In the end, the Buddha believed, only three things matter: how much you loved; how gently you lived; and how gracefully you let go of those things not meant for you. Had I loved? Certainly. How much and how well, though, those were questions I wasn’t prepared emotionally to address at that moment. Had I led my life in a gentle manner? Not hardly, but I’d saved lives in the process, and that was a fair trade, in my opinion. The more pressing question was how, if ever, I’d get over losing Savannah. How does one accept that the seminal romantic relationship of your life, with a woman so beautiful, so complete, that you could think of nothing but her day and night, was never meant to be?
I didn’t know.
I doubted I ever would.
TWENTY-SIX
Whether Kiddiot was oblivious to how I was getting along emotionally, or was trying to comfort me, I couldn’t say. He lay on my chest giving himself, not me, a bath that went on for easily a half hour. He may have been dumb, but at least he was well groomed.
I leafed through Flying magazine, pulled a copy of Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” from my bookshelf but found it too depressing, tried to sleep, did 100 push-ups, scrambled three eggs and ate them watching an infomercial about how to dance your belly away, tried to sleep, took a hot shower, and stared out at the moon. Anything to stop from thinking about how close I’d come to saving Savannah’s life.
If only I’d been more observant when I had initially approached Dwayne Anderson’s van.
In the movies, there’s always that scene. You know the one: where the good guy stands over the bathroom sink, usually stripped to his chiseled waist, leans down to splash cold water on his face, then slowly looks up at himself in the mirror, staring into his own anguish-filled eyes, searching deep down for whatever the hell it is he’s supposed to find in there.
I gave it a shot. I splashed water on my face. I stood looking at myself in the mirror. All I got back was an overpowering realization that I’d succumbed to weakness, to whining, that I’d forgotten how to be a man.
I also noticed I needed a haircut.
It was after 0500 when I finally dozed off. I was awake for good at 0535.
The little bell over the door tinkled. My barber, former light heavyweight contender Primo Zacapa, glanced over, cutting another customer’s hair as I walked into his tiny shop downtown on Cortez Avenue.
“Que pasa, Logan?”
“What’s up, Champ?”
“It’s all good. Have a seat. Be with you momentito.”
At sixty-two, Primo remained every inch the fluid, graceful puncher he’d been back in the day, when he’d gone the distance with WBA legend Pipino Cuevas at the Forum in Los Angeles and lost on a split decision that every bookie on the street said was rigged. I sat down on the worn leather couch opposite his shop’s one barber chair and watched him work: snipping and moving, snipping and moving. The customer, an older man with sad blue eyes, sat under his smock, head tilted forward. He possessed little hair on top, but that which he did have, Primo used to full effect, trimming and layering with such skill that, at least from where I was sitting, you’d have never known the guy was hurting for follicles. When Primo was finished, and the customer had left, he quickly swept up the trimmings with an old broom and a metal dustpan, unfolded a fresh smock from a wicker basket, and ushered me into the old swayback leather chair.
“An oldie but a goodie,” he said, offering me a tattered, twelve-year-old Playboy.
“Not today, Champ.”
“Not today? How ’bout another one? I got Miss June.”
“I’m good.”
His narrowed eyes told me he knew something was wrong, but he said nothing. He pinned a disposable sanitary strip around my neck and flapped the smock high into the air, letting it settle gently around my shoulders.
“So, how would you like your hair cut today?”
“Whatever you feel like, Champ.”
He paused from pumping up the chair’s pneumatic lift with his foot, wearing his usual spotless sky-blue Mexican wedding shirt, his own luxuriant black hair combed straight back, and looked at me hard.
“Every time you come in here, I give you a Playboy. Every time, I say, ‘How do you want your hair cut?’ You say, ‘In silence,’ cuz you want to catch up on your ‘reading.’ Every time. Today, no Playboy, no silence. What’s going on with you, brother?”
“It’s been a bad couple of weeks.”
Primo was an excellent barber. Not so much because of the way he cut hair, but because he knew when to talk and when not to. He shrugged, then turned me in the chair, facing the big wall mirror, and went to work. I closed my eyes, my head filled with the comfortingly distracting perfume of talc and bay rum, and slept.
“All set, boss,” Primo said after what seemed like no more than a couple of minutes.
He pivoted the chair and handed me a mirror so I could check the back.
“You do good work, Champ.”
Off came the smock and the sanitary strip. I stood, got out my wallet. A Primo haircut ran fifteen dollars. I realized I only had nine dollars. I offered him what cash I had.
“Looks like I still owe you six, plus a tip.”
“Keep it. You need it more than I do.”
“I’m good for it. You know that.”
He waved dismissively as if to say, “Don’t give it a second thought,” and walked me to the door.
“It’s about your lady, isn’t it?” Primo said.
I swallowed down the golf ball in my throat and nodded.
“You’re not gonna see her again, are you?”
“No.”
Primo rested a hand on my shoulder. “My wife passed three years ago. Cancer. We was married thirty-one years. Trying to forget that one woman is like trying to remember somebody you never met. You don’t never forget her, OK? But you move on, you know what I’m saying? You got no choice, brother. None of us ever do. You feel me?”
“I feel you, Primo.”
He smiled and struck a classic boxer’s pose — slight crouch, face guarded by raised fists, the left slightly ahead of the right. His two front teeth were whiter than the others. I wondered how many times they’d been punched out of his mouth when he was a younger man.
“Remember,” Primo said, “fists high, elbows low, and always, always, keep your head moving.”
“Thanks, Champ.”
We shook hands and I left, but his words of advice lingered long after. Savannah was gone. I could never forget her. I had to move on.
A big red digital “0” was flashing on my answering machine at the airport. No new messages. No new students. My flight school was dying. Truth be told, it had been for a long time. The pragmatic side of my brain screamed that it was long past time to fold the tent. Hell, I was no businessman. What was I thinking, trying to start a small business amid the nation’s worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, and in a town that already had three other flight schools up and running? The quasi-optimistic side, the side that rarely weighs risk to reward, the side which made me a good fighter pilot and an even better special operator, told me to give it another week. Keep hope alive.
Larry had solved the Ruptured Duck’s electrical issues, refusing to charge me. An alternator wire had frayed. The repair, he said, had taken him twenty minutes.
“Not even worth my time, filling out a bill,” he said. “You owe me nothing.”
I knew that the real reason Larry didn’t bill me was because he felt sorry for me. He nodded, “Yeah, whatever,” when I promised to pay him back someday. He’d heard it before. Many times.