Fortunes Told/ Hairs Cut

Before I left for Mexico I figured I would get a hair-cut.

Someone had recommended I see this lady about it. Turns out she wasn't much of a barber but a hell of a fortune teller. I got the address from a contact in the city who mainly deals with polish immigrates and intelligence from their network of resistant fighters. This particular contact thought I needed a little insight in to my future and subsequently a trim.

After a little wandering around the village I found the Barber pole hanging from a second story apartment above a sign that said Fortunes Read/ Hairs Cut. I walked up the stairs and was passed by some ladies leaving almost bald but for some rough tufts of hair sticking out of their heads. Is that what I'm in for I thought?

The room was like your typical Barber shop, mirrors, two barber chairs, a waiting area with magazines, chairs, a coat rack, and pictures of men's and women's hairstyles but here you couldn't pick your hairstyle. There was also a back room separated by a beaded curtain over which hung a sign in the shape of a hand with an eye in it reading Aggi the Psychic.

I sat in the chair supremely skeptical and afraid for my head. Aggi came out, she was a dressed in a peasant tunic and looked like she hadn't had a haircut for years herself. Steel gray and black pulled back into a wild ponytail that reached the back of her thick legs. She looked at me with indifference and said "You want haircut?"

"Yes- please."

She motioned with her strong arm that looked accustomed to hard manual labor whipping out a white smock she tightly fastened it around my throat. Trying to loosen it with my finger I said "Just a little off the sides." and she smacked my hand away and said "Sit still."

Hair collected on the floor and she clipped away taking random bites off my head. I blew the hair off my face and blinked to keep it out of my eyes. Out from behind a beaded curtain a little woman with a broom twice as big as herself and dressed similar to Aggi started to sweep the hair into piles at Aggi's feet .Then a high-pitched voice came from below me.

"You will be traveling." The voice was coming from the little lady sweeping the hair into piles around the chair.

"Yes, I plan too." I glanced down and saw here staring down into the small piles of hair.

"Don't move." the lady with the ham hock arms said and forced my head straight ahead.

"The trip you are taking will end abruptly. Be careful of a green woman and be on the lookout for an enemy who is really your ally. Your trip will be ultimately unsatisfying. Don't go into bad places alone."

By this point it was all pretty general stuff and my head was getting cut to shreds.

"Stay off of motorcycles. You have knowledge, you feel you can't divulge. Disappear, someone is looking for you... you should disappear."

Although I was almost completely bald by this point I wanted to hear what she said and let the rest of my hair get chopped off.

"You will have children. But soon you will have to..."

At that point she stopped.

"Have to what?" I said looking down at the lady as she swept up the remaining piles of hair and waddled back behind the beaded curtain.

"Hey, where's she going?"

"No more hair no more fortune." the thickset lady with the scissors grunted.

It was true my head was completely shore.

Mexico Night

  

     It turned gory that night in Mexico. Blood mixed with rain water pouring from the palm fronds and running along the concrete patio of the cantina. I wouldn’t have ordinarily minded a scene like this but it was my blood pouring so freely into the night. Just a minute ago I was drinking a cerveza with lime and smoking in my new guayabera shirt; now my head felt the rain but the blackness faded.  I was watching my life pour out, and I didn’t really mind, I actually felt quite comfortable head busted open face digging into the concrete patio.

            I rolled onto my side and looked into the placid saucer sized brown eyes of the little Mexican kid. He was frowning and looked scared. I pushed myself on to my knees. Someone had done a good job putting me down. There was a gash on the side of my head, unsteady as I stood I placed a hand to stauch the bleeding.

 “Hola Kid.”

     He just looked at me with what I guessed was concern, shock or just plain curiosity then ran inside crying.  I let myself drop back into the chair I had been sitting in when someone clocked me good with what must have been something hard and heavy. I looked at my shirt and it was rusty pink with blood, water and dirt. My beer didn’t spill so I took a long draught, lit a smoke and took a long drag.

 “Fuck…”

“Senor Gringo you OK”? The ladies in the kitchen were apparently too busy to see what happen while they were preparing an octopus in a large cast iron pot. I had watched them squeeze the ink from the things head. The giant pot of pulpo was simmering now, it smelt both garlicy and like the ocean. Now I had ink coming out of my head- red ink I was back in school the old mistake machine back in action.

     Why wouldn’t someone just finish me off?  The Kestrel wasn’t so crude as to caveman bash me on the side of the cranium, no I would be dead if it was him who wanted me dead.

