Boulder
Jonah, the barber, came half an hour later.
Never had I seen someone look so ridiculous. The man was about my age and had a hairdo and a beard that had me seriously doubting his sanity. It was cut to look like what can best be described as an open-mouthed shark, ready to attack.
The sharp point of hair on his forehead was mirrored by his beard cut into the same pointy “teeth” look.
“Oh wow, you truly weren’t exaggerating,” Jonah breathed to David and looked us over with curiosity.
“No, these are real Nmen,” David said. “The question is, how do we make them blend in?”
“Leave that to me, I’ve always loved a challenge,” Jonah said excitedly and pointed to me. “You,” he commanded, “we’ll start with you.”
I exchanged a glance with Magni, silently telling him that I didn’t appreciate being bossed around by a Momsiboy and that I didn’t feel comfortable with Jonah’s style.
“Make it as simple as possible,” Magni said. “Aren’t there any normal-looking men here?”
“Normal-looking men?” David asked. “I’m pretty ordinary, I think.”
“You look like a boy with that flawless skin, and how come you don’t even have a stubble? Did you just shave?”
“No.” David shook his head. “I had my beard removed permanently.”
“You did what?” He might as well have told me he had his dick removed by surgery. What kind of man would do something that absurd?
“It’s standard here; actually, Jonah’s having a beard is uncommon,” David explained.
“Well, I don’t want eyebrows like that.” I pointed to David’s fine lines that curved unnaturally and returned my gaze to Jonah. “And I don’t want my hair to look like sharp teeth like yours. Just make it simple.”
“Oh my, aren’t you a big dictator,” Jonah purred, and his feminine way of flicking his eyes at me made me take a step back.
“Come on, darling, take a seat.” He pulled out a chair and I hesitantly moved to it.
Bending forward and letting his hands run along my jaw, Jonah said, “I would looove to go crazy on you but since you won’t appreciate my art, I guess we’re doing it the boring way.”
“Yes, as boring as possible,” I agreed.
“We’ll need make-up,” he muttered and frowned. “You both have scars and that’s rare to see here. We take really good care of our skin, and we have excellent surgeons should we be unfortunate enough to get a scar.”
With a hand under my chin he moved my head from side to side. “You have nice bone structure; we could do an elegant cut that would enhance that – hmm, maybe go with a vintage look.”
“What’s a vintage look?”
“Undercut in the neck and over the ears and longer on top,” he explained. “It’s a classical hairdo that was popular back in the day and one you can still get away with, although most would never dream of doing something that boring.” He gave another long speculative glance at me. “Or I could braid your hair in the butterfly style. That would look pretty.”
“Cut it,” I said. To me this was about more than blending in. I wanted Christina to find me attractive, and maybe cutting my hair would have the same effect on her as the time I shaved for her.
My hands clenched the armrests of the chair tightly when Jonah went to work. I didn’t have a mirror but felt my long hair fall to the floor indiscriminately.
I can grow my hair back, I kept telling myself, and truth be told there were men in the Northlands who preferred their hair short. It was rare, but not as uncommon as it had been when I was a child.
A childhood memory played in flashback – when the master at the school I grew up in had once shaved off all my hair because of problems with lice among the children. If I had been the only one it would have been humiliating, but he did it to all thirty of us and that left all the students in the same boat. I vaguely remembered the feeling of running my hand over the short hair back then and liking it.
“Voilà,” Jonah exclaimed after a while. “Boring, but still much better than the messy nest you had on your head before.”
I stood up and brushed hair off my shoulders before I moved to the bathroom and looked myself in the mirror. The front of my hair fell down in an edgy way but the sides and my neck were completely short.
“Do you like it?” Jonah asked behind me, meeting my eyes in the mirror.
“It reminds me of something from an old movie I once saw,” I commented.
“Yeah, like I said, it’s vintage.” He tilted his head. “With your full beard you kind of look like an old-school hipster, but it won’t work here. The beard has to go, or I could cut it in an elegant pattern if you’d like. How about waves, or little hearts?”
I looked at his hideous beard again and made a quick decision. “I’ll shave it off.
“Good. But turn around first.”
I did and Jonah, who was almost a head shorter than me, lifted his hands.
“Bend your knees, giant, I need to do your eyebrows and I can’t reach.”
“Don’t mess with my eyebrows,” I said again.
“Come on, big boy, trust me, will you?” Hoping that he would do something boring and old-fashioned like he had with my hair I bent down so he could reach.
It took him only a minute and then he signaled that he was done. “I just made them less bushy.”
He hadn’t made them into fine lines like David’s, and I almost sighed with relief when I saw that they looked fine.
“Good. So, project number one, you’ll shave while I go and take a look at project number two.”
