Cosmopolis

'I never seen such ratty hair on a human.'

'I woke up this morning and knew it was time.'

'You knew where to come.'

'I said to myself. I want a haircut.'

The man eased the sunglasses off Eric's head and placed them on the shelf under the room-length mirror, checking them first for smudges and dust. 'Maybe you want to eat something first.'

'I could eat something.'

'There's take-out in the fridgerator that I nibble at it when I get the urge.'

He went into the back room and Eric looked around him. Paint was coming off the walls, exposing splotches of pinkish white plaster, and the ceiling was cracked in places. His father had brought him here many years ago, the first time, and maybe the place had been in better shape but not by much.

Anthony stood in the doorway, a small white carton in each hand.

'So you married that woman.'

'That's right.'

'That her family's got like money unbeknownst. I never thought you'd get married so young. But what do I know? I have chickpeas mashed up and I have eggplant stuffed with rice and nuts.'

'Give me the eggplant.'

'You got it,' Anthony said, but stood where he was, in the doorway.

'He went fast once they found it. He was diagnosed and then he went. It was like he was talking to me one day and gone the next. In my mind that's how it feels. I also have the other eggplant with garlic and lemon all mashed up together if you want to try that instead. He was diagnosed it was January. They found it and told him. But he didn't tell your mother until he had to. By March he was gone. But in my mind it feels like a day or two. Two days tops.'

Eric had heard this a number of times and the man used the same words nearly every time, with topical variations. This is what he wanted from Anthony. The same words. The oil company calendar on the wall. The mirror that needed silvering.

'You were four years old.'

'Five.'

'Exactly. Your mother was the brains of the outfit. That's where you get your mentality. Your mother had the wisdom. He said that himself.'

'And you. You're keeping well?'

'You know me, kid. I could tell you I can't complain. But I could definitely complain. The thing is I don't want to.

He leaned into the room, upper body only, the old stubbled head and pale eyes.

'Because there isn't time,' he said.

After a pause he went to the shelf in front of Eric and put the cartons down and took two plastic spoons out of his breast pocket.

'Let me think what I have that we could drink. There's water from the tap. I drink water now. And there's a bottle of liqueur that's been here don't ask how long.'

He was wary of the word liqueur, Anthony was. All the words he'd spoken were the ones he'd always spoken and would always speak except for this one word, which made him nervous.

'I could drink some of that.'

'Good. Because if your father himself walked in here and I offered him tap water, god forbid, he would rip out my last chair.'

'And maybe we could ask my driver to come in. My driver's out in the car.'

'We could give him the other eggplant.'

'Good. That would be nice. Thank you, Anthony.'

They were halfway through the meal, sitting and talking, Eric and the driver, and Anthony was standing and talking. He'd found a spoon for the driver and the two of them drank water out of unmatching mugs.

The driver's name was Ibrahim Hamadou and it turned out that he and Anthony had driven taxis in New York, many years apart.

Eric sat in the barber chair watching the driver, who did not take off his jacket or loosen his necktie. He sat in a folding chair, his back to the mirror, and spooned his food sedately.

'I drove a checkered cab. Big and bouncy,' Anthony said. 'I drove nights. I was young. What could they do to me?'

'Nights are not so good if you have a wife and child. Besides, I can tell you it was crazy enough in the daytime.'

'I loved my cab. I went twelve hours nonstop. I stopped only to pee.'

'A man is hit one day by another taxi. He comes flying into my taxi,' Ibrahim said. 'I mean he is flying in the air. Crash against the windscreen. Right there in my face. Blood is everywhere.'

'I never left the garage without my Windex,' Anthony said.

'I am Acting Secretary of External Affairs in my previous life. I said to him, Get off from there. I cannot drive with your body on my windscreen.'

It was the left side of his face that Eric could not stop looking at. Ibrahim's collapsed eye fascinated him in a childlike way, beyond the shame of staring. The eye twisted away from the nose, the brow was straight and tilted upward. A raised seam of scar tissue traversed the lid. But even with the lid nearly shut, there was a sediment stir to be detected in the eyeball, a roil of eggwhite and mottled blood. The eye had a kind of autonomy, a personality of its own, giving the man a splitness, an unsettling alternative self.

'I ate at the wheel,' Anthony said, waving his food carton. 'I had my sandwiches in tinfoil.'

'I ate at the wheel also. I could not afford to stop driving.'

'Where did you pee, Ibrahim? I peed under the Manhattan Bridge.'

'This is where I peed, exactly.'

'I peed in parks and alleys. I peed in a pet cemetery once.

'Night is better in some ways,' Ibrahim said. 'I am certain of it.'

Eric listened distantly, beginning to feel sleepy. He drank his liqueur out of a scarred shot glass. When he finished eating he put the spoon in the carton and set the carton carefully on the arm of the chair. Chairs have arms and legs that ought to be called by other names. He laid his head back and closed his eyes.

'I was here what,' Anthony said. 'Probably four hours a day, helping my father cut hair. Nights I drove my cab. I loved my cab. I had my little fan that worked on a battery because forget about air-conditioning in that day and age. I had my drinking cup with a magnet that I stuck on the dashboard.'

'I had my steering wheel upholstered,' Ibrahim said. 'Very nice, in zebra. And my daughter with her photograph on the visor.'

In time the voices became a single vowel sound and this would be the medium of his escape, a breathy passage out of the long pall of wakefulness that had marked so many nights. He began to fade, to drop away, and felt a question trembling in the dark somewhere.

What can be simpler than falling asleep?

First he heard the sound of chewing. He knew where he was at once. Then he opened his eyes and saw himself in the mirror, the room massing around him. He lingered on the image. The eye was mousing up where the edge of the pie crust had struck him. The camera cut on his forehead was discharging a mulberry scab. There was the foaming head of hair, wild and snarled, impressive in a way, and he nodded at himself, taking it all in, full face, remembering who he was.

The barber and driver were sharing a dessert of finely layered pastry glutted with honey and nuts, each holding a square in the palm of his hand.

Anthony was looking at him but speaking to Ibrahim, or to both of them, speaking to the walls and chairs.

'I gave this guy his first haircut. He wouldn't sit in the car seat. His father tried to jam him in there. He's going no no no no. So I put him right where he's sitting now. His father pinned him down,' Anthony said. 'I cut his father's hair when he was a kid. Then I cut his hair.'

He was speaking to himself, to the man he'd been, scissors in hand, clipping a million heads. He kept looking at Eric, who knew what was coming and waited.