      I had figured out why the Kestrel wanted me in Mexico though; I stuck out like a sore thumb down here, yeah I could get lost in Mexico,but  it was easy for anybody to find me. The local news spread quickly and information was cheap and easy to get. I quickly found it hard to assimilate; they looked at my blond hair and blue eyes and soon I was gringo, or Americano or whatever they called me. I didn’t have a grip on the language so relied on who ever I stayed with. I also knew who hit me lying beneath a palm tree like another jungle plant was a green hat shimmering like the surrounding jungle.

Bridges

"What is it with you and bridges?"

 I was cranky with a screaming tooth ache and it wasn’t getting any quieter. My whole head was wobbly with it and the whiskey I was nipping to keep the pain at bay.

“What’s the matter Mr. Farmer- don’t you like the scenery? Besides it’s easier to see who’s coming up on you. You can learn a lot from me Chuck.”  

"Yeah, right." This Kestrel guy was more irritating than ever.

We paced the bridge the wood slots making a creaking, satisfying noise as we crossed toward Manhattan.

"I saw your little post-script to your girlfriend."

"You are resourceful Kestrel."

“Did I ever tell you I was an engineer before the war? Good training for an intelligence man, figure out how the pieces work together. How you can eliminate unnecessary parts.” The Kestrel said with a grim smile.

"Listen you know as well as I, you need to get her out of there and the way I see it, they already know about her, they don't need me to tell them."

"Spit it out what do you want?'

"I need you to go to Mexico."

“I hear it’s just wonderful this time of year, I’ll send you a postcard. You are just hilarious Mr. Kestrel.” I took a drag from my cigarette and a pull from my whiskey.

"You don't get it; you could have compromised me Hombre, that’s Espanol by the way."

I glanced at him, threw my cigarette over the railing and stopped dead.  My head felt like it would cleave off leaving me half a head; I thought Shit I could be happy that way- if the pain stopped.

"What are you saying pal?"

"I’ll bring her to the U.S. but you cannot have any contact.”

""What makes you think I’m going to do that now?”

“I know what kind of ratchet you two had going on... what your plan was, I know who is a big fan, of your Ava de Fleur, or should I say Louisa Foerster. So this is the deal; you leave, not forever, just till this blows over, she in deference to you-  comes here to live but I can’t let you two communicate; too risky.”

"You don't understand. I was going to marry her. Where do you get off”?

“Very romantic; didn’t peg you for the romantic type. Maybe my reputation doesn't precede me. A year ago I would of just eliminated you both and been done with it but I like you Chuck. You remind me of myself in a way.”

I spun and grabbed the man by the throat shoved and held him just over the railing tenuously balancing him.

"WHAT makes you think I can't do the same to you right now”? The pain was too much.

"Mr. Farmer I have many tentacles, I have my eyes, ears, and talons in many places. You can let me fall into the river but your poor Ava won’t leave France; worse she won’t die in France she will die somewhere much much worse."

I let him back my head swimming with pain emotional and physical. I pulled out the flask of whiskey again and took two quick hits.

"The choice is yours Mr. Farmer, either you do as I say or...have it your way." he said as he turned pulling his overcoat up over his neck and face.... "You won’t be helping anyone especially Louisa or..."

“Or myself yeah right well…”

 “…Or that little bun she’s got in the oven.”

