“Unique, noble, and hairy,” I say. “Now be quiet and hold still or I’ll wind up nicking you.”
“What do I care?” he demands. “We werewolves are made of stern stuff.”
“You may not care,” I reply. “But he does.”
I gesture toward Otis, who is sitting there reading the obituary column, as usual. His fangs are pressing against his lips as if they may burst through at any moment.
“Otis is my friend,” says Basil. “He would never drink my blood.”
“Not unless I was thirsty,” says Otis in agreement.
“When are you thirsty?” I ask.
“All the time,” admits Otis.
“Well, I would never drink your blood,” chimes in Morton, which I find very disappointing. Morton is all bone as far as the eye can see. He looks like a refugee from a medical class or maybe a Halloween party, and I have been waiting for him to eat or drink something for fourteen years now, just so I can see where it goes once he swallows it.
“What’s the matter with my blood?” demands Basil.
“Nothing,” says Otis. “I will defend your blood for as long as it lasts.” He stares at Basil. “I think it would go well with a jelly donut.”
The door opens and a pretty woman with auburn curls as soft as fairy floss, dressed in slacks and a blouse, enters.
“Can I help you?” I ask.
She holds up a page she’s torn from a newspaper. Otis sees that it’s not another obituary column and pays her no further attention. “I’m answering your ad for a manicurist.”
“You did see the part about the unusual clientele?” I ask.
“How unusual can they be?” she asks.
“Go to work on Basil here,” I say, stepping aside, “and then tell me.”
She pulls up a stool, I roll the manicuring tray over to her, and she takes Basil’s paw in her hands.
“Claws,” she says, frowning. “He has claws.”
“And dewclaws,” I add, pointing to the curved claw growing out of each wrist.
She shrugs. “What the hell, I need the work.”
“Don’t cut the quicks,” says Basil, stifling a whine.
“Or at least alert me if you do,” adds Otis.
“This is some place, this barber shop,” she says. “By the way, my name’s Mavis.”
I am about to ask her what her last name is, or how much she thinks I am paying her, but just then three elderly ladies, all wearing hats and each carrying a hat pin in her withered fingers, burst into the shop.
“Damn!” mutters one of them. “He’s not here!”
“Let’s go, girls!” says another to her two companions, who haven’t been girls since Sherman took a little stroll through Georgia. “He can’t have gotten too far.”
And just like that, they’re back on the sidewalk and rushing down the block.
“This happens a lot, does it?” asks Mavis.
“Actually, we’re hardly ever visited by old ladies brandishing hat pins,” I tell her.
“I want a raise,” she says.
“You’ve been here less than three minutes,” I note.
“I want one anyway.”
“You don’t even know what I’m paying you.”
“If I’m going to work on werewolves and skeletons, it’s not enough,” says Mavis.
“Okay,” I say in agreement. “When you’re right, you’re right. You’ve got a raise.”
“Good,” she says, going back to work on Basil’s claws.
I make a mental note that someday I must figure out what I’m paying her. At the moment, she doesn’t seem to care, as long as it’s more than it was when she walked in the door.
And speaking of walking in the door, she has barely begun to work on Basil in earnest when the door opens and in walks a burly figure. I assume it is a man, because it walks on two legs and wears shoes and socks. But it also wears a floor-length overcoat with the collar turned up, and a scarf wrapped around most of its face, and a slouch hat covering the rest of it, and while assuming it is a man would be safe anywhere else, here at the Close Shave it is very little better than an even-money proposition.
It walks to the clothes pole, where Morton and Otis have hung their overcoats—Basil doesn’t need one with all that fur, and besides, he can’t find one to fit him when he’s busy being a wolf—and it peeks out through the front window.
“Are they coming back?” it says in a deep masculine voice.
“Who did you have reference to?” I ask.
“The old biddies with the hat pins,” it says.
“No, they seemed in a hurry to go up the street,” says Basil.
“Good!” it says with a sigh of relief. “Do you mind if I stay here for a few minutes, just in case?”
