Page 148 - Rainbow County and Other Stories

136 Jack Fritscher

“Why don’t you flip through a few of those,” Lloyd said.
“Being from back East, you might never have seen those kind of
pictures.”
“I’m not from back East. I’m from the Midwest. The southern
part of the Midwest. New York and New England’s back East.”
“It’s all back East here in San Francisco which has nothing
to do with California which has nothing to do with the rest of
the country, if you catch my drift.” Lloyd adjusted a wire and a
screw in the board across his lap. “Nossir,” Lloyd added, as if he
were changing the subject to answer a question Robert had never
asked. “I never get lonesome up here looking down on the boys
and girls in Rainbow Coun ty.”
“Is that a bar?” Robert asked.
“Nope,” Lloyd said. “It’s the other foot of the rainbow arch
from Oz. It’s just a teeshirt I made up. It’s a state of mind. What
size do you wear? Maybe I should give you one.”
“Hey, don’t injure yourself doing me any favors,” Robert said.
“I can pay.”
“I got a hundred of them,” Lloyd said. “A man has to be
enterprising.”
By the late Sixties, Lloyd had nearly gone under. He had
standards. He had tradition. He figured men and boys should be
groomed a certain way. He hadn’t been able to see himself as one
of those fancy-nancy men’s salons that other barbers changed to
when nobody wanted Princetons or flat-tops or, his favorite, crew-
cuts anymore. He figured to ride out the long-hair fad. But here
he was forty-five, with a one-chair shop and a steady but small
clientele of older balding gentlemen of the sort people once kindly
called “born bachelors” as opposed to “eligible bachelors.” His
trade kept him comfortable. The brisk pace that had once been
Friday’s and Saturday’s had fallen off taking with it the strain
from his eyes and the pressure from his varicose veins.
“I been closed for four months, yeah.” Lloyd said. “Just a
second and I’ll have all these wires tied up. Out for four months.
Back for three.”
“Vacation?” Robert asked. He was vaguely bored. The maga-
zines were nothing to write home about.

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