Price of the Haircut_Stories

by Brock Clarke

  “I miss my wife so much,” Antonio Vieri said.

  “That’s the spirit,” Brad said. “But speaking of your wife, I should probably know a few things about her before people show up.”

  “Of course,” Antonio Vieri said. “What is the expression?—please start shooting me with your weapon.”

  Again, Brad shook his head, as though he couldn’t believe his good fortune. “Right,” he said. “Tell me something about her.”

  “She ate her insalata mista . . .”

  “Yeah, yeah, and she read the best-selling novels,” Brad said. “I know that already. That’s only two things. What else did she do?”

  “What else?” Antonio Vieri asked. Did there need to be something else? Were two things not enough? How many things did one need to do? How many things did the patriarch of the gangsters do? He brushed his cheeks with his fingers, and he told people that—what was the expression?—he’d concoct a deal whose terms they had no choice but to accept. How many things did you have to know about someone in order to love them, and to miss them once they were gone?

  “Yeah, what else?” Brad said. “Tell me how you and your wife met.”

  “I found her,” Antonio Vieri said. “I was sitting alone in this apartment, staring at the cracked plaster walls, and I said to myself, out loud, in the manner of the truly lonely, ‘Antonio Vieri, if you do not find a wife, if you do not find friends, then you are going to end up in this apartment all alone for the rest of your life. You are going to end up as the saddest man in Florence. I am warning you.’ And so I went out and found them.”

  “What do you mean, you ‘found them’?” Brad asked. He had that puzzled look on his face you get when you think you have one thing and then you find out that it’s something else entirely. Antonio Vieri knew the look. It was the same look his wife had had when he had told her to leave him for the famous American author. “Do you mean you met them?”

  “Do I?” Antonio Vieri said. He thought this might be, as with the vernacular in the best-selling novels, a problem with translation. “Maybe I do mean that. What is the difference?”

  Just then, there was a knock on the door. Antonio Vieri stood up to answer it, but Brad motioned for him to sit down in the chair. Antonio Vieri did; Brad placed The Final Patriarch of the Gangsters Once More in Antonio Vieri’s hands, then mussed Antonio Vieri’s hair, which was sparse and considerably mussed already. On the table next to the chair, there was an opened jar of black olives, the label yellowed and corroded and nearly unreadable, one overly soaked and aged black olive swimming buddyless in the dingy brine. Next to the jar there was a two-year-old newspaper opened to a half-completed two-year-old crossword puzzle. On the floor, next to Antonio Vieri’s chair, was a tower of the famous American’s best-selling novels about Italian gangsters in New York, teetering toward the man who had read them too many times, and away from the window, away from the piazza, away from the man who had written them and who was now drinking wine in an outdoor café. All of these things—the books, the newspapers, even the olive—were originally meant to give Antonio Vieri comfort; but now, gathered and displayed as they were, they made him almost unbearably sad: there is nothing worse than seeing all the things you use to make yourself feel better gathered together in one place. Antonio Vieri felt terrible, but he could tell Brad felt good: Brad surveyed the scene, gave Antonio Vieri a satisfied nod, then opened the door.

  “Is this the Pity Palace?”

  Antonio Vieri couldn’t see the speaker, but it was a woman’s voice, an American, yet another one.

  “Yes,” Brad said. “Admission is ten euros.”

  “Each?”

  “Each.”

  Antonio Vieri heard some grumbling, then zipper sounds. He leaned forward to get a glimpse of his first paying customers, and, in doing so, grazed the leaning tower of books with his elbow, and then the tower was no more: the books fell with that raspy paperback sound, some of them falling on the floor, but most of them on Antonio Vieri. He yelped and brushed the books off of him, as if they were ashes from the cigarettes he didn’t smoke. When he looked up, he saw his first paying customers, gaping at him.

