“It’s been so long,” Stavros says. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
Apparently, unless he’s pulling my leg, Stavros doesn’t even remember me being here just last week.
“Uh, yeah,” I say. “How long has it been?”
He goes back to trimming the hair of the customer in the chair. “Months, at least,” he says after a moment’s thought.
What am I going to do about him?
Stavros looks up at me and narrows his eyes, waving his scissors in a menacing manner. “You been going to one of my competitors? One of those fancy-schmancy super-cutting places?”
I hold out my hands in protest. “What? No! Of course not! I would never go to anyone but you.”
“Well, OK then.” Mollified, Stavros goes back to work. “Still, all this time way, your hair must be getting long. Just a sec and I’ll do you after I’m done with this guy.”
“Actually, I didn’t come in for—”
I stop myself as Stavros stops cutting hair, gives me a quizzical look. If I finish the sentence out in the way I originally intended, what we’ll wind up with is ‘Actually, I didn’t come in for a haircut,’ then Stavros will say, ‘Then what did you come in for?’—since I’ve never just stopped by just to chat before—and then what will I come back with: ‘Because I’m worried you’re losing some of your little gray cells?’ No, I can’t say that. So:
I hold out my open palms, roll my eyes at my own idiocy and say, “I forget what I was going to say.”
At this, Stavros laughs. “You too? That happens to me sometimes, but you’re too young for that, Johnny.”
He finishes with the customer, they settle up and soon I’m in the chair for a trim I don’t need.
Stavros drapes the cape around my neck. “So,” he says, “what are you up to today?”
“After this, I’m going to hit Stop & Shop, get some things for the dinner party my wife and I are having this weekend.”
“Your wife?” In the mirror, I see the look of deep shock on his face. “How come you never told me you went and got yourself a wife?”
Since I reminded him of it last week, after having discussed Helen with him many times in the past year, I don’t know what to say to this.
“I guess it slipped my mind?” I shrug.
He laughs appreciatively, like he could see how this could happen, a man forgetting about his own wife.
“Hey,” I say, “how you been feeling?”
“How else would I be feeling?” He pounds himself on the chest. “I’m strong as an ox.” And I can see that he is. Stavros’s mind may be failing him on some levels, but he looks like he could take me. OK, so maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but still.
“How about those Jets?” I ask.
“Oh my God,” he says. “Did you hear Peyton’s not coming? We’re getting Tebow instead!”
This is good. Word of the Tebow acquisition just hit the news on Thursday, so even though Stavros doesn’t remember that I was here just last Saturday, at least he remembers this.
“I know, right?” I say enthusiastically—not enthusiastic about Tebow, but rather because Stavros at least has some short-term memory. But wait a second. Did I just slip and say ‘I know, right?’ Ah, fuck it. Sam’ll never know. She’s not here and I can say whatever I want to. “It’s crazy times,” I go on, more enthusiasm. “I think they’re just fucking with Sanchez’s head. Do you think they’re fucking with Sanchez’s head?”
“Oh, I definitely think they’re fucking with Sanchez’s head.” In the mirror, Stavros waves the scissors at me, a reminder. “So what are we doing today?”
I regard my own image, the image that doesn’t need a trim at all. “Oh, I don’t know,” I say. “Really, I think just a half inch off’ll do it.”
“A half inch? Stavros looks disgusted as he shakes his head. “That can’t be right.” He tilts my head forward, runs a comb through the back. “It’s been so long since you’ve been here, it’s got to be more than that.”
Even if his mind is going, his eyes still work. Can’t he see my hair doesn’t need much of a cut?
My head’s still tilted forward but I crane it just enough so I can see Stavros’s reflection in the mirror. And what does that reflection tell me? He’s smiling devilishly and—oh, shit—he’s got the buzz razor out. Is he going to try to get even with me, because he thinks I’ve been two-timing him with another barber, by giving me some kind of radical cut?
T-bone or London broil?
“Mr. Smith?”
I’m in the meat section of Super Stop & Shop, trying to figure what to get.
“Mr. Smith?”
Helen never said who exactly she invited over, but I’m figuring it’s got to be one of the brothers and a spouse. Maybe it’s Frankie. and Mary Agnes? I wouldn’t mind seeing them. I’ll bet Frankie loves a good steak.
“Mr. Smith!”
I feel a tiny finger jab me in the side and turn around but there’s no one there. I feel another jab and realize it’s coming from below, so I look down. Carroty hair. Blue eyes. Oh. Oh!
“Willow!” It’s the little girl from the cruise ship. “What are you doing here?”
“It is you,” she says. “I wasn’t sure at first. Your hair’s different. All of them.”
I reach a hand up, feeling my newly and completely naked neck. Making up for what he thought was a lot of lost time, Stavros went a little crazy with the scissors.
“It doesn’t look bad, does it?” I ask.
Willow tilts her head to one side, considers. “That depends on what kind of look you’re trying to achieve.”
I could ask for clarification, but I’m not sure I’d like the answer. So, instead: “What are you doing here?” I ask again.
“I told you I live in Connecticut.”
“You don’t live in Danbury, do you?”
