Page 131 - Sweet Embraceable You: Coffee-House Stories

The Barber of 18th and Castro 119

but I did and you took it hook, line, and sinker. You wait awhile
and you’ll get to know I got a real killer sense of humor.”
“Never mention killing.”
“Hey!” Robert said. “That’s a figure of speech. Nothing is
what it seems. It’s all mirrors. One thing’s always meaning some
other thing besides what a person thinks it means. You know that,
being a barber, standing between your mirrors in all those parallel
universes. I’m not dumb, you know. I’ve spent most of my life in
recent years reading all kinds of the strangest things so the inside of
my head’s like an encyclopedia. My second-cousin, Ollie Thomas,
who’s madam librarian back home told me so.”
“Perhaps you have,” Floyd said, “low blood sugar. I myself often
experience strange mood swings.”
“Naw. My blood’s fine and my sugar’s better.” Robert winked
the way his father always winked. “If you catch my drift.”
“Sounds like,” Floyd pulled his ear, charading, working Robert
toward the door, “like we’ve circled back to sex.”
“Have you noticed that too? How everything sooner or later
always comes back around to sex?”
“You are sure going to have a good time down there on 18th
and Castro,” Floyd said. “That intersection is laying on its back
with its legs in the air just waiting for you.”
“I ain’t done it.” Robert’s face reddened with anger. “I told you
I ain’t done it! I ain’t never done it when it was my will. But when
I’m good and ready, I just might, and I just might be the best at it.”
Something, some thing, in the room ground suddenly to a halt
between them.
“What?”
It could only be one thing. Floyd wished he’d carried a little
hand fan, something petite and operatic from the eighteenth cen-
tury, to hide the smirk on his lips.
“I ain’t done it. Not yet.”
“Done what?” Floyd was intent on forcing Robert to say it.

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