LIKE MOST PEOPLE, I sweat buckets on the average day. But this sweat was something special. I woke up sweating. Five times. I changed my T-shirt three of them. Felt like I was sleeping on a slick sheet of plastic, which I probably should have done.
When I finally got up for good, I went to the mirror and saw a wreck. Not the wreck I usually found there either. This one was pasty faced and sunken eyed from under-sleep.
And worse, much worse. The hair. My God, the hair. It was as if my head was soaked overnight in a teriyaki marinade, then baked in a clay oven, the result being metallic, yet frayed at the same time like one of those World War II army helmets with the netting on top.
How did he do it? This was an evil genius like I had never encountered, and I had encountered most of them. Somehow my mad uncle had concocted spicy potion food that not only burned me top and tail, but miraculously turned my boring but normal hair into his own rusted ragtop overnight.
“No,” I said to my reflection, which stared back at me from the very spot where Frankie’s perfect mug had floated just a day earlier. “No, no. Do I not have enough handicaps already? Isn’t it just shooting fish in a barrel, to make me socially untouchable? Well then, come on, Lord, work me over; it is your day, after all... so do bring it on. Why not give me a couple extra legs, or maybe move my butt to my forehead.”
“I couldn’t help but hear...,” came the unwelcome voice from the other side of my door.
But of course.
“Oh, so you’re still around. I thought maybe your work was done here.”
“Nah. My work is just starting. And from the sound of the blaspheming I’m hearing from in there, it may take more than I’d imagined.”
Uh-oh.
“Could you repeat that please?”
“What, that my work was just beginning?”
“No. The other part.”
“About your Sunday morning blasphemy?”
“Mmm-hmm, that’s the one. Thanks.”
I decided to address this latest development in the great test that was Alex in the way I address most things.
I huddled silently in my bedroom, hoping he would just go away.
“Well, if you want to talk about it, I’ll be around,” said Alex after an impressive seven silent minutes.
But I did not want to talk about it, my blasphemy, or any other it. I didn’t want to even see Alex when I got out there, and now I was sentenced to seeing him anyway, in my own mirror.
I had thought about it through the night, through the sweating and changing, through the toilet visits, through the rolling around in bed looking for sleep, finding sleep, then wanting to lose it again because of the dreams. I had thought about my new life here, the one my uncle Alex hauled through the door just yesterday when he stepped back in out of the netherworld of his fake death.
It worried me, I had to say. It made me think about what I was happy enough not to think about for a long time. It was staring at me now, out of my own mirror, looking less like me than yesterday, looking more like my uncle, who looked much like my dead dead father.
It made me, as many things do, afraid. But unlike most of those things, the scary stuff Alex brought was possibly stuff that already had my name on it.
So did I have to take delivery?
“Ma, I’m going out,” I called loudly as I slid open my bedroom window.
“Elvin,” she called from downstairs. “Out where? What are you doing?” She sounded a bit worried, which she usually manages not to be despite my behavior.
I was a little worried myself. It wasn’t a huge way down, but my view from my bedroom window looking straight down to the patchy lawn below looked like a paratrooper’s training exercise. Not only had I not ever tried going out that window even in my devil-may-care younger days, I couldn’t ever remember opening the thing wide enough to accommodate my head in these devil-cares-very-much-indeed more mature years. I knew my abilities, and this amounted to a suicide attempt.
So I was forced to retreat and run the gauntlet of the stairs.
“What am I doing? What are you doing?” I insisted when I found Alex and my mother dressed up for something and ready to go out. On a Sunday, well before two P.M.
“We’re going to church,” my mother said.
When I was a kid I had this tic where when someone would say something to me that I found incomprehensible, I would repeat all their words in my head and make it all the more noticeable by moving my lips like a five-year-old ventriloquist with an imaginary dummy.
We’re going to church....
“What’s that he’s doing?” Alex asked my mother as if I couldn’t be spoken to directly.
“Stop that, Elvin,” she said. “And what is that you’ve done to your head?”
“I didn’t do anything to my head,” I said, feebly trying to cover the whole mess with one hand while pointing my accusation finger at the true culprit. “He did.”
“What did I do?” Alex asked, almost giggling.
“Elvin, for goodness’ sake,” Ma said, quite definitely giggling, “what could Alex have done to your hair?”
“I don’t know. But it had something to do with the food. My body has been acting very strangely....”
She giggled more.
“And then I woke up with hair... like his,” I said with the conviction of a big TV detective who had uncovered the murderer no one else could uncover because the crime was so insanely complicated and implausible.
