Dean sets a bottle of white wine on the table and fills plastic margarita glasses.
“Well?” he asks. “Did you get a show? I heard the evidence of a dramatic exit, all the way in the kitchen.”
“No. Not much of a show,” Flip says. “He just treated her like shit.”
“Well, I will tell you one thing,” Dean says. “No kind of sugar daddy is worth that kind of treatment. I know from experience. From what I’ve seen, he spends most of his money on his car anyway. But she’s young. She has time to figure it out.” Dean settles into his chair and touches plastic glasses with Flip. Dean says, “Clink.”
“Do you think he’s violent with her?”
Dean takes a minute to consider the question. “You really are straight, aren’t you?” he says, between sips of wine.
“Yes. I’m straight. We’ve been over all that. What does that have to do with this?”
“Well, plenty of married men with children claim to be straight. But they end up down at the Southern Bell trolling for boy tail. You never know.”
“I’m pretty sure I know,” Flip replies.
“Well, you have a case of the white knight syndrome. I have seen many a man throw his life away because he thinks he needs to save someone who doesn’t need saving.”
“Is that so?”
Dean crosses his legs at the knees, smooths his shirtfront, wipes the corners of his mouth delicately with a paper napkin, and folds his hands in his lap. He gazes at his imaginary view. Then he says, “I have never seen the boyfriend hurt Vanessa. I have never seen a mark on her. I have only heard him yell and storm around.” He lets that sink in. “And that tells me he is not hitting her. He is all emotion with no control. If he were hitting her, he would leave marks, and I would have seen it by now, because I’ve been looking. That is what I think.”
Flip isn’t convinced.
Dean takes a long sip of wine, refills both glasses, and returns the bottle to its spot. “So you don’t need to save her. If you ask me, she likes pulling his chain. I’ve seen her do it. You know, I have this theory that people generally deserve the relationships they end up in. And I suspect she’s getting something we don’t understand out of the relationship. Perhaps she has daddy issues, or is trying to irritate her mother. Who knows? Human behavior is complex,” he adds. “Now, let’s deal with that mop of yours. We need to get you a job.” Dean stands and heads into his apartment.
Evil Twin
Dean returns moments later with an electric trimmer, a plastic cape thrown over his arm, a spray bottle worn in a special holster, and a lime-green tote. The tote reminds Flip of a tackle box, but is clearly made for other paraphernalia. Dean unclasps it, tips back the lid, and removes a comb and two expensive-looking pairs of scissors.
Dean moves the chair he’d been sitting on into an empty parking space between two cars and pats the seat. “Your throne awaits,” he says. He bows low.
Flip feels dizzy as he stands: wine and painkillers. He tops off his drink before moving to his assigned seat. In a deliberate attempt to be cautious, he makes exaggerated, cartoon-style strides off the small curb and over the parking stop.
Next to the table, and leaning with its back to the wall, the tiny patio chair had seemed perfectly adequate. But as he stands over Dean’s chair now, Flip worries it will crumple like an aluminum can under his weight. He slowly lowers his rump onto the seat; his ass hangs off both sides. The chair creaks and its feet bite deeper into the still-warm asphalt. After a short, trepidatious pause, it seems to be holding, so Flip exhales.
“We better get moving while the light is good,” Dean says. He twirls the plastic cape like a showy matador and fastens it behind Flip’s pudgy neck. Flip giggles. He puts one hand over the mouth of his wine glass and balances it on his knee under the cape, and uses the other hand to cover his grin.
“And what, pray tell, is so humorous?” Dean asks while he works.
“Nothing, really. Just feel like laughing. It just came over me all of a sudden. I think my moods are swingin’ like a loose gate in a storm. Not eating much, in combination with sleep deprivation and self-medicating, can do that to a guy. Even a big fat guy.”
“Oh, stop. You are handsome. Now let’s make some magic,” Dean says, and works his scissors like castanets for emphasis. He quick-draws his atomizer and spritzes Flip’s hair and forehead with cold mist. He rakes his fingers across Flip’s head, and a shock of sensation runs around Flip’s scalp and tingles down his spine. His grin evaporates as quickly as it appeared; he’s overwhelmed with a wave of melancholy weepiness. It has been too long since someone touched me.
