A Place of All Seasons

The afternoon was slowly drawing out in the salon. Joanna sat near the staff door, slumped over with her neck hanging lazily off the back of the chair, mildly hearing the continuous mix of top fourty playing from a radio in the ceiling. Every time a plane flew over the area, the frequency would try to shove in a Punjabi talk radio station. The two converged with one another, creating static warfare that would last until the plane moved on. Joanna despised being so close to the airport.

            It was a typical slow day. All that happened was nothing. Just the radio and the sack lunch of left over pasta salad. Joanna fantasized about celebrities coming in for a cut and what she would say to them or how she would do their hair. With the exception of that local news reporter who came in for a pre-flight cut that one afternoon, celebrity episodes at the First Class Salon were none existent.    

The boredom reached its peak for Joanna so she started cleaning windows to pass the time. They didn’t need it, but she sprayed the panes with the diluted ammonia cleaner anyway. When she wiped away the light blue streaks, she noticed a sun-faded sticker on the top left corner of the last window. It was a snowman dressed as Santa Clause. The red had faded to a transparent yellow. She figured it was left behind after the Christmas season had passed. She wondered where the box of decorations went.

            In the back of the store, she nearly killed herself trying to pull the huge box from the top shelf. She could only slightly grab at it with the tips of her fingers, and inch by inch she wiggled it towards her. It fell and smacked her shoulder before hitting the floor, spilling an entire year’s worth of season. There was a giant rubber spider tangled in Christmas lights. There was a Canada banner stuck to a cut out of a leprechaun. There was a squished foam Easter Bunny.

            Within an hour, Joanna had the entire place decorated. It was as if Mother Nature had vomited her tacky seasons all over everything, and Joanna loved it. It was her work of art. It made each holiday look so cheap and made up, a testament to what she believed. She once believed in vampires, egg laying rabbits and leprechauns. She was a girl then, but not now, though she never recalled believing in Santa Clause.

            Joanna determined she would keep the shop this way until tomorrow, that way she could clean it all up and re-organize. It would give her something to do for the day. The clock covered in fake spider web and shimmering red holly told her there were fifteen minutes until she could go home.

            The door chimed and almost gave her a heart attack.  It limped in, an eerie wheeze whistling from its lungs, buried somewhere beneath the heavy jacket. Like its pants and shoes, the jacket was stained with the colour of the streets. Its brow was perspiring heavily, soaking the rough wisps of hair to a curl. It kept its head down, timidly reaching the front desk.

            “Pretty hot in that thing,” she said.

            It looked up, an overgrown grey and black beard dominating the face, the strands hardened into dreadlocks by time and neglect. Its nose was pink and bulbous and horrible, gleaming with sweat that dripped off the side of the nostril. The nose was cratered and peppered with pop marks and zits. A thought entered Joanna’s head that made her have to spit out her gum. She thought of how this nose resembled a sticky newborn kangaroo.   

            “I uh, I thought it was cold here,” it mumbled in a crusty voice, examining the bowl of corn candies.

            “It’s unseasonably warm,” she said. “First time in Canada?”

            It took a handful of candy and shoved it into its jacket pocket. “It’s just been a while. I forgot.”

            “Cut and a wash?”

            “Just a cut.”

            “What about a shave?”

            “Oh, um, you do that here?”

            “I can. It will cost an extra dollar fifty.”

            It lightly grabbed at something on the inside pocket of the coat, making sure it was still there. “Uh, sure. I’ll have a cut and a shave.”

            “Alright, let me take your coat.”

            When it took the coat off and handed it to her, a wave of stink immediately filled the room. The scent reminded her of the way the subways tunnels smelled when she lived in the city, a sort of recycled staleness mixed with puke or feces. She hung the jacket, which advertised a sports team that didn’t exist anymore. It looked like it had been through a war. She propped open the front door to air out the place.

            She sat her customer down at her station and removed its baseball cap, revealing hair that consisted of thin, greasy wisps that stuck to the balding scalp like overcooked grey spaghetti. Most disgusting was near the crown of its head. There were small yellow and green mounds growing on the skin. They looked like tiny mountains, ones that erupted transparent goo that seemed to collect in the roots of whatever hair was left on the head. She turned to gag discreetly.

            “What holiday are we celebrating?” it asked softly, keeping its eyes away from the mirror.

            “Well, everything I guess,” she said, quickly gathering her tools. She wondered how this thing wanted its hair cut. If she went too close, she’d surly pop one of those sores and she wasn’t prepared to deal with whatever ungodly slime would shoot out at her.

            “Kinda weird,” it said. “I uh�"I haven’t got a cut in a while.”

            “Yeah, looks like it,” she said tying a cloth around its neck

            “I’m here for a funeral,” it said. “Can you make it look, I don’t know... good for a funeral?”

            “Well, I guess I’ll bring it down a bit,” she said, snapping on a pair of rubber gloves. The last thing she wanted to do was touch this thing’s scalp with bare hands. “I’ll make it level on the sides.”

            “Alright.”

            Joanna took a breath and began soaking the head with a spray bottle. This was the common method of preparing the hair when the customer didn’t want a wash. The fluid in the spray bottle was a combination of water and an antibacterial component. Normally she would comb the hair through as she sprayed, but she was too afraid to run the teeth over the scalp. Any styling would have to be done gently and with the hands, as to not agitate the sores.