“Just in case they come back?” I ask.
“Just in case they’re still on the street looking for me.”
“What did you do to them?” asks Otis, who takes a professional curiosity in such things.
“Nothing!” it says passionately. It takes its hat and coat off, and I can see that it’s a man. Or at least it used to be. He’s got an awful lot of wounds on him, even a few bullet holes, but no blood and no scabs, and his skin is mostly gray. And all he’s wearing under the coat is a pair of colorful gold briefs.
“I know you!” exclaims Mavis. “You’re Loathsome Lamont! I saw you wrestle last month!”
He nods his head wearily. “Yeah, that’s me.”
“What did you do to those sweet old ladies?” Otis persists.
“Not a thing!” Lamont insists.
“Then why do they want you?”
“They want to stick their hat pins in me,” says Lamont.
“For no reason at all?” says Otis dubiously.
“I’m a rassler,” answers Lamont. “What other reason do they need? Most of our audience is excitable little old ladies with hat pins. If we ever stop, half the hat pin manufacturers in the world will go broke. I mean, who else uses hat pins these days?”
“But why are you hiding from them?” asks Morton. “Not to put too fine a point on it, you’re a zombie. You can’t feel pain.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” says Lamont.
“Hold on,” I say. “Now even I’m confused.”
“Look,” explains Lamont. “I’m a Bad Guy.” I can almost hear the capital letters. “I don’t want to be, I want everyone to cheer me, but”—a bitter expression crosses his lifeless face—“there’s a prejudice against zombies. So I bite and I kick and I choke, and at least once a match I hit my opponent with a chair from ringside. It’s all in good fun, and no one ever gets hurt. I mean, after all, we’re rasslers.”
“I always thought the matches were fixed,” says Morton.
“They’re not fixed,” Lamont says, correcting him. “They’re scripted, like any other dramatic performance.” A wistful expression crosses his face. “I’d give anything to be the Good Guy for a change. Lancelot Lamont, they could call me, or Lamont the Lustrous. Even Lamont the Lovable would be okay. But no,” he concludes unhappily, “I have to be Loathsome Lamont. I blame it on anti-zombie prejudice in high places.”
“I don’t want to interrupt a mournful tale of self-pity,” I say, “but why are you here at all?”
“I was choking the life out of Handsome Harry, same as always—we were going to meet later for a beer—and then he twisted out of it, applied a reverse Mongolian death grip, and threw me out of the ring, just like we practiced it in the gym yesterday.”
“And the little old ladies threatened you with their hat pins and you ran away,” says Morton. “But why? You’re already dead. Nothing can hurt you.”
“But they don’t know it,” answers Lamont. “They stick me, and I howl in anguish, and it makes their evening.”
“Why do I think this story is not going where I thought it was going?” muses Otis aloud.
“When I was doubled up on the floor in mock agony, I was keeping an eye on my fans, and some other little
old lady—I think she was there to abuse Horrible Hubert—stuck a hat pin in my back, and I didn’t react. The woman immediately started screaming that I was a fake and that I didn’t feel pain, and my loyal fans shouted her down and then decided to prove that of course it hurt when they stuck their hat pins into me . . . but there were so many of them I knew I couldn’t react to every one of them, so I ran to the locker room, grabbed my coat and hat, and fled into the night.”
And Otis, Basil, Morton, Mavis, and I all ask in unison: “Why?”
“They’re my fans,” he explains. “I couldn’t break their sweet bloodthirsty little-old-lady hearts by disappointing them.” A very dry tear tries to roll down his cheek. “I never want to disappoint anyone.”
Mavis walks over and runs her hand through Lamont’s unkempt hair, ignoring the pieces of scalp that flake off. He looks up at her with an expression I have only seen on abused puppies.
“Aw, you poor thing,” says Mavis, who is adapting to the Close Shave quicker than I’d expected.
“All I ever wanted was to be a hero,” says Lamont, his lower lip trembling. “Just once in my life—well, in my death—I want to hear cheers instead of boos. I want my fans to send me the roses, not the thorns. Is that so much to ask?”
