“Look, I just feel like there’s gotta be a loyalty discount.” The man barking about the prices was sitting next to Miles and his father. He looked like one of those guys who was pushing fifty but played pick-up basketball with hack-boxes like Benji and Mucus Man every weekend to keep him young.
“Loyalty?” House turned the clippers off and pointed them at the man. “You don’t know nothin’ ’bout loyalty. If I don’t charge you what I do, then I can’t make the rent on this place. Are you gon’ call me and invite me over to your dee-lux apartment in the sky for me to touch up your hairline and shave your face? You suckers talk all this trash like New York City ain’t the new Disney World, and when was the last time Mickey Mouse offered you a free pass into that castle thing or whatever the hell they got down there? Huh? Never!”
“Man, just hurry up so the rest of us can get cut. Always talkin’.”
“Oh, you gon’ get cut, alright. Keep yappin’. Plus, you know the deal—you either wait or skate. You after Shorty Forty over there, anyway.” House was talking about Miles. “Y’all know why I call him that, because he always gets a four-point-oh. One of the smartest people in the whole hood, and definitely the smartest in this barbershop.”
Mr. Frankie, whose jeans were covered in paint splotches, was playing chess with Derrick, one of the younger barbers who didn’t have any clients at this point in the day. He usually cut the little kids’ hair because he knew how to do a funny helium-toned voice that always made them stop crying, and they didn’t start coming in until around eleven. Ms. Shine was also in there. She had a mini bush and always came to House to get it trimmed down.
“My Cyrus was a four-point-oh student back in the day. The biggest nerd y’all ever wanted to meet,” Ms. Shine said, a shaky sweetness to her voice. “Let that be a lesson to you, Miles—leave that dope alone.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Miles answered. Ms. Shine nodded and pinched her lips.
“Where’s old Cyrus these days?” House asked. “Ain’t seen him.”
Ms. Shine stared blankly. “Me neither. A while ago the cops came to the house and took him away. I ain’t heard from him since, but I figured he’s better off in there than he was out here. At least in there he can maybe get some help. Get clean.”
“Yeah,” Miles father said. “I’m sure he’s okay.” Then silence. The discomfort seemed to lower the ceiling of the shop. Finally, House spoke up.
“You know who else I haven’t seen? Backseat Benny.”
“Who?” Ms. Shine snapped out of her trance of sadness.
“Benny. Homeless dude who sleeps in the car around the corner. He used to come here and I’d give him a cut in exchange for him sweeping up the hair.”
“Oh yes. I didn’t know that was his name. I used to leave coffee cans full of cookies on the trunk on Thanksgiving and Christmas. I haven’t seen him.”
“Me neither,” Derrick said, moving his queen to the other side of the chessboard.
“I’ve seen him,” Frankie said. “Maybe two weeks ago. He was getting yanked out of his car and thrown in the back of a paddy wagon.”
“What he do?” House asked, swiping the smock from around the construction worker’s neck and brushing the extra hair from his sweatshirt.
“I have no idea,” Frankie said. “But that was the last time I saw him.”
Miles thought of the poem he had written for Ms. Blaufuss’s class about Backseat Benny, “Disappearing Men.” He’d been there for so long, yet so few people knew his name. Same went for Neek. He rarely left his house, so if you didn’t live across the street from him, where you could see him peering through the blinds, you’d never know he was there. And Cyrus Shine was a zombie most days, ignored by most people. “Invisible Men” would’ve fit just as well.
The whole barbershop broke into a fit of head shaking, and afterward the conversation rolled on as usual. House sprayed sheen on the construction worker’s hair, the smell of coconut and vanilla filling the air. Then House used his hand to lay the man’s waves, before holding the mirror up in front of his face.
The man nodded. Paid. Tipped. And left.
“Shorty Forty, you up!” House said, slapping hair from the barber chair. As soon as Miles sat down, his father blurted out, “Low Caesar. A number one. Nothing special, please.”
“Whoa. Relax, Jeff. Why you actin’ like I ain’t never cut his hair before? When he sit in my chair, you turn it off, and I turn it on,” House said. “Anyway, how’s school, Miles?”
“It’s okay.” It sucks.
“You figure out how to build a teleportation device yet?”
“I wish somebody would.” Derrick moved knight to jump pawn.
“Nah, not yet,” Miles said. “I’m just trying stay focused and get up out of there.” Also, I think my teacher might be trying to kill me.
“I know that’s right,” the argumentative man next to him said. “I want House to stay focused because I’m trying to get up out of here!”
And on it went, the chatter about haircut prices, the gossip about how much so-and-so sold their house for, and how much the new house down south cost. The occasional pumping of the radio volume whenever one of House’s jams came on, offbeat eighties tunes that were used for hip-hop samples, as Miles’s father always liked to remind him. And the feeling of the plastic guard gliding over Miles’s head, hair falling in his face, the hot blade on his neck, then on his forehead, and the familiar sound of the buzzing in his ear. When his cut was complete, Miles’s father stood up to pay, but Miles pulled out what was left of his money from the ridiculous showtime moment on the train the day before.
“I got it,” he said to his father, counting out the ones.
“Are you stripping, son?” House asked.
Derrick and the mad man both laughed. Ms. Shine turned away to hide her grin.
“No.”
“Better not be,” Miles’s father added.
“I’m not.” Miles slammed the money in House’s palm. “But I do need a job. And since Benny is missing—uh, arrested—maybe I can come sweep up on Saturday.”
House nodded, still holding Miles’s hand, the money smashed between their palms. “What you charge?”
“Ten dollars an hour and free cuts for me and him.”
House looked over at Miles’s dad, who looked on, proud. “What are you, thirteen?”
Miles flashed to Mr. Chamberlain’s class. Him on the floor at the broken desk.
Thirteen.
Except as a punishment for crime…
“Sixteen,” Miles’s father answered for him, jolting Miles back into the barbershop.
“I know, but he’s brutal like a thirteen-year-old. My grandson’s in the eighth grade, and he tries to hustle me every time I see him.” House scratched his chin. “How ’bout this. Eight-fifty, and free cuts for you.”
“Deal!” Miles’s father jumped in again, unable to control himself. “He’ll start next week.”
“Great, glad we got that settled,” the back-talker from earlier grumped. “Now can y’all please…please get out the way so this fool can cut my hair?”