Confessions to a Poet

     "Rage. Rage and fear. Standard feelings growing up, for me at least."
Lounging on a stack of books doubling as a chair, a cherubic faced but rangy teen sat with pale crystal blue eyes and a shock of amber hued hair uncombed and crazily pushed back from his face, fussed with a pipe and a book of matches.
      "Arthur are you listening to me?"
      "Merde, I can't get this pipe lit!"
      "Don't smoke that in here!"
      "Merde." he said slamming down the pipe and knocking over a stack of hardbound books.
      "Watch it! Those are already sold." She rushed over and neatly stacked the first editions back into a neat tower.
      "Merde- Nito, you need to relax. Have some fun, some deranging of the senses if you will."
      "Will you just listen for once?"
Leaning forward Arthur grimaced with a mock professorial look of interest placed the unlit pipe in the corner of his mouth; as he did so he lurched forward, his throne of books giving way underneath him and burying him in a avalanche of books. "Merde!"
      "Oh my god, stop fooling around Arthur"! the grey-eyed girl eyes flashed.
     An amber head of hair broke through the pile of books as did an scarred wrist and one leg sending books sliding, toppling down over each other; pages rippling.
      "Merde! Fuck! What happened to all your furniture anyway?" the poet said from under the pile of books.
     Surveying the tiny apartment there were stacks of books fashioned into a low table with an electric hot plate used for cooking and eating on, a stack carrying a computer, various stacks made into seats like the one Arthur had destroyed, and what looked like a futon covered with a quilted comforter was really another low stack of paperback books.
     "I got rid of everything to make more room for my books, its my business after all." the grey-eyed girl glanced approvingly at her handiwork.
     "I think I will stay under here, just let me smoke my pipe."
     "Ok, if you will listen."
     "Your wish Madame Nitocris, is my command." Arthur said with a flourish of his scarred wrist from under the pile of books. The grey-eyed girl lit his pipe and Arthur happily wagged his one leg and smoked with one half of his body still trapped.
     "As I was saying;rage and anger and I should add anxiety were what my home was filled with on those days my father had something go wrong at work. He would come home and sit smoking; literally foul cigarettes. My mother was no help those days she would provoke him with questions she knew he couldn't answer. She would start on her wine well before he came home her faced pulled into a paroxysm of sullen redness."
     "When the voices grew littler, quieter; I knew trouble was brewing. I would get a tingling sensation in the pit of my belly and sit on the sofa with a book, while the voices grew quiet and the sentences shorter. Till one would say "What was that look for?" and I would try to be as invisible and quick as I could so not to get hit with shrapnel from the opening salvo as the sentences got longer and the volume of the voices increased. Like a rising and falling tide of words and volume their arguments had a violent progression. From quiet and many, to loud and short, to dead silent, to loud and long, accompanied with a bang and a scream or a slam and a screech always yelling and sometimes even crying. Threats were a passed back and forth with increasing vehemence like a continuously escalating game of catch.
     If my retreat was successful, hiding in my room in our small house I felt the walls falling in on me. Then I would take all the books off the shelves on all four walls of my room. I neatly stacked them one-by-one and build a coffin, a sarcophagus and settle in sealing it up completely -phasing out the tumult going on around me.  I wanted to die to the world I was in, die to the everyday world, and like a Pharaoh be reborn in another better world, to enter the worlds in the pages entombing me; to be a character in a book."

News Report

   

     The latest in a series of attacks on people using Kindles and other e-reader devices took place today in a midtown Starbucks.  The attacker grabbed one woman's Kindle smashing it on the ground and used a shortened field hockey stick to smash six other devices before fleeing the scene. Like in previous attacks leaflets bearing the phrase “It was a pleasure to burn.” the opening line of Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 were found at the scene. The novel describes a dystopian future where books are banned, and burned. Police have no leads about the nature of the attacks. Are these attacks the work of protesters? Occupy Wall Street has disavowed the attacks saying they do not believe in the destruction of personal property. Are these attacks a contemporary version Bradbury's book or are they something else? Do these attackers want anything? It’s hard to tell, they seem senseless and random, occurring often in coffee shops or on subway trains and platforms through-out the city. The mayor has promised to find the perpetrators and has stepped up security on subways and subway platforms. The only description of the attacker or attackers that has been made so far is someone wearing workers coveralls, sunglasses, ski mask and hat. If you have any information call crime stoppers at 1800-tip-crime.

      In other news we are sad to report the passing of a legend; the songstress Ava de Fleur. The reclusive singer was famous for her days in New York after fleeing the Nazi’s occupation of Paris in 1940. Most people will remember her for her hit “All Year Through” which she mysteriously refused to sing after 1944.  Miss de Fleur died late yesterday evening of natural causes.

