Lazy B
by
Chris Fink

And if you touch the eye of the other man in the mirror, it will seem to him that you are touching your own.

                                                                              Da Vinci, Fifth Book on Light and Shade

      The hair and nails place next door looks open, but the barbershop looks shut. The blinds are drawn and the red-and-white barber pole sits frozen. Danny tries the door anyway. He’s long overdue. He finds the door locked but rattles it again. Two fingers split the blinds, a lock clicks,  and the glass front door swings open.

     The barber squints against the sun. “Danny, where you been?” he says. “Come on in.”

     Danny stands on the sill. He looks over his shoulder at the busy expressway, the cars reflecting the sun. Inside, Alex has a bald old man in his chair and behind him a father-son tandem in matching palomino cowboy hats.

     “That’s all right, Alex,” Danny says. “I don’t want to put you late for supper. I’ll come round again tomorrow.”

     But Alex is all smiles. “I can’t turn you out, Danny. You know me. I’m like an old whore. I can’t turn out a good man.”

     Danny gives Alex his laugh and smile and steps into the barbershop. He shuts the door behind him and Alex locks it. The traffic noise abates. “Well, I have a big job for you then,” Danny says, glancing down to the small mess of gray hair on the checkered floor. He states the truth outright to cast a friendlier light on it. In his experience, men appreciate this approach.

     Danny nods to the old man in the red barber chair. His bald head looks like some globe–Jupiter, Danny thinks–ringed with thin white hair and marred by an angry melanoma. Danny chooses the red barber chair closest by, preferring it to the row of short red seats where the cowboy and his son sit. The little cowboy, perhaps he is eight, gazes up at Alex’s legion of model cars. Two walls are lined with a double row of wooden shelves up high, featuring cast iron models in clear plastic boxes. The big cowboy looks at a magazine. Above him, an imitation antique sign reads, This is your father’s barbershop.

      Danny picks from the stack of color-drenched magazines on the counter next to him. He hefts the magazine then opens it, flipping the glossy pages, settling into the barber chair. He’ll have to wait a while.

     There are two extra barber chairs here, but Alex is the only barber. One time when Danny came in on a slow day, he found Alex himself enthroned in one of the heavy chairs, chin up, perusing a glossy magazine. Danny has only been in this barbershop a half-dozen times. On his second visit, Alex called him by his first name when he walked in, as if they were old friends. Actually Alex knows him only by the name Danny–the name he goes by–but Daniel is his Christian name. It’s pronounced Danielle, like a girl’s. He’s half Polish and half Mexican, but you wouldn’t know it. An old friend of Danny’s once said that the Polish and the Mexican cancelled each other out. His skin might be a shade darker than white, but this is California, after all.

     After his last visit to Alex’s barbershop Danny disappeared for six months to England–on  assignment with his aerospace company. This is the same company that brought him to California from Nebraska two years ago. Here in California, the locals call Danny’s aerospace company the Lazy L because of its ranch-like setting along the 101, and also because it’s a gravy job: union benefits and government contracts. People tend to think–Alex included, Danny figures–that workers at the Lazy L must be rocket scientists, since their business is making rockets. Danny knows better. The government farms out individual contracts to Lazy L’s around the world, so that workers at any given plant never know exactly what they’re working on. Their jobs are so highly specialized that they’re in the dark about the larger picture. For the past two years, for instance, Danny has been working on the heat resistant scales that form the skin, Danny suspects, for ballistic missiles. These small heat-resistant tiles are basically like roofing shingles. Danny is a glorified roofer, he figures, but he’ll take the paycheck. And if people want to think he’s some kind of expert, so be it.

     Now, Danny sits comfortably in his barber chair. His glossy magazine smiles up at him from every page. Danny likes that Alex has remembered him after six months. All in all, this seemingness of genuine care and familiarity is good enough for him. He knows the difference, anyway, between surfaces and interiors. Unlike his single-minded co-workers, Danny maintains some interest in structural integrity.