“Why are the pretty ones always crazy?” Ma asked the air. Not for the first time.
But because she was a veteran of my stories and my style, she didn’t bother trying to work out my logic but did tip a glance toward Alex.
And she started giggling all the harder.
“My God, that’s what it is. It is the same hair.”
I thought she was having a very good time for somebody who was going to church. Alex smiled indulgently, but didn’t seem to be having quite as much fun. Me, I thought my mother was taking a very serious issue way too lightly.
“We kind of thought you might like to come along,” Alex said.
“I don’t usually...,” I said.
“So, neither do I,” Ma said. “But I thought it might be nice, for a change.”
“You know I don’t like change, Mother,” I said sternly enough to straighten her out, but not enough to frighten her.
“Oh God, no, not Elvin,” she burbled, warmly tugging at Alex’s sleeve. She was finding me irresistibly amusing with him here, like somebody who had been waiting ages to tell all her old jokes to somebody who hadn’t heard them yet. “He wouldn’t change his underwear if I didn’t make him.”
That was patently untrue.
“I’m sure that’s not true,” said Alex. “But change can be a very good thing, Elvin,” he added alarmingly.
“So,” I said in nonresponse, “you’re a Jesus guy then?”
Ma switched quickly from her airy voice to her growl-sigh. As a guy in a peanut butter helmet, what did I care?
“Sure,” Alex said confidently. “Jesus is a friend of mine.”
“And so you’re going to introduce your friend to my mother.”
“Alex,” Ma said, tugging him toward the door, “you don’t have to hang around to be grilled by my impolite son. We’ll be late.”
“No, that’s okay. Elvin, you are a sharp, inquisitive boy. Healthily skeptical. I admire that no end. Like your father.”
I was still trying to figure out how I felt about that. I zip-banged in every direction whenever he said that about me and my father, but I could not for the life of me tell you whether it was a good or a bad feeling. Only that it was a big, fast, shake of a feeling.
“I like Jesus, and Jesus likes me; that’s a fact. It’s a relationship we both keep in perspective, though, if you know what I mean.”
Of course I did not know what he meant.
Ma opened the front door, blew me a kiss, and headed out. Alex pulled a tweed cap off the coatrack and mercifully covered his head. I stood there, making sure to look him in the eye because that seemed somehow important, even though I was still a little off balance about things.
A relationship we both keep in perspective, if you know what I mean.
He came back and patted me on the cheek. His hand was very warm. “That’s right, keep repeating it. You’ll work it out.”
“Keep repeating what?”
“We’ll talk later, okay?” he said. “Just you and me. About stuff. About everything. You can grill me all you want. And maybe I can grill you.” As he said the last bit, he did the thing, backing away and sticking me with one more poke in the belly.
“If you do that one more time...,” I growled.
Right, growled. I didn’t sound anything like myself. I kind of scared and impressed myself.
He grinned hard, and for the first time I noticed he was missing most of the teeth along the right side of his mouth.
Grilling Alex didn’t sound like a bad idea at all. Who was he, poking me in the belly all the time? I knew I was a little portly. But that was my issue. I didn’t need any reminders, and I didn’t need any help, either.
Why was I such a lightning rod for people wanting to improve me all the time? Was I so offensive that people had to come back from the dead to try and fix me up for the greater good of this world and the next?
Anyway, who was he? Just because he was skinny, he could offer me tips on living? Because he was skinny and because he used to be related to my dad who used to be alive and used, also, to be related to me? And because he was also good buddies with God?
I happened to be good buddies with God. I was cool with God and God was cool with me. I know, there was the issue of my good buddy’s kind of cruel sense of humor, but from my experience a friend is no friend if he cannot dig the needle into you on a regular basis. Like this:
Me: Mikie, I don’t know what it is, but I am eating like a horse lately.
Mikie: Like a horse a day, from the looks of it, El.
Mikie, as in my best earthly friend, said that. But that was okay, because my next-best earthly friend was right there to jump in. Watch:
Me: I don’t care. I have decided to live with it and embrace my inner fat guy.
Frankie: That’ll come in handy, El, ’cause I don’t think anybody’s gonna embrace the outer one.
So there, you see, was my frame of friendship reference. That’s what friends did. Therefore, I think I was one up on most people in being able to perceive the Almighty, because while most folks went flailing around and chasing signs and worshipping crying statues and ooohing and ahhhing at stigmata and the like, I knew profoundly that God loved me because he mocked me. I, in turn, praised him by being his straight man. That is why I was not required to go to church or confession or anything else. God and I had a more intimate thing, based on humor. And that, I could understand.