“Now. Let’s get started,” Dean says. “What did you have in mind?”
“This is all about getting a job. The interview is for a corporate gig. So I guess something acceptably professional and conservative.”
“And what about the beard?” Dean asks, accessing Flip’s facial hair while pensively tapping the flat of a comb against the side of his leg.
“Just haven’t shaved. You can just take it off,” Flip says. Dean moves behind Flip and doesn’t respond. Flip worries he’s offended Dean. “You’re the expert. Do whatever you feel is best. I thought you said ‘shave and a haircut.’ So if you want to shave me, go ahead. But, if you’d rather not, I can do it myself.”
“No. No,” Dean says pleasantly. “I have had a vision of what you could look like. And it involves keeping some of the whiskers. Are you okay with that?” Dean lays a hand on Flip’s shoulder. “I think it’s a look that will be taken seriously. It will let people know you mean business.”
Flip has never trusted men with facial hair. He has always assumed they’re hiding something and he worries it might appear he doesn’t care enough to shave for the interview. But he nods once. “I am in your hands,” he says.
“Very good. So how was your day?” Flip tells Dean about the crazy parents with the tiny baby, the subsequent ass shaking and chest poking. When Flip finishes the story, Dean clicks on the clippers. A fervent, mechanical humming fills Flip’s senses, like being swarmed by wind-up bees.
“That,” Dean says loudly, “is why I try to stay away from breeders. In my experience, they tend toward emotional instability. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“Now don’t move.” He runs the clippers up Flip’s left sideburn, bends his ear down and works around the back until he makes it to the other ear. Flip watches clumps of hair tumble down the cape, across his chest and gut, and come to rest in a valley created between his hidden Chablis and his belly. Dean changes the guard on the clippers and starts on the sides of Flip’s head.
“And you? How was your day?” Flip asks.
“I had an uneventful day. I am essentially retired. So I walked to the park, I smoked my two midday cigarettes. I had a pleasant lunch with an old lover who is married and has adopted a baby from Honduras. Smoked again and returned home.”
More hair slides down Flip’s torso. The clippers shut off, and scissors come out.
“How do you feel about that? About the ex’s new family, I mean. I assume he married another man. I mean, you didn’t drive him to heterosexuality, did you?”
“Good God no. He’s still quite queer. I feel fine about it. Just fine. Gary always wanted to adopt. I never did. It was one of many reasons things didn’t work out. He will make a good father, though. I’m certain of it.” Dean stands in front of Flip and turns Flip’s jaw to the left, tugs his chin down a bit. “Now, don’t move,” Dean instructs.
“Kind of old, for starting a family. Could be tough on your friend. I would hate to start having kids at your age. No offense.”
“Ah. I see how you would think that. But no, Gary is twenty years my junior. And now, his husband, Bruce, Gary calls him Brucie, with a saccharine level of affection,” he says the pet name with evident distaste, “is actually a year or two younger still.”
“I see.”
Dean snips, combs, and periodically spritzes. He rou
ghs Flip’s hair with his fingers.
“Your hair is thick,” he says. Then he changes scissors and combs and snips some more. He uses the clippers again on the back of Flip’s neck, on his eyebrows, and on his earlobes, where hair shouldn’t be growing, but apparently is.
“Stage one is complete. And you already look like a new man.” He stands back and crosses his arms, grooming implements sticking out of his hands at odd angles, like that character from the Tim Burton movie. “You may drink now. I need to get my beard trimmer.”
Flip moves his wine glass from under the cape and downs all the remaining room-temperature liquid. He leans to set the glass down. The chair creaks. His butt has scooted forward on the seat, so he rearranges himself, tries to sit up tall, and pulls back his shoulders, like he’ll need to in the interview. It doesn’t feel right, so he just slumps forward again, like a great lump. In his mind’s eye, Flip sees himself as a pink mountain gorilla—massive, hunched, and endangered.
“Okay,” Dean calls as he approaches. “Here we go. I wish we were at my old shop. Raise this chair and this would be easier.” Dean has a smaller pair of clippers in one hand and tilts Flip’s face around with the other. “Would you mind standing?” Dean asks.