     Alex and Jupiter are numbering the country’s problems, part of the barbershop routine. Actually, Alex numbers the problems, and Jupiter nods his bald head in time. Jupiter looks old enough to be Alex’s father. In the barbershop, though, all the men seem to be of the same generation. From this angle, Danny can’t quite see Jupiter’s eyes. His neck is bent. A large brown insect perches on his bald head. Could be he’s nodding off. Alex’s voice rises, either for Jupiter’s benefit, or because he needs convincing himself. From Danny’s experience, a man will speak louder just to convince himself, the bold noise of his own voice urging him on.

     Since Danny has been waiting, perhaps five minutes, the barber has numbered the old problem of taxes and the old problem of gasoline. To Alex’s view, the skyrocketing cost of gasoline had mostly to do with the liberals and their string of lawyers who forbid you search for resources on your own soils. “Now you have to go begging to godforsaken enemy territory,” Alex says, “this when you’re sitting on the vast, untouched oil barrels of Alaska. You tell me how they get a dollar ninety-seven cents for a cotton-picking gallon of gasoline?”

     Danny recognizes this as an old record that spins again and again. Setting an old man in the barber chair is like setting the needle in the groove. Some people avoid barbershops because of these routines, Danny supposes, but he finds it comforting–not in the least threatening–to be face-to-face with bald ignorance and assurance. Most of the men who work at the Lazy L are similarly self-assured. After all, they make good money. And they work for the best company–the Lazy L–in the best state–California–in the best country–the US of A–in the world. Throw in a first-rate retirement plan and the added bonus of even greener pastures in the Lazy Hereafter, and Danny can see why everyone is so self-satisfied. Still, he doesn’t have many friends at work. At work, people steer clear of Danny. But here in the barbershop, Danny feels right at home. A barber is just a barber, harmless as a haircut. Here, the contracts are uncomplicated and safe, and you can see the whole place from one chair. And so he returns, every three months or so, because given a choice, Danny would rather go back to an old place than go someplace new. He sees this as a habit, not a rut.

     Danny lets the barber’s bold, ignorant arguments comfort rather than rile him. He could not say these arguments were mendacious; there was no orator more sincere than Alex. You knew you were getting the straight story, as he saw it. Now Alex has settled in on the country’s number one mother of a problem. He’s been finished with Jupiter’s hair for some time, but he’s putting the finishing touches on with the straight razor. Alex is best at the finishing touches. The old men in his chair don’t mind paying for a haircut, so long as Alex doesn’t finish them off too quickly. “In theory,” Alex says, waving the razor, “you can link most of our problems right now to the problem of immigration. All the illegals come flooding into the country and take up our jobs and suck up our taxes. You take our hospitals alone. L.A. alone had 20,000 illegal Mexicans born last year.”

     Alex touches the straight razor to the strop then spins Jupiter in his chair to look at himself in the mirror. “Did we get her?” Alex asks. Jupiter nods approval and Alex folds the blade. He undoes the drop cloth, spilling a meager palmful of Jupiter’s gray clippings onto the black and white tiles. “That’s brown babies paid for by you and me,” Alex says. “Did you know a Mexican male can sire twice as many offspring over a lifetime as a white male? It’s a biological fact. Now you tell me we don’t got a problem right there.”

     Jupiter unbends himself and retrieves his wallet. “Sounds like you have it all down square, Alex, I can’t argue with you there.” He moves around toward the door. “What’s that come to now?”

     “That’ll be fourteen,” Alex says. He stands behind the chair. Above him, next to his framed barbering license, a black and white placard reads, Standard hairstyles for men and boys. There are several illustrations, all subtle variations on the fade, the flat top and the high and tight.

