Three
He didn't really have to go in to work, but Ray Connor was happy to get out of that house. He was a bit worried, tell the truth. It only occurred to him now as he took the four block stroll that he might actually be in physical danger. On the one hand, he'd known Davey since the kid was a baby. On the other hand - heck, the man was a walking corpse! He'd seen enough movies to know this might not be a good thing.
Of course, he didn't have any first hand experience with such a creature, until now, and so far it seemed pretty harmless, like an outcast alien from another planet. Hardly seemed to be the same person at all and yet, in all the little ways, he was, like how he held himself when sitting, and how he still had his father's eyes. It was going to be a tough morning, he considered. By profession he was naturally a talker, and here was something he didn't know how to go about telling, or even if he should. Just before he got to the shop he decided he wouldn't say a word, but that didn't hold up five minutes under the scrutiny of his long-time business partner, Clayton Jeffries.
"Look like you seen a ghost", Clayton said, almost as soon as Ray came out of the back room with his smock on. They were known as "Ray'n'Clay" and had been for so long now they could hardly remember when it stuck. Ray'd been there first, apprenticed way back when with old man Harley when he still barely a man himself. He'd been snipping and shaving all sorts of people ever since. The neighborhood had gone through many economic and ethnic changes over those decades, each era leaving its relics behind, relics that became the regulars of the scarcely visited barbershop. Aside from all those leftovers, the only new faces were from the young rich kids who sailed their boats and yachts out onto the river.
Clay was young, by Ray's count, only in his mid-sixties thereabouts. He liked to call him 'kid', as he did now.
"Not no ghost, kid", he said. He figured now he'd tell some half-truths and see if that worked. "It's my nephew, Davey. Showed up early this morning. Been in some kind of a fight from the looks of it."
"Harry's boy?" Clay queried, knowing darn well it was. They had no secrets from each other after all that time, and knew each other's families as well or better than their own.
"That boy was always into something", Clay went on, getting up from his chair and putting the morning paper down where he'd been sitting. He paced a bit across the front door, peering out to see if any customers might show. He knew there wouldn't be any, at least not for half an hour, and then it would only be Richard, who'd come for his special ninety cent shave, as he did every Tuesday whether he needed it or not.
"He's a good boy", Ray countered, pulling out the broom and sweeping at random illusions of dust on the floor. The place was spotless. The men spoke slowly, took turns going about their incoherent and unnecessary routines. It was a living, barely. If it weren't for social security and having paid off that house a long time since, well, Ray didn't even want to think about that. Now that he did, though, he had to wonder how long Davey was going to stay, and how much it was going to cost him.
'At least the kid don't eat or drink', he said to himself. 'That'll make it cheap. All he really needs, as far as I can tell, is some clothes. Can't keep wearing that bloody outfit. Pants, shoes, jacket, shirt. Underwear, socks ought to do it', and he figured in his head how much all that might cost and when he would get around to it. Shame was that Davey was a good six inches taller and maybe fifty pounds heavier than Ray, so he couldn't wear any of his stuff.
"So's the kid sticking around?" Clay asked. "He at your place?"
"Yeah", Ray nodded. "Don't know how long. Long as he needs to, I guess. Neither me or him's got no other family, you know. Got to take care of your own."
"Got to", Clay agreed. "Like my Willa. Keeps coming back, like a wooden nickel."
He laughed and then added,
"Is that right? A wooden nickel that keeps turning up?"
"Think it's a bad penny", Ray told him, and Clay nodded and said,
"A bad penny. Should've named her Penny in the first place. Then it'd make some sense at least."
"She ain't left yet?" Ray inquired.
"Nope. Says the husband's bound to beat her up again, she shows her face. Says 'papa I can stay right?' trying to make that little face she always made when she was six and begging for another ice cream. I say course so darling, even though she's more than forty now."
"Kid will always be a kid", Ray said,
"That Davey was a wild one", Clayton reminded him. "Remember that time he showed up in that Mustang with that gang of hoodlums?"
"Wasn't no gang", Ray said. "Just joy riding is all."
"It was too a gang", Clay disagreed. "Some of them later got popped for robbing a bank. Two of them guys it was."
"Davey said he didn't even know them."
"Davey said a lot of things", Clayton replied crossly. "How about that time he needed that three hundred dollars."
"Sure", Ray snorted. "How can I forget when you remind me all the time. Sure he lied about it. Didn't want to talk about it. Girlfriend. Abortion. Kind of thing happens to people."
"If that's really what it was", Clay replied. "I never was so sure to believe either the first lie or the second."
On that note, the ever reliable Richard walked through the door and before he even took his seat, he removed his battered fedora, straightened up his old dark purple tweed jacket, studied Clayton's face with a serious look and said,
"Always believe the second lie. Second lie's the one they're gonna stick to, so you might as well accept it."
Then, after a laugh far outsizing the humor of the statement, he coughed and sputtered and sat down in the door-side barber chair. It was Ray's turn to do the shave. They liked to alternate customers, seeing as there were so few. They hardly ever had to work at the same time anymore. Ray got busy, spreading the cloak around Richard, fastening the collar, lathering the lather, soaking the towel in the warm water, picking out his razor. While he went about this business, Richard kept on talking.
"I always prefer to come up with a good lie to begin with" he informed them. "Then I never modify. Never modify. I come home late and I'll tell Becky 'I was at the circus and caught a ride on a tiger'. She won't even bother to question my integrity, not after that. A man comes up with a good enough story, he don't ever have to worry about changing it."
"Something outrageous, huh", muttered Ray, and it occurred to him that maybe all that stuff Davey said about digging his way out of the grave, but then he remembered the wound, and the smell, and the way that part of his cheek rubbed off. It gave him shivers to think of it, but also brought in the idea that he'd have to do something about the boy's appearance. He was going to need some kind of make-up if he was ever to go out in the world again. You couldn't go around like that, with the skin falling off your face in strips. And some kind of bandage to go around the waist. Yep, he was going to have to do a little shopping.
"Crazier the better", Richard declared. "Why I'd tell my wife I was dead if I thought it would get me off the hook!"
"She might even make it so", Clay chimed in with a chuckle.
"She might at that", Richard agreed. It was all a bunch of talk, and everybody knew it. Becky, his wife, had once been Becky Jeffries - Clay's big sister - and they'd had one of the happiest and most easy-going marriages anyone had ever known. Three kids, all grown by now, and two of them with kids of their own, happy little squatters, every one.
"Davey Connor showed up last night", Clay told Richard, who glanced up at Ray. Ray was about to commence with the blade and merely nodded, casually.
"Been awhile, ain't it?" Richard asked.
"Few years", Ray said, and hushed the customer by bringing the razor to his face. Ray really didn't want to talk about it much. He wanted to get things straight in his mind first. There was too much to think about and he wasn't getting any good thinking done yet that morning. He kept up the small talk as best he could, assuring his friends that Davey was fine, nothing was wrong, that he'd come around to see them anytime now, that Ray was glad to have him, had given him the spare room for his own.
Topics soon turned to other matters, and after Richard had gone a few other customers appeared at sporadic intervals. The morning went by fairly quickly, and Ray knocked off at noon. By then he had already planned out his shopping expedition - the pharmacy, the thrift store, that should be enough. He moved slowly and considered his purchases carefully. Luckily it didn't amount to much, less than twenty dollars for a used but not too shabby wardrobe, as well as the make-up and bandages. It was going to take a few meals out of his week but he figured that was unavoidable. The kid didn't seem to have anybody else.