But I didn’t have to like it all the time.
“Ahhh,” I shrieked as I caught sight of myself in a big plate-glass bakery window. You know that morning bakery smell when all the different stuffs, the various bagels and birthday cakes and muffins and donuts and breads and rolls and danishes and baklava and cannoli and apple pie and blueberry pie and strawberry rhubarb pie and cherry custard tarts are all firing up at the same time and all become one unbelievable, inseparable, satanic, majestic smell?
Right, well, I didn’t shriek, exactly, but I did take in a sharp breath of air that made a sound. I had lost myself in the bakery scent and stood there gawping at the window like a cross between a Norman Rockwell scene of wholesomeness in which I would eventually be handed a cruller by a kindhearted baker, and a Grimm fairy tale where a long, twisted, gnarly hand would instead reach out and yank me into an Elvin potpie.
I didn’t look too good. I was showing the signs of lack of sleep, of a poorly chosen T-shirt that had fit me a couple years earlier when Bart Simpson might possibly have still said “Cowabunga” like he was now on my belly, and of the mysterious madness that still swirled on my head. I forgot, I was out to get a haircut.
Peeling away from the bakery window, I assured myself that all that was required here was the proper styling. I had seen the shampoo and conditioner ads. A snip here, a flip there, and you achieved a new confidence that changed everything, put a bounce in your step and removed it from your belly.
Not to mention putting a little distance between your look and your uncle’s.
I must have wanted this bad, to go out looking randomly on a Sunday for a haircut. Sal, my regular barber, was closed on Sundays, but I suppose that was part of the plan. I didn’t want my regular barber. Not because I normally only went to him because I had done so all my life and he was three doors down from us. Not because he was well past retirement and I had to wake him up sometimes and when I did he usually couldn’t find his glasses and then he usually just went ahead with the job anyway. Not because I sometimes went in and got a haircut without needing one just because I was passing his window and he was very alone and wide awake and he waved at me like he was my grandpa and happy to see me. And not because he still gave me lemon or root beer lollipops in the clear wrappers that I don’t think you could get without going to an old barber.
I didn’t want to go to Sal because he always made me look like me. I didn’t want that.
Without much to go on, I cruised the streets of town, finding that there were not only an alarming number of hairdressers, but that most of them were open on Sunday. I thought about going into one and panicked, then walked the whole route again to casually look the whole bunch up and down again.
I didn’t know what to look for. It could be hard to tell whether they did guys, for example, although I supposed that in the twenty-first century, everybody probably did. I couldn’t take a chance. I decided to consider only the ones that said “Unisex” right there in the window, and had guy pictures alongside all the girls, and the guy pictures could not be prettier than the girl pictures. This whittled down the field surprisingly quickly.
Then I eliminated the one where my mother went. And the three others on the same street. Then I crossed off the ones where the hairdressers themselves had scary, large, dry, white and/or sparkly hairstyles. Why would a place that wants your hair business show you atrocities like that if they had the first clue of what to do with your hair? Asymmetrical styles, out. Too many stylists, say five, with two or fewer customers, not—
“Listen, kid, if you pass by once more without coming in for a haircut, I think it’s harassment,” said the man with the perfect black, straight-back comb job. His hair came down kind of long on the sides, hanging softly on either side of his face, but the middle bit on top stayed miraculously still, holding the whole show together. He had a sort of pirate mustache and beard, and altogether looked far cooler than I ever figured a hairstylist was supposed to. He stood in the doorway, under a sign that read “Mysterious Ways Hair.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”
“No, you’re not sorry. That hair is sorry. Get yourself in here right now.”
“Yes sir.”
“Now,” he said when he had me in one of the two available chairs, “you have done the right thing. Now it is up to me.” There was a third chair, where someone was sitting under one of those Martian helmet dryers, with some kind of towels swirled all around her face. There were no other stylists around. “What is your name?”
“Elvin.”
“Good. I like it. I am Nardo. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Elvin.”
We shook hands. He had a good firm grip, but mostly from his first two fingers and thumb. From all that scissors work, probably.
“How old are you, Elvin?” He was looking me over now, walking around, crouching low, then boosting up on his toes to get angles on my head.
“Almost fifteen.”
“Almost? Almost fifteen. Does that mean that you are fourteen?”