     “Fourteen,” Jupiter says. He pauses, seeming to mull over the questionable figure. His fresh haircut, something like a low and tight, isn’t on the chart. He says, “The first haircut you give me cost three dollars right here, what, twenty-seven years ago?” Jupiter looks over to Danny and gives him a wink. “The amount of hair I got, the price ought to go down, not up.”

     “Well, you got the cost of living to consider . . .” Alex begins in protest, until he sees the old man smile and place a twenty on the counter.

     “You can make up the difference next time,” Jupiter says, and moves toward the door.

     “I’ll be here. You know me. . .”  Alex calls after him.

     When Jupiter lets himself out, the barber finishes dusting the chair then turns to the two on the short red seats. “Next victim,” he says to the boy. The boy looks down, his face disappearing behind the palomino hat, and moves in closer to his father.

     “This is his first real haircut,” the cowboy says. “I been cutting it myself at home til now. Til now that’s been alright, but the wife thinks Little Man ought to have a real haircut.” Danny feels a twinge of sympathy for the boy. His father has a long, shaggy handlebar mustache. He seems good-natured enough–a cowboy like in the truck commercials, not a cowboy like in the old movies.

     “Let’s step up to the chute then, Little Man,” Alex says. He spreads the drop cloth like a cape. “I promise to go easy on you since it’s your first time through.” The boy doesn’t look up, so the barber walks toward him. From his shirt pocket peer the two silver curves that are the tops of his scissors. He steps strategically over the black tiles and pauses on the white ones, now stepping two squares forward, now stepping a square to the side. The barber makes a little show of this, trying to capture the boy’s downcast gaze. But Little Man isn’t having any. He crams onto his father’s lap, burying his face in his father’s denim shirt. Cowboy tries to peel him off, and Danny catches a glimpse of the boy’s face. He’s a pale, tow-headed boy, but his face has reddened now, a shade lighter than the chairs. He doesn’t appear to be breathing.

     The barber gives the boy back some ground. “Let’s see what I have to put Little Man more at ease,” he says. He walks over to the shelves lining the barbershop walls, still stepping over the black tiles. He begins to finger some of the dozens of model cars, each in clear plastic boxes, each the size of a good-sized hand. “I’ve got every make of car ever manufactured on American soils,” he says, handling a yellow T-Bird. The boy casts a look up from under his hat, up to his father, then up further yet to the barber and the line of boxed cars. Alex seems to be searching for just the right car. He handles several of the same vintage as the early-fifties T-Bird, then moves along the shelf toward the present day. The boy watches him fully now. He breathes a small gulp of air.

     Looking at the barber from behind, with his head tilted back, Danny sees that Alex is still blessed with a full head of hair–no tell-tale thinning in the center of his scalp. He has deep black hair yet–probably dyed. He’s Italian, but has no Italian features or accent to speak of. Danny knows he’s Italian only by the pictures of him as a soldier taped along the mirror. There is no mistaking the pictures of a brash, young Italian-American soldier. But somehow the Italianness of the older man standing here now, fussing over the model cars, has receded. Neither the barber’s age nor his race are evident. Danny knows he’s a Viet-Nam veteran, which meant he was fifty at least. But he could have been a decade younger, Danny’s own age. In the picture, he made a good-looking soldier. Except for the uniform, Danny thinks, he could have been a soldier in any of our wars. 

     The barber’s fingers settle finally on a box and lift it gently, like a trophy. “This, Little Man, is a ’66 Ford Mustang ragtop. I owned this exact vehicle when I was back from the service. This baby has 200 wild ponies under the hood, and I rode every one.” He kneels close to Little Man, leaning in, leading with the clear plastic box. The other hand he’s got against his thigh, palming the scissors. Somehow he made the switch. Little Man shows two rows of straight white teeth. In his fist, the barber’s scissors glint. Historically, Danny knows, barbers kept the sharpest and most sterile instruments in town. For this reason, they were not only barbers, but also doctors and veterinarians. The red-and-white swirl of the barber pole signaled to townsfolk, and to passers-by, that bloodletting occurred here. The barber holds the box closer now. Inside the box the Mustang is sky blue. The barber talks softly, expertly, coaxing the boy. “Look at the chrome ornament on the grill,” he says. “It’s a chrome pony, just like a real pony. I used to polish the chrome pony before I took her out.” Alex looks up at Cowboy smiling and then back to Little Man. “Go on. Take her out,” he says. He pushes the box toward the boy and the boy reaches to accept.

