Addiction can manifest into shapes which may or may not be recognized. At this moment, it shaped into thinking about an unimportant occurrence. Just staring blankly at a paper in front of me, with a pen grasped by my hand, and forbidding my focus to leave my head. The focus leads all of the thoughts to me like a shepherd. The simple matters want attention, so they use every method to be the subject of my thinking.
In my office, I was thinking what could have made the tower of despair put its shadow on a lady I saw while riding the bus to the barbershop. What is the emotion that was the subject of her face? Sadness? Fear? Was It related to her family? Or perhaps money? Money...money…money...right! With a simple and sharp left turn,my senses were back and they made me rediscover the reason I was in my office in the first place. The income of February wasn’t enough for the barbershop’s costs, I was informed of that while reviewing the income and expenses for this month. It feels as if everyone is on a vacation to another universe. I didn’t expect managing a barbershop would be an easy task, but I had become quite shocked at the weight I felt on my shoulders.
I continued to think about any solutions to our problem. At the same time that I was thinking, the song New Year by Beach House put me in a comfortable and perfect spot. The bridge that let this sensation reach me was my headphones. This was something I really appreciated about Dev. He consumed music more than anyone, so naturally he was the one who recommended the artist to me. He too was in the office, watching a movie on his phone, or was it a series? He was holding his phone with the scarred palm of his.
He stood near the door in front of Jules. She was listening to music just like me. Definitely something that Dev recommended. Jules was passionate about films and series more than any of us. Although one of her eyes couldn’t see the world in its fullest and the color of the eye had a little bit of whiteness to it. She definitely recommended what Dev was watching. I’ve known these two for a while now. They helped me shape the barbershop. Guess we’ve grown more than business partners.
The more I kept on thinking, the more distracted I became. I wished I could’ve just met an impenetrable obstacle and reached the conclusion that more of my savings had to be spent, but I continued riding on the train of thought with no clear stops. Even if I jump off, I would only travel an endless fall. Before getting trapped forever in the train, the front door of the office moved. It revealed a man who was affected by the grasp of time, welcoming him to his forties. He was known to all of us and he always transferred the warmth of his emotions to us. Dev, Jules and I greeted him and shook his hand, then Jules went to make some of her finest tea and Dev brought a chair and took his coat and backpack from him. He was mainly here to see me, I thought. The start of conversation was on me:
“Great seeing you again Charles.”
“More pleasure for me, Jayce.”
Charles had a warm fatherly voice that always reminded me of my own dad. His voice also had the gentleness of my mother, at least that’s what I felt. Then I continued:
”It was a shame to see you leave the community. Your bakery definitely helped us through tough times”
“Surely, it did. But not even Jayce the Shepherd could have saved that business.”
“I did go the extra mile for you. Jesus, I miss those cookies of yours.”
“Well luckily for all of you...”
Charles pointed at his backpack and Dev brought it for him faster than I could see what he was pointing at. He opened his backpack and pulled out a bag cookie and a box full of muffins. He said:”Your favourites.” and gave the cookies to me and the box of muffins to Dev. Jules immediately reentered the room after smelling the scent of the soothing muffins. Dev asked:”You still make them?”
“Can’t be helped. I’d continue making them for all of you even in the afterlife.” He finished that sentence with a smile.
After some time Jules, muffin still in her mouth, brought her magnificent tea for all of us. Charles and I continued our conversation.
“Feeling safe in the new neighborhood?”
“Oh, actually I’m living with Frank instead. His girlfriend broke up with him not long ago, so there was some space for his old man.”
“In that case, we can be blessed by your regular visits. Right?”
“Definitely. I assume you have found some use for the empty space my store produced?”
“Luckily Lucka did. He’s connected both his store and yours.The guy has some plans of his own. Pretty eager to execute them too.”
“What does he plan to do with that much space?”
“Well, he did get an album out. Caught himself a decent audience. Typically he has to organize a concert. Most artists just reserve a pub or club and give a share to the owner, but with that much space he has no one to give his share to other than himself. I think the concert will be in a week or so.”
