The Waterproof Bible Read Online Free PDF

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5
The first haircut of the rest of his life
    Twenty-six hours after his wife’s funeral ended, Lewis Taylor looked through the peephole of the second-finest hotel room in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Squinting, he refocused his right eye and saw a man wearing a crisp, white, collarless shirt standing in the hallway. A black comb and a pair of scissors with long, slim blades protruded from his breast pocket. Lewis continued watching. He did not open the door.
    “Are you the barber?” Lewis asked.
    “I am,” the man said. His accent was Eastern European, although Lewis could not place it more precisely.
    “How can I be sure?”
    “Listen, I can come back later. Maybe even send someone else? Makes no difference to me.”
    “No, no. You’re right. I’m sorry,” Lewis said. He slid off the chain and unlocked the door.
    The barber stepped inside. Both men stood in the small foyer. Behind them was a living room of considerable size and a hallway leading to the bedroom and bathroom. Some moments passed.
    “Where should I cut?”
    “Where’s best?”
    “Is the bathroom okay for you?”
    “Sure. That’s fine,” Lewis said.
    Lewis watched the barber’s dress shoes leave prints in the carpet as he walked towards the bathroom. Lewis had never seen a carpet vacuumed so perfectly. He imagined a fleet of miniature snow-grooming machines hiding in the closet, coming out at night to work the carpet as if it were a ski hill. When he opened his eyes, the barber was carrying a chair into the bathroom, and Lewis followed him inside.
    Setting the chair on the tiled floor in front of the full-length mirror to the left of the vanity, the barber gestured for Lewis to sit. Lewis sat. Closing his eyes, he felt the barber’s massive hands on the sides of his head, turning it this way and that. The barber saw that the roots of Lewis’s hair were brown and that it had been cut quite recently, no more than two or three days earlier.
    “This hair is very well styled. Very modern.”
    “Thank you.”
    “You sure you want me to cut?”
    “Very much.”
    “More conservative?”
    “Yes. That’s right. More conservative.”
    “Unlike the suit you’re wearing?”
    Lewis looked into the full-length mirror, although he did not look at his face. The suit was the height of fashion. As were his shoes and tie. As he stared at his reflection from the neck down, he had the disturbing premonition that his clothes would someday be someone’s Halloween costume.
    “Yes,” Lewis said. “That’s it. That’s it exactly. The opposite of what I’m wearing.”
    Lewis felt a towel cover his shoulders. He heard thescissors open above his head. As the barber began to cut, Lewis kept perfectly still.
    Many things had happened to Lewis since he’d stood in the middle of an intersection in the east end of Toronto, watching a green-skinned woman pilot a white Honda Civic. The first had been backing away from the limousine he’d been travelling in. The second was climbing inside the nearest taxi.
    “Hello,” the driver said.
    “Yes?”
    “Where to?”
    “I don’t know.”
    The taxi did not move. Lewis took two twenty-dollar bills from his wallet and, leaning forward, placed them on the passenger seat.
    “Straight,” he said. “Just go.”
    The cabbie drove west on Queen Street, and Lewis slumped in his seat, asking himself if he was doing the right thing. The answer came quickly—he wasn’t. The right thing would be to go to his wife’s funeral and sob uncontrollably. He knew that he should be immobilized with grief. That he should, very shortly, begin raging against a distant and uncaring god. But Lewis was incapable of doing any of these things. Instead, he turned his body slightly to the right and looked out the window.
    The taxi drove past buildings that were familiar to Lewis, but he felt as if he had entered an entirely different city. Rolling down the window, Lewis stuck out his head, dog-like. He looked down at the asphalt blurring