Page 104 - Sweet Embraceable You: Coffee-House Stories

92 Jack Fritscher

evidence, the rest of Life, unnoticed by the hawk-eyed manager,
into the bottom of the basket on whose canvas he had carefully
marked with a red felt-tip pen: “If found, return to R. S. V. Place.”
He didn’t need to put his street address, not in Canterberry where
every body knew him.
“I don’t really play piano,” Floyd said. “I’m not a pianist. I’m
a mechanic of the piano.”
“I don’t really sell Fuller Brushes,” Robert said. “But I did.
People like to meet me. I like to meet people.” He reached for a
small stack of magazines that lay next to him on the burgundy
leatherette seat.
“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

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