     For a moment Danny thinks the barber might jerk back the offering and grab both the boys thin wrists in his fist. But of course he does not. Of course he hands the box over. Little Man slides his tiny white fingers under the lid of clear plastic, loosening it. The lid falls open. The boy tilts the box. The sky blue Mustang hesitates, then rolls slowly, haltingly, out.

     “She’s a beaut,” Little Man says, soft as a hum. The barber stands up then, steps back, and crosses his bare arms. His bare arms look strong. He still holds the scissors in one fist. For a moment, it’s quiet and still in the barbershop.

     “Why don’t you go on ahead,” Cowboy says to Danny. “We’re in no hurry, and this thing might take awhile. You go on first.”

     The cowboy’s offering startles Danny. He has been watching the scene over the pictures in the magazine. Danny has the sense now that something has been narrowly averted. Now he feels the vulgar thickness and slickness of the pages in his fingers. He puts the glossy magazine back on the stack, gets up from his comfortable chair, somewhat dizzily, and walks slowly toward the other.

     Alex, back at his station, makes his ceremonious preparations with the neck cloth and drop cloth. “Short haircut, Danny?” he asks when Danny sits.

     “Yes, short haircut, but don’t go above the ears,” Danny says. “You know, the usual.” Alex fastens the black strap around Danny’s neck, and then spreads the drop cloth over his lap. Danny wonders if Alex–if any barber–takes comfort in doing the same haircut over and over, if they’re relieved when they hear the words, “the usual,” or if it depresses them, if they feel stifled in their craft. Danny wonders briefly if what Alex really wants is to try something wild and new, some avant-garde hairstyle for men, like in the glossy magazines. It is a glib, fitful wondering. Danny doubts Alex wants to get fancy with him.

     Alex spins Danny around in the chair to face the mirror. He won’t cut his hair in this position–he’ll cut it with Danny facing away from the mirror. Danny suspects that Alex doesn’t like you to watch him when he cuts your hair. For that matter, Danny himself would rather not watch. But for now Danny faces the mirror with Alex standing behind him. On the counter by the mirror sits a wide-mouthed jar filled with blue liquid and various barbering instruments. Alex’s face is directly above Danny’s face in the mirror. Danny thinks briefly, strangely enough, of standing in front of the bathroom mirror as a boy, his father standing directly behind him. Looking up to the bathroom mirror, Danny saw his own face, small and pale, and his father’s face, also small, but dark. There were no bodies in the mirror. All he saw were the different-colored faces, one above the other, one tearful and one stern, and their matching crewcuts.

     Alex dedicates some attention to the natural cowlick in Danny’s hair, massaging in some sort of hair balm, getting his hair wet. Looking in the mirror at the two of them, Danny sees that he could be Alex’s hermano. The word comes to him in Spanish, surprising him. He looks at the picture of the handsome young Italian soldier taped to the mirror, and then at the older, yet somehow ageless, somehow raceless, man in the mirror. Danny decides he himself looks more Italian than anything, comparing favorably with the young Italian soldier taped to the mirror. It was like comparing two shades of color that looked nothing alike until you held them up together and saw that, yes, in fact, they were two shades of the same color, that they were complements. Yes, Danny looked much like the Italian man, except for his unruly mop.

