Every moment is an opportunity to be creative, the guru said. Every moment is an opportunity to do something different. The man turned the radio off, got out of the car.
The barbershop had gold stadium seats, the kind that flapped down, bolted to the ground. This was the waiting area. No one sat in the waiting area, but most of the barber chairs were full—except one.
Right here, boss, a barber in a blue Dodgers cap said to the man as he spun the maroon leather chair around.
The man was a walk-in. He didn’t really need a haircut, but why not? He was listening to the guru.
He gave the barber his specifications. One-and-a-half to three on the sides, with scissor work on top. The length on the top was negotiable.
The barber had a friendly voice. He was clean shaven aside from the stubbly goatee that peppered his chin. The barber had a son around his own son’s age, it turned out.
He talked about walking into a CVS on a Friday night in a pair of slides, everyone else dressed to the nines. He’d go home now and watch TV. The others, they’d be going out. By the time they came home, he’d be an hour or two away from waking up.
In fact, he woke up in the middle of the night often, and not because his youngest son woke him up, but because he had a young son.
Am I doing this right? he questioned himself in the dark.
The man didn’t say anything as the clipper droned above his left ear.
The barber nudged the underside of the bill of his blue cap, and with the back of his hefty, hairy hand, he mopped up the accumulated perspiration on his brow. The man followed the path of the barber’s hand back down to his side and out of focus, but soon in focus was a small easel chalkboard sign with the price breakdown for various kinds of cuts and shaves. The sign was right near the entrance. How had the man missed the sign? He must not have been in the moment.
You see, the sign read CASH ONLY.
The man did not have any cash. The blades of the scissors sent his hair falling. He could feel the soft taps on his shoulders like gentle reminders of something he hadn’t done yet.
Excuse me, the man said, but I don’t have any cash on me. Can I come back after?
No problem, boss, the barber said. I trust you.
When the barber finished his work, the man was still facing the back of the room, the brick wall. He felt warm shaving cream on the back of his neck and then the downward scrape of a straight blade. Then some aftershave was applied. It stung a little, but it smelled nice.
The barber swiveled the man around to face the mirror, to show off his work. The man did not like what he saw. This, however, was no fault of the barber’s, so the man smiled and nodded and stood, and they shook hands. Perched at the base of the mirror where the barber’s scissors and clippers rested was a picture of his son in a jersey, holding a soccer ball. The son looked happy.
The man noticed another man, a disturbed man, gesticulating, talking to himself, approaching on the sidewalk. He thought about doing something, a handoff of something once he was able to get into his car, but all he had were nickels and dimes and pennies in the bottom of the center console, and a couple empty protein bar wrappers on the passenger seat. Once the busy boulevard had cleared, the man walked to the driver’s side door, got in the car, and drove off. The man looked in the rearview mirror. He drove in the direction of an ATM he once knew.
There was a crosswalk about a mile away that linked a bike path. The bike path was about a mile long. The path was concrete but on either side was kempt grass. Despite the grass and the clean path, transmission towers hovered above. These towers, they lined the whole path, rooted in the swaths of grass. These towers, they were there—they weren’t going anywhere.
A red light stopped the man at this crosswalk. A troop of preteen girls in pink and purple and baby-blue helmets pedaled their bikes across the intersection. Some of their handles were tasseled. The girls, they looked happy together. But then on the other side waiting for them was another man. This man was not their father—he was homeless. He wore a formerly white, now-yellowed track jacket, and baggy orange nylon pants. He was bald on the top of his head but he had long blond hair matted on the sides. His eyes were visibly red, and his pants, they were a little down, but his chin was tilted up as if he was commanding the sky, but no. He was yelling at the girls. And that’s when, through the dirty, blurry windshield, the man noticed the piece of flesh, the homeless man’s penis, dangling between his legs. The vagrant grabbed it with a hand and showed it to the girls. A horn honked behind. The light had turned green. Out of habit, the man pressed the gas, but he stared into his various mirrors and watched the girls cautiously navigate around the man.
He called the police station and a woman answered. He reported what he saw.
I’ll have to transfer you to dispatch. I just work the front desk here.
The man hung up.
He kept driving to the ATM, but then he saw a sign for a Goodwill. He wanted to exercise some good will. What this other man in need needed was a belt, the man decided in the moment. He turned into the small shopping-mall lot and parked next to the grocery store.
But then, as he was about to get out, he saw the empty wrappers on his passenger seat and his stomach made a noise.
Be in the moment, he told himself inside his head.
Be in the moment, he said aloud in a deep tenor, like the voice of the guru. The man followed his gut. He was hungry.
He walked toward the grocery store with the intent of entering, and as he approached the automatic doors, the cheap display of slightly limp flowers, the shoved together carts, he heard the wistful accordion. A man in a brown coat on a small stool compressed and pulled apart the instrument languidly, his eyes closed. There was a small cardboard sign, a torn-off flap from a big box it looked like, with a request for money, perched against the player’s shins. The sign concealed what the man surmised were rather small feet. Next to the beggar was a hefty woman in a black smocked dress. She was holding a baby, and her eyes were open, green, shining. They reminded the man, these green eyes, of the piece of jade that dangled from his long-gone mother’s necklace. This woman in black was beautiful. This woman in black looked well fed. The music carried in the wind, and the baby also looked bundled and well taken care of, the man decided. This family wasn’t in need. He looked at the woman and shook his head in disgust. He looked at the baby and thought of his son. He checked the time. School was out. He needed to pick up his son.
When the man pulled up to the small lot of the after-school program, he parked the car. Behind the fence was the playground, a handball wall, the blacktop. There was dirt, grass, and trees, too. His son was somewhere there. The man took his time.
He retrieved the boy, let him buckle himself. His stomach was growling again.
I want a snack, Dad, the son demanded from the back, but the son didn’t have the backpack, the lunchbox. The man did, up in the front, next to him. There was an Oh Henry!, a Charleston Chew in there, a Tootsie Roll even. He put the car in reverse. He drove with one hand, tore the wrapper with his front teeth. He ate one slowly, began another.
Dad! Those are mine!
With a quick flick of thumb and index finger, he turned the dial controlling the voice louder:
Life is the relationship with yourself, the guru said. The man squirted the Tootsie Roll free from its wrapper, shot it straight to the back of his mouth where his molars were. He tasted its sweetness.
No one else needs to be a part of it, the voice said.
A low, moody cloud crested above the pointy lamp of a streetlight. The setting sun was behind it, giving it a strange orange glow. A storm was coming, but the man noticed something else in the cloud—that it looked like ice cream. 
Ashton Politanoff lives in Redondo Beach, California. He is a frequent contributor to the literary annual NOON, and his first novel You’ll Like It Here was published by Dalkey Archive. He is an English instructor at Cypress College.
Illustration: Calum Heath.
