A young, pretty girl raced down Azalea Street in Santa Cruz, California at the dawning of another business day in 1972. Café patrons stared as a flash of curly, tawny hair, tan skin, blue Keds, and a button-down knock off of the popular “Lilly” dress flew by. Yanking open the door of “Sherman’s House of Golden Locks”—conveniently located on the main thoroughfare, adjacent to the Tip-Toe Tavern and Doghouse Diner— the glass door banged shut behind her, a heavy brass bell hanging from the doorknob clanging in protest.

Doubled over from exertion, Zinnia Sternman grasped her thighs, gasping for air. Strains of The Beatles’ “Rubber Soul” album crackled through speakers located above wall-length mirrors, an enormous air conditioner located above the door wheezing before emitting a blast of frigid air. A display case held a multitude of muumuus for sale in all colors and sizes, brushes, and too many cans of hairspray to count. The place did a brisk business in both muumuus and Aqua Net. “Auntie Zoe, he’s...he’s gone. Jim is no more...phew,” she was still panting.

She finally arched her back, sounding off a final, “phew,” before looking around. Her hair framed her face like a Caravaggio angel as she smiled.

            “Zinnia, what are you talking about?” one of three large women with even larger behinds inquired. The women were tending to clients, all of whom now stared her like a herd of cows startled out of grazing by an unfamiliar sound. A menacing beehive hairdo threatened to topple the Amazonian mountain of flesh that was Zoe should she lean forward too far, while a lit cigarette topped by a generous portion of ash hung from her lips. She and her sisters served as practical models for the muumuus, and the one Zoe was sporting lent the appearance of a colossal azalea bush in full bloom. “Can’t you see I’m busy?” she snapped before flicking the ash into a beanbag-bottomed, chrome ashtray like a seasoned marksman hitting the bull’s-eye at a thousand yards. She took another puff before reaching into her rolling cart, extracting a can of Budweiser beer, and taking a generous sip.

            “Jim is dead. Jim, remember?” Zinnia stamped, offended Zoe had forgotten.

            “Want a cold one, honey?” Zoe asked her client, who nodded her assent while admiring the expert job Zoe had done ratting the woman’s fine hair into a fashionable football perched precariously, and defying gravity, on top of her head. “Look at this in the mirror, you’ll love the back. Give me two secs,” Zoe offered, handing the woman a mirror with which to admire herself from several angles all at once.

            “Hush now, Zinnia. Does your mother know where you are?” she growled, muumuu swishing as she stepped through a clicking curtain of colorful beads into the back room where the sisters kept their supplies, coffee percolator, and refrigerator that was never short on the ubiquitous supply of Budweiser.

            Zinnia followed. “Yes, yes. She told me to tell you. Auntie, listen,” she said, suddenly breaking into her own rendition of “Light My Fire,” dancing in time to her own music of the spheres.

Zoe’s jaw dropped, almost causing her to lose the Marlboro still perched between lips colored fuchsia from Revlon’s latest “Heart of Hearts” collection. “Jim Morrison?” She took a final, deep drag, exhaling a stream of blue-white smoke.

            “Geez, took ya’ long enough,” Zinnia exclaimed.

            Zoe burst into the shop as all heads turned again toward the source of the latest commotion. “Flo, Stella, that beautiful man is no more. Jim Morrison has passed on.”

            A sextet of heads shook in unison at the grave news. Almost immediately, Zoe rushed into the back room, snatched “Hotel Morrison” out of a long line of albums, and placed the needle on her favorite tune, “L.A. Woman.” As Morrison’s honey voice poured out a tribute to the “lucky little lady in the City of Light,” all heads bowed, no beer was sipped, and cigarettes lay unattended in various ashtrays. One of Stella’s huge, pink plastic curlers flopped onto her forehead with a click, but she did not look up until the song was over.

            “He was the most divinely-gorgeous man,” Zoe exclaimed before returning to the work at hand. “You know, we gave him his first haircut in California; said he was a military brat. He stopped in Santa Cruz on his way to L.A. He was a young kid.” She looked toward Zinnia. “You were just a little thing then, four or five…do you remember?”

            Zinnia closed her eyes. Suddenly she could picture him. Tall, lean—“Pretty as a girl,” Flo had said. She pictured his dark mahogany hair; large, expressive eyes; and his scent…he had smelled really good.

            “Hello ladies,” he had said, seducing them with a brilliant, perfect smile and succulent lips. “Can a fella get a cut in these parts that ain’t too establishment?”

            “Honey, you’ve come to the right place,” Zoe assured him as she and her sisters fought over who would do the job. “Want a cold one?”

            “You bet, thanks.” He turned to Zinnia. “And who are you, princess fair?”

            Hands on the arm of his chair, her enormous eyes widened even more. She had been unable to move. He was tempting and terrible all at once. Her face reddened before she turned heel, flying into the back room crying. His laughter followed her. “And here I thought I had a way with the ladies,” he added as Zoe cracked open a Bud.

            They joked and chatted as Zoe cut his hair just above his shoulder. Once Zoe finished, he thanked her, pressing bills into her hand. Standing, he kissed all the sisters on the cheek. Zinnia peeked through the bead curtain and was caught. “Come here, princess fair,” he murmured, beckoning. Zoe nodded it was ok.

            Emerging from the back room, she walked to him. “Some day someone will write songs about you. You are beautiful.” He brushed the hair from her face, kissing her on the cheek before standing and leaving. He smiled and waved through the glass as he walked away, out of Santa Cruz and on to fame, fortune, and now, death. They had all stared at him, too dumbfounded to speak. “Jim, come back,” Zinnia hollered. She ran to the door, unable to pull it open, and began crying. The women rushed over, offering comfort and promising many scoops of licorice ice cream from her favorite ice-cream parlor, Dapper Dan’s.

            Zinnia’s reverie was interrupted as Zoe’s voice penetrated the surge of memories. “What happened to him, Zin? Did they say on the news?”

“Yep. They said he died in Paris, something about a bathtub,” Zinnia reported.

            “France,” Flo retorted. “Zoe, how the heck did that beautiful man wind up in Paris?”

            “I have no idea. What a shame.” Everyone shook their heads one more time before business as usual resumed. It had not taken long for Flo to irritate Zoe, inaugurating an argument. 

            “Sherman would turn in his grave if heard her say that. Turn, I tell you. And not once, but twice, maybe even three times,” Zoe quipped to Stella.

            “Oh, go take your rollers out and sit hard on one...long and hard,” Flo lobbed back.

            Zinnia knew the gloves had been tossed. It was her cue to leave.