Close Shave

Ryan brings the blade across Doug’s neck. Ryan holds his customer’s life in his arthritic hands that he takes two painkillers for each morning with his orange juice to keep steady. One slight jerk, one small misstep, and…Ryan would go from barber to butcher in an instant. But he’s not worried about making a mistake. He’s shaved plenty of men’s gizzards, all shapes and sizes. He even once cut someone’s hair slightly inebriated after a night out for his best friend’s bachelor party, in which Ryan forgot to run the calculus on how much he drank to when he needed to be up and at work for his first appointment the next day.

Ryan finishes Doug’s shave by glazing across the jawline with the razor. He gives a visual inspection to ensure he hadn’t missed a spot before skimming over Doug’s face with a warm, moist towel to remove any excess shaving cream.

“Any aftershave today, Doug?”

“What are my options?”

Options? What options? Ryan has had the same green, burning-sensation aftershave since Nixon was in office. Nothing more, nothing less. Sure, it wasn’t the most comfortable feeling in the world, but the aftershave did what it was supposed to do, what Ryan’s father had taught him a good aftershave was supposed to do—burn like hell and wake you up. So why mess with a classic? Everyone always tinkering around with what’s not broken. Fiddling for the sake of fiddling, as Ryan saw it. A damn shame.

“Same ole, same ole. Just got this green stuff.” Ryan shakes the bottle for Doug to lay eyes on. “Might burn like the dickens, but it does what it’s supposed to do.”

“I think I’ll pass.”

Doug rubs his hand across his shaved face that feels fresher than a naked mole running across the Sahara. He admires himself in the mirror. Much like many of Ryan’s customers, Doug has unsavory, morally deplorable thoughts about himself while looking at himself. The sort of thoughts one never shares with another living creature. The sort of thoughts that he will more than likely look back on while on his deathbed and wonder what in the hell was wrong with him.

“Any plans for the weekend?” Ryan makes conversation.

“No, nothing this weekend. How ‘bout you? Any hot dates?”

“At my age, no, no, no siree. Might go out to the lake to try and catch some trout.”

“Sounds nice.”

It wasn’t. Fishing, Ryan determined some time ago, was never meant to be a nice hobby—not a sport, never a sport—but rather it was one of those activities that one tends to do once they reach a certain age. An excuse to spend several hundred dollars on a fishing pole, another couple thousand on a small boat, not to mention the constant stream of expenses to replenish bait, beer, and sunscreen. Yet, if Ryan didn’t go out fishing every weekend, then had no idea what else he would do. Maybe wait to die, he supposed.

But he doesn’t share these sorts of thoughts with Doug. His customers don't want to hear an old man bitch and moan about his free time. Doug just came in for a quick shave from the lowly old, widower barber on his last leg before hobbling into the grave. No one wants to hear his maudlin disposition.

Doug lifts out of the chair, grabs his hat, pays Ryan what’s due, and then saunters out of the barber shop to continue about his day. He tips 5%.

Cheap bastard.

Ryan sweeps and cleans up around his vintage faded-maroon Koch barber chair. He resets everything to where it needed to be. He does not have any more scheduled appointments, so he’s just waiting until 5 o’clock…or the possible walk-in that might wander in.

He settles down into his barber chair and pulls out the letter from his landlord, Walter Truland. He’d read the letter quite a few times prior. He’d read it so much that he might be able to recite it by heart. But he still didn’t understand what it said. Not on any sort of intellectual level. Ryan could read and comprehend just fine. But he couldn’t quite understand why in the hell Walter sent the letter of eviction now.

He had been a tenant at that location on James St. since before Walter was born. In fact, Ryan’s original landlord, the person he had shaken hands with when signing the contract to make the space a barber shop some fifty years prior, had been Walter’s father. And in all those years Ryan had always made sure to pay rent on time, kept his shop and the space outside of his shop clean, and even volunteered his weekends on occasion to do free landscaping for the property. Now Walter wanted to kick him out?

Of course Walter hadn’t the guts to tell Ryan in person. Instead, despite living no more than fifteen minutes from Ryan’s barber shop, Walter sent a letter.

While the letter did not disclose the exact reason Ryan was being evicted at the end of his lease agreement, he had read in the paper that a new data center construction was going to be starting next spring. In fact, the location of that data center, unsurprisingly, was right where his barber shop stood at the moment.

When Ryan first told his loyal customers that he was closing up shop, many responded with visual righteous indignation. The sort of play acting to suggest their displeasure over his circumstance, but contributed nothing to resolving the problem. Most had already found new barbers by the end of the week.

He briefly considered moving to another location. But at his age he no longer had the energy to even contemplate the idea of picking up and starting his business in an entirely different location. Some of his customers might follow him, but not all. By the end of it—finding a new shop with the right amount of space in a high traffic area with reasonable rent, paying a moving company to transport all of his equipment there—he wasn’t sure his heart could take it all.

He figures he’ll finally retire like Maddie wanted. Too bad it would be 6 years after she passed.

He folds up the letter, tosses it into the jar of deep ocean blue barbicide. He stares into his reflection. He does not have the same sort of lascivious thoughts that Doug, or many of his other customers, had while sitting in his antique Koch barber chair. Instead he studies his hair. Every last follicle, from his greying, ruffled head to the short but sharp stubs poking around his face to the thick curls of knuckle hair insulating his deteriorating paws. He thinks, I need a cut. I wonder who will do it for me? Don’t you remember me, you old fool? Cut your own damn hair.

Thick thermal currents congeal in the atmosphere. Burning isotopes caught in digital wars vying for space among the data-driven push to demolish, rebuild, demolish, thrive, deteriorate. A quiet sound of paper rips through with no one there to write down what’s left on the scar tissue.