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74 Jack Fritscher

“Why don’t you flip through a few of those,” Floyd 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 Eng land’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.” Floyd adjusted a wire and a screw
in the board across his lap. “Nossir,” Floyd 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,” Floyd said. “It’s the other foot of the rainbow arch from
Oz. It’s just a T-shirt 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,” Floyd said. “A man has to be
enterprising.”
By the late Sixties, Floyd 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, crewcuts
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.” Floyd said. “Just a second
and I’ll have all these wires tied up. Out for four months. Back for
three.”

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