Waiting For The Cut

With Matt Gaetano Levin

Two men, STEVE and HAROLD, both in their early twenties, and with
long hair styles, are standing outside a small hair cutting salon on a
sweltering July afternoon. The salon is closed. STEVE, after offering a
cigarette to HAROLD—who waves it off—lights one himself and begins to
pace.

STEVE: [Checking his watch.] I hate fucking Brooklyn.
HAROLD: [Wipes his face with a balled-up handkerchief.] Brooklyn? I
don’t know about Brooklyn. Brooklyn may not be as terrible as I thought
it was. It’s hard to form an opinion when you’re rapidly losing
consciousness. Jesus, it’s like we’re standing on the sun here.
STEVE: [Looking away.] Brooklyn’s where you have to wait for this jerkoff.
HAROLD: [Rolls his neck.] This isn’t what you meant when you said he
always keeps you waiting, is it? He doesn’t pull this every time you
come here? Did you confirm the time with him?
STEVE: Yeah. Yesterday.
HAROLD: And he’s got your number? Could have reached you this morning?
STEVE: Yeah.
HAROLD: [Feeling his wrist.] Dude, my pulse is gone! [Panicked. Holds his head with both hands.] And my memory—it’s gone too!
STEVE: All of it?
HAROLD: No. I think just the last year.
STEVE: If it’s just the last year then you can still remember the last
time you got laid. [Shades his eyes. Peers into the salon window. Then
looks down the block.] He’s never been this late before. He’s gotten
much better at it. [Looks at his watch again.] My fucking watch is
sweating.
HAROLD: [Calmed down. Wipes his face again.] I think they said last
night that, factoring in the wind-chill index with the
temperature-humidity thing, today would be the hottest day in the
history of the world.
STEVE: [Distracted.] If they did they got it right. [Looks up and down the block.] It’s a goddamn hour. Where is this asshole?
HAROLD: Don’t quote me on that. Okay? I could be way off.
STEVE: [Shaking his head.] I wonder sometimes why I come here. I mean I probably should have mentioned something else:
HAROLD: What?
STEVE: He can also fuckup. In fact, he can also fuckup in a major way.
There was one fuckup that was actually beyond major, really
spectacular—worthy of its own wing in the Hall of Fuckups.
HAROLD: Yeah?
STEVE: He loved what he did. He was proud of himself. He even took a Polaroid.
HAROLD: Yeah? I don’t remember. . .
STEVE: You don’t remember because you didn’t see me for a month. I cancelled all my public appearances.
HAROLD: Wait. That was. . . ? It was that bad?
STEVE: Put it this way: I would definitely have gotten mucho action—if it’d been 1964 and I had a cockney accent.
HAROLD: You looked like a Beatle?
STEVE: Early Ringo Starr.
HAROLD: Okay. I’ve got a statement and then a question. The statement
is: Yeah, when you were bugging me to give him a shot and finally
getting me to make this trip—which I never wanted to do because nothing
I’ve seen of his work for you has blown my skirts up past my ankles—you
fucking probably should have mentioned that! The question is—and I’m
anxious to have your wisdom on this before it’s too late, while your
brain scans are still registering occasional blips. Do you figure I can
find my way back to Manhattan by myself? The “3” train, right? What is
it—four blocks this way, then hang a left?
STEVE: Let’s give him a little while longer.
HAROLD: Why? Damn. I was expecting an acceptable level of mediocrity. I
thought the worst thing I had to worry about was getting wasted in a
crossfire.
STEVE: Because you’re my friend and because speaking of “getting it right. . . ”
HAROLD: You know the barbershop in the 86th Street subway station? It’s beginning to loom as a viable option.
STEVE: We’ll give him another fifteen minutes. Okay? [Looks at his
watch.] Fifteen minutes. Exactly fifteen minutes. You can handle fifteen
minutes, can’t you?
HAROLD: [Hugs himself and pretends to shiver.] My sweat just turned very
cold. You ever hear of someone freezing to death in his own sweat?
STEVE: Listen to me. Let me tell you this. The first haircut he gave
me—when I was working the lights for a music thing in the little park
around the corner and needed a quick trim. It was strange because I
asked him for just a simple trim and at first that’s all that I thought I
got, you know? There was nothing noticeably out of the ordinary. If
anything, it seemed a little on the flat side.
HAROLD: Right. But after you washed it—and probably factoring in certain favorable atmospheric conditions…
STEVE: No. Yeah—maybe something like that. I don’t know what it was,
what he did, and whenever I bring it up he changes the subject.
HAROLD: When was this exactly?
STEVE: 1987.
HAROLD: 1987? That’s four years back in the dank and murky
past—that’s back when you were with Beth, the lost love of your
wretched, woebegone life.
STEVE: Actually it was the day before I met Beth.
HAROLD: [Startled.] He gave you a haircut the day before you met Beth?
STEVE: [Looks away.] Beth came here with me for the haircut after that
one. It was on a perfect fall afternoon—cool and clear. You could smell
apples in the air.
HAROLD: [Stares at STEVE. Then abruptly turns away from him; walks a few
steps off; stops; comes back.] Let me have one of those.
[STEVE gives HAROLD a cigarette, takes another one himself; lights them both.]
HAROLD: If he’s not here yet he’s not coming—we know that, don’t we?
STEVE: Yeah. . . I guess.
HAROLD: [Turns away again. Turns back.] Actually. . .
STEVE: What?
HAROLD: I was thinking that he could be coming. I mean there’s a chance
that he stumbled into a serious crisis situation on his way here, you
know? It’s possible that he was called upon to administer multiple
emergency mullets and buzz cuts and shit, and he could have every
intention of showing up when he’s done.
STEVE: This is weird. I was just thinking the very same thing.
HAROLD: [Motions toward STEVE’s watch.] How much time did you…?
STEVE: [Looks at his watch.] Twelve minutes now.
HAROLD: Considering that the disaster he may be dealing with could have a
heartbreaking size and scale, he might need more than just another
twelve minutes.
STEVE: A disaster of the magnitude we’re talking about. . . Yeah, I’d say he…
HAROLD: What I think is that, under the conceivable circumstances, we should go another round—give him another full hour.
STEVE: [Taken aback. Emits a quick laugh.]
HAROLD: Hey, another hour’s not unreasonable, man—not under the conceivable circumstances.
STEVE: [Holds up his hand.] No. You’re right. Absolutely. Another hour’s
more than reasonable. [Looks at Harold with a suddenly pensive
expression. Says softly. . . ] You’re on my page now.
HAROLD: And, if you think about it, man, under the conceivable
circumstances we owe him that much, don’t we? Under the conceivable
circumstances it fucking behooves us to give him another hour.
STEVE: [Looks at HAROLD with mock admiration.] That’s very good. Shit, I could learn a lot about living from you.
HAROLD: It’s not like we even have any respectable options here.
STEVE: I can’t think of any.
HAROLD: Then we’re doing it—we’re doing another hour?
STEVE: I don’t think we could live with ourselves if we didn’t. [Looks
at his watch.] Make that sixty minutes. [Squints down the block. Looks
at his watch again. Purses his lips. Grimaces.] Exactly sixty minutes.
HAROLD: [Sits on his haunches. Wipes his face with his handkerchief.
Thinks aloud.] Yeah, another hour. Who knows? That might do it. That
might be just what the prick needs us to give him.

BLACK