Short Back and Sides
But I wanted a trim
I was five minutes early; the shop wasn’t yet open. I stood basking in the sunshine, having heard from the hotel valet it was to be the warmest day of the year so far. It certainly felt possible.
The air is scented with a weightless veil of pipe smoke. Looking around, I see the old man sitting on a bench, satisfying a need he cannot ignore. I don’t know when I last smelled pipe smoke.
A teenage man is standing at the door to the shop. One side of his head is yellow, contrasting with black hair on the opposing side.
At the stroke of nine, a woman wearing a Supercuts apron opens the door. Behind me, the old man stands up from the bench and taps his pipe on the edge of the seat before tucking it into his jacket pocket. He, too, comes to the door. I wouldn’t guess his age, but his hair looks like he just got out of the bathtub. He has a glow about him, somewhat bluish, like when kids cry, a fat face, and perhaps better described as a man filled with pot-bellied success.
It appears the young man is early for his appointment with Sherry. I begin to wonder who Sherry is? He must wait twenty minutes or so, she assumes. I guess he hoped if he got here at the opening, he might squeeze in.
The stylist lets her finger slide down a list of names. Alan, Harry, and Poppy. She looks up from the list. I hold up my hand. Behind, a woman enters the shop. Poppy, she sings out. The pipe man is Alan. Two more girls appear from the back of the shop wearing their Supercuts aprons.
I’m requested to occupy chair 2. I do so. My hair, what there is of it, isn’t so bad, Just a trim, Jenny had told me. Don’t have it short; it makes you look too old. Good to know.
After being in the chair for about a minute, the stylist appears in the mirror’s reflection. She throws a curtain over my head, also emblazoned with the name Supercuts. Her hair has several shades of color, from pink to orange. Now that I study her, I believe her head has had an epileptic fit. Her skull was smeared with nastiness. I’m tempted to ask if her name is Sherry. Instead, I start my usual game of believing these people could all be characters for a story I might begin later in the day.
The stylist cutting my hair has inspired me. I imagine her with green eyes, gold blood, and skeleton tattoos hanging from broken branches. Which isn’t at all imaginative because I just described my hairstylist. Maybe not the gold blood.
“Good morning, sir. How would you like your hair cut today?”
Holy crap, her voice sounds like woodland fern? Beautiful. Well, that doesn’t work. I’m confused now. There are five chairs, only three filled. Poppy, seated in the next chair, is in her sixties maybe, with a blue rinse and a Safeway shopping bag placed under the shelf in front of her. The bag reveals she has loose dentures, owns a cat, likes cabbage, and prefers uncut bread.
The teenager, browsing his cell phone, is not afraid to pay handsomely to wear holes. Teenagers have a rigorous purpose, devoted to being an exact replica of the next teenager. I could not guess what moves his heart. Was he blessed to grow up with scabby kneecaps, spend his summer nights in trees, eat too many boiled eggs, and play dirty games with his school girlfriends? He has tiny, tidy, unscratched fingers. Fingers, I’ll bet never touched a toad, given gentle care, or were ever stained with blood. He looks like a young man capable of turning abstract into reality.
Poppy is telling her stylist she is recently widowed. Poppy’s skin is no longer honey, her voice near a whisper, crackling on her lips, saliva licked back. Who will buy her flowers now?
The stylist removed my cape. I am done. I look in the mirror, Jenny is right.
