When Dogs Cry Read Online Free Page B

minutes. The golden rule: don’t give him the shits or there’ll be hell to pay.
    Immediately, I threw the magazine back to the table, face down so the barber wouldn’t know right away what a pervert I am. He’d have to wait until later when he tidied the magazines.
    Sitting in the chair (it sounds about as dangerous as the electric chair), I considered the whole woman on the cover situation.
    â€˜Short?’ the barber asked me.
    â€˜Nah, not too short please, mate. I’m just tryin’ to have it so it doesn’t always stick up.’
    â€˜Easier said than done, ay?’
    â€˜Yeah.’
    We exchanged a look of mutual friendliness and I feltmuch more at ease in the firing line of the scissors, the chair, and the barber.
    He started cutting and like I said a minute ago, I reviewed the woman on the cover situation. My theory on this subject was and still is that I obviously desire the physicality of a woman. Yet, I honestly believe that
that
part of my desire for a girl is somewhere on the surface of my soul, whereas further and much deeper inside is the fiercer desire to please her, treat her right, and be immersed by the spirit of her.
    I honestly believe that.
    Honestly.
    Still, I had to stop thinking about it and talk to the barber. That’s another rule of the barber shop. If you talk to the man and get him to like you, maybe he won’t screw it up. That’s what you hope for anyway. It doesn’t mean you’ll have instant success, but it might help, so you try it. There are no guarantees in the world of barber shops. It’s a gamble no matter which way you look at it. I had to start talking, and fast.
    â€˜So how’s business?’ I asked, as the barber cut his way through the thickness of my furry hair.
    â€˜Aah, you know mate.’ He stopped, and smiled at me in the mirror. ‘Here ‘n there. Keepin’ my head above water. That’s the main thing.’
    We talked for quite a while after that, and the barber told me how long he’d been working in the city and how much people have changed. I agreed with everything he said, with a dangerous nod of my head or a quiet ‘Yeah, that sounds about right’. He was a pretty nice guy to tellyou the truth. Very big. Quite hairy. A husky voice.
    I asked if he lived upstairs from the shop and he said, ‘Yep, for the last twenty-five years.’ That was when I pitied him a little, because I imagined him never going anywhere or doing anything. Just cutting hair. Eating dinner alone. Maybe microwave dinners (though his dinners couldn’t be much worse than the ones Mrs Wolfe cooked, God bless her).
    â€˜Do you mind me askin’ if you ever got married?’ I asked him.
    â€˜Of course I don’t mind,’ he answered. ‘I had a wife but she died a few years ago. I go down the cemetery every weekend, but I don’t put flowers down. I don’t talk.’ He sighed a bit and he was very sincere. Truly. ‘I like to think I did enough of that when she was alive, you know?’
    I nodded.
    â€˜It’s no good once a person’s dead. You gotta do it when you’re together, still living.’
    He’d stopped cutting for a few moments now, so I could continue nodding without risk. I asked, ‘So what do you do when you’re standin’ there, at the grave?’
    He smiled. ‘Just remember. That’s all.’
    That’s nice,
I thought, but I didn’t say it. I only smiled at the man behind me in the mirror. I had a vision of the large hairy man standing there at the cemetery, knowing that he gave everything he could. I also imagined myself there with him, on a dark grey day. Him in his white barber’s coat. Me in the usual. Jeans. Flanno. Spray jacket.
    â€˜Okay?’ he turned and said to me in the vision.
    â€˜Okay?’ he said in the shop.
    I woke back into reality and said, ‘Yeah, thanks a lot, it’s good’,