     Alex has selected the appropriate attachment for his clippers, and now he spins the chair smoothly back round and begins to cut. Danny feels the deep buzz of the clippers in his skull and teeth, and he feels the barber’s strong finger ends at his temples. Alex cuts expertly and quickly during this part of the operation. Danny figures Alex could cut a man’s hair twice as quickly as he actually did, but then a man might not feel like he got his money’s worth. As well, Alex seemed to relish the finish work; he worked quickly over a head of hair until he got to the finish work, the short clipping of the individual hairs and the shaping and shaving of the short hairs around the ears and neck.

     Now, Alex is unusually quiet. Danny often breaks the ice by asking the news. “Are we at war with anyone?” is usually a sure bet. Such an offering is inappropriate now, of course. Danny just sits quiet and feels the strong, unmistakably male fingers at work on his scalp. Danny would rather have his hair cut by a man. When a beautician runs her fingers through your hair, brushing you with her pelvis and chest, you feel the weight of her hope and regret. With a man, the contract has no hidden dangers. Yes, it’s better to have a man. The question of preference is solved easily enough, Danny thinks now, by recalling simply that his father cut his hair, not his mother. His earliest associations with this shearing ritual were male associations. It seems somehow unnatural to have a woman cut his hair.

     The barber pauses for a moment and walks to the window. He twists the thin plastic stick that opens the blinds, and red light floods the barbershop, fitting everything in the room with low-slung shadows. Outside, the cars flow down the expressway. The barber walks back to his station. Danny squints, glances down at Alex’s watch. His watch is set to military time, not California time.  It’s six o’clock California time. “No rest for the wicked,” Alex says. “I’ll have to phone I’ll be late for supper.”

     Outside Danny sees the red and white barber pole, spinning.

     “The thing just goes berserk,” Alex says.

     In the red light, the red of the barber pole appears black. A tight group of four Latino boys walks by the front of Alex’s shop. They appear to be coming from the hair and nails place next door. They loiter about awhile outside until the barber waves them off with both arms. “Go on,” he says. “We’re closed.”

     Three of the four wear dark, hooded sweatshirts with Greek letters on the front. They wear their hoods up. Danny has noticed this before, a trend from his childhood come back round. Danny used to wear his own sweatshirt hood up, to hide his shaved head.

     “What goes on there next door?” Danny asks. Alex is through with the clippers for now. He scissors rapidly at the sides of Danny’s scalp. The hair is falling in thick, dark clumps on the drop cloth.

     “Don’t get me started on next door,” Alex says. “Ornamental woman runs the place. She don’t own a license. I warned her the inspector’s past due. It’s none of my business. Hair, nails, massage. Who knows, maybe she’s hooking too. It’s none of my business if she’s hooking.”

     Danny feels Alex push his head forward gently, yet firmly. He’s working on the back of his head now. Neck bent, Danny looks at the shelves along the barber chair where Alex has various products for sale: shampoo, talc, motor oil, hair gel, bug killer. A thin layer of dust coats the products. The barber has never tried to hawk these items. They just sit there, available, obviously, in case you need to make a purchase. Danny appreciates the barber’s professional acumen. At this awkward angle, he sees something else now. On the side of the shelf facing the corner, in clear plastic packages, hang what appear to be WWII-vintage gas masks. Danny has never noticed these before. There are two of them, olive drab. They hang from heavy nails. There is no dust on the packaging.

     Alex abruptly lifts Danny’s chin. Danny, slightly dizzy, realizes he’s been holding his breath.

     “How are things down to the Lazy L?” Alex says. “Are you gearing up?”

     The rooms spins a little. The cowboy looks up from his magazine at the mention of the Lazy L. Little Man has moved off the chair, and he’s testing the Mustang down on the floor. Danny looks up to the legions of cars. They’re all parked at angles, like in a parking lot. Behind some of the boxes on the top shelf is a framed picture of a capital letter B. The B is a blocked letter, sans serif. It’s just a big black letter B with a white background, except that the picture frame is sideways so the B is prone, its two curved bulges bulging up.

     “Well?” Alex asks.

