“You have a mullet,” she says with clippers in tow.
“Damn them,” I reply.
“Who?” she asks.
“All my friends,” I say. “They kept that from me and snickered secretly as I went to the bathroom and left the room.”
“It’s not that bad,” she reassures.
“I heard you the first time. They’re all gone just cut my hair,” I say, needing some progression.
The bubble lettering of the tattooed word “hip-hop” appear as she raises her left arm and begins clipping my shaggy mane. She talks about the state of music, working fulltime at the airport with coworkers who sell drugs and being a single mother. I nod incessantly in a barber chair wearing a backwards cape around my neck. She spoke about all sorts of rambling subjects but I kept looking into the maze of mirroos that allowed me to see everywhere without turning my head.
“So how should I cut it?” she asks again.
“Damnit, I trust you. Give me the executive,” I say, hoping this nugget of nonesense will quell her restless line of questions.
The woman getting her hair cut next to me keeps peering over for unkown reasons; she’s been listening to my baterings but something must be done. I leap out of the barber chair and grabing a mister-bottle and begin squirting the woman.
“Serves you right,” I say while misting the unknown peeper.
“What the hells the matter with you?” she says.
“Lots,” I reply, “but voyerism isn’t one of them…creep”
My barber is struck with an odd mix of confusion and laughter.
“Cut the hairs. I’ve got somewhere to be and this place is crawling with perverts,” I say as she begins snipping hairs.
“Was that some childish way of saying you like her?” she states. “Like hitting the girl you like in kindergarden.”
She thinks herself smart but being a chivalrous man I avoid the obvious follow-up question about why her baby’s dady isn’t around anymore and give her a watered-down dose of honesty instead.
“Like her? I’ve never so much talked to her,” I say. “There’s too much work to be toiling around with woman. I’m here for a haircut not psychoanalysis.”
She banters some more about the troubles of being a single mother and despite the uninterested look on my face she continues. I eye the mister-bottle, which she has placed out of my reach. “Good luck,” I say, tipping her five dollars before walking out into the cold, scratching at hair around my neck.
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