“My name is Boulder,” I told him. “And my friend is called Magni.”
“Nice to meet you, Boulder,” he said. “I’m Jonah, as in Jonah and the whale,” he pointed to his hair. “You get the reference from my design.”
“No,” I said honestly. “I don’t.”
He opened his mouth and bared his teeth dramatically. “You know, like a big white whale.”
“Ahh, you mean a white shark?”
“No, a whale,” he insisted.
I crossed my arms. “You do know that whales didn’t have teeth, right?”
“Of course they did. How else would it eat Jonah?”
I shook my head. “Jonah wasn’t eaten, he was swallowed.”
“Says who?”
“The Bible,” I answered calmly. “Don’t you learn anything in school here?”
“Oh, I’ve heard of the Bible.” He nodded. “My class focused on Greek mythology but I had a friend who learned about Christian mythology, and he was the one who told me about Jonah and the whale. They were terrifying creatures that could eat a man whole.”
“They didn’t eat people.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “You would understand if you saw a picture.”
“I’ve seen pictures and I’m telling you that whales didn’t eat people; you’re thinking of sharks.
“How would you know?” Jonah said, slightly offended. “Have you ever seen either of them in real life?”
“That’s a stupid question since they’re extinct,” I pointed out dryly.
“They were almost extinct, but I’ve heard there are still some left and not to brag or anything, but we’ve brought back lots of extinct animals so I bet the oceans will be full of them again soon.”
I gave up arguing with the small man and went to watch him give Magni a makeover.
“Braids or haircut?” Jonah asked.
“Braids,” Magni said after looking at me. “I’m not fucking cutting my hair like that.”
“Wonderful, I’ll make you really pretty.” Jonah eagerly started combing Magni’s hair. “By Mother Nature, have you ever heard of hair products?” he complained. “Your hair desperately needs a deep impact treatment.”
Magni had his eyes closed and I was sure he was trying to refrain from saying something vile.
“And your beard?” Jonah asked when he was done. I had to look away to swallow my laugh. Jonah had braided blue ribbons into Magni’s mane and created what he called a butterfly braid.
“What do you think?” he proudly asked me.
“It’s… lovely,” I said, my lips twitching from my suppressed grin. Magni got up with a scowl and moved to the bathroom, where I heard a deep groan.
When he was clean-shaven and we had both suffered through Jonah’s fashion tips and been schooled on what colors worked with our complexion and shit, I looked at Magni, who was wearing a blue scarf that complimented the blue ribbons in his hair.
“I love it,” Jonah said and clapped his hands with excitement. “The turquoise color truly makes your blue eye pop out, and you…” He turned to me holding up two different scarves against my face, biting his inner cheek over what looked like the toughest question of his existence. “I think we’re going to go with golden. Yes, those piercing gray eyes of yours can use the warm contrast.”
I had to stand still while Jonah arranged the scarf in a fashionable way and when he finally announced he was done, Magni pulled me close with his eyes narrowed.
“I swear, if you ever tell anyone about me dressing this way, I’ll use that hair remover I took from David tonight and make sure you live the rest of your life without eyebrows.”
“Right back at you,” I groaned. “And just so you know, I don’t think I would stop with the eyebrows.”
“So we never speak of this,” Magni stated firmly.
“No.” I didn’t point out that if we were successful our wives would see us in this pitiful state.
“So, where is it that you need to go exactly?” David asked us.
“My wife is a professor at a university called New Berkeley; do you know it?”
He nodded, “Yes, it’s down in Old San Francisco, but that’s hours away”
“So?” I challenged him. “You have a drone.”
“It’s not my drone. It’s a public drone and a trip like that would cost me all my energy points.” He sighed and looked at Magni. “And your wife?”
“I don’t know where she is.”
Confusion spread on David’s face. “You want me to guide you to your wife but you don’t know where she is.”
Looking tormented, Magni tensed his jaw. “That’s right, I don’t know where she is. Her name is Laura and she’s a Northwoman.”
“Wow…” Jonah whistled. “Talk about impossible odds.”
“We’ll go to find Christina, and look for Laura on the way,” Magni ordered.
“All right.” David looked at Jonah. “Thank you for your help. May peace surround you my friend.”
“No, no,” Jonah chuckled. “I’m coming with you; this is too exciting to miss out on.”
David lit up. “You sure?”
“Yeah, we can use some of my energy points too. I’ve never been on a guys’ trip before – this is like a real adventure, right, boys?” Jonah was smiling from ear to ear.
“We’re men, not boys.” I said firmly and didn’t miss the irony of my first meeting with Christina when she’d felt offended because I called her a girl.
“Let’s go,” Magni ordered and led the way to the drone.