“It was never really about the hair, Rose,” I said.

Rose met my eyes in the big mirror and rested her hand lightly on my shoulder without a word.

“It was about remembering who I’d been the whole time,” I said.

I laid two twenty-dollar bills on her front counter, tucked the blue card into my coat pocket, and stepped out into the bright morning.

By two thirty, I stood in the hallway outside the executive auditorium at corporate headquarters downtown.

Brenda came out through the double mahogany doors carrying a leather binder and a stack of printed quarterly revenue summaries.