The Haircutter

by Dana Thompson

  I said, “So what, so I’ll just drive out there like the wolf? Like someone will basically do the wolf job all over again, but I’ll be the wolf?”

  “Yes!” she said.

  “HE should drive me!” I said.

  “Harp? Oh he’d never do that,” she said.

  “YOU should drive me!” I said.

  “Well that ain’t fun for me, Puss.”

  I said, “Hell, we should BOTH be in it! We’ll both be wolves!”

  “I don’t wanna be a wolf!”

  “I got it!” I picked her up and sat her on my writing table. “We get driven out to Wyo by Charlie Quick, and we act JUST like wolves, alright? No talkin’! And he sets us loose in the wild and we have to live like wolves to see what that wolf went through!”

  “Why do I have to go along? It ain’t like you drove two wolves,” Carol said, waving a giant red flag I was blind to.

  “Cause I don’t give a bum’s hoot about art and you know it,” I said. “Come on, we can be love wolves and nuzzle a bunch.”

  “You gotta do a new project! We need money!” she said.

  “So help me get it, Feminist!”

  She walked away, taking her pussy with her.

  That is how it came to be that Carol, freshly showered and with her face puffed up from crying, told me an hour later that we’d ride out there like love wolves, communicating only with our hearts—no talkin’!—and we’d get dropped off in the woods at separate places far apart, and that the art would be: we’d have to find each other using only our hearts. “No cheatin’! No callin’ out! However long it takes!”

  We went to Biggest Browse to purchase wilderness survival books. We looked for Finn and found him shelving on the basement level. As we approached him, his face took on the expression of a lottery winner who’s in shock about winning.

  “H.C.?!”

  He barely shelved the book that was flapping in his trembling hands. “Oh my god!” He stepped forward on sickly-thin corduroy legs and kissed Carol’s cheeks, breathing heavily, “You’re so beautiful!”

  I said, “We’re looking for—”

  And he interrupted, “You two, fuck! I gotta say you guys are inspiring! I’m totally changed! Like SO inspired! H.C.!” He grabbed the sides of his reddening face, “That whole time you were coming in here I had no idea you were an artist! I really respect how you could just do that and not have to talk about it and not show your stuff off like most artists. God, and your WORK, man, the PIECES!”

  I automatically put out my hand, and he shook it, looking down at it. When I yanked it back, he fell against a shelf and a book popped out and landed cover-up at our feet—Seven Steps toward a Healthier Mane on Your Horse. Carol picked it up, “Ooh! John we should get horses when we get back!”

  Finn said, “Where are you going?”

  I said, “Well that’s what we need your help with. It’s for the next art piece.”

  “Oh my god!” Finn squeaked.

  “We’re gonna get Charlie Quick to drive us out to Wyoming same route as the wolf job, and then me and Carol are gonna do a hunt for each other in the woods without shouting out using only our hearts. So we’re gonna need literature on how to camp and do your basic survival skills.”

  Finn bit his too-thin lower lip, pressing his teeth into a chin pimple. He brought his hands up to obstruct his blushing face and clapped them. I looked at Carol and she was beaming, giggling.

  I said, “Now snap out of it. That’s enough there. Take us to the section.”

  Finn took one step, saying, “Right this way,” and his foot didn’t work—he collapsed right there in the aisle. His boss passed by with a clipboard, then reappeared walking backwards with his glasses on the tip of his nose, “Finn?” he said.

  Carol picked up Finn’s head and his eyes were rolled back to the whites. He looked like a dead baby bird on a sidewalk.

  We studied in The Chambers, slapping at mosquitoes, saying, “We’d better get used to them!” The city blew hot breath in through the window screens. Carol sat on a toss pillow on the floor in front of the fan reading about plants—her own plant a vagina, wet and living, too. I didn’t read hard on my survival book because I knew that as soon as I got dropped off I’d call Darron. My plan was, I’d spend three or four days in a motel and then I’d have Darron take me back out to the woods again and drop me off closer to Carol. As long as she didn’t know that I’d cheated, it was fine.

  Carol said, “Let’s have flare guns.”

  Carol said, “Let’s have real guns too.”

  I said, “We can just go with the flare.”

