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.