My father spent a quarter of a century in and around the Fairfax District of Los Angeles when he moved to join me, his palm tree blue sky intoxicated only daughter in California. The neighborhood was reminiscent of areas in New York with which both of us were familiar and comfortable, little grocery stores and curio type shops and of course, barber shops, then very unhip and wonderfully cheap as nothing is any longer. He was an observer my dad. He has been gone 16 years. I don't think this or any such shop any longer exists in that area, which has given itself over to the Z or some such generation. So, in a way, this is a little piece of the history of the area.
She was standing at the entrance of the barber shop. The store was empty, all four chairs unoccupied. She seemed deep in thought and did not notice my arrival.
"Could I get a haircut, today?" I asked.
She started. Her large, blue eyes widened behind her massive circular lenses. She did not blink, not for an instant. She was happy to see me. I am one of her favorite customers.
She took both my hands, backing up, pulling me into the shop. Her expression was pregnant with a need to tell me something important.
"Henry's dead," she said, fixing me with the unblinking eyes. I detected no great sadness.
I was shocked. Henry was to me a fixture of the neighborhood, like the ancient lady who sits outside Canter's Delicatessen soliciting coins for Jewish causes with her blue and white slotted can.
"You didn't heard?" she pronounced. "Three days ago, three, a massive heart attack. Six in the morning. They called Vladimir."
Two extraneous thoughts entered my mind--the obvious but ubiquitous grammatical error was the first, and then the idea that I should have heard of Henry's demise. My contacts with the shop are rarely more than once a month. Imelda, however, has always treated me as special. I rarely escape a warm hug and, if I am unwary, a kiss on the cheek. At the very least, she clasps my hands in her pudgy, warm ones and holds them prisoner for an inordinate time.
I looked at barber chair number one, at which Henry could be found standing for as many years as I can remember. A short man, perpetually old, taciturn, with a circular band of very white hair ringing the shiny nakedness of his head.
I expressed my sorrow, asked if there were any way I could help, extricated my hands and turned to go, but she stopped me.
"No," she said, "the shop is open. Vladimir and I run it. Come, sit."
She led me to her chair, the last one in the place, all the time talking in incoherent, incomprehensible, excited sentences. There was something other than sorrow about her. It was a kind of relief. It would have escaped me if I did not know of her history with Henry. There was, in fact hate between them, venomous and deep seated.
Vladimir, the other barber suddenly appeared from the back of the shop. He was pushing a broom that searched with manifest futility for wisps of hair on an immaculately clean floor. There was nothing of sadness in his manner. He was humming a Russian melody, coming close to us as if to eavesdrop, peering through milk-bottle lenses, smiling. He had never been this intrusive before but I did not care. He spoke only Russian and it was questionable as to what he could see out of those thick lenses or understand.
What was clear was that he, like Imelda, were acting as if a great burden had been lifted from them.
I was not sure what benefit might have accrued to Vladimir. He was always a substitute barber whose services were rarely requested. His bad vision and his frequent sorties to the rear for another shot of vodka did not recommend him to customers. Imelda once told me that he had begged her to finish a shaving job on a supine, unsuspecting customer, relinquishing his soap encrusted razor to her with a shaking hand.
There had been a feud between Henry and Imelda from the first. He wanted her out from the day he hired her to accommodate a sudden surge of business. That same day he fired her without giving a reason.
"I cried," she said. "I told him I had no money for rent, or food, and he let me stay." He wide open blue eyes teared at the memory.
Henry regretted his kindness immediately. For Imelda, her next few years were a succession of trials and harassments, practically each she recounted to me as a bonus accompanying the haircut she was giving me.
There seemed no rationality to Henry's animosity. He received fifty percent of every haircut she gave. She drew customers. His services were preeminently wanted by the Orthodox men whose rules seemed to preclude ministrations from a woman. She is an excellent barber if one does not mind the endless chatter. I suspect that Henry was jealous of her skill.
I might have been an unwitting contributor to the feud. Henry had been my barber for years before I discovered Imelda cut my hair the way I preferred.
Imelda is short and stocky, perhaps in her middle forties. Barbering seems her only skill since she expresses great difficulty in finding more remunerative placement. Still, she makes no demands of destiny, asks for little more than sustenance and is another victim of the pervasive injustice of the world.
"Just the night before he died, he missed striking me in my face by an inch." The remark came in sibilant tones through the mask she wears when she does her cutting, to avoid inhaling short hairs. She was also wearing her customary cloth hat in addition to the mask, the red one, which alternated with another in green.
The thought of Henry striking anyone was incongruous. "Henry seemed such a gentle man," I said.
She stopped snipping, incredulous at my comment.
"One night, without warning, he came to my chair and threw my hair dryer to the floor. 'Get out!' he shouted, shaking his fist in my face, his in rage!"
She pointed to a jagged tear in her white coat. "Here is one hole he made with his scissors. The other is in my green hat."
"Why didn't you call the police"
"He would lie, say he didn't do it. After that he would take out the sharp blades from my clippers and put in his dull ones. They cost twenty dollars a piece."
"What did you do?" I asked.
"I put in a lock and it stopped." She was silent for a time. I saw that she saw her status now as more secure. For now, Henry's wife needed the barber shop. Imelda offered a continuation of the money that would pay the rent. So, Imelda is happy. Vladimir, too. I did notice that she had not moved to chair number one. I had a theory.
"Imelda, why don't you move the shaving lather machine to your position? I would make your work easier."
"Henry's wife won't let me," she responded flatly.
This could mean sentimentality, a wifely gesture to maintain Henry's earthly possessions just as they were when he departed. Somehow, I think not. Henry likely left strong residual impressions of his loves and hates before his earthly departure.
