than two months, and it looked as though he’d lost fifty pounds and half his hair. He’d been very fat and nearly bald before; he was still fat and only a little more bald so to some people these changes might not have been noticeable, but I noticed them. “Oh,” he said, “I’m dieting,” and his hands waded through the competing brightnesses of ripped wrapping paper and rumpled clothing until he found an unopened box. “Here,” he said, “open this,” and I did, and the box contained a tiny silk bikini so red it burned my hands. I dropped the bikini on top of an amber-veined turquoise metallic vest. “I didn’t know the Ringling Brothers had a clothing line.” “I got them from a catalog called International Male.” I just stared at him until his rheumy eyes could no longer avoid mine. “Trucker. Please. Not you.” That’s when he reached into the glove compartment for the receipt to the computer. “Minitower, monitor, keyboard and mouse, printer and scanner and digital camera. Even,” he said, and with a trembling finger he pointed to a line on the invoice, “an iPod.” “Trucker, please,” I repeated. “Not me .” Trucker didn’t look at me. “I’ve set up an email account for you. It’ll be billed to my credit card.” The receipt was a plain white piece of paper with the traditional black scratches on them, but in Trucker’s shaking hands they danced off the page. He stuffed the receipt into an envelope bulging with twenties, and when he pressed the envelope into my fingers it was wet with sweat from his palms. “The password’s AvengeIt,” he said, his hands squeezing mine once, convulsively, then letting go. “But you’ll have to check it when you activate the account. Change it, I mean. Probably you’ll have to change it.” He pushed his hands over the tops of his pants to dry them, but his pants were wet too. It was summer in Kansas just as it was summer in New York. It was hot everywhere.
I woke to a gentle shake from the barber. The first thing I saw in the mirror was the key I’d found in my mother’s desk. Only then did I examine the new shape of my skull, as smooth as a field of wheat stubble after the combine has shorn it. As I took all this in I felt the barber spray a clear liquid on the rash that had sprung up on the back of my neck. He fanned the area with a hand towel, bathing my skin in waves of coolness.
“A leetle alcohol,” he said, his accent so thick his tongue seemed coated with chocolate. He spoke to the face in the mirror, which I hadn’t quite accepted as my face, and even as I spun the chair around to face him a question spewed from my mouth of its own accord.
“Do you have a phone book?”
The barber smiled uncertainly and fanned his towel as though I were a miniature bull. “Is like Rasputin, no?” He tapped the stain on my chest with one hand, pulled a beard out of his chin with the other. In response to my blank stare he tapped the suspenders. “Nanu, nanu?”
I just paid him then, twelve of the dollars Trucker had given me, along with the bikini and the pantaloons and the receipt for the computer and the thing that had caused him to lose fifty pounds in two months, and then I went from the barber’s shop back to mine. To No. 1 I mean. To The Lost Garden. I peeked around for Nellydean but didn’t see her anywhere, nor was there an indication that any customers were in the shop or, for that matter, had visited in the recent past. Everything I touched was coated with a thick oily layer of dust, the kind of grimy residue that takes years to build up, and even though a sign on the front door proclaimed the shop was open the letters that made this declaration had lost all but the faintest insistence of color.
Beyond the door the air smelled like lost memories and broken promises. Around every corner, on every shelf, under every lid a worthless treasure waited to be discovered and discarded, and nothing was as it seemed. In one box I found a
I woke to a gentle shake from the barber. The first thing I saw in the mirror was the key I’d found in my mother’s desk. Only then did I examine the new shape of my skull, as smooth as a field of wheat stubble after the combine has shorn it. As I took all this in I felt the barber spray a clear liquid on the rash that had sprung up on the back of my neck. He fanned the area with a hand towel, bathing my skin in waves of coolness.
“A leetle alcohol,” he said, his accent so thick his tongue seemed coated with chocolate. He spoke to the face in the mirror, which I hadn’t quite accepted as my face, and even as I spun the chair around to face him a question spewed from my mouth of its own accord.
“Do you have a phone book?”
The barber smiled uncertainly and fanned his towel as though I were a miniature bull. “Is like Rasputin, no?” He tapped the stain on my chest with one hand, pulled a beard out of his chin with the other. In response to my blank stare he tapped the suspenders. “Nanu, nanu?”
I just paid him then, twelve of the dollars Trucker had given me, along with the bikini and the pantaloons and the receipt for the computer and the thing that had caused him to lose fifty pounds in two months, and then I went from the barber’s shop back to mine. To No. 1 I mean. To The Lost Garden. I peeked around for Nellydean but didn’t see her anywhere, nor was there an indication that any customers were in the shop or, for that matter, had visited in the recent past. Everything I touched was coated with a thick oily layer of dust, the kind of grimy residue that takes years to build up, and even though a sign on the front door proclaimed the shop was open the letters that made this declaration had lost all but the faintest insistence of color.
Beyond the door the air smelled like lost memories and broken promises. Around every corner, on every shelf, under every lid a worthless treasure waited to be discovered and discarded, and nothing was as it seemed. In one box I found a
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