Flip stands, hair falls onto his shins and the tops of his shoes. Dean steers him to the appropriate spot and turns his face toward the waning light. Dean steps up on a parking stop, checks his footing, and moves in with the clippers; a swarm of smaller mechanical insects has arrived.
“So you had your own shop?”
Dean makes a shushing sound and lightly smacks Flip on the top of the head. “Don’t talk until the process is complete. Artist at work. I need to concentrate. And you need to be still.” He grabs Flip’s chin, turns his face and neck again, and goes back to work. The clipper scrapes as it mows strips of whiskers from under his neck.
“I shall do the talking,” Dean says, his cadence slow and distracted. “I had a salon. I owned it with my husband.”
“You were married?” Another shush and smack. Dean twists the clippers this way and that. He concentrates. His brows bunch and relax. The tip of his tongue pokes out from time to time. Flip’s foot hurts from the spot rubbed by the rock, his legs ache from the walk, and his back hurts on general principle. He tries hard not to sway. He wants desperately to sit for a few minutes, and he wants more wine and pills.
“Yes. Happily married,” Dean speaks as if the conversation never lulled. “We opened the place together. Shear Design. That was what we named it. Walter and I. Walter was older than me and we were very much in love. I was in charge of the beauty salon, the spa, the staffing, and client services. Et cetera. We had a tanning bed. He was in charge of the books. We owned the building. Condo above. Work below. It was an ideal situation for a couple of queens in love. It sounds a bit stereotypical to say it aloud. But it made us very happy for over a decade.” He stops scraping the clippers along Flip’s skin, steps off the parking stop, takes several paces back to scrutinize his work. He seems to come to a decision about Flip’s face, makes a little clicking tsk sound with his tongue. “Then Walter got very sick and died. I sold the shop. Gary was my rebound.” Dean is very matter-of-fact about it.
He approaches and uses his fingers to check the length of Flip’s sideburns. He closes one eye, nods, and opens it again. He shortens the right sideburn a fraction. He steps back again.
Flip looks down, as he if he might catch a glimpse of his own face.
“Don’t move,” Dean says. Then he steps behind Flip and rattles around in his tote.
“I’m sorry about Walter. Your husband,” Flip calls in Dean’s direction.
“Oh. Well. Thank you. But, no need to be sorry really. Of course I miss him. But we did have a good life together. He was my husband. Not legally, like Gary and his Brucie. But, for all intents and purposes.” He returns with two large hand mirrors.
“You must have been torn up when he passed.”
“Oh yes. It was a terrible loss. But I’ve learned that often the things we judge to be curses in life actually turn out to be great blessings. And vice versa.” He hands Flip one mirror and walks around behind with the other. “This is the big reveal,” he says. “When you are ready, hold up the mirror and behold the new you.”
Flip raises the mirror and is horrified. Being confronted with the broad expanse his face has become is immediately shocking, especially after avoiding his reflection for so long. To see himself in a magnifying hand mirror is brutal, cruel even. He stops himself from wincing out of concern for Dean’s feelings, but he wants to fling the mirror away and hide somewhere dark. He longs to hop up and order takeout, something fried and salty followed by something sticky and sweet. But he continues to stare, stricken and appalled by the image before him.
His haircut is high and tight, just enough to part and brush down on top, and so close at the sides that he’s almost hairless. It does look darker with the gray sheared off, and his eyebrows do look better, his eyes larger. He squints and touches his fingers to his temples. His crow’s feet are nearly nonexistent. One good thing about a fatter face: fewer wrinkles.
He’s most disturbed, not by his jowly face, but by a collection of faint, angular strips of whiskers. Two vaguely triangular shapes spread out beneath his sideburns and stretch around his soft jaw line to point at one another, not quite touching, over the fleshy knob of his chin, like a geometric abstraction of Man reaching out for God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but in facial hair.
Two darts wrap from under his nose and bracket the corners of his mouth, again leading the eye to a meaty, pale, negative space on his chin. Finally, a tiny triangular soul patch aims at the same fatty, negative space. He doesn’t look much like himself, more like his own gay, evil twin.
