The instructor held up a small bloodied baby doll, which he then tossed across the room into a trunk.
“Blammo,” he said. “Let’s let that trunk represent a crypt or tomb, and it’s your fault, from speeding, how then do you feel?”
“Bad,” said the Buggin’ girl.
The pretty girl passed the barber the Attendance Log, which had to be signed to obtain Course Credit and Associated Conviction Waivers / Point Reductions.
They looked frankly at each other for what felt like a very long time.
“Hokay!” the instructor said brightly. “I suppose I don’t have to grind you into absolute putty, so now it’s a break, so you don’t view me as some sort of Marquis de Sade or harsh taskmaster requiring you to watch gross visuals and graphics until your mind rots out.”
The barber took a deep breath. He would speak to her. Maybe buy her a soda. The girl stood up. The barber got a shock. Her face was the same lovely exotic intelligent slim Cleopatran face, but her body seemed scaled to a head twice the size of the one she had. She was a big girl. Her arms were round and thick. Her mannerisms were a big girl’s mannerisms. She hunched her shoulders and tugged at her smock. He felt a little miffed at her for having misled him and a little miffed at himself for having ogled such a fatty. Well, not a fatty, exactly, her body was okay, it seemed solid enough, it was just too big for her head. If you could somehow reduce the body to put it in scale with the head, or enlarge the head and shrink down the entire package, then you’d have a body that would do justice to that beautiful beautiful face that, even now, tidying up his handouts, he was regretting having lost.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hello,” he said, and went outside and sat in his car, and when she came out with two Cokes pretended to be cleaning the ashtrays until she went away.
3.
Later that month the barber sat stiffly at a wedding reception at the edge of a kind of mock Japanese tearoom at the Hilton while some goofball inside a full-body PuppetPlayers groom costume, complete with top hat and tails and a huge yellow felt head and three-fingered yellow felt hands, made vulgar thrusting motions with his hips in the barber’s direction, as if to say: Do you like to do this? Have you done this? Can you show me how to do this, because soon I’m going to have to do this with that Puppet-Players bride over there who is right now flirting — hey! — flirting with that bass player! and the PuppetPlayers groom sprinted across the dance floor and began romping pugilistically around the bass player who’d been trying to cuckold him. Everyone was laughing and giving the barber inexplicable thumbs-ups as the PuppetPlayers groom dragged the PuppetPlayers bride across the dance floor and introduced her to the barber, and she appeared to be very taken with him, and sat on his lap and forced his head into her yellow felt cleavage, which was stained with wine and had a cigarette burn at the neckline. With many gestures she bade the barber look under her skirts, and overcome with embarrassment he did so, eventually finding a wrapped box which, when opened, revealed a wrapped cylinder which, when opened, shot a banner across the dance floor, and on the banner was written: BEST O’ LUCK ARNIE & EVELYN FROM MOM AND POP. The PuppetPlayers newlyweds sprinted across the room and bowed low before Arnie and Evelyn, who were sitting sullenly on the bandstand, apparently in the middle of a snit.
“Mickey!” Uncle Edgar shouted to the barber. “Mickey, you should’ve boffed that puppet broad! So what if she’s a puppet! You’re no prize! You’re going to be choosy? Think of it! Think of it! Arnie’s half your age!”
“Edgar for Christ’s sake you’re embarrassing him!” shouted Aunt Jean. “It’s like you’re saying he’s old! It’s like you’re saying he’s an old maid, only he’s a guy! See what I mean? You think that’s nice?”
“I am!” shouted Uncle Edgar, “I am saying that! He’s a damned old lady! I don’t mean no offense! I’m just saying get out and live! I love him! That’s why I’m saying! The sun’s setting! Pork some young babe, and if you like it, if you like the way she porks, what the hell, put down roots! What do you care? Love you can learn! But you gotta start somewhere! I mean my God, even these little so-and-sos here are trying to get some of it!”
And Uncle Edgar threw a dinner roll at a group of four adolescent boys the barber vaguely remembered having once pulled around the block in a little red wagon. The boys gave Uncle Edgar the finger and confirmed that not only were they trying to get some of it, they were actually getting some of it, and not always from the same chick, and sometimes more than once a day, and sometimes right after football practice, and quite possibly in the near future from a very hot Shop teacher they had reason to believe would probably give it to all of them at once if only they approached it the right way.
“Holy cow!” shouted Uncle Edgar. “Let me go to that school!”
“Edgar, you pig, be logical!” shouted Aunt Jean. “Just because Mickey’s not married don’t mean he ain’t getting any! He could be getting some from a lady friend, or several lady friends, lady friends his own age, who already know the score, whose kids are full-grown! You don’t know what goes on in his bed at night!”
“At least I don’t think he’s queer!” Uncle Edgar shouted to the adolescents the barber now remembered having loaded sleeping into a minivan on the evening of the day, years before, when he’d pulled them in the red wagon.
“If he is we don’t give a rat’s ass,” said one of the adolescents. “That’s his business.”
“We learned that in school,” said another. “Who You Do Is Up to You. We had a mini-session.”
Now the PuppetPlayers groom was trying to remove the real bride’s garter, and some little suited boys were walking a ledge along a goldfish stream that separated the Wedding Area from Okinawa Memories, where several clearly non-Japanese women in kimonos hustled drinks, sounding a huge metal gong whenever anyone ordered a double, at which time a bartender dressed like a sumo sent a plastic sparrow across the room on a guy wire. The little suited boys began prying up the screen that kept the goldfish from going over a tiny waterfall, to see if they would die in a shallow pond near the Vending Area.
“For example those kids torturing those fish,” shouted Uncle Edgar. “You know who those kids are? Them are Brendan’s kids. You know who Brendan is? He’s Dick’s kid. You remember who Dick is? Your second cousin the same age as you, man! Remember I took you guys to the ball-game and he threw up in my Rambler? So them kids are Dick’s grandkids and here Dick’s the same age as you, which means you’re old enough to be a grandpa, grandpa, but you ain’t even a pa yet, which I don’t know how you feel about it but I think is sort of sad or weird!”
“You do but maybe he don’t!” shouted Aunt Jean. “Why do you think everything you think is everything everybody else thinks? Plus Dick’s no saint and neither are those kids! Dick was a teen dad and Brendan was a teen dad and probably those kids on that ledge are going to be teen dads as soon as they finish killing those poor fish!”
“Agreed!” shouted Uncle Edgar. “Hey, I got no abiding love for Dick! You want to have a fight with me at a wedding over my feelings for Dick, who throwing up in my Rambler was just the start of the crap he’s pulled on me? All’s I’m saying is, there’s no danger of Mickey here being a teen dad, and he better think about what I’m saying and get on the stick before his shooter ain’t a viable shooter anymore!”
“I’m sure you start talking about the poor guy’s shooter at a wedding!” shouted Aunt Jean. “You’re drunk!”