Louis's Sundays

His place is about this size.

Record muggy heat this morning, and as I got the Rollator out of the car and started tottering across the parking lot to Louis' hair salon (currently a single basement room in a big apartment building) it crossed my mind -- for the first time -- that I might not be able to do this much longer.  Louis and I have met monthly for half a century now.  While I struggled with the doors, I was rehearsing how to ask if he ever made house calls.
     Then as I inched into a chair he whipped the cape around my neck and said "I have something to tell you.
"They just raised my rent here and I've decided to quit the business.  It'll be hard on the ones that need color, but for just a haircut, and someone like you who pays in cash [?!] I could come to your house, starting in September."
     It struck me as what Annie used to call "COSMIC."      Louis lost his wife some months ago, and as he snipped away he told me that he goes to the cemetary every Sunday, visits his wife's grave and "I talk to her.  Then there's this guy who's at his wife's stone about 100 yards away.  So then the two of us go to breakfast  at McDonald's.  We get the special deal on two Egg McMuffins with sausage, and two free senior coffees."

 
 
 
 





"And then we go to the track and bet on the horses."