  There were two of them, a man and a woman. It was clear that both of them could really—what was the expression?—fasten a sack over their faces out of which they would eat like hungry animals. Their round faces glistened with sweat and the remnants of their midmorning gelati. The man wore a cap pulled way down over his forehead, almost to the eyebrows; the cap was sky blue, and was adorned with a white cross, or rather several white crosses, layered on top of one another, each one slightly bigger then the next, which gave Antonio Vieri the impression that the cross might at any minute burst right out of the sky-blue cap and into the unsuspecting secular world. The woman had the sort of severely blunt haircut that signifies either piety or retardation; she was wearing a shiny green windbreaker on which the name Donna was written in cursive over the right breast. Both the man and Donna wore the overlarge belts that Antonio Vieri knew were called “fanny packs”; he also knew what a “fanny” was and could not understand why, then, the belts were worn around the stomach and not the fanny. All he knew for sure was that they were ridiculous. Perhaps if the famous American author had worn a fanny pack, Antonio Vieri’s wife would not have left Antonio Vieri. But Antonio Vieri guessed that he didn’t, and she had.

  Donna approached Antonio Vieri warily, hesitantly, as if he were a hungry lion and she, the woman, had forgotten to bring the meat. The man hung back, head down, as though ashamed. Donna was holding in her meaty hands the flyer that Antonio Vieri’s friends had made and disseminated; she consulted it quickly, and then looked back at Antonio Vieri.

  “You’re Antonio Vieri?”

  “It is I.” He glanced at Brad, and Brad nodded. They’d rehearsed. Antonio Vieri cleared his throat and said: “My wife left me for the famous American author who wrote those best-selling novels about Italian gangsters in New York. I miss her so much. I even miss the way she ate her insalata mista. She ate her insalata mista so delicately, one leaf at a time, like an angel. Now she is gone, and I am the saddest man in Florence. This is my home. This is the Pity Palace.” At this, Antonio Vieri made a sweeping gesture with his right arm, as though inviting Donna to see how pitiable his palace was. But Donna didn’t notice: she’d been looking at the flyer, reading along from the text of Antonio Vieri’s speech. After a few seconds of silence, it must have been clear to Donna that he had nothing more to say: she raised her head, looked at him, then at Brad, and said, “That’s it? That’s not so bad. I don’t feel sorry for you much at all.” Donna’s lips, her cheeks, her whole face, quivered with disappointment. If the gelato on her chin, her upper lip, and her cheeks was makeup, then the disappointment was something that couldn’t be covered. Antonio Vieri felt sorry for her; it was the first time he’d felt sorry for anyone else. It was like finding money in your pocket, money you’d never had, never lost, money you didn’t know you’d ever wanted. “You don’t seem so sad.”

  “I don’t?”

  “He does,” Brad said. Antonio Vieri could hear the yelp of panic in his voice, could see that Brad hadn’t pocketed the twenty euros, as though he wasn’t sure they truly belonged to him yet.

  “He doesn’t,” Donna said, then sighed and cocked her head in the direction of her husband. “But go ahead, Steve. We’re here. You might as well go ahead show him your mole.”

  Steve took two steps forward, pulled off his hat, and showed Antonio Vieri his mole. It was on his forehead, just above the hairless space between his eyebrows, which was why Steve had worn his hat so low. The mole was the size of an eye, was black, except where it was purple, and had topography: little mountains crusted with something white, shallow valleys of the deepest, most malignant purple. In one of the valleys there seemed to be a thin stream of pus. The mole looked angry, angrier even than the littlest Italian gangsters with the most to prove in the famous American author’s best-selling novels, so angry that
it throbbed. Antonio Vieri could see hairs growing out or through the mole, wiggling frantically, as though trying to escape. The hat had put a crease in the mole, making the southern tip look like it had seceded from the rest of the sovereign mole.

  “Ouch,” said Brad.

  Steve didn’t say anything, as though he were resigned to let his mole and his Donna do all his talking for him. He put his hat back on and receded again into the apartment’s shadows.