  We’d shoot a flare gun off when we found each other and Darron would be waiting with a camera to snap a pic of the sky (we’d alert him using a cell that Charlie Quick would deliver). The presentation—the proof that we had done the hunt honestly—would be that we’d just say we’d done it, and that would be artistic too because the audience would have to trust we’d done it. So it was a project on both love and trust, with a minor in acting like wolves, and a major in hunting. It was a new way of hunting that no one had thought of before. We’d have Charlie Quick do a photojournalism through the peephole when he dropped us off. We’d sleep in tents that we’d hitch alone, we’d use camping stoves to boil creek water for rice, and we’d “use our hearts” to find each other. We decided to name the piece Hush, Howler—Hunt even though I felt dumb when we told people. (“It’s hush comma howler and then dash hunt.”) The more people we told about the new project, the more Carol got haughty about it. People said, “I can’t believe you’re going to do that!” They said, “Aren’t you scared?” And she’d say, “That’s what bear mace and pony tills are for!” They’d tick their tongues and shake their heads, “You are so supportive.” Then she’d seriously say, “I’m lookin’ forward to the Zen.” She always said that when she told people. (“I’m lookin’ forward to the Zen.”) I had to admit—I was looking forward to the “Zen” too. Peace and quiet like when I’d come home from Brother and Son’s and I’d sit at my desk and the only sound was my slurping pop or turning the page of a book while Jenny barked at the living room window.

  I just remembered that I killed Jenny.

  We went to Kmart and bought two pup tents for $16.99 a piece (they were on clearance). We bought long backpacks and all the stuff to stuff them with that the survival book said. I chose a brown backpack and Carol chose red, so if anyone saw us in the woods they’d know we like poops and bloody tampons.

  “Nobody’s gonna think that,” Carol said at the checkout, annoyed with me. My hands hung at my sides, their palms facing the person behind us in line. I yawned and Carol saw my gold fillings—I could’ve known that’s all she saw in me.

  The day we went to the Thank You Gallery to tell Christmas, I was pleased to see that Carol didn’t even glance at Harp in his glass box. I hadn’t seen him since the opening (at the start of which he disrobed dramatically and took a seat on his glass chair and leaked tears out, etc., while onlookers said, “What are we doing after this?” or “Don’t you think it’s more chic if I just have one glass of champagne tonight?”) He looked completely different. He looked like when Darron used to play with dead squirrels till Father John would make him bury them, and when we were bored we’d go dig them up. He looked like one of those squirrels if we’d thought to shave it and prop it up.

  Christmas emerged from his office clapping.

  “I heard, I heard,” he said. “Everyone’s talking about it. So when do you leave? Do you want Quick to drive you?”

  Charlie Quick was in a corner picking up dog poop with a plastic kid’s shovel. He froze when he heard his name. I saw his face turn red to match the shovel.

  “Eew,” Carol said.

  “Someone’s dog shit in here,” Christmas said. Then he went, “Speaking of which!” He tiptoed over to a chute on Harp’s glass box and opened it and looked in. He grimaced and slowly closed it. He snapped at Charlie Quick, “Empty that fucking thing. It’s di
stracting the artist. Deal with that dog’s shit later.”

  Did I wonder about Christmas and Charlie Quick? About their relationship? I and everyone else in New York did, the difference is I didn’t care. From what I had gathered, they lived together in a penthouse on the Upper West Side. They slept in separate bedrooms, but Charlie Quick got into bed with Christmas and his cats if he felt like working from home with trays of brats and kraut. They met in Dusseldorf in 1984 as two young mustard lovers who saw the spark of loneliness in each other, and soon discovered that they were both orphaned only children of only children. They took care of each other when sick from then on out, yadda ya. The Thank You Gallery was Charlie Quick’s but he didn’t have the bells to run it, so his oil-money friend Christmas bought it up and started his circus. Christmas was a celibate for no particular reason, and Charlie Quick fancied no-nonsense American black women, so the penthouse dinner table often had his female guest—perhaps the three of them were laughing at whatever-the-hoot and cheersing, eating goose necks, drinking Riesling from crystal goblets. But what did they want from this art stuff? They were like purebred bloodhounds playing Sniff The Cat’s Butt; I always thought, “Go do something else!” But as Christmas once said in an interview, “There isn’t a reason for anything, Jesus Christ. Can we stop this insanity yet? How could there be a reason for anything? What does that even mean? Every day is simply Christmas. And everything is a present. Haven’t you noticed?”

