Add This to the List of Things That You Are by Chris Fink

Author:Chris Fink [Fink, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780299326289
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press

Lazy B

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. You try the door anyway. You’re long overdue for a haircut, and tomorrow is a special occasion. You find the door locked but rattle 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.

You stand on the threshold. Over your shoulder on the busy expressway the cars reflect the slanting sunlight. Inside, Alex has a bald old man in his chair and behind him a father-son tandem in matching palomino cowboy hats.

Sure you can fit me in?

The barber is all smiles. You know me. I can’t turn out a good man.

You return Alex’s friendly smile and step into the barbershop. You shut the door behind you and Alex locks it. I have a big job for you then, you say, glancing down to the small mess of gray hair on the checkered floor.

You nod to the old man in the red barber chair. His bald head looks like some globe—Jupiter maybe—ringed with thin white hair and marred by an angry melanoma. You choose the spare red barber chair opposite 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 die-cast 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.

You pick from the stack of vintage nudie magazines on the side counter. You heft the magazine then open it, flipping the glossy pages, settling into the barber chair.

There are two barber chairs here, but Alex is the only barber. One time on a slow day you found Alex himself enthroned in the extra chair, chin up, perusing one of the vintage magazines. You’ve only been in this barbershop a half-dozen times. On your second visit, Alex called you by your first name when you walked in, as if you were old friends. Actually, Alex knows you only by Danny—the name you go by—but Daniel is your Christian name. It’s pronounced Danielle, like a girl’s. You’re half Polish and half Mexican, but no one would know that. An old friend of yours once said that the Polish and the Mexican canceled each other out. Your skin might be a shade darker than white, but this is California, after all.

Tomorrow, when she visits California for the first time, your mother will dust off that old name. Daniel, she’ll say, cupping your face. Look at you. Your father would be so happy with your haircut.

After your last visit to Alex’s barbershop, you disappeared for six months to England on assignment with your aerospace company. This is the same company that brought you to California from Wisconsin four years ago.

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