“What do you think?” Dean asks.
“I am truly blessed,” is all Flip can think of to say.
Flip says, “Thanks,” repeatedly, and in several different ways while Dean tidies up. He doesn’t want to be ungrateful. The haircut will do very nicely.
“I may need to shave the facial hair,” he says. “It looks great. But I’m not sure it will work for an interview.” Flip says it friendly, and Dean responds in kind.
“I understand. Corporate America can be a bit on the conservative side.”
“Exactly,” Flip says. “But it’s the most creative beard I have ever witnessed. I am honored. Clearly you have talent.” Flip returns Dean’s chair to its spot on the veranda and settles into his own seat.
The sun is setting. Dean takes a disposable lighter from his pocket and lights the tiki; a flame flickers within its grotesque visage.
The chain on Number Four slides free, the deadbolt snaps sharply, and the door comes open. Gray Head is tall and slender, wearing a stiff black uniform. He fixes a matching eight-point cap in place before closing and locking the door behind him. The brim of the cap is glossy black and matches his shiny belt and patent leather work shoes. He swings a cheap black briefcase with a brass combination lock in his left hand.
“Flip. This is Larry. Larry, this is the Lakeside’s newest addition, Flip.” Dean peppers in his usual flourish of hand gestures as he speaks.
Larry comes over and shakes Flip’s hand firmly. “Pleasure,” he says. He speaks in a high tenor and has the yellow teeth of a heavy smoker.
“Same here,” Flip says.
“Did you hear all that ruckus earlier? Woke me up before my alarm went off,” Larry says.
“Yes. The boyfriend was in fine form today. Flip heard him yelling at Vanessa,” Dean says.
“She deserves it, far as I’m concerned,” Larry replies. He keeps talking as he moves to a compact car backed into a nearby space. He walks to the driver’s side of the two-door Dodge Neon and unlocks it. The car matches his uniform; Larry’s demeanor is like an undertaker commanding the world’s tiniest hearse, commandant of a funeral home for the diminutive.
“She’s been stealing from me,” Larry continues flatly. T
hen he lays his briefcase and hat in the back seat, slides into his car, snaps the headlights on, and drives away. Halfway across the lot he reaches out his window and snaps a magnet-mount siren on the roof of his car.
“He works nights and hates women, at least since his divorce,” Dean explains. “Also, I suspect he’s not so fond of homosexuals or nonwhites. Not very pleasant company. He reminds me of my second boyfriend.”
“He’s a security guard?”
“Yes, something like that. Building security out at a business park, I believe.”
Flip watches, expecting the siren light to start flashing blue. But Larry is a professional and leaves it turned off.
“Would you like to join me for dinner in about an hour? Nothing is so depressing as eating alone,” Dean says. He offers as if he feels obliged to ask, because Flip is still sitting on his veranda.
“No. I’m sorry. I have to make a few calls and get to bed early. Are you sure I can’t pay you for your fine work?”
“No. No. Not necessary.” Dean uses his hands to ward off the offer. “Once you get your first paycheck, you can take me out to dinner. Maybe sushi.”
“You bet,” Flip says, although he hates sushi.
They watch as a cloud of gnats bob around one of the working streetlights in the parking lot.
“Well, thanks again,” Flip says.
An Increasingly Crowded Orgy
Inside, Flip sees the red light flashing on the room phone. He punches some buttons and listens to his message.
“Hi Flip,” Lynn’s voice sounds close and intimate. His breath catches. “Sara said you called and spoke to her and Dyl. She was not very forthcoming with details. I just finished homework with Dyl. It’s so hard to get him to sit still and focus. I asked Sara if she’d finished her science report for Monday. Apparently I insulted her horribly, because she yelled and stormed upstairs. Dyl and I left a message on your cell. You should check it. Let me know what you find out about the job interview. I’m beat. Mom is driving me nuts. I’m going to turn in early. Maybe we can speak soon.” There was a pause in which Flip thought she was preparing to say I Love You. Come Home. Let’s have dangerous sex. She only says, “Good night.”
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