“Hey, pal, we all have problems,” says Basil, who is even less sympathetic as a wolf than he is as a man.
“You’re a magnificent carnivore, very near the top of the food chain,” replies Lamont. “What problems could you possibly have?”
“Do you know how few sheep are running loose in Central Park?” shoots back Basil. “I hang out behind an all-night hot dog stand begging for scraps. And the two times I actually find lady werewolves, they’re not in heat.”
“But you can still resort to dating humans,” Lamont points out.
“Hey!” shouts Mavis suddenly. “Resort? Like a last resort?”
“Oh, no offense intended at all, madam!” apologizes Lamont.
She glares at him. “Madam?”
“M-miss,” stammers Lamont. “I mean miss.”
She arches an auburn eyebrow.
Lamont blushes—which is to say he turns a deeper shade of gray. “I would never insult a lovely lady like you.”
She preens, twirling a lock of hair on an impeccably manicured finger, and then throws him a smile as a reward. From his reaction I get the distinct impression that Lamont doesn’t get many smiles or rewards.
“So why do you want to be a hero?” I ask when Lamont is through with his version of a blush.
“Why indeed,” adds Otis, deigning to look up from his obituary columns, “when it’s so much sexier being bad?”
Lamont blinks, and it is obvious that he has never considered this angle before. “But I look like the walking dead. In fact, I am the walking dead. What could be sexy about that?”
Otis glances up at the zombie, amused, then folds up the newspaper and looks speculatively at Mavis. He lets his gaze slide down from her face to the curve of her neck, suggestively licking his blood-red lips. She shudders delicately and unconsciously tilts her head to expose more of her neck.
Otis stands, and even I am transfixed by the elegance in the gesture; I’ve never seen him display his vampiric charms before. He glides over to Mavis while she stares at him as if hypnotized. He keeps eye contact for a long moment before moving around to stand behind her, sliding his hand up her arm as he does so, until he’s pulling her hair away from the side of her neck. He leans in, his lips a hairsbreadth from the aortic artery throbbing in her neck. “It’s the danger they find intoxicating,” he says at last, baring his fangs. “Not only do we court death, but our natural instinct is to take away life. And yet a night with us can lead to immortality, and maybe even eternal love . . .” He looks up at Lamont and winks. “Women love that romantic claptrap. They don’t realize that vampire males want the same thing as human males.”
“What’s that?” asks Morton, who long since ceased being any kind of a male.
“Poor fellow,” says Otis with obvious sympathy. “I think I’ll leave it to your imagination.”
“But I haven’t had an imagination in decades,” protests Morton.
“Then perhaps I’ll show you after all,” replies Otis.
The sight of a vampire literally drooling all over my newest employee suddenly brings me back to the here and now, and I realize how vulnerable Mavis is. While supernatural creatures such as werewolves and zombies are immune to a vampire’s charms, human minds and hearts are very susceptible to manipulation. I see how the situation could become very bloody in an instant, and my insurance doesn’t cover death from vampire attack.
“Otis, I don’t think Edna’s going to approve of this,” I say, hoping mention of his insanely jealous wife will help snap him out of it.
“Omigod!” he rasps. “Is that yenta on the way in?” His eyes dart to the front of the shop, searching frantically for a full minute before relaxing. “So I wanted a little nosh,” he says weakly. “Sue me.”
“Try that again and I just might!” snaps Mavis, who is suddenly animated again.
Otis sighs and his eyes lose their hypnotic red glow as he pulls himself away from Mavis, severing their connection. He turns to me and asks in a half-whining, half-supplicating tone, “Not even a little taste?”
“You know the ground rules,” I tell him. “No blood gets spilled in the Close Shave unless it’s caused by my razor.”
Otis sighs in the overly tragic fashion that only a self-centered vampire can approximate. His fangs retract and he makes his way back to his customary seat to bury himself in the obituary columns once again.