  We followed Christmas into his little office. He has a butt the size of a little boy’s. Carol sat down in one of his little arty chairs for his butt and she cleared her throat and sat up straighter. She’d never gotten used to Christmas. Her smile had a melted quality around him. She thought he was the coolest person in the art world because he never went to parties that weren’t his own. He didn’t even smoke. She once called him a mirage on the plane of artistic existence, and when I asked her what the hell that was supposed to mean, she said, “I don’t know, it’s what some artist said about him,” and I upturned a table and kicked one of the legs off to show how I won’t abide by anyone calling Christmas a mirage on the plane of artistic existence, even though I didn’t care, or didn’t know what that saying meant. (I was so confused back then.)

  Christmas got out a spray bottle and sprayed his face and head until he was a glistening penis, then he got out a towel with a Santy on it and wiped himself down. “Disgusting,” he said. “There’s a week left on this thing,” gesturing toward Harp’s box.

  “Disgusting,” I said, and spat on the floor.

  Christmas looked at it and burst out laughing.

  We’d leave the next day at six in the morning—Quick would pick us up in the wolf job truck. I looked at Christmas and Carol as they were going over a papered detail that I wasn’t interested in, and I thought, Huh. I thought, Will you look at that. I thought, A year ago, the only people I knew were Doorman Diego and that dead baby bird on the floor of the bookstore. Now I have a Christmas Carol.

  Carol said, “Sign here,” and I signed a document. Christmas got out his pearl-handled pistol and shot the doc on his dotted line. Carol and I just put our pointers in our ears and didn’t say anything about it, because it was the third or fourth time we’d seen him do that and we were comfortable now like, That’s Christmas and his office floor of bullet holes that women’s high heels get stuck in. I felt a wash of satisfaction in the wake of the gunshot, like the final rinse in a carwash. I felt so good that, on the way out the door, I let me and Carol stop in front of Harp since I knew she liked art and since I’d heard someone at the opening describe how Harp “looks into the eyes of the viewer and then into their soul, and then into the infinity that their soul came from, and then he rides the wave of infinity with you. And then he drools, and if you look closely at the pinhead of the drool, it has the universe in it.” Sure enough, I saw a puddle of drool between his feet with some galaxy in it. Sure enough, I saw his eyes scramble up off the floor and snake up Carol’s body. When they landed on her face, she inhaled so hard her protruding sternum creaked. I covered her face from him and punched her sternum in.

  “Let’s go!” I roared.

  The crack of dawn. Sun reaching into the main room to illuminate tables. To flick shadows off our silhouettes as we moved around the apartment. For breakfast I did up everything we had left in the fridge. One last savory meal. Charlie Quick would be feeding us granola through the peephole. Doorman Diego rang up when Quick was downstairs—it was a hard, loud buzz—like a bee farting hard until it pops. Carol and I looked at each other.

  “Here we go.”

  “Here we do.”

  “I love you. Last chance to say it,” I said.

  “Same here, let’s go, he prolly doesn’t got parkin’.”

  Down we went in the elevator with our backpacks and nothing else. I felt stupid, so I put my backpack on one shoulder like a junior higher. I didn’t want to go on this art project, but the fact that Carol would be next to me for the drive there and back was a big bone I looked forward to enjoying.

  We stepped out of the elevator, “Goodbye, Doorman Diego.”

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “Hunting.”

  “God bless!” he called.

  We stepped out onto the sidewalk—an early summer morning. Quick flicked his cigarette into the street and helped us load the haul—our sleeping bags spread out nicely, our backpacks in a corner. I handed him a letter and a map for Darron, Carol’s little black camera, a black cell phone, and a note detailing the details for him. Carol and I climbed into the haul and looked at each other. We put our fingers to our lips as Quick shut us in, my finger like lifting the Empire State Building to my lips, Carol’s finger like pressing a polished, scented twig to her lips to pose with. Charlie Quick started up the truck and it lurched forward—we braced ourselves. Carol squealed to show how this will be fun, actually!

