Following Fish

the hair

Ruth was right. I immediately spot Davis Tauber by his hair. It is, as she said, a lot of hair. Not in a long way, but in an Einstein or Beethoven way. It's a pallet of greys, whites, and tired blond, with a texture that is either good body or bad hygiene. Not ready to approach, I take a seat and observe the back of him. He is skinny and dressed in wild prints and vintage fabrics. Worn sneakers support a relentlessly jangling leg. The angle of his knees spilling out from beneath the tabletop suggests that he is tall, lanky even. He is concave, with his face over a large book. His left-hand scribbles in an even larger leather-bound journal. He stops, suddenly. Then drops his pen and spins around.

"Oh good, it's you."

I look around and realize he is talking to me.

"I thought maybe there was a spider on the wall looking at me. You know how you can feel their eyes on you, all eight of them, when you're both in the shower, you and the spider I mean. But, it's just you. Not just you. Just, I'm glad you're not a spider. How about you?"

"How about me, what?"

"Are you glad you're not a spider?"

"If I were a spider I'd have to spend a fortune on glasses. So, maybe better that I'm not."

He considers this, while he sips his coffee. His eyes look past and above me. He strokes his chin and wrinkles his brow. "Worse is if you wore bifocals." He says this quite earnestly.

His face looks small under his hair. His features have a putty look about them. I am tempted to pinch his cheeks and see if they hold that form, but sense that would not be okay, even for this odd person. Some of his hair has taken up residence in the form of a mustache. Thin and grey, migrating down the grooves of his laugh lines, stopping before they populate his chin.

"Though, if I were a spider," I muse, "I could probably rig up a monocle to function for all the eyes, simultaneously."

"That would save money." He's now sitting backwards on his chair, still clutching the coffee cup. "Are you getting anything?" He says after surveying my empty table.

"Yes." I get up and and order, when I return with my drink he is sitting at my table. In my seat. He runs his hand, not through, but around his hair.

"You're Lucee Lekki." He stretches the "you're" like a taffy pull.

"Bruce is telling people my last name now?"

"Bruce? No. I mean, I know Bruce, but I know you from school. From work. I mean, I work at the university. I saw you read your poems. I remember your hair. Your hair and the poems. The alliteration in your poems, and in your name. Lucee Lekki." He repeats my name three more times. It's clear that it's a phonetic delight for him to say it.

"It's my married name." His eyes, the color of last night's dress, flash to my wedding band. I keep talking. "You're in the art department?"

"Math."

"Really?"

"Why so surprised, Lucee Lekki?" He takes a bite of a scone that appears from nowhere.

"I just bought a piece of yours, so I figured art department." He laughs. Cackles? I realize he thinks I've made a pun when I said "figured art." A quick and tangential brain is under all that hair.

"I saw you looking at that last night. I was going to say hello, but I split when I saw Hugh."

"So did I."

We both laugh. His attention makes a sharp and perceptible shift. To what? I don't know.

"Well that's great; you bought it." He stands abruptly, his putty face sculpts itself into a wicked smile. "See you around, Lucee Lekki."

He scoops up his books and is gone.

The interaction with Davis leaves me so emotionally off-balance that when I exit the coffee shop, I reflexively go to collect Fischer. Who, of course, is not there. The words that I wish to say to him are turning to hot lava in my mouth so I whisper them to him and no one at the same time.

"I just met a real weirdo, buddy."