Mavis watches him until she’s sure he isn’t a threat anymore, then turns to me, her impeccably manicured hands now resting pointedly on her hips. “Somehow I intuit that working here could be very hazardous to my health,” she states.
Now it’s my turn to sigh. “So I’ll give you another raise.”
Mavis flashes me a triumphant smile, which is more than a little bit curious, or at least premature, as I have never once mentioned her starting salary. “Wonderful!” she says, and then turns back to the barber’s chair. “Now, Basil, tell me how you let your paws get into such a disgraceful state.” She sits across from the werewolf again and opens up her beautician’s bag, pulling out various implements—more than a few of them looking like small medieval torture devices—as well as a curious container of cream. While Basil complains about the damage the concrete causes his claws when he runs with the pack at night, Mavis starts to rub the cream onto his paws. “You just need to moisturize every day to keep your skin supple,” she tells him. “That’s all there is to it.”
“I wish,” laments Morton, who hasn’t had any skin since before Mavis was born.
“What’s the point?” asks Lamont. “I use antidandruff shampoo, and you can see how well that works.” He shakes his head, and it’s as if it starts snowing. Flakes of dead skin start falling everywhere.
“Walk around with a couple of talkative snakes for hair, constantly yabbering in your ear, and then see if you complain about something as trivial as flaky skin.”
We all turn to where the voice is coming from and see Harold, one of my regular clients, walk through the door.
“I thought you were going on a walkabout,” says Otis.
The Australian medusa shrugs. “It wasn’t worth the hissing and whining,” he says, taking his usual seat. “If it wasn’t one damned snake, it was another. Cecil kept me awake all night, bitching about his broken fangs. As for the rest . . .” He grimaces. “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” Then he mutters an obscenity. “When are they going to understand there is no tangible there on a walkabout, even in Central Park?”
“Are they dangerous?” asks Mavis quietly, carefully observing the undulations of the snakes.
“Don’t be frightened,” says Morton. “They’re harmless.”
“Even if you’re not a skeleton?” asks Mavis dubiously.
“Don’t listen to him!” cries one of Harold’s snakes in a squeaky little voice as it stretches out to its full five inches. “I’m as vicious as they come!”
“Me too!” says another, and then another. And suddenly they are all bouncing up and down to get the manicurist’s attention and baring their fangs to impress her.
Mavis’s face blanches to a shade lighter than Otis’s—which is quite a feat, as Otis hasn’t seen the sun for half a century—and I realize that if I’m not careful I could lose an employee, a commodity with which the Close Shave does not exactly abound. Mavis has been here twenty minutes, which is already longer that the previous four lasted.
“Harold is a pacifist,” I say reassuringly.
“But I’m not!” says Cecil, the biggest of the snakes.
“Big deal,” snorts Otis contemptuously. “I’ll lay plenty of seven-to-five odds that you can’t even bite your way through a balloon.”
“Don’t get him started on his broken fangs,” says Harold plaintively. “It’s all he talks about.”
“But it hurtssss,” Cecil hisses, his head hanging low.
“Maybe Mavis has a tooth file amongst her instruments,” I suggest.
Her auburn curls bob around her face as she shakes her head. “I’ll have to order one.” She looks at me, head tilting. “The Close Shave will pay for it, right?”
“Yes,” I say. Then I turn to Harold and add, “If Harold pays for the dental service.”
Harold’s face hardens. “I’m not even talking to Cecil this week.”
I shrug. “There’s your answer.”
Suddenly Morton stands up and walks over to the vending machine. He puts some coins into it and out pops a Coke.
I can barely contain my excitement. Finally, fourteen years after putting that vending machine on the shop floor in the hope that Morton would someday use it, I am going to see where liquid goes when it passes through his teeth.
Lamont sighs. “Boy, that looks good,” he says wistfully.
“So have one,” I say.
He indicates his glittering trunks. “I was in such a hurry to leave the arena that my pants—and my money—are still in the locker room.”
“Here, have mine,” offers Morton.
Aftertaste Page 15