Gibson passed another night on the floor, lights on. In the morning, he found a laundry basket of clean clothes outside his bedroom door. An old winter coat and sweater hung from the doorknob. Toby had left him a note along with car keys and a hundred dollars. The note advised him to bundle up and listed the address of a barbershop. At the bottom, the note read, “Come and give Sana a hug when you look presentable. She sends her love.”
As he weighed his options for the future, Toby and Sana made a compelling argument for rejoining the human race. Just as Damon Washburn made the case for scrubbing his hands of the whole miserable experiment. Unfortunately, as much as he admired the Kalpars, he wasn’t like them. And of the two paths, only Damon Washburn gave Gibson a sense of purpose.
Gibson would thank Washburn for that when he saw him.
He turned over Toby’s note and wrote a list of errands. Everything he’d need to begin his hunt. Step one: even if he no longer felt at home in the world, he would need to pass for someone who did. He wouldn’t get very far looking like he’d escaped from an asylum.
The sleeves of Toby’s sweater and coat were too long, but Gibson wore them gratefully. He scooped up the money and car keys and packed his duffel bag. He wouldn’t spend another night under their roof. Toby and Sana saw him as a reclamation project, but he had no intention of being reclaimed. Damon Washburn would pay, and Gibson, in turn, would pay the price to see that he did.
Bear cleared her throat. “What about Ellie? You promised to take care of her.”
“I am.”
“You’re giving up. Coward! What kind of father does this?”
“A bad one.”
“You promised. How can you do this?” Arms crossed, Bear waited for an answer and stomped her foot when he started getting ready to leave instead. “I hate you.”
“Yeah,” Gibson said. “I hate me too.”
Gibson had been driving since he was thirteen, and sitting behind the wheel of Toby’s car, he felt thirteen again. He circled the block a couple of times until he started to get the hang of it.
The Arlington barbershop was both resiliently old-school and multicultural. Three of the six chairs were staffed by Greek men in their sixties, the fourth by a Filipina woman, the fifth by a young African man with an indomitable smile, and the last by a stout Brazilian woman who sang as she worked. Five of the six chairs were occupied, and several customers waited for their regular barber. Customers and barbers alike paused at the sight of Gibson, who stood awkwardly in the doorway, fighting his urge to flee.
One of the Greek barbers, lounging in his chair reading the Post’s sports section, whistled appreciatively at the apparition in the shop’s doorway.
“God has sent us a wise man,” the barber said. “What tidings do you bring us from the east?”
The shop roared with laughter.
“And what has he done with his two friends?” another asked, picking up the joke.
“Where’s the frankincense?” bantered a third.
When the barber saw Gibson hadn’t joined in, he hopped up and beckoned to his chair. “Come in out of the cold, my friend. Come. Sit.”
The shop sprang back to life after Gibson took a seat. The barber swept the cape around Gibson and studied him in the mirror. He tried and failed to run a comb through the rat’s nest of Gibson’s hair.
“You offer a unique challenge, my friend. What are your intentions?”
“High and tight,” Gibson replied.
The barber didn’t understand, so Gibson held up his thumb and forefinger, half an inch apart. “That long.” He narrowed his fingers until they almost touched. “The sides.”
“And the beard?”
“Gone.”
The barber nodded his head in agreement. “A fresh start. You are a wise man after all.”
The barber went to work with electric clippers, hair falling away in long sheaves like winter wheat to the scythe as a face that Gibson recognized slowly reemerged. When the beard was no more than stubble, the barber reclined the chair and lathered his face with warm foam and shaved him with a straight razor. The barber held up a mirror so Gibson could judge his handiwork.
“An improvement,” said the barber. “Very handsome.”
Gibson studied his gaunt features in the mirror. He’d lost a lot of weight but looked almost civilized. Almost. The running scar that laced his neck from ear to ear lent him a frightening aspect. It would make him too memorable, and he would need to let his beard grow back. But it was nice to be clean-shaven for a moment. He traced the old wound with his fingers—a permanent reminder of how close he’d come to dying in the basement of his childhood home, and of the man who’d tried to hang him there. The man had told him that it would take a long time to die when hanged from that height. The short drop, he’d called it. Perhaps, Gibson thought, he was still dying in that basement and everything since had just been a fantasy.
He couldn’t be that lucky.
“Stop thinking like that,” Duke said.
“Get out of my head.”
“You’re not the only one he hung in that basement, you know. But I don’t have a scar. No one came to save me.”
“I was only a kid.”
“Always an excuse.”
“That’s not fair,” Gibson said.
He realized that the barbershop had fallen silent and that all eyes were on him. Watching the crazy man talking to thin air. He apologized meekly and tried to pay for his haircut.
“Keep it,” the barber said. “Merry Christmas.”
Bear was waiting in the car—a little dark cloud of judgment. She and his father were taking turns beating up on him today.
“Bear. Not now. Please.”
She didn’t move or blink.
“What?” Gibson asked. “What do you want from me?”
“You’re going to regret this.”
“I’m not safe to be around Ellie.”
“And you think getting even with Damon Washburn will help that?”
Gibson tried to convince her, but it came out all wrong. Bear continued to press her case all the way over to the bank, even after he had parked. His head ached, and he needed to go in and see if he had any money left in his account, but he didn’t trust himself around people with Bear hectoring him this way. Gibson was sick of listening to her. His mind was made up. It might not be a perfect plan, but it was the plan he needed. He snapped at Bear to give it a rest, and when he glanced over again, she was gone.