            After the head was sufficiently drenched, she grabbed a white towel from the shelf over her mirror. She hesitated.

            “Here, just um, you know, dry your scalp a bit so I can blow dry it,” she said.

            It took the towel from her and rubbed the scalp for thirty seconds or so and handed it back. The white towel was now a mess of brown, red and yellows swirled about like some organic Jackson Pollack piece. She’d always hated those paintings. Instead of throwing it into the laundry chest, she tossed it in the trash.

            Joanna plugged in her hair dryer and set it to low. She ran it near the head until the strands of hair dried out, rising off of the scalp slightly. The open sores were beginning to scab because of the heat. After it was sufficiently dry, she took the scissors, and one by one, started to trim grey clumps of hair.

            “So,” she said, “you haven’t been in the country for a while?”

            “It’s been a long time. I forgot it got hot here sometimes. Sometimes I forget about the different seasons, they all run together,” its eyes studied the decorations around the room.

            “Today is very warm. First day of spring and it feels like summer.”

She dunked her scissors in the solution to clean off the stray hairs. A thick cloud came off of the blades in the blue liquid.

            “Is that what today is? I didn’t realize. I’m going to a funeral tomorrow,” it said.

            “I’m sorry. That’s�"yeah, funerals are so sad.” She had never been to a funeral.

            “My mother died,” it said, “and my brother, he contacted me and told me she went. He bought me a ticket to come here. I haven’t been here in a very long time.”

            “Hmm,” she said, not knowing how to respond. “Can you turn your head to the left for a second, please?”

            It did this, and in the mirror she saw its harsh profile. Its nose blobbed off the face and looked somehow worse from the side than the front. She guessed it had been badly burned.

            “So you haven’t seen your Mom since you lived here?” she asked.

            “Yeah,” it said. “I guess we kind of lost touch... she uh... we lost touch.”

            “That’s sad. It’s nice that you came on a plane to see her now. That’s very special.”

            “It was my brother. He’s got a big house here. I think he has kids. He sent me money for a ticket to come. He’s gonna be letting me stay at his house. Just for a little while.”

            “Well that’s nice,” she said, trimming the bunchy hairs around his small ear. The insides were walled with thick yellow wax.

            “I hope she’s happy. I mean in a good place. With God maybe,” it said.

            “I’m sure she is.”

            “My brother said there would be a... what do you call it?”

            “What’s that?”

            “When they leave you something,” it said.

            “An inheritance?”

            “Yeah. Only he called it a birthright. I don’t know what it could be. I told my brother I don’t want it. I don’t know...”

            “Wouldn’t your mom want you to have it?”

            “I guess so,” it said. “I don’t think I deserve anything. I haven’t been here in a long time.”

            “Hmm,” Joanna said, not sure what to say. She didn’t want to upset her customer.

            A plane flew over the shop and the static convergence filled the room for a moment over the ceiling stereo. She finished off at the back of the head, examining her work, determining that this was all that could be done. She grabbed a brush and swept the cut strands from off of its pimpled neck.

            She moved on to the beard, starting with the scissors, straining to cut the thick wads of oily hair. One by one her blades would sever through the dreaded locks, them falling to its chest like overly ripe bananas falling from a tree.

            “I been on the street a long time,” it said.

            “How long?”

            “Since I got out of jail. Fifteen years.”

            “Oh,” she said, turning to grab a hot towel.

            “Yeah. Aren’t you curious? You want to know what I did?”

            She looked at it a moment before asking, “Are you sorry for what you did?”

            “Yes.”

            “Then no,” she said, gently resting the towel over its face.

Smearing the face with the warm foam and taking her blade, she shaved the beard. Strip by strip the white cream was wiped off by the mirror-like edge, along with it, the remnants of its ancient beard.        

             “All done,” she said cheerily.

            “Thank you,” it said, not looking up.

            “Why don’t you take a look?”

            It lifted its head slowly. Joanna held a small mirror behind to show the back of the head. His chapped lips gently cracked a smile. He looked at himself in the large mirror as though looking into some cosmic portal, bordered with glowing yellow bulbs. In Joanna’s chair sat a man. His features no longer curses, but inflections of his soul, trim and proper and existential.        

            “Do you like it?” she asked.

            “Yes,” he said. “It will do just fine.”

            “Good.”

            “You say it’s the first day of spring?”

            “Yes, it is.”

            “Right. It feels like the season’s changing,” he said.

            The gentleman paid her at the counter with a crisp American twenty that he took from a manila envelope in his coat pocket. Before she could give him change he was headed out the door. He turned back and nodded his head to her. She did the same.

            Joanna watched him move swiftly across the street to a bus stop. He checked the schedule a moment, and got in the bus when it pulled up

            She turned the open sign toward her and shut off all the lights. Everything was backlit by the outdoor streetlamps. Without the salon lights shining over everything, her room of seasons blended into a communal blackness. She would wait until tomorrow before shoving it all back into the box.   

Reviews

[RM Americano]

A dollar fifty is a damn cheap shave. The whole time I was reading I was expecting "it" to be either a horribly wronged Santa Clause or Henry Chinaski. Your description of "it" had me cringing after each new detail. You painted quite a nightmarish portrait of this man. The transition from penitentiary life back to the real world can be quite the nightmare itself. Joanna displayed more patience than most barbers would.

Good piece.