But in the mornings, to wake up, to get the resolve he needed before the office back-and-forth started, he went swimming. The office loomed in front of him. It was the type of experience that would become so entrenched later in life that it would be hard to look back at this moment and think of a time when offices were new. They were life now; then they were soul-sucking. Those mornings, he’d drive to a parking spot in the woods, shedding his khakis and blazer on the backseat, and he’d walk down to the empty lake, the tight green around it and the cool air coming off the water. He walked into the water, never ran, swam out as far toward the far-side trees as he could, turned over, looked up. When he was ready he swam back.
• • •
At the barber’s Javi was talking to him. It wasn’t usual, that Javi talked to him. There had been a time once when he wanted a conversation with his barber, after having read old stories about barbers singing in your ear, giving all the political conversation. But not after looking at a computer screen all day, reading news reports and industry updates, his only break from the machine when he walked to the bathroom, which his company docked half an hour of pay for each day. They assumed half an hour each day was what people usually spent. They wanted employees to be in their seats, emailing with the companies they represented. After hours of that, Andrew looked forward to the period of useful silence, of animated quiet, that the trip to the barber’s provided. How there was no sound, and he could hibernate in his own head, because someone else was already working.
Javi was asking about work. How it was, whether he liked it. Whether he’d had time to go to a Mets game this season.
Work’s fine, Andrew said. We just got the crop of summer interns in, so it’s making life a little easier for the junior consultants.
That’s good, Javi said, encouraging.
And it’s always nice to see some young people, especially of the female persuasion, Andrew said. He grinned and looked up at Javi to grin with him. But perhaps he hadn’t heard. Andrew looked back in the mirror and remembered that Javi had a daughter. He wasn’t sure if that kind of thing mattered.
Your father has not been in in a while, Javi announced.
Huh, Andrew said. He didn’t know why this would be. He said so. Think he needs a haircut? Andrew said.
Oh yes, said Javi, everybody needs haircuts. Especially in the summer. It keeps the cool in the head. Very important. You can keep cool heads.
Andrew shifted in his chair. He watched the sculpting of his head that was taking place in the mirror. Don’t people usually have cool heads around here? Andrew asked. That’s sort of what Marine Park is, no? A bunch of cool heads?
Javi cut a difficult part around the ear and nodded slowly. Yes, he said, but sometimes no. He went on to elaborate how the other day, while he’d been on his way to work, walking down Quentin Road, he saw a crowd surrounding a man lying on the sidewalk, and when he got closer he realized that a woman was screaming next to him, or trying to scream. She was screaming in a way by which you could tell she’d been screaming for a long time. Javi asked if someone should do something, and the man next to him, in a firehouse T-shirt, said that the trucks were already on their way. Another man in a firehouse T-shirt was kneeling with the man on the ground, trying to hold his arms away from his head, which was bleeding. The fireman held the hands down with one of his own, pulled off his T-shirt, wrapped it around the back of the man’s bleeding head, to act as a cushion at least, even if he couldn’t stop the blood. The bleeding man’s hands continued reaching for the blood spot on his head. Javi shook his head, asked the obligatory question. Someone next to him said, A hammer. He got into a shouting match, and the attacker pulled a hammer out of his backpack. The man stood his ground, because he couldn’t believe that anything would happen. Then the hammer man stepped forward and started swinging. The bleeding man fell. Finally something snapped in the hammer man, and he stopped swinging, and ran away.
Andrew had turned to look at Javi while he told the story, the scissors fallen to Javi’s side. Did the man who told you all this see it happen? Andrew asked. Javi shrugged. Sure, I think so. Andrew pressed, He saw it with his own eyes? Someone with a hammer? Javi shook his head again. People are people, he said. I heard what I heard. They all had long hair, he added. Not good in the summer.