Don Lee - The Collective

My period of leisure was over. My novella would have to wait. I taught myself how to do projections and budgets on spreadsheets, segment lists on a relational database, and put together RFPs and consolidate bids. I was busier than I had ever been in my life, in the shithole until late every night, working on weekends as well, but, still hurting over Mirielle, I was grateful for the distraction, and I was even, to my surprise and embarrassment, sort of enjoying myself. I was learning things, getting things done. The work was tangible. You set goals, deadlines, and there was an end result. I realized I had an aptitude for number-crunching and strategic planning, and, for the first time, I felt like a grown-up.

At Filene’s Basement, I bought a blue blazer, khaki trousers, wingtips, and a couple of button-downs and ties, in addition to a rollerboard. I took the US Airways shuttle to D.C. for the next seminar, spending three nights at the Marriott, not far from the Capitol, where the Senate was wrapping up Clinton’s impeachment hearing. When I got back to Cambridge, Joshua took a gander at me in my outfit, wheeling my rollerboard behind me, and said, “Dude, what is happening to you? What are you turning into ?”

Since I was working much of the time, Joshua had been hanging out with Jimmy Fung, whose business at Pink Whistle had flourished for a while, largely due to the 3AC’s extended network. The thing about Jimmy was that he knew Asian hair, which was different from Caucasian hair — thicker, heavier, coarser, harder to cut, more prone to cowlicks. Moreover, like Asian faces, the backs of Asian heads were broader and flatter, and needed extra volume. When Asian hair was cropped ineptly, every mistake was magnified. After childhoods of mothers giving us bobs and bowl haircuts with square bangs (the China doll, the Caesar, the Cleopatra, the Stooge), after being butchered at salons with white hairdressers, it was a relief for Asians to find someone like Jimmy, who used texturizing scissors and razors to chop off some of the bulk before styling, then could layer and shape and soften the hair so it was feathery and light, so it fit the face and skull, so it had some brio and élan. “You have to conceive it like art,” he would say. “It’s like doing sculpture.”

Jimmy was, actually, very good at what he did. Clients came in, asking him to replicate the styles of Asian pop and movie stars, and he could readily turn them into Faye Wong ( Chungking Express ), Norika Fujiwara ( CanCam model), or Chow Yun-Fat (the coolest actor in the world). I myself got my hair cut by Jimmy at Pink Whistle, partial to the Yun-Fat.

For several months, the place was hopping. Jimmy renovated Pink Whistle, making the interior slick and flashy, with several TVs continuously playing music videos, Cantopop blaring all day long. He hired another stylist, a colorist, and a manicurist. But then things took a downturn. Clients failed to return, and new ones weren’t materializing. He had to fire all his help and now worked alone again. The problem was, Jimmy Fung — ever the hustler — was also a lecher. He kept hitting on his female clients, as well as his staff.

“He’s an inveterate sleazebag, isn’t he?” I said to Joshua.

Joshua, who had been acting as Jimmy’s pro tempore advisor, said, “He’s not so bad.”

Only guys continued going to Pink Whistle, lured in by the increasingly salacious videos, but men’s haircuts weren’t nearly as profitable as perms, body waves, color treatments, and highlights. Jimmy was in trouble. He had overextended himself with the renovations, for which, Joshua told me, he had borrowed money from a less than savory source. Jimmy was trying to think of what else he could do to bring in more income.

I went into Pink Whistle for a trim one day, and noticed a change. There was a girl in the salon — a very young Asian girl, possibly only sixteen or so. She was wearing a spaghetti-strap tank top and tight capri pants, and she was feather-dusting the bottles on the shelves.

“Is Jimmy here?” I asked. “I have an appointment for a haircut.”

She was pretty, although her appeal might have been that she was so young, and therefore illicit. Normally I would have censured this kind of pedophiliac impulse, the mere thought of it, but she was staring at me in an openly provocative way, eyes unwavering. They were dead eyes, though — disdainful, sullen.

“Jimmy come back fifteen minute,” the girl said, her voice nasal and grating. “You want shampoo?”

“I’ll just come back later.”

“I give you shampoo!” she shouted shrilly.

I sat down in the chair. She wrapped a vinyl cape around my neck, attaching the Velcro much too tightly, yet I was too cowed to complain. I leaned my head back into the basin, nestling my neck into the curved cradle, and she sprayed water (much too hot, but again I kept quiet) onto my hair, then lathered it up, leaning over me, her arms squeezing her breasts — not large, but perfectly contoured — together so they distended and contracted inches from my face. She was rough, raking her fingers against my scalp, yanking on my hair. I doubted she had had any professional training as a shampooist at all.

“You want massage?” she asked me as she rinsed. “I give you massage.”

I thought she meant a scalp treatment, one that would undoubtedly require paying for an expensive oil or conditioner. “No, thanks, that’s all right,” I said.

“I give you massage!”

“No! Thank you, but no.”

“Why no massage? You gay? You like boy?”

Then I began to comprehend what was going on. Sitting in the stylist chair while I waited for Jimmy, I looked up at the mirror and saw a new sign Scotch-taped to the top corner: Pink Whistle special massages now available. Many varieties. Fifteen minutes, half hour, full hour.

By the time Jimmy returned, my hair was already dry. The girl had sat in the room with me for a while, slapping aside pages in a magazine, occasionally glaring at me, then had disappeared into Pink Whistle’s antiques store/art gallery section.

“Hey, man, sorry about that,” Jimmy said, spritzing water onto my hair. “I was sitting in the Dolphin, getting lunch, and I was having a coffee, thinking, Man, the day’s going so slowly. Then I realized my watch had stopped. Believe that? It’s a fucking Rolex. Okay, it’s a knockoff Rolex, but a good one. It’s lasted me years.”

“You got it in Hong Kong?”

“What? No. New York, mate. Canal Street.”

He clipped away at my hair, tousling strands and switching between the scissors, shears, and razor. “The girl washed your hair?” he asked. “Yeah, course she did. Don’t expect you did it yourself.” He had on a vintage paisley shirt, unbuttoned nearly to his navel, dzi beads dangling from his neck. He was the only one among our group who had gotten a 3AC tattoo, on his upper left arm, just like Joshua’s. “What’d you think of her?”

“She’s Chinese?” I asked.

“Thai.”

That figured. “I don’t know, seems competent enough.”

He snipped and whittled. “You’re not going out with anyone right now, are you?” he asked near the end of the haircut. “You and Mirielle broke up, right?”

“Almost a month ago.”

“You haven’t hooked up with anyone else?”

“No,” I said. Then I added, ridiculously, maybe out of machismo, “Been too busy.”

“Understandable, understandable. What do you do again? A science magazine, is it?”

“Literary journal.”

“Right, right. As I was saying, a lot of guys I know are in the same position, too jammed to even breathe these days. Can’t stop to take a goddamn break and relax for one minute, am I right?”