“Well, happy to hear my misery had a benefit to someone.”
We all had a chuckle after that answer. Jules seemed to have enjoyed herself more than all of us. Warm moments with Charles passed quicker than it should have had. He left behind his warm goodbye with us.
*
An hour later we were getting ready to have our monthly meeting. Few problems arose in the past months but the doom they could have brought us had little to no forgiveness.
At the time of meetings I don’t like anyone to intrerupt us, not even the earth meeting the atmosphere concerns me during these times. And so what was brought to me moments later was much more bothersome than anything anyone would experience. With cheerful shouting and laid back language, Lucka barged through the door.
“Heeeeeyyy. What.is.going. ON people. AH, There is our guy. Not even jesus can top THIS guy. Give me the welcome smooch, eh?”
His first step towards me met the ground and I made him not to take the second step with the anger and frustration in my voice:
“Lucka. Out of all the people in the district, I didn’t expect you to remember about some of the essential things that an average person would keep in mind. But to not remember to interrupt us in our monthly meeting…”
My body couldn’t keep all of these emotions in itself. I needed to pour them out. To the expectation of no one, not even myself, my leg jumped and landed flat on Lucka’s stomach. Lucka fell down a second after the impact. Even Though a large chunk of my anger evaporated, I still needed more evaporation to do. I turned to the open door of the office, the girls working in the barbershop all were staring at me, and pointed to the employees and shouted:
“NONE OF YOU OLD HAGS THOUGHT TO NOT LET HIM COME IN?! YOU FUCKING MORONS!”
To put this anger to sleep once again, I reached inside the pocket of my jacket and pulled out my nail polish and started repainting my nails. It calms me down pretty easily. While I was applying purple paint to my nails, Dev and Jules helped Lucka to sit on a chair and tried many ways to calm his pain, as much as possible. Jules fed him some sweets and Dev sweet talked him. Lucka still had to endure most of the pain.
After some time, both parties were back to their original state. My nails were dry and Lucka was breathing normally again. Dev and Jules both told me to apologise through their eyes and faces. I didn’t really see where my fault was in this situation. There was no need for my apology, but Lucka’s apology was pretty much needed. I can say that an emotion was demanding an apology from Lucka, something in the lines of pride or honor. But this would have been bad for my image. As they say ‘must give respect to get respect’, the wild nature of mine doesn’t want to understand this. I kneeled and put my hand on Lucka’s shoulder, looking into his eyes I said:
“I’m sorry for my outpurst Lucka”
Only a part of me agreed with that statement. Lucka looked back at me, cracking a smile, and said:” Ahhh, it ok. Should’ve known better.” Dev felt a little sad after Lucka finished his sentence. Lucka immediately presented the topic that gave him the kick in the stomach in the first place. So fast that it made us forget any occurence of it. He wanted to thank us for helping him out in expanding his music shop and preparing the place for the concert. He had the idea of promoting our hair salon to his fans. Because in the front cover of his album, it was him posing flamboyantly with a quite unique hair style that Jules personally gave him. He thought our salon could give his fans that specific haircut. It was a solid idea. It made me feel awful about the force Lucka absorbed. The idea also would have helped us with the financial issues we had. I thought about it for a while, then I went close to Lucka and hugged him like a pro wrestler and said happily:”Oh Lucka, you little bastard!” Then he immediately said:” The hell you mean?! I’m older than you.” Dev and Jules came and joined me in the hugging ceremony.
The employees were looking through the open door. They had themselves lost in the middle of figuring out how the situation went from the boss screaming as if he wanted to create the third impact, to a session of group therapy. After we got our fair share of warm hugs, I went and gave them the missing puzzle to their investigation. Their joy was as overwhelming as ours. In the mist of their celebration, Dev came and stood beside me. Being taller than me, he put his arm on my shoulder. With my left ear, I heard him say:”How about giving the apology you own to them too, hmm? That’ll make them even more happy.” Jules also came and put her hand on my shoulder, she is the same height as me, stating that she agreed without saying anything. Their arm felt like heavy shotguns aimed at my head. Leaving no back door open for any grand escape.
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