Joni gave a great shampoo and an okay haircut. I'd been to her often enough that we'd adopted the comfortable barber/regular customer tone that invites intimacy. So, on this particular day when I sat down in her chair and asked what was going on in her life, I expected a good story. Joni did not disappoint. She smiled a slightly wicked smile and reported that she'd had a blind date.
“How'd it work out?”
She leaned the chair back, laid a towel across my chest and set up her tools and shampoo before answering. Finally she said, “He seemed nice enough; so I let him kiss me good night and all; but when I went back and parked across the street from his house the next night, you know what I saw?”
“You had a date with him the next night?” I asked.
“No, I just wanted to check him out, you know, just to see what he did when he thought nobody was watching.”
She was shampooing my hair and she had very strong hands.
“About 8 o'clock he brings this woman back to his house, can you believe that? This was one night after his date with me.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Well, I went up and knocked on the door and when he opened it, I told him that I didn't like sloppy seconds and he should never to call me again or I'd have my father pay him a visit. I said it real loud so his new girl friend was sure to hear.”
“You'd slept with him?”
“Do you think I'm the kind of girl that would go to bed with a guy on the first date?”
She stopped what she was doing and stepped around so I could look at her. She was in her mid-thirties, trim and had a pretty face, but there was something about her that reminded me of that line from Jaws where Quint says, “The thing about a shark, he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes.”
As Joni used a straight razor to square off my sideburns and shave the back of my neck, I wondered how many second dates she'd had in her life, but I didn't ask.
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