  “I know,” Donna said. “We’ve prayed. We’ve prayed and prayed for the Lord to rid Steve of his mole. We’ve even prayed for the Lord to make it cancer. ‘Please, Jesus, make it cancer.’ That was our exact prayer. The insurance won’t pay for getting rid of it unless it’s cancer. But it’s not cancer. Jesus in his mystery and wisdom won’t make it cancer, not even precancer. I don’t know why. All I know is that it’s ugly. I’m sorry, Steve, but it is: I can see it even through the hat; I can see it even though you’re way over there in the corner. Even with my eyes closed, I can see it. Watch. Here I am, closing my eyes, and I can still see it. There it is, Jesus, the way you made it. You died for our sins, and then You made Steve’s hideous mole.”

  “Ouch,” Brad said again.

  Donna opened her eyes and nodded. “It’s come between us.”

  Antonio Vieri could see how that could happen. It happened in the best-selling novels all the time: someone murdered his brother, and the murder came between the murderer and his other brother; someone murdered his father, and the murder came between the murderer and his mother; someone lied to his wife about all the murdering, and the lying and murdering came between the lying murderer and his wife. It seemed, to Antonio Vieri, that if Donna’s Jesus existed, then He made two people and not one only so that someone or something would then come between them. The best-selling novels and their famous American author had come between Antonio Vieri and his wife, and now it was clear that Donna and Steve and Steve’s mole were about to come between Brad and Antonio Vieri, too. Antonio Vieri could see the blank, horrified look on Brad’s face. Earlier, Brad had confided that before he’d met Antonio Vieri, nothing had ever worked out for him, not in love, not in anything. “My last job was working for a dry cleaner,” he’d told Antonio Vieri. “But then I got fired for not keeping the dry cleaning dry enough. My boss said he’d never seen anything like it. Do you understand what I’m telling you?” Antonio Vieri had: he understood how easily pity became self-pity, understood that if Antonio Vieri and his Pity Palace became just one more thing that didn’t work out for Brad, Brad would leave him, and he would be all alone again.

  “The story I’ve told you,” Antonio Vieri said quietly, as though telling them a secret, “that is not the whole story.” Once he’d said that, Antonio Vieri could feel the difference in the room. It was like the wind had picked up, blown the despair out of the room, and replaced it, not with something else, but with the hope that it would be something else, something better. It was like that moment in one of the best-selling novels, after the middle-brother gangster has confessed to betraying the younger-brother gangster, but before he knows whether the younger-brother gangster will forgive him or murder him. Donna and Brad leaned toward Antonio Vieri expectantly; even Steve seemed to move out of the shadows a little bit. “My wife liked to eat insalata mista—that much has been told. And I would just sit around and watch her eat: she was that beautiful. That’s all she did; that’s all I wanted her to do. I thought I never would get tired of it.”

  “But then you did,” Donna said, nodding, as if she were hearing an old story, one of her favorites. “Jesus gave you everything you wanted, and then Satan made you want more.”

  It was true. Antonio Vieri remembered the moment too clearly. He and his wife were sitting at the kitchen table; he was watching her eat her insalata mista delicately, one leaf at a time, like an angel, just like she had the day before, and the day before that, and all Antonio Vieri could think of was what it would be like to sit there and watch his wife eat her insalata mista like this for eternity, and so he said, out of the blue, “Maybe you’d like something to read,” and gave her one of the famous American author’s best-selling novels about Italian gangsters in New York.

  “You mean one of these?” Donna asked, as if she had not really noticed the books scattered around before that moment. She picked up one of the books—The Proper Italian Word for Death—and held it so anxiously, so uncertainly, Antonio Vieri wondered whether she’d ever even held a book before. “Where did all these books come from, anyway?”

  “They—what is the expression?—tumbled off of a moving construction vehicle.” In truth, Antonio Vieri didn’t remember where they’d come from. Perhaps the previous tenants had left them, although Antonio Vieri didn’t remember anyone living in the apartment before him, nor did he remember living in another apartment but this one. Perhaps his friends had brought him the books, although Antonio Vieri didn’t remember his friends bringing him anything but food. But what did it matter? Where does anyone get anything? You are lonely, and so you go find a wife to make you less so. You want the wife who makes you feel less lonely to read something to supplement her delicate, angelic eating of her insalata mista, and so you give her a book. The world is not so mysterious. Antonio Vieri’s wife had said, “Yes, I’d love something to read,” and luckily, Antonio Vieri had one of the best-selling novels to give her, no matter where it’d come from.