“No. We’re visiting relatives. We’re going to have a picnic and my mom said we should stop and shop so we’d have something to bring. This looks like a good place for that and it works out very well.”
“How so?”
“Well, it is called Stop & Shop.”
“Actually, I meant the other part.”
“Oh. That. You’ve been on my mind a lot lately.”
I feel my eyebrows shoot up. Unfortunately, there’s not much of a hairline for them to hit anymore. “I have?” Aw, this is cute. Maybe she’s got a crush on me?
“Definitely. So, how’s married life treating you?”
“It’s, um, great.” What a bizarre question for a little kid to ask!
“It is?” She sounds skeptical. “Are you completely sure about that, Mr. Smith?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You do know what Shakespeare says about marriage, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.” I fold my arms across my chest. “Maybe you should enlighten me. What does he say?”
She frowns. “Well, maybe says was the wrong word. But a survey of Shakespeare’s complete plays shows that comedy always ends in marriage in Act V. I think there’s only one obvious conclusion we can draw from this.”
“And that is?”
“Shakespeare ended his comedies with marriage in Act V, because he knew that there’s no good in showing an Act VI. That’s when all the bad stuff happens.”
“Actually, I think he ended them in Act V because he wrote five-act plays.”
Why am I defending Shakespeare’s artistic choices to this kid? Next, she’ll be lecturing me on what a great guy Macbeth was and how Richard III was simply misunderstood!
“Yes, I know that.” Willow rolls her eyes. “But then why don’t they get married earlier in the play? It’s always at the very end, in the last scene, like he didn’t want people to see what happens next.”
She makes that sound so ominous.
“How old are you again?” I ask.
“Everyone does that.” Willow sighs, like she expected better from me. “
But it’s not a valid argument.”
“I just, I don’t know what it is you’re trying to say here, Willow.”
“I just—”
“Willow!” a woman’s voice calls.
“I just worry about you a lot,” Willow says hurriedly. “That’s all, Mr. Smith.”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” I reassure her. “I’m fine.”
“Willow!” The voice is more stern now and around the aisle corner comes Willow’s mom from the cruise ship. “There you are.” She looks at Willow, her eyes as stern as her voice—I imagine it could get a parent rattled, losing sight of a kid in a big grocery store—but then she catches sight of me and it’s all smiles. “Mr. Smith!”
“Hey there, Mrs.—” I realize I’ve never known Willow’s last name and thus I finish lamely with: “Willow’s Mom.”
“Actually, it’s Miss or Ms.,” she says.
“When my parents were thinking about getting married a few years back,” Willow cuts in, “I talked them out of it.”
“Willow!” Ms. Willow’s Mom says, scandalized. She shakes her head. “It’s probably easier if you just call me Diana.”
“I practice what I preach,” Willow says. “If Act V never ends, you never have to deal with Act VI.”
Diana shakes her head but I can tell: the scandalized looks, the head shaking—she still thinks her daughter’s the greatest kid in the world.
“Care to go to a picnic with us, Mr. Smith?” Diana offers.
“He has other plans,” Willow says. “He’s married.”
“Ah, well.” Diana sighs. “I’m going to get in line, Willow. Meet me at the front of the store.”
“I don’t know if you can tell,” Willow says after she’s gone, “but things didn’t work out with my parents. They broke up.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. So…keeping them from getting together didn’t keep them from splitting up?”
“Good one, Mr. Smith. I have to go now.”
“OK, but hey, Willow. Try not to worry about stuff so much.”
“I’ll try. And get the London broil instead of the T-bone. The T-bone is a more impressive cut of meat but London broil is a great cut if done right, so long as you know what you’re trying to achieve with it. You know, unlike with your hair.”
I’m still thinking of Willow—or, more accurately, trying not to think about her bizarre worries concerning my married life—as I arrive home with my sack of groceries, round the entry into the kitchen and see…
My wife on all fours down on the kitchen floor.
Now, I wouldn’t exactly characterize myself as a sexist pig, although some might, and in the years I spent in the unmarried wasteland hoping to break in I never once fantasized about having a wife be barefoot and pregnant on my behalf, but the sight of my wife on her knees in short-shorts scrubbing the kitchen floor…Well, it is hot.
“Hey, someone looks good,” I say.
Her hair’s pulled back in a ponytail but some strands have come loose and as she glances up at me, she blows them out of her face.
“Hey, where’d most of your hair go?”
“Why? Does it look bad?”
“No, not bad,” she muses, her head tilted to one side, “just very different. It all depends what you’re going for.”
Grateful that she’s not horrified—I’ve always feared that underneath my thick hair I might have one of those misshapen heads—I don’t ask for further clarification.
“Don’t walk on the floor yet,” she says when I attempt to place a foot over the threshold.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” I take the foot back.
“Give it a few minutes after I’m finished, then you can come in.”
I am more than content to stand there for as long as she wants me to, grocery bag in hand, watching her do what she’s doing.
“I’ve been cleaning,” she says, still scrubbing away.
“I can see that.”
“No, I mean the whole place.”
