the freezing temperatures outside.” She must get herself to agree with herself.
There’s some fussing with a cord.
Then, Sam’s fingers move into the slick of her hair. Their cue is hot, loud air from his dryer. Her scalp tingles; but it’s a false start. She feels his fingers slip a bit, and he holds his breath. “Uh,” He kills the noise, takes away the humidity which lingers warm on her neck. “Hold on." Brought back is the muffled quiet of his office. Barroom chatter, clanking, it’s all an abstracted thrum past the closed office door. He retrieves a hand mirror, says, “hold this,” and then turns on the heat again.
He – despite his mighty, Maydayian talk – first waves the dryer around her head like any ole ‘ding-a-ling.’ Once her hair isn’t entirely sopping, he starts with his brush, rolling it up, setting the curl with heat, rolling it out. They find a rhythm. Rolling, unrolling in blooms of warmth.
He’s concentrated, chewing his bottom lip when she observes him in the mirror. His work is imperfect: he hasn’t her clips or rollers at his disposal, but there’s a practiced precision to his preening, and educated guesses for her layered length.
“Not bad fingerwork, hey? The trick is to lift these pieces in the front here, like this.” Two fingers imitate a pair of scissors, which playfully snip-flip at her bangs.
She laughs again, has to project her voice over the dryer, “I didn’t realize that you would take this much pride in efforts that were not exclusively for your own appearance.” Last year, this quip would have carried a sting. This year, the tenor’s changing. His low chuckle is more felt vibration than it is heard volume. “This is a thoughtful gesture, Sam.”
Self-reticent, he hides in a quip that’s returned-to-sender: “Oh I – occasionally use my powers for good.”
“I see that.”
“You’re well on your way to bein’ bombshell certified.” Fluffing his fingers through her hair, he plays with how it falls and remembers how it lays. She has one helluva head of hair, still scented to the high heavens like it used to be on his pillow. So while Diane wonders which one of them he’s truly just complimented, Sam’s trying to keep it cool.
“Okey – alright.” Better to maintain the momentum. He thumps the dryer down, rubs his palms together. His gaze darts around for hairspray like it does for ordered liquor on a Saturday night. He clouds it just right. “How’s that feel, we satisfactorily warmed up?”
Appraising, Diane angles the mirror this way and that. Granted, it’s haphazard relative to how she herself styles it, comparatively flatter; but certainly not without mane-and-merit, carried out as an act of – well, care. She compliments without complimenting, “The man knows how to blow hot air.” Because in so doing, she thinks she can balance the scales.
But he challenges that balance. “Hey, I do you a favor and you still give me hell?”
In this house of glass, she relents. Turning away from their reflections, she shifts Sam himself, and not the image of – always the image of – into view. “Thank you, Sam. Truly. I am sufficiently warmed.”
Her smile’s sweet, legibly touched. He reciprocates it.
“Me too.”
Wistfully, “Well.”
Just as, “Yeah.”
“ – It’s awfully late. I should leave.”
“Aw you’re not cuttin’ out before payin’ a tip to your good ole barber now.”
She plays along, comfortably and by the rules of their earliest game. “What is your going rate?”
“Still a ten. Don’t know about going.”
“Right.”
Neither does she.