Trisha Collopy Trisha Collopy is a writer and editor living in Minneapolis. She is a past Loft Literary Center Mentor Series fellow. Her work has been published in Ploughshares, Lambda Literary Review and Blithe House Quarterly, among other places.
An excerpt from Mouth Music The Wild Rose Beauty Shop was a little shack at the end of Main Street, where the wooden sidewalk ended and the row of storefronts tumbled into houses and weedy lots. Gus passed it on her way from the hotel to her boarding house every morning and night. A hand-made sign below the name said, “Hair Bobbing Our Specialty” and a picture in the window showed the styles: Orchid Bob, Coconut Bob, Brushed Back Bob, Tousled Frizzy Bob, Eton Crop, Shingle. On a Tuesday, her only half-day, Gus lingered over a photo in the window, a movie star with cropped hair that came to a vampire’s point on her forehead, her full lips painted into a lacquered smirk. A girl in a white smock came out and lit a cigarette. “Leatrice Joy,” she said, exhaling. Gus startled back from the window and almost tripped over a dusty planter next to the door. “That lady you been eyeballing. You got a thing for her?” A stab of fear bloomed in Gus’s chest and she felt her ears flame. She should move on, she knew, but her feet were rooted to the spot in front of that window. “Is she famous?” “Yah, she’s in the movies. ‘Eve’s Leaves,’ ‘Clinging Vine.’ Bunch a them.”
18
