Read Online Little Blue Lies by Chris Lynch - Free Book Online Page B

so I stopped talking about it mostly, although I never quite stopped thinking it. Types. A type. All three men are big guys, two big-bigs and a short big, and all have suits on. Middle aged. Slicked hair, big rings, neck and wrist chains. Cologne. Dear lord, the cologne. Colognes. It’s the cologne wars as the guys’ scents fight it out for the air space as they take up three wall seats next to Malcolm, and then the colognes join forces to defeat all the old-timey barber aromas, and pretty much wipe out the beach smells entirely.
    â€œWhew,” Santo says to the guys, pausing just to make the Phew wave in front of his nose with his scissors hand. “What’d you boys, swim here through a sea of Avon ladies?”
    â€œHarrr-hahahahaha,” the boys all howl. Good-time boys. They like to laugh. They love a laugh and they love to be the subjects of a good gag that doesn’t cut too close but doesn’t miss their specialness either. A type. Junie would kill me. Malcolm laughs, long and loud. He’s a different type.
    The three men talk in loud voices, about what they read in the day-old newspapers and month-old magazines they pick up off the seats. Like the long line of Santo barbers, these guys have been here and have been doing this for forever. They rarely get haircuts, occasionally shaves, but their presence is as much a part of the place as the swirling barber pole out front.
    Malcolm waves at me in the mirror, shakes his head androlls his eyes at the men. I wave back, raising my hand under the big nylon bib, causing the whole thing to tent up and send hairs sliding away to the floor. Santo slaps my hand back down. Malcolm laughs.
    Suddenly the whole thing feels so melancholy, I don’t know what I’ll do. It comes over me in a wave, and really, I’m so blindsided by it, I don’t have a response for it, for me.
    It’s Junie, of course. It’s her. And everything. What am I doing here, in the barbershop of my whole life? What am I grooming for? I’m supposed to be high-diving into big life right about now, but I’m . . .
    I’m what? I don’t even know that?
    But I do know that if I let what wants to happen happen and I start getting all misty-faced here, I will be skinned like a fish by the crowd, by the old pal, and by the barber himself. When I cried once in this chair, I was certain from the look that Santo was going to beat me up. And I was four.
    I look to my right, out the window, out past the thrilling crashing waves and the infinite potential sea. This, this is better.
    Santo whips me by the chin tip back in the direction of the mirror with such force that my eyes don’t focus again for three or four seconds. When they do, I see Malcolm laughing again. Santo squints and resumes intensely sculpting me back to respectability. As he finishes the right side of my headand works his way around back, I gradually let myself rotate in the direction of the beach again. The place that’s always there for me. All the elements combine just so to re-right me when I breathe it in, take it in.
    Only, something’s in the way.
    Ronny Blue is standing there, all wide-boy wide stance, wide grin as he stares in the window and into me.
    â€œRonny Blue, Blue Ronny!” comes the triumphant call of the masses as Ronny comes through the door.
    â€œHello there, boys,” Ronny says as he swaggers in. He stands there, in front of the row of chairs, as the men all burble greetings and gentle ass-kisses. Malcolm—my Malcolm—actually rises to his feet, goes to shake the great man’s hand.
    â€œAre you kidding me?” I blurt as Malcolm anxiously waves me off.
    â€œHey, why ain’t we out playing tennis, a day like this?” Ronny bellows as if Malcolm were in another barbershop two towns away.
    â€œI don’t know, Ronny. Why aren’t we?” he answers.
    Malcolm stands there, stupid, as if he expected a real answer,