Signs

     Charlie in blue suit and striped tie swinging his briefcase slightly,walked through the fog on an unusually warm December to a five story apartment building of light brown brick and bay windows on W. 96th Street and pressed the intercom button marked D. Sign.
     Derrick rolled over searching for her warm soft skin, but woke to the faded smell of suntan lotion on the pillow next to him.  "Aw, Shit." he groaned. "She's gone." Has been gone for two months now.
     The bell rang an angry shriek again. Trembling and head circling, he heading the thirteen steps to the door, and pressed the intercom button.
    "Come up." he growled and flipped the lock open.
    The elevator being out of service Charlie headed up the stairs sweating from the climb and the strange December humidity.  Charlie knocked and the door floated open; inside was a moderately sized apartment with an open floor plan living area with a small kitchen and a hallway leading to other rooms. Shelves of books, leather bound volumes, ancient looking tombs and large art and photography books covered one entire wall.  The furniture was spare; a black leather sofa, a dinette set in the kitchen, and a aspidistra plant in the corner.
     Charlie, busy taking in the apartment didn't notice Derrick come out of the bathroom down the hall vigorously drying his face on a towel.
     "What? Are you with the IRS?"
     "Professor Sign, we talked on the phone, we had an appointment? Charlie Farmer with Forrest Insurance."
     "Right". Derrick moved to the sofa and sat hand holding his temples, moving head his head side to side cracking the bones in his neck and jaw. Running his hand over two days stubble and his shaved crew-cut.
     Charlie wondered why he got stuck with these assignments. Difficult clients who had to be visited at home. Charlie sat at the other end of the sofa and put his briefcase next to him; there was no coffee table.
     "OK Professor Sign, ah do you prefer Professor, Dr. or Detective?"
     "Whatever Chuck lets just get this thing over with." Derrick grumbled feeling his stomach churn with last nights gin and tonics.
      "Because we dealt with all the preliminary questions over the phone Prof. Sign I just have a few more things to clear up. We will be done quickly; I will get your signature and be on my way before you know it."
      "Right, shoot."
      "Do you use alcohol or tobacco?"
      "I have the occasional drink, and once in a while I will have a cigar."
      "OK, any family history of disease."
      "My mother was a terrible driver."
      "Excuse me?"
      "No none, are we done?"
      "How long have you've been blind?"
      "Twenty years but who's counting. Its only partial, I get around just fine."
      "Really, then what kind of hat am I wearing?"
      "Your not wearing a hat."
      "Good guess. But it says in your file that you lost your vision while still an officer for the NYPD. Correct?"
      "Your wearing a sensible blue suit and I think your girlfriend who wears a clean, flora perfume picks out your tie, so that is most likely striped and red for the holiday season. Your a insurance salesman so your clean cut but today you didn't shave because you were meeting a blind man. Your shoes are scuffed because you walk a lot to meet clients and you stepped in something on the way here. Your wearing a watch but its not working. And your sweating like a pig."
      "Wow, how the fuck did you do that."
      "Listen, I can tell you more. But right now I want to ask you a question."
      "OK Professor Sign."
      "What did you do with that green hat you stole- Mr. Farmer?"

Agents

         Shadows mixed with fog and night mixed with mists rising up through the parapets; wrapping up the bridge in an inveigling gloaming.  I was supposed to meet the man here over an hour ago, but it's just been me, my cigarettes, and the occasional strong baritone foghorn of the tugs going up river.  I've been on so  many sides now, its hard to tell where I am anymore. I'm on my own bridge between Europe, Britain, the good ole USA and what I hope is a way out of all this, hell maybe even an end to the war. But the fog is so goddam thick.  What the hell, where is this guy; boredom, the price we pay for information these days.  In my coat are two letters, one I'm supposed to hand to this guy; if he ever decides to show, and one for Ava in Paris.  It’s damp and the tobacco smoke from my lucky strike clings to my hand and finds its way up my coat and around my fedora.  A siren is wailing in the somewhere out there that I presume is the city. A fire alarm. Clicking of Florsheims and he was on me before I realized it. 

      "Nice evening, don't you think? Especially for our line of work. No?"

      "Yeah, just wonderful.  I feel like I'm back in London. Lets get this done- I’m running out of smokes waiting for you." my irritation flooding over.

     "I didn't know if it was you, Hamlet's father or Jacob Marley."

     "Yeah, great." I didn't have time make jokes.

     "Sorry, ran into some unexpected circumstances." the man said coldly, flatly.

     "Just hand it over." I said taking out the letter.

     As the man reached into his jacket pocket- I for once got a good look at him. He was of average height, with fair hair cut short. From under the brim of his hat, eyes that were intense, perceptive eyes, there was a icy rigor to the man that didn't match his lighthearted quips.

     "Here you are." He held out his parcel, I handed him his letter.

     And when we exchanged; I noticed a gap were his first two finger should have been on his left hand. 

I realized then that I just exchanged top-secret documents with the man codenamed: Kestrel.

      "Just remember what your working for, not who. There's no reason to turn a young spook into an old ghost." He called back as he vanished again into the sightless night.