It is a hardship, tearing my eyes away from this vision of my wife, but I do so long enough to glance around the kitchen—everything sparkles—then turn and crane my neck to see the dining and living rooms; the whole place is spotless.
“You didn’t have to do all this,” I say.
“Of course I did. We’ve got people coming in a few hours and the place was a mess.”
This is true. In the short time we’ve been living here, we’ve fallen into a pattern of, well, general messiness. It’s just so hard during the week to find time to get everything done, particularly when there’s so much I’d rather do with my wife than, you know, wipe down a counter or swish a toilet bowl.
“I mean you could have waited for me,” I say. “I’d have been happy to help.”
“But you were getting the groceries and later on you’ll make dinner. I figured it was only fair.”
“My, that’s…very democratic of you.”
She blows the annoying stray hairs out of her face again as she backs the last few inches out of the room. Rising to her feet, she turns to face me. “You know what we need?”
I look a question at her because honestly, right now, I don’t feel like there’s another thing in this world that I need. I just love this woman so much.
“We could use a wife,” she says.
“A wife?” I laugh. “I thought I already had one.”
“You know,” she says, “a wife for both of us—someone to do all this day-to-day stuff like cooking and cleaning so we don’t have to.”
Shifting the groceries to one side, I put a hand on her hip and pull her in close to me. “Whatever you want,” I say, “whatever makes you happy.”
I lower my head, kiss her, press my hips into hers enough that she takes a step backward into the kitchen.
“Hey.” She pulls away from me. “I know where you’re going with this. Not on my clean kitchen floor.”
Rats.
She snakes around me, heads for the stairs, doesn’t even turn around as she instructs, “Put the groceries away first and then meet me in the bedroom.”
OK, so maybe I’m not going to get laid on the kitchen floor, at least not right this minute, but it’s Saturday afternoon and if I’m not mistaken my wife just informed me that we’re about to have sex in our bedroom.
My life is not bad.
“So how did things go with Stavros earlier?” Helen asks.
We’ve had incredible afternoon sex and have sufficiently enjoyed a quiet period of reflective afterglow. Do I mean that ironically? Hmm…tough to tell. Now her head’s on my shoulder and she’s even remembering to ask about Stavros, which is so sweet, given that she’s never met him.
I explain about how the week before, for the first time I noticed that there were lapses in his memory.
“And if anything,” I go on, “today it seemed even worse to me.”
“How so?”
“Well, last week, it’d been a while since I’d been in. But this week? I’d just been there the Saturday before and yet he obviously didn’t remember it.”
“Sad,” she says. “Doesn’t he have any family to look out for him?”
“That’s the thing. I don’t really know. I know he’s never been married but that’s all really.” For some reason, I don’t mention the married mistress he boffs regularly. Anyway, it’s not like a married mistress is the person a guy turns to when he starts losing his shit. Not that I have any direct knowledge of any of this.
“How bad do you think it is?” she asks. “Is he safe to work? Should he be on his own?”
Stavros not work? And if Stavros didn’t live on his own, where would he go? “Oh, I don’t think it’s as bad as all that,” I’m quick to say. “I’m just a little worried, that’s all.”
“Still,” she says, “it’s sad.”
“Yes,” I agree. “It is that.”
We spend so much time in bed talking, just enjoying being together, we even make love a second time—are we killing this
marriage stuff or what here?—that time just slips away and before we know it…
“What time did you say people were coming?” I ask lazily.
“Seven,” Helen says.
We both look at the clock—shit!—and bolt out of bed.
It’s a mad dash of showering, throwing on clothes and soon I’m in the kitchen, hastily throwing a salad together while Helen sets the dining room table. I’m working on a creamy avocado dressing that features garlic, honey, basil and lime, when my cell goes off. As I answer it, I look through to the dining room and see Helen setting the table for four.
“Hey, Johnny, it’s Mike,” the caller says.
Mike is one of a larger group of guys I hung out with in high school. There were actually two Mikes. For years afterward, we all still hung out whenever we were home from college and then even beyond for a bit, but over time, the group atrophied as groups will until it was just Billy and Drew and me as regulars, so I haven’t heard from Mike in at least a few years.
“Hey, what’s up?” I say.
Now Helen’s cell goes off and I see her fish it out of her pocket.
“Listen, I’m getting married in October and I was wondering: Will you be my Best Man?”
It occurs to me that I haven’t been anyone’s Best Man in six months. Am I slipping here?
“Of course,” I say.
“Of course,” I hear Helen say in the other room. “I understand. These things happen.”
Something occurs to me.
“Wait a second,” I say to Mike. “Which Mike is this, Mike I or Mike II?”
“It’s Mike II!” He sounds offended. “You know, Mike Freschetti. Don’t you recognize my voice?”
Now Helen’s putting her cell back in her pocket.
I ignore his question because any answer I give can only cause offense. The Mikes were never big on personality—not by choice, I don’t think; they were just very bland—only ever really distinguishable by number, so instead I just say, “But wasn’t I your Best Man six or seven years ago?” Come to think of it, I was both Mikes’ Best Men.
Isn't It Bro-Mantic? Page 18
