'Short back and sides,' he nodded to the barber.
'Why not try something new, Jake? Something different. Fifty's a big year.'
'That's what you said about forty, Trick. You said that forty was a big year.'
'Yeah I did? Well, fifty's bigger then. There are more numbers.'
'There are not more numbers in fifty, Trick. Forty has two numbers: four and zero. So too does fifty have two numbers: five and zero. True, five is greater than four, but fifty does not have more numbers in it than forty does.'
'Stop being such a tight-arse, Jake, it's your birthday.' Trick brushed him lightly at the back of his neck.
'Straight back and sides, Trick, and watch where you put those scissors.'
'Geez Earl, you ever hear of somebody being so itty-bitty on their birthday?' Trick jabbed his neighbouring colleague with his right elbow.
'I sure as have never,' Earl said although he had only just dropped into the conversation now, busy as he was giving his client a close shave. 'Doesn't ol' Jake want something new? Something more suave?' He pronounced the word 'suave' so that it came out like 'saav'. Saab with a v, a very long v.
'That's what I been asking him,' Trick pointed the scissors in Jake's direction. Jake was unmoved. Trick carried on, 'I'm trying to help you, Jake, to be helpful. Pic-tor-ial. Picture this.' He stepped towards Earl and the two of them began to sing, 'Country roads, take me home, to a place I belong. West Virginia,' Earl's close shave burst in, 'Mountain momma. Take me home,' the three of them harmonized, Earl and Trick holding hands by now, 'country roads.'
Jake liked that melody. He had heard a sweet, broad-shouldered girl play it on her guitar in a hillbilly tavern in a hillbilly town once. It had made his heart leap.
'Is that a bit of saline misting up the eyes then, Jakie?' Trick taunted him.
'Leave him be,' Earl said, suddenly composed, shameful. 'It's the fella's birthday.'
Trick spoke to the coloured lady who was sweeping up multicoloured wisps of hair with a broom. 'Bring Jake here a coffee, will you,' he said to her. 'With foam.' He swiveled back to look at Jake. 'Earl and I got ourselves a foamer.' He was proud. 'A small tornado for whipping.' Jake was thinking about falling leaves, snow on his galoshes. Trick was saying, 'We saw it being advertised on one of those infomercials. What's the name of that company that makes all those products for sale at unbeatable prices? You know the one,' he was searching himself, 'Vermark?'
'Verimark,' Earl interceded.
Jake was trying not to make too much of the fact that he was reminiscing. He looked straight ahead and focused on his reflection: drooping mouth, nose growing slightly to the left, sagging, watery eyes that were pinkish. When the coffee arrived he swallowed it in three short gulps and then scooped up the remaining foam with his teaspoon like a child digging for the last of his ice-cream at the bottom of the cone. Trick and Earl exchanged glances, satisfied.
Trick had acquired his moniker as a youngster. He couldn't pronounce the 'tr' in the word 'trick'; he said 'tick'. His older brother Trevor - being a 'tr' man himself - teased him tirelessly ('Hey Trick, you wanna hear a joke? What's a tic that's handicapped called? Spastic. What's a tic that's anxious called? Neurotic. Ha, ha.') On it went. Later the lines were marginally more sophisticated ('A tic that's acerbic? Caustic. A tic that's cynical? Sarcastic.') The name stuck. ('Everyone can pronounce your nickname but you!' Trevor roared). Trick's real name was Raymond.
'Kind of the opposite of Trick when you think about it,' Jake said. 'Raymond's a good, honest name. Raymonds are good, hardworking people. You ever heard of a Raymond being convicted of a felony? No. Raymond owns the corner café, his father's furniture business, the CNA.' What he really meant was that Raymonds are unmagical. There isn't anything mysterious about a Raymond. Raymonds become hairdressers.
'Earl, however,' Earl said trumpeting his own origin, 'now the name Earl is majestic. Royal,' he dragged out the second vowel so that it sounded like 'royaal'.
Jake was short for Jacob. His brother was Jasper, his sister Jolyn. His mother had a thing for Js. She liked how the letter was drawn onto the page. She liked its shape; she said that it was unusual. 'Not as straight up and down as a T, nor as curvy as an S. Wonderfully asymmetrical.' She was big on imperfection. 'No point in trying to be perfect, Jasper, Jake and Jo,' she said. 'Nothing in it besides for a lot of hard edges. Like being square.'
Jake didn't like to be called Jake; he would rather be known as Jacob. But after Jasper, three years the elder, declared his brother 'Jake' when Jake was too small to protest, there was no going back. Then it was all 'Jake this' and 'Jake that'. ('Jake, won't you pass Mommy the salad dressing? Thank you my angel. Thank you Jake.') Jasper was Jasper John - kind of like the artist Jaspers Johns - and Jolyn liked to be called 'Jo'. Everyone was sorted except for Jake.
'And it's been like that ever since,' Jake said into the mirror talking to Trick and Earl.
The close shave had since departed: paid his fee and slapped the birthday boy on the back with a 'Hip hip hooray!' before taking to the street.
'You mean you being called Jake or you being unsorted-like?' Trick asked.
'Both.' He gave a heavy sigh.
'So you telling me,' Earl said furrowing his brow and scratching the wrinkles that he had created,' all this time, all the time that you been coming to Trick and me here. What's it been now, Trick?'