“Yes,” I said, my chin dropping guiltily to the navy polyester cloak I now had wrapped around me.
“Well, you look fifteen, I must say. Carol,” Nardo said, poking the other body with a comb, “doesn’t Elvin look quite mature for fourteen?”
Carol grunted.
“So who did this to you? You can tell me,” Nardo said as he began taking exploratory snips of my hair.
“My uncle,” I said grimly.
He stopped clipping. “Oh. Well, I usually don’t get an answer, since it’s actually just a joke question. But okay. Is this uncle of yours the devil, or just a very, very bad hairstylist?”
“He’s...”
What was he? I didn’t know what he was. And what was it about getting your hair cut that made you feel obligated to answer questions?
“I don’t know what he is, actually.”
“Close family, huh?”
“Well, no, I guess not.”
“What do we have in mind today, Elvin? Something radical? Bold? I’m guessing you are looking for something new, because that’s why the winds brought you here. Do you have something in mind? Or see something you like on the walls?”
The walls had dozens of pictures, divided equally among men’s and women’s styles, with very little difference between them. They could have all been the same mannequin with the wigs switched for each new picture. And the truth was, not one of them looked remotely as slick as the maestro himself.
“Can you make me look like you?” was what came flying out of my mouth. I felt myself turn red with embarrassment, but was glad it came out anyway as long as the result was going to be that I was as devilish cool as this guy.
“No.”
I deflated. Not in any good way, though.
“You can’t?”
“I can, of course. But I won’t. Nobody gets to look like me. That’s the rule.” He pointed dramatically toward the back of the shop, to a sign posted on a door, that read “We are sorry, but nobody can look like Nardo.”
“Anyway, my friend Elvin, you are a very handsome young man in your own right. You do not need to look like me. We just need to find the details to complement what you already have.”
I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the picture. Of Frankie. It was his most recent class picture. He gave it to me for my birthday.
“Can you make me look like this, then?”
He took the picture from me, stared at it, and expressed himself.
“Oooh, mama. Isn’t he nice. Do you know this boy? I mean, he’s no Nardo, of course, but he is awfully nice anyway.”
I slumped. “That means no, then.”
He couldn’t quite bring himself to stop studying the Greek god in his hand, but he could spare me a thought at the same time. “Hey, hey, didn’t we already have trouble with this? No more of this low self-esteem nonsense, or I will make you ugly. I can do that, too, you know.”
“Sorry. We wouldn’t want that.”
“No. Now about this. You don’t have curly hair, for starters.”
I tugged at a corner of the picture. He wouldn’t give it up. I craned. “It’s not curly, exactly, though. It’s wavy, really.”
“Yes, true. And it isn’t as... dark as yours, or... quite the same texture. And his hair is thick....”
“I have seen the picture, Nardo. Many, many times. Seen the real thing a lot too. I understand the gargantuan nature of the request. I just thought maybe if you were really talented...”
“Hmm. An awfully big challenge to set a person for a slow Sunday. But I do like a challenge. You have come to the right place, Elvin. Probably the only place.”
“Great,” I said, clapping my hands, buzzy with excitement now.
“First we’ll need to wash this mop.” He pulled me out of the chair, led me to another chair, and leaned me back all the way over till my head was in the sink. “So this uncle who did this to you...,” he said as he began running warm water and his fingers through my hair.
“Oh, I guess he’s probably all right. I’m still getting used to him. I thought he was dead, but he’s not. He’s out with my mother right now.”
“Your uncle goes out with your mother? What does your father think of that?”
“Not much. He’s dead.”
“Are you sure? You were wrong about the other guy.”
“Pretty sure.”
“Oh,” he said, working some honey-smelling shampoo through my hair with an extra-gentle motion, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. They’re not really out-out; they’re at church.”
“Oh,” he said again, stopping even the shampooing to sympathize. “I am sorry. They always have the worst hair of all.”
He went back to his very fine work of shampooing, rinsing, conditioning, and rinsing my hair. It was a pretty relaxing treatment for a haircut, a whole different world from old Sal. I was nearly asleep by the time Nardo revealed that his mother went around telling people that she had had affairs with Jimi Hendrix and Ernest Hemingway and at least two Beatles, but she wasn’t certain which ones.
“They will screw you up, your relatives, if you pay too much attention to them.”
“I’ll try not to.”
“Good. And take better care of your hair.”
“Right. Less attention to relatives, more attention to hair.”
“Bingo. Key to life.”
Finally I had the key.