  Dear Charlie Quick,

  Drive the speed limit and all that. There is a bag of granola that you should’ve purchased that’s up there with you in the cab. Remove the stopper on the peephole and funnel granola in to us until we whimper like wolves which means for you to stop pouring. Feed us six times a day. We have urination contraptions with which to urinate (mine is a dick of course; Carol’s is a special contraption for women), but when we need to lay craps we’ll knock three times and you should glide the truck to the nearest rest stop or gas station. Keep all music off—we don’t want to be tempted to hum along. Anything that wolves don’t do is what you should support. Do not stop very often to sleep. It will be very uncomfortable for us to sleep on the hard floor of the haul, so we want to get out to Wyo as soon as possible, but don’t fall asleep at the wheel and crash either, as cops would arrest us.

  When we get to Carol’s drop spot (DIRECTIONS AND MAP UNDERNEATH THIS PAPER) you’ll unstop the peephole and photograph us using the little black camera I handed you. Do more and more shots where we do different poses, until I whine like a wolf, which means stop. Then Carol will get out and you’ll close the haul door electronically. Drive to my drop spot then and, same routine, with the photographs and on and on. THEN, go into town at Ten Sleep and go to 6183 LARDY STREET between 4:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. to deliver the cell phone to Darron Reilly, my little brother. Also, give him the letter that’s in the pile here in an envelope labeled “Darron.” If my mother answers the door, tell her: “I’m trading this cell with Darron for some Imitation Cowboys and I wrote him a Thank You. Please see that he gets these,” then leave. Then you have completed your mission, and you may return to New York at whatever pace you please, though something tells me you’ll choose “quick.” Carol and I will take the bus back once we’ve completed Hush, Howler—Hunt.

  Signed,

  The Haircutter

  Sunlight shot through the bullet holes around us.

  “It’s like we’re in Outer Space!” Carol said.

  “Just call me Woomalee Amatrist!” I said, and she said, “Hey I though
t we weren’t talkin’!” We went all silent, then snickered hard at the Amatrist joke.

  There we were—going back to Ten Sleep on the same road we rode in on, in the same truck, but now in the back where the wolf and his piss and shit rode.

  Art!

  I swung my tongue like a wolf and Carol licked her hand some. We smiled like, See—we’re doing it, and we’re not gonna be embarrassed. We got on our knees to look through the bullet holes. Cars coasted next to us unaware of the truck’s inner life. I waited until there was no one next to us, and I stood up and lined my pisshole up to a bullet hole and peed. I farted on accident and turned around and Carol was there getting the contraption that she’d purchased tucked good between her legs. She lined it up to a hole. The pee ran down the wall for both of us, and that’s the second to the last time we peed that way. I wrote a note and rolled it scroll-like to send through the peephole next time Charlie Quick fed us. It said: Glide to a gas station or a rest stop when we knock three times FOR PEEING TOO.

  We’d pop out the haul like two quick fish poops and float away toward the johns. We’d collapse onto pots that collected our collapsed internal debris. We’d jog back to the haul howling, as if to feed the truck’s ass two wolves.

  It was about picking at stuff (your shoes, the splotches of paint on the floor, your scalp zits, your thoughts). Carol often watched her thoughts on a screen in front of her like a movie. She reacted and blushed. She had muted conversations—her lips lightly moved. I got her attention once and made a gesture like what are you smiling about? She flinched hard. Then she scooched over to kiss and make L. It felt like the “old days.” I went, “Whoa Girly,” all soft on accident. We rocked that truck. Afterwards, Carol had a cig out one of the bullet holes. She put her lips over a hole to exhale. I thought, We’ve got a smoking wolf here, folks. We were getting way too much granola in, what with it being six times a day, so I had a corner pile of granola that I laid munching on popcorn-style with my head propped up on an elbow. I thought, We’ve got a lounging hamster here, folks. We were careful to remember to howl now and then—Carol lightly shaking her hair back, clearing her throat, doing a howl. H.C. howling through a mouthful of granola. A couple of artists getting some howls in. (And shit like that.)