     “Well,” Danny says, trying to focus. They’ve been in the news each day, the wall of protestors and their picket signs about murdering and war profiteering. Working at the Lazy L these days, Danny feels like an abortionist. He wants to tell Alex he’s just a cotton-picking roofer with a bigger paycheck, that sucking clock at the Lazy L is tantamount to barbering for a right-wing Congress.

     Instead, Danny says, “The usual. You know, top secret stuff.”

     Cowboy snaps the pages of his magazine. Little Man is spread eagle on the floor now. His chin rests on a black tile. He’s taking the Mustang in long, slow figure eights between the different-colored tiles, idling low in his throat, just cruising.    

     “Get up out of the dirt, Cowboy says. His lips form a snarl under the hitching post of his mustache. He pulls the boy up by a rear belt loop, jack-knifing the boy. Little Man comes easily. His hat goes sailing off, loosing his straw hair. The hat lands squarely on a black.

     Up on the top shelf, the Big B waits. Danny wonders what it means. Where would you find a B alone? On a picket. Above a long gravel drive. On a frat boy’s sweatshirt, the Greek letter, Beta. You don’t call your country a cunt.

     Alex has the clippers out again, beginning the finish. Everything is happening quickly. It’s not too late, Danny thinks. Little Man can still go home to mother.

     “You know,” Danny says, “my old man was a real butcher.”  He speaks loudly, so Little Man can hear. “He used just the clippers. He’d set me down on the toilet seat and drape an apron over my neck. My mother would have told him not to go too high.”

     Danny feels the clippers make a nick, a gouge, just above his ear. The barber lets out a breath, some hiss. “I’ll have to fix that,” he says. Danny can’t see. He’s facing away from the mirror, facing Cowboy, who’s got his arm around his tow-headed boy, got his arm around his boy’s neck. There can be no mistake Little Man is his father’s son, yet somewhere, Little Man has a mother. The boy could use a haircut. His last haircut was a real hatchet job.

     “I’d end up butchered anyway,” Danny says. “I was thirteen and he was still doing it to me. My mother was this big Polish woman, twice the size my old man, and she could hold her own. When he went overseas I grew my hair out. Of course he never had a chance to see.”

     “Your dad was a soldier?” the barber asks.

     “He was an old soldier,” Danny says. “He got his in ‘73 just when everyone else was coming home.”

     Danny feels another nick, higher up. “I’ll have to fix that,” the barber says. Little Man looks like a straw doll in the red chair. His turn is coming. His feet dangle above the ground. There’s been an accident. The Mustang landed on a white, its wheels pointing up.

     Danny feels the clippers digging in now, the metal teeth cutting along his scalp. He doesn’t say a word.  The barber pushes Danny’s head forward. A pile forms on the floor, Danny’s black hair piling over the thin gray hair.

     “I’ll have to go all the way up,” the barber says. He spins the chair back round in a slow revolution, so that Danny faces the mirror again, the barber behind him. On the counter, the blue jar yawns. The barber runs the clippers in backward strips, from the back of his neck, over his crown and down to his forehead. The strips are white against his black hair. Hair piles up in front of the clippers and Danny feels the clippers bog, then rev and grind through. He closes his eyes.

     When the clippers stop, the buzzing in his ears continues, only softer. From somewhere, from the other room, perhaps, Danny hears the soft melisma of women’s voices.

     “Did we get her?” the barber asks. He’s got the straight razor out. He touches the blade to the strop.                         

     In the mirror, Danny sees the surprising whiteness of his own head, so long buried. He no longer resembles the man behind him holding the blade. He looks more like the boy in the ad for the high-and-tight, just one in a long line of crew-cut boys. In the top corner of the mirror Danny sees the recumbent letter B. The B looks pregnant, large breasts and large belly, ready to birth. Each rounded hump is a quonset hut, a small shelter, his hut and her hut, cinched across middle by the taut black strap.