Lansdale Cruise—Saturday Morning—No Kidding

Last night, I talked to the bush man. He told me he knew about what happened with the newsman. “Things go around,” he said.

“No kidding,” I said.

He said Stanzi and Gustav will come home. He said they’re bringing him a woman. He said the woman wrote a song last night about being free. He told me her name is Patricia. I asked him if we could stop sending the bomb threats now.

“It’s hard to stop a machine once it’s in motion,” he said.

“It’s like the answers,” I said. “I think you gave us the wrong answers.”

“It’s hard to stop a machine once it’s in motion,” he said again.

“Whatever,” I said.

“Whatever?”

“Whatever. I want to stop lying now. Right now. That’s why I came to see you.”

“I will miss your hair,” he said.

“You have bags of my hair. Let’s trim this into something cute. Like a bob or something.”

“Would you like me to put a bowl on your head and cut around it?”

“You’re a sculptor,” I said. “I want you to use your imagination.”

I walked out of the bush with my hair sculpted into this woman, Patricia. From every angle there was another Patricia. Her face, her hips, her breasts, her eyes. My head was a hundred Patricias. I was a walking museum.

He gave me a lowercase e that was beaded with pearls. He told me that I have to do the interviews now because the man and cameraman went back to LA.

When I got home I washed my hair and then I went on the Internet to find a style I liked and I watched a how-to-cut-your-own-hair video and gave myself a decent layered bob.

Today is different. When my dad asks me what I did last night, I tell him, “I went and saw the man in the bush. He sculpted my hair into a hundred statues.”

He doesn’t even look up from his paper.

“You should at least look up to see my hair,” I say.

He folds a corner of the paper down and squints at me. “Looks nice,” he says. “A little short, maybe, but hair grows back.”

Every Mrs. Cruise so far has had hair down to her ass. Always blond, like mine. Always highlighted and no roots showing.

“I don’t think it’s too short,” I say.

“A man in a bush?” he asks.

“I’m thinking of getting it cut shorter, actually.”

“It’s your hair,” he says.

I turn on the kitchen TV and scroll through the channels looking for a cooking show and stop when I see the newsman’s face. The minute I see it I want to start lying again. I turn the volume up so I can hear him.

He’s talking about whales. He’s talking about how whale-watching tourism is booming again in California. At the end of his report, a helicopter flies overhead and he says something unintelligible and points at it. Then he apologizes to the anchorman and says it’s an inside joke between him and his cameraman.

“I had sex with that guy two nights ago,” I say.

My dad folds down the corner of the paper again and slides his glasses from his head to his nose. “Him?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Total poseur.”

“Looks it.”

“He’s from Ohio but tells everyone he’s from California.”

He says, “Isn’t that the channel with the annoying weatherman?”