The Song of David

The smile wobbled and Millie reached out for her gate, feeling for the latch as if she needed something to hold onto while I kicked her in the stomach.

“Yeah. Why would I ever presume to be more?” she asked, her voice light. The gate swung open and without turning toward me again, she walked toward the front door, barely using her stick.





FRIENDS OR NOT, I found myself in front of Amelie’s door at a quarter to eleven. I knocked and waited, wondering if Millie had changed her mind. The friend comment had been insulting—I knew it as soon as it left my lips—but I had to make sure I wasn’t leading her on until I knew where I was going. I was dressed in my navy blue suit jacket and a starched white shirt, but I’d left the tie at home and pressed my Wranglers instead of wearing slacks. I could dress up when I needed to, but I was hoping my pressed Wranglers and shiny boots were good enough. I’d slicked back my shaggy hair and told myself I didn’t need a haircut. I’d never been attached to my hair, I just never got around to taking care of it. But it made me look a little unkempt, so I wetted it, threw some goop in it, and slicked it back. I looked like one of those shirtless guys in a kilt on the cover of a romance novel, the kind my mom used to read and collect. It didn’t matter. Millie couldn’t see my long hair or the way it curled well over my collar. She couldn’t see my jeans for that matter, so I didn’t know why I cared.

The front door swung open and Henry stood there with wide eyes and a baseball bat.

“Hey, Henry.”

Henry stared. “You look weird, Tag.”

Said the guy with the bat and the hair that looked like a burning bush.

“I’m dressed up, Henry.”

“What did you do to your hair?” Henry hadn’t moved back to let me in.

“I combed it. What did you do to yours?” I asked, smirking.

Henry reached up and patted it. “I didn’t comb it.”

“Yeah. I can tell. It looks like a broom, Henry.”

We stared at each other for a few long seconds.

“They use brooms in the sport of curling,” Henry said.

I bit my lip to control the bubble of laughter in my throat. “True. But I’m thinking you would look more like a baseball player with less hair. That’s your favorite sport, right?”

Henry held up the bat in his hands, as if that were answer enough.

“I was thinking . . . I was thinking that you and I should maybe head over to my friend Leroy’s and get a trim tomorrow. Leroy owns a barbershop. Whaddaya say? Leroy is nice and there’s a smoothie shop next door. It’ll be a man date. A date for men.” I might as well kill two birds with one stone.

“A mandate?” Henry ran the words together.

“Yes. I am mandating that you get your hair cut. We’ll go to the gym afterwards, and I’ll show you some moves.”

“Not Amelie?”

“Do you want Amelie to come?”

“She’s not a man. It’s a man date.”

Amelie chose that moment to gently push Henry aside.

“I am definitely not a man, but Henry, you really should have invited Tag inside.”

Amelie was wearing tan boots and a snug khaki colored skirt that came to her knees, along with a fitted red sweater and a fuzzy scarf that had streaks of red and black and gold in the weave. I wondered how in the world she coordinated it all. Judging from Henry’s hair, he couldn’t be much help.

“On February sixth, 1971, Alan Shepard hit a golf ball on the moon,” Henry offered inexplicably, and moved aside.

“And today is February sixth, isn’t it?” Millie said, clearly understanding Henry’s thought processes a whole lot better than I did.

“That’s right,” I said. “So February sixth a golf ball was hit on the moon and on February seventh, 2014, Tag Taggert and Henry Anderson are going to get haircuts, right Henry?”

“Okay, Tag.” Henry ducked his head and headed up the stairs.

“Call me if you need me, Henry,” Millie called after him. She waited until she heard his door shut before she addressed me.

“Henry has an attachment disorder. He doesn’t even like it when I cut my hair. If my mom had allowed it, he would be the biggest pack rat in the world. But hoarding and blindness don’t mix. Everything has to be in its place or the house becomes a landmine. So he wears the same clothes until they’re threadbare, won’t cut his hair, still sleeps with his Dragon Ball Z sheets he got for his eighth birthday, and has every toy he has ever been given stored in plastic bins in the basement. I don’t think he’ll go through with the hair cut. He’s only let Robin cut it twice since my mom died, and both times he cried the entire time, and she had to put the clippings in a Ziplock bag and let him keep them, just to get him to calm down.”

I was slightly repulsed, and I was glad Millie couldn’t see my expression. “So he has bags of hair in his room?”

“I’m assuming he does though he won’t tell me where. I pay my next-door neighbor to come in and clean once a week, and she hasn’t found it either.”