'Going on twenty years,' Trick said.
'Going on twenty years,' Earl said. 'All this time you haven't once asked us to call you Jacob instead of Jake?'
'I've been coming here for twenty-three years,' Jake said.
'That's even worse!'
'When everybody's called you Jake your whole life, what difference are a couple of extra people going to-'
'A couple of extra people, eh?' Earl huffed and puffed. 'You hear that, Trick? Jake here - ahem, Jacob - says we are just a couple of extra people to him. No more than a couple of extra people. Two nobodys.'
The cuckoo poked its head out from the cuckoo clock and announced that it was noon. Earl went outside for a cigarette.
'I wanted them to call me Chico,' Trick went on. Like the place in California? Jake wondered. 'Like Chico Marx,' Trick said, 'the eldest of the Marx brothers. They called him Chico for chicken-chaser. Lady chicks, that is.' His real name was Leonard.
Jake noted, noticing not for the first time, that the salon's mirrors were decorated on their outskirts with a mix- up of stickers, most of them faded and torn. On the mirror in front of which he was seated today, on this day in March - his fiftieth birthday - there were four adhesives. The first was for the swimwear range, Labamba: stained- glass colours, cartoon of a girl in a tanga bathing suit. The second looked like it could have been a bumper sticker: thick-mustard yellow rectangle with dark font spelling 'think bike'. The third was a full-length miniature of Trick's favourite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, Michelangelo. The fourth was a clown holding a tube of Mentadent P toothpaste: 'Mentadent P is for me!'
'I told Trev that it'd be rad,' Trick was saying. 'I could be Chico and he could be Groucho. He wasn't much keen on it though and I don't know why. Groucho was the most famous of the bunch.'
Earl came back inside. 'It's raining,' he said.
'Yes, Earl, that sometimes happens.'
Earl's 12 o'clock appointment arrived. He wanted his hair done like Tom Cruise in Top Gun.
'Did Tom Cruise have a hairstyle in Top Gun?' Jake whispered to Trick.
'Looked pretty natural to me.'
'What about Tom Cruise in Cocktail?' Earl suggested.
'Haven't seen it,' the guy said.
Earl was persistent, 'You know the one with Elisabeth Shue where they kiss in the water and the Beach Boys perform 'Kokomo' on the soundtrack?' The guy stared at him blankly, his mouth closed. Earl raised his eyebrows. Obviously not his cup of tea. 'Oh well,' he said.
'Flugelbinders,' Jake said.
'What?' They all turned to look at him.
'When Jordan, Elisabeth's character, suggests to Flanagan, Tom's character, that the little plastic thingamajigs at the end of shoelaces are called flugelbinders.'
'Don't know what you're talking about,' Earl said.
'What?' Jake said. 'It's one of the most important scenes in the movie. I can see it clearly now. It starts off with Flanagan twirling one of those tiny paper umbrellas that are used to adorn cocktails. Then he says to Elisabeth - to Jordan - 'You know there's a guy-'
'Sorry buddy.' Earl walked away, leading his client to the washbasin.
'Flanagan was wearing a patterned shirt and white canvas plimsolls!' Jake had become hysterical.
Earl mouthed the words, 'Memory problems' to his twelve o'clock.
'Are you sure that it's the same movie?' Trick asked Jake.
'Of course!' he screamed.
'Look, I'm sure that it's in there somewhere,' Trick softened his tone seeing as though Jake was obviously upset. 'Do you want another coffee?' he tried to placate him. 'Clarice!' He raised his voice into the air. 'Clarice!'
'No,' Jake said sulkily, 'I don't want another coffee. Hell, what's taking you so long, Trick? I mean with the haircut. It's nearly lunchtime.'
'I'm doing it extra nice for you today, Jake. For your birthday.'
'Thanks.'
'Look, Jake, you ain't getting any younger or any prettier-'
'This is news.'
'- so you might as well start working on your personality.'
'It's never too late!' Earl shouted from the back.
'How old's that geezer anyway?' the man with the wet hair asked.
'I'm in no mind for this, Trick,' Jake said.
'Who's ever in the mood for a change, Jakie?' 'Jakie' was worse than Jake. 'What you ought to be looking for is 'no mind'. Mushin no shin: that's Eastern for 'mind of no mind'. Then nothing will affect you.'
'Some people can tolerate adjustment more easily than others,' Jake said, defending his position. 'Some people have a natural inclination to move while others prefer to keep still. I prefer to keep still. Isn't that what the Zen masters are always saying: be still.'
'There is Zen, Jake, and then there is stasis. You are sacrificing your psycho-social development.' He sheared a bit more hair than was necessary. 'Have you ever been in love?'
Earl came over to ask Trick about the colour of a certain tint. Jake heard them saying something about 'Tom Cruise- Brown Colour Number One'. Then there was an eruption of laughter.
'Do you know what the litmus test is?' Trick asked Jake.
'The litmus test?'
'The litmus test. The litmus test is used to determine the acidity of a given solution. Blue litmus paper turns red under acidic conditions and red litmus paper turns blue under alkaline conditions. The strip acts as a pH indicator: it reveals the relative tendency of a solution towards acidity or alkalinity. You see Jake, solutions are rarely purely acidic or purely alkaline. There are only relative tendencies towards equilibrium, towards neutral. So don't worry, everything will be fine. You'll see.'