“It only takes five minutes to keep the line clean.”

She reached into her apron pocket and pulled out the laminated blue consultation card from the morning I had come into her shop bald four months earlier.

“I kept this pinned to the frame of my mirror,” Rose said, laying the card on the marble counter beside my purse.

“Most clients ask me to toss them after the first cut.”

I picked up the blue card and turned it over in my hand, reading my old Maple Street house number penciled faintly across the top line.