  “Did she like it?” Donna asked. She looked dubiously at the book in her hands, as though wondering how anyone could like such a thing.

  “She loved it,” Antonio Vieri said. He could hear the jealousy in his voice, could feel it in the back of his throat. “She loved all of them. She loved them so much that’s all she did; she barely even ate her insalata mista anymore, and when she did, she’d eat big fistfuls of it so that she could get back to the novels. So one day . . .” And then Antonio Vieri stopped. He had the urge to apologize—not to anyone in the room, but to his wife. He wanted to crawl deep into her ear and whisper, I’m sorry, I love you, I’m sorry, I love you, until that was the only thing she could hear, until she knew that it was true.

  “Tell us, Antonio Vieri,” Donna said. Steve had emerged from the shadows and was standing next to his wife; they were holding hands. “Jesus wants you tell us so we can feel better about Steve’s hideous mole.”

  Antonio Vieri cleared his throat once, twice, thrice, closed his eyes, and then said, “And so one day I told her that it seemed like she loved the best-selling novels more than she loved me. I told her that if she loved the best-selling novels so much, then why didn’t she leave me for the man who wrote them?”

  “And then she did. You poor guy,” Donna said, and Antonio Vieri nodded. “She actually left you for the famous American author.” She turned to Steve, her face shining and holy. “Take your hat off, Steve. Jesus made your hideous mole, but He also gave us this poor man and his story.”

  But Steve didn’t take off his hat. He moved closer to Antonio Vieri, squinting, as though trying to see him more clearly. Antonio Vieri was slumped in his chair. He’d never told the whole story to anyone before, not even his friends before he’d sent them away. Now that he’d told it to Steve and Donna, he wished he hadn’t: he felt dead, like everything to know about him was known, and none of it was good. Antonio Vieri wondered if this was what the middle-gangster brother had felt after confessing to his younger-gangster brother, and wondered, already feeling dead, if he minded so terribly much when his younger-gangster brother then had him killed. “Let me get this straight,” Steve said. “Your wife kept reading these books—”

  “The best-selling novels about Italian gangsters in New York,” Antonio Vieri said. “Yes, she did.”

  “And one day you told her that she should leave you for the famous American author—”

  “And so she did that,” Antonio Vieri said.

  “And the famous American author was in Florence,” Steve said. “He just happened to be in Florence, and your wife just
happened to know he was in Florence.”

  “Obviously,” Antonio Vieri said. “Otherwise, how would she have left me for him?” Antonio Vieri suddenly was tired of answering Steve’s stupid questions with their obvious answers. He wished Steve would let Donna and his mole do the talking for him again. He wished Steve and his mole would retreat to the shadows of the apartment, wished Steve and his wife would leave the apartment, wished they would go away forever just like Antonio Vieri’s friends had.

  “And that’s her?” Steve said, pointing to the two caricatures on the wall.

  “I drew those myself,” Antonio Vieri said. “Crudely, but with all my heart.”

  “Why does he talk that way?” Steve asked Brad. Brad shrugged and pretended to look at something interesting on the floor, and so Steve asked Antonio Vieri, “Why do you talk that way?”

  “What way?”

  “Why do you only say a few things, and why do you say those few things the same way every time you say them?” Steve said. “‘The famous American author,’ the ‘best-selling novels,’ ‘the insalata mista.’ You sound fake.”

  “I don’t,” Antonio Vieri said.

  “You do,” Steve said. “Maybe that’s why your wife left you for the famous American author.”

  “She left me for the famous American author because I told her to,” Antonio Vieri said, but Steve didn’t seem to be listening. He was over by the caricatures, looking at them, scrutinizing them.

  “These are so bad she could be any woman,” Steve said. “Or no woman at all. Don’t you have any photos of your wife?”