Simone is her name. “It is true, my parents named me after the great singer, Nina Simone. But they got a shock when I sang them my first aria from the cradle,” she laughs. Simone smokes. So her laughter is naturally smoky, in as much as her voice is husky. She will, respectfully, stand a good distance away when puffing on a cigarette, picking idly at her well painted nails in between drags.
One of her ‘ciggie stops’ (as she calls them) is just outside Mario’s (the hairdresser).
“A small reward after my kilometre health walk,” she explains, fishing for a lighter in her handbag slung diagonally like a cross belt.
At her feet sit her two ‘darlings’. The poodles, Mimi and Max. Black as a starless night. They are, literally, a picture. Groomed to perfection, their fur cut and shaped like topiary in a garden.
Mimi wears a ribbon, a contrasting shade of fuchsia, around her shaped ‘wig’. Her legs appear to have been shaved (finely shorn, really) except for the bottoms which are left fluffy so it looks as if Mimi is wearing black boots. She has similar little ribbons tied around her feet, replicating anklets of sorts.
Maxi, for his part, sports an electric blue bow around his neck. Passersby on the pavement frequently stop to snap their icameras.
“Millions of people in the world living hand to mouth and look at this woman chucking so much money on her dogs,” observes Ravi, between scissor-clicks, from inside the hairdressers. “I really wish she wouldn’t stop here to have a chat, that woman annoys me so much.”
Simone from outside, oblivious to the reaction she’s causing, natters on informing everyone who is listening about the new vet that’s joined the practice in the next suburb where she takes Mimi and Max for their weekly visits.
Bit of shaking up
When Mario, the previous owner, passed away after a sudden stroke, the family put up a sign to say they were selling the business.
Ravi, a recent migrant from Chennai with a fair background in haircutting, decided he’d give it a go, so took out a bank loan, took over the business, but kept the name.
“Mario’s sounds better than Ravi’s any day,” was his assessment. “Fifty-fifty,” says Ravi, when asked how business is shaping up. “Some days are okay, some days are most definitely not okay. I sit idly in the chair watching ‘Mrs. Rich-and-Famous’ take her dogs for their expensive walk to the dog doctor.”
Story has it that Simone, who never married, inherited all her father’s wealth acquired from a used-can recycling business.
“She doesn’t have to work for the rest of her life,” says Ravi, adding, “Mr David, her neighbour, was telling me this. Have you seen the car she drives?”
He sets the scissors and comb aside, checks what he sees in the mirror, bending this way and that to get a view from many angles, appears satisfied, as am I, then sprays water from a bottle on my head. “Head massage?” Would love it, I tell him, my brains need a bit of shaking up.
Five minutes later, I feel so light headed and relaxed I don’t want to leave the chair. But Ravi is removing the protective toweling and carrying it, with its remnants of clippings to the waste bin in the corner.
“You come to this suburb often?” he asks. He is delighted to have encountered a stranger with a smattering of Tamil on his tongue. I tell him a friend of mine (Barney) lives around the block.
I also suggest that he consider grooming poodles in his spare time. “That way you can get the lady to chuck the money at you and not elsewhere. Besides, it’s a lot of cash I imagine to groom a poodle.”
“One hundred dollars each, sir,” says Ravi, adding with a grin, “you’ve given me a really top idea. Suddenly I don’t dislike the woman that much.”
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.
