Ike pulled into the parking lot of the strip mall and parked the truck.
“Stay in here,” Ike said.
“Shit, you ain’t gotta tell me twice,” Buddy Lee said. He reached into the cup holder and retrieved his knife. He held it out toward Ike.
“What I’m supposed to do with that?”
“Stick people with the sharp end.”
“I ain’t gonna need that,” Ike said.
“Look, you said there was a long story to this shit. In my experience that usually means shit didn’t end all copacetic. You don’t need to go walking in there naked. So it’s either this or the gun,” Buddy Lee said. Ike’s eyes settled on the knife. Maybe he should take it. How long had it been since he’d talked to Lance? Ten years? A lot of things can change in that time. People forget their debts. Their loyalties change and shift like smoke. The knife would be protection. The gun would be an act of aggression.
Ike grabbed the knife and put it in his front pocket.
“I’ll be right back,” Ike said.
“Ain’t like I was gonna run a marathon. Just don’t lose it,” Buddy Lee said. Ike gave him a look.
“You ain’t gotta worry about that,” Ike said,
* * *
Ike heard the robotic ding of a doorbell as he entered the barbershop. There were five chairs with five different men and boys of various ages in them. The shop smelled of cleaning chemicals, machine oil, and air fresheners that reminded him of cheap cologne. The far-left wall was a bank of mirrors. The far-right wall had posters of Michael Jordan dunking, Mike Tyson boxing, and a chart of various hairstyles along with the prices for said hairstyles. A fifty-inch flat screen dominated the rest of the wall. The Wizards were playing the Celtics as subtitles crawled across the bottom. A slice of late-nineties R&B was raining down from a couple of speakers in the ceiling.
“Be with you in a minute, chief,” said one of the barbers, an older man with white sideburns but coal-black hair on top. The cacophony of buzzing coming from the various trimmers sounded like lazy hornets flying around the clients’ heads.
“I’m looking for Slice. He here?” Ike asked. The older man stopped and gave Ike a long once-over.
“Who’s asking?” the older barber asked. Ike hesitated.
“Riot. Riot Randolph,” he said.
The clippers in the old barber’s hand started to tremble. He snuck a glance toward the back of the building. A pair of blue velvet curtains hung over an opening there.
“Hang on,” the old man said. He flicked a button on the side of the clippers and sat them on the shelf behind him. A cell phone appeared in his hand. Ike watched as the man’s thumbs flew over the screen. Seconds ticked by and then the older man looked up at Ike.
“Take a seat,” he said.
“You gonna finish or you want me to come back?” the older barber’s client asked. The rest of the guys in the shop burst out laughing.
“Slow your roll, young buck, or my Parkinson’s might kick in,” the older barber said.
“You ain’t got no Parkinson’s, Maurice,” the client said.
“But that’s what I’ll tell people when they ask why I chopped your head up, though. I’m just a confused old man,” Maurice said, adding comical withered intonation to his voice at the end of his statement. Another burst of laughter filled the shop. Ike sat in the last chair in a row of chairs bolted to the floor and to each other. Ike felt a hair tickle his throat. He coughed and grimaced. The muscles in his chest felt like they were wound tight as a fishing reel. Every breath made him wince. The pain in his body was getting close to matching the pain in his soul.
“Look at this shit. Man, I don’t know why they got this stuff on the TV,” a large man in the third chair getting his beard dyed said. He pointed at the flat screen, bringing his hand from under the smock covering his upper body. Ike followed the man’s finger and saw a commercial for a show about a drag-show competition.
“You know why it’s on. White folks love seeing Black men in dresses. It’s a whole thing about feminizing us, making us weak,” the barber dyeing his beard said.
“It’s a C-O-N-spiracy, huh, Tyrone?” a young light-skinned brother working on a client’s lineup said.
“Oh, you don’t think they want our ‘women’—quote, unquote—independent and our men weak and gay? That’s how they keep us in line. It ain’t paranoia if it’s true, Lavell,” Tyrone said. Lavell laughed.