He lost his heart to her completely the summer she cut his hair on the desert sands beyond the valley of Sorek, after he had killed a young lion for her and caught three hundred foxes and slain a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass.
It was one of those haze-filtered days when the sun seemed to consume the entire sky, stretching from horizon to horizon in uniform unrelieved brightness, vague in intent, as though it could turn itself to rain or brilliant sunshine with equal ease. They had taken his father’s car out beyond Jones Beach, having to stop only once when the radiator boiled over (“I don’t understand,” Grace said. “I never have any trouble with it.”) and parking it finally on a strip of sand facing Gilgo. The ocean was calm that day, reflecting the opalescent sky in silvery tumidity. The beach was almost deserted. There was no breeze; the sand barely stirred. She wore a two-piece bathing suit, with the bra straps lowered, a curving line of white showing on the slopes of her breasts where her tan abruptly ended, the beauty spot near her left shoulder almost lost in the bronze of her skin. She was reading the Sunday Times through sunglasses, commenting on each world situation as the magazine section revealed it, reading a book review aloud to him, one hand resting on his head, the fingers toying with his hair. “You need a haircut,” she said idly, and then read him passages of an article on Nantucket from the travel section, and then began leafing through the main section — “A man got bit by a shark. Do you think there are any here?” — pausing to examine the advertisements, “Do you like this dress?” sharing the newspaper with him as he lay beside her with his eyes closed against the searing glare of the milk-white sky. “I could cut it, you know,” she said.
“Cut what?”
“Your hair.”
“No, thank you,” he said.
“Mmm, well. They’re already showing the fall clothes, look at that. Do you like tweeds?”
“Yes.”
“Why won’t you let me cut your hair?”
“Because you’re not a barber.”
“You look terrible,” she said. “Shaggy and hairy. Let me cut it. Please.”
“Why?”
“It’s sexy,” she said, and she shrugged.
He turned his head to look at her, the sky bright and glaring behind her, squinting up at her. Her long blond hair was pulled to one side of her head, woven in a thick strand there, tossed carelessly over her shoulder. The sunglasses were perched on the end of her nose, the brown eyes peering expectantly over them, a thin confident smile on her mouth. She sat back on her legs bent under her, rising from the chaos of the New York Times scattered on the blanket around her, blond and sun-limned and sitting bustily erect with her slender hands folded in her lap, patiently waiting.
“When’d you get so sexy, all of a sudden?” he asked.
“The beach always makes me sexy,” she said.
“Mmm?”
“Yeah.”
“Where would we get a scissors?”
“I have one in my sewing basket.” She reached for the basket, and he caught her hand.
“You brought that along on purpose, didn’t you?” he said.
“No, I was going to work on my hanging.”
“Your what?”
“My hooked wall hanging. You know I’m making one, so stop looking so surprised. I’ve been hooking for a long time.” He burst out laughing, and she said, “What’s so funny?”
“Don’t you know what hooking is?”
“No, what is it?”
“It’s something sexy,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“You always invent these things, don’t you?” she said. “Just to make me feel very young and innocent.”
“No, really. A hooker is a—”
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” she said.
She took the scissors from her basket, and he sat before her unprotestingly while she cut a huge hole in the New York Times and then put it over his head like a barber’s apron. She got on her knees behind him, and examined his head with her fingers widespread. “You really have big ears, did you know that?” she said. “They stick out all over your head.”
“Why don’t you just cut them off?” he suggested.
“Well, Clark Gable has big ears, too,” she said, and sighed in resignation.
“He also has a mustache. You think I should grow one?”
“No.”
“Then maybe you’d better take off the ears.”
“Maybe so. What good are big ears without a mustache, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, here we go,” she said.
“Listen...”
“Mmmm?”
“Don’t leave holes.”
“Where the ears were, you mean?”
“No, I mean where the hair was.”
“Stop worrying,” she said. “I think I have a flair for this sort of thing. Really. I think it’ll be a beautiful haircut.”
“Yeah, well...” he started dubiously, and then heard the click of the scissors behind his right ear. He closed his eyes. He heard only the metallic rhythm of the scissors and Grace’s shallow breathing behind him, and somewhere beyond that the distant sound of the ocean, not the usual crashing of an angry surf but rather the cavernous murmur captured in a seashell. Click, the scissors went behind his ear, click, click, he could feel the sun hot on his bare head, click, click, click, gaining more authority now. “Oh, this is going to be very nice,” she said. “Really, it’ll be lovely.” He grinned and felt an odd contentment spreading through him. The steady click of the scissors almost lulled him to sleep. He turned once to look up at her, “Yeah, I almost did get your ear that time, mister,” and saw the intense concentrated look on her face, the sunglasses very low on her nose now, the way his grandmother used to wear her glasses when she was sewing by the front window of the tailorshop in the waning winter light. He closed his eyes again.
“I’m getting hair all down me,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Oooh, it itches.”
He turned to look at her. The slopes of her breasts in the scanty top were crosshatched with pen strokes of fallen hair. She brushed them away with the flat of her hand, and then reached into the bra top and made a writhing motion, her face pulling into a grimace.
“You have the most uncomfortable hair in the world,” she said. “Urggh, it’s sticking to the suntan oil.”
“You want some help there?” he asked.
“I can manage, thank you,” she said. “Ick, it’s all over the place.”
“Listen, do you think I can get a shave and a manicure, too? So it shouldn’t be a total loss?”
“Shut up and sit still,” she said. “Boy, am I ever sorry I started this.”
The scissors began clicking again. Grinning, he said, “Watch out for the lice.”
“I am.”
“I don’t want to disturb them.”
“No, I know that.”
“They’ve been with me so long, I’ve begun to—”
“Will you keep quiet, please? I’m trying to concentrate.”
“How’s the hair doing? Still going down there?”
“Where it goes is none of your concern,” she said.
“My regular barber doesn’t have that kind of trouble,” he said.
“No, I should hope not. What’s this sticking up here in the back?”
“In the back?”
“Don’t get dirty, you evil-minded thing.”
“If it’s in the back, it must be a cowlick.”
“I didn’t know you had a cowlick.”
“I have all kinds of secret things you don’t know about.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll learn, I guess,” she said. “Oh, hell.”