Come on in! We’re OPEN.

Yes.

I hate com­ing here only to find out that he’s closed. I can never remem­ber if it’s Tuesdays or Wednesdays. I bet­ter ask him that. Maybe I should ask him for his card like the one Iain got.

I hope that no one’s in there already. I hope I’m the first one and there’s no wait­ing. Otherwise, what’s the point of com­ing here so early.

Damn. Two peo­ple. Close the door gen­tly to announce your pres­ence. Maybe I should ask Joe if he has any red­head hair­style posters he doesn’t need. I’m too embar­rased with these other peo­ple in the shop.

The Sun. Front page, a woman just wants her son back. How did he die? Fell out of a 10-storey win­dow. Goddam tabloid press. Why did he fall out? By acci­dent. Boring. Teacher on trial for sex­ual rela­tions with 15-year-old girl. What hap­pened? Mother sus­pected teacher after daugh­ter was spend­ing an inor­di­nate amount of time with him after school. Mother caught daugh­ter wear­ing teach­ers sweater one day. My God.

The old peo­ple in here are too friendly. It’s almost as if every­one they know has died, and they’re con­stantly look­ing for new friends. Old peo­ple must have a con­nec­tion like that. Their friends must be dying out on them all the time.

Life. The third most wanted Al-Qaida leader cap­tured. CIA spe­cial oper­a­tions group res­ur­rected, page 12. Are all their cover sto­ries on page 12? CIA oper­a­tive on the job, rid­ing a horse in the desert. Same man inter­ro­gat­ing cap­tured American Al-Qaida. Same man was killed a few months later in an upris­ing. How? Customer is done, but I want to read this article.

Joe greets me as friend. He’s in a good mood today. I won­der why he’s so loqua­cious. Sorry Joe, I don’t feel like talk­ing today. I sup­pose he knows so much about his­tory because he’s a bar­ber, and peo­ple always have inter­est­ing sto­ries to tell. I hope he doesn’t argue with the woman today; my hair­cut never seems to sur­vive one of his argu­ments. Please don’t talk to her, Joe. Just concentrate.

I for­got to tell him to cut it a lit­tle bit shorter. It’s half-way done though, so I shouldn’t say any­thing now. Maybe he’ll do it any­way, because he rememe­bered how I liked it last time. I hope he doesn’t try to style my hair with the dryer. I wore a hat in here, and I’ll wear it back out again, but I’ll put it on when he can’t see me from inside the shop. I won­der if he’d be insulted if he saw me put the hat on right after.

The brush. The mir­ror. The hair in the back isn’t short enough. Fuck. There’s still colour in the back at the crown. Fuck. It looks stupid.

There’s no one in the shop. The woman is dis­tracted at the other end. Maybe I should ask him now. I should ask him now.

“Where do you get your posters, Joe? Do you get any red­head ones?”

Yes.

I won­der if the woman heard me. He doesn’t have any now, but he’ll keep an eye out for me. I’m so grate­ful. I hope he’ll remem­ber. I think bar­bers are sup­posed to have good mem­o­ries. Maybe I should have stressed that any red­head poster would be fine. Maybe I should have told him to get me as many as he could. I won­der if he won­ders what I want one for. Shit, I should have told him to get me any that he could find.

I know I have a twenty. Why didn’t I ask for change this time? I hope he remem­bers how much I tip him and just gives me change tak­ing the tip into account. Thanks, Joe.

You do remember.