A neatly dressed gentleman entered a dirty and worn barbershop. It smelled like a wet rag for days. The guy was quite a contrast to the place. His black velvet suit was worth about a thousand dollars, even his sunglasses were of a luxury brand. Anyone who saw him thought he'd come from a high-class act.
“The usual cut! “ he sat down and a young barber approached him. “Please! Three with scissors here and one on the side” they put the toll on him. “And thin sideburns, you know!”
That was all the gentleman would say.
The young man nodded silently. He was the only one present in the room. There, the two of them alone, the shaver began to sound as it went about its work. The gentleman did have abundant hair, but it was notorious that he took care of it with the best of hygiene products.
The gentleman's name was Augusto Gulliver, an expert assassin who was quietly hired by governments to carry out their economic or expansion plans. The barber didn't know it, not even the extroverted chubby girl who entered the shop after five minutes. The girl with a sensual hip movement turned on the sound system. The atmosphere of the place stopped being gloomy and became a salsa casino center.
“Yessi, the new guy did it again”- the barber didn't stop doing his job even when he was talking. He did it with mastery. “This time he missed a pair of scissors," he frowned. “I'm sorry I lost my glasses or my brush, but not my favorite scissors.”
Yessi laughed.
“Are you going to keep that up?" she began to eat a lollipop with an erotic gesture. “You're just saying that because he was the only one who was there before you lost your stuff.”
Augusto could have gone to a more upscale place, but he wanted to go to that barbershop. He was interested in hearing and seeing the interaction of normal people. It was so real that he looked forward to it every month. He would take one day a month to come to the place and shave. He wasn't afraid that his enemies would come looking for him in that compound. Everything looked so ugly, his enemies would think they were walking into a trap.
“Then that gentleman invited me to have a bottle of rum at his house," Yessi made a surprised face.
“I guess you didn't accept it," the barber raised the scissors and began to cut. “Damn it! Give me those," and changed his tools when he saw that they didn't cut hair. “So, you didn't go to his house for your boyfriend, did you?”
The fat girl pouted with mischief.
“Of course I accepted. I mean, the old man had a great truck. I wasn't going to waste his nice offer.”
It didn't seem that yesterday Augusto had killed a group of terrorists in the borders of a tropical country. There he was in an ordinary barbershop, enjoying the gossip. And yesterday, he was running for his life in a jungle that never stopped raining. His abundant hair falling expertly to the floor, he closed his eyes and continued to listen to the gossip.
The barber laughed heartily at Yessi's stories of infidelity.
“Believe me, I was shocked. The old man withstood the battle, and the one who was defeated was me.”
The two young laughed. That made Augusto consider if he was an old man, he was 45 years old. In which 30 years he had spent his life as a spy, mercenary, economic advisor, and soldier. Added to the many false charges he held to supposedly save a country. A piece of land where the people had no idea of what their rulers did and did not do, they just enjoyed their banal lives with pleasures as banal as the infidelity that the fat Yessi told.
“We'll have to talk to the boy." The Barber was fine-tuning some details of the cut, in about 10 minutes he would finish. -If I lost my razor, I wouldn't tolerate it.
“Oh, it's only been five days since you lost those things, I'm sure they'll turn up, boy” Now Yessi was eating some empanadas that he took out of her purse. Grease was dripping on the counter. “This new guy is a god's bread.”
“ Sure, sure” For a moment the barber's hand shook with anger. “And they always get lost when he's alone.”
“Come on! Who would steal a pair of scissors, a brush, and a pair of sunglasses? Who in their right mind?”
Last month they had been talking about the effects of the government's decisions to raise taxes, and how it affected their alcohol spending, drifted to the party they were having at the weekend; and then on to the barber's new girlfriend. Trivial topics that interested Mr. Augusto a lot. Topics that made him feel alive. The life of those people was the opposite of the shootings, bombings, and killings he was used to seeing. Infidelities, unfounded gossip, complaints against the poverty they lived in, but still they enjoyed it.
Augusto had been going there for two years.
He stumbled upon the place while strolling down the avenue, looking for a place to hang out. Perhaps looking for a little peace after so long in the current Cold War. As he entered the barbershop, he knew that's where he wanted to be. Those people had no idea of the cruelty of the real world. The poverty blowing in the back of their heads was so pronounce that they were unaware of the real decisions of the millionaires. They were just puppets, but somehow free of their actions.
“Getting back to the point. Will you go back to the old man?” the barber was fine-tuning the details of the cut, he was about to finish. “I know you! When they leave you are destroyed. You look for more parties.”
Augusto couldn't see her, but he guessed the girl was smiling. If they knew the world out there, maybe those banalities of sex and gossip would fade away, or they might not stand it, and commit suicide.
“Maybe” sounded the sound she was making as she sucked on the lollipop. Too much lewdness she used to make. “Mr. Dorco has a lot of money, he could become my Sugar”.
Augusto knew him, two headlights illuminated his brain looking for information, the knowledge he possessed flowed. Mr. Alto Dorco. Government official, a congressman who wanted to rise to the presidency. He had been doing so for years, but did not dare to get his hands dirty. Nor did he have the clout to seize a slice of power. He was so insignificant that he would stay in that rank until he died. To the upper echelons, he only served as a spy against the real traitors.
“Ready, sir!” The barber removed the towel and cleaned the remains of hair that were left on Augusto's face. “Thank you very much for coming!”
Mr. Augusto felt a little nostalgic about having to leave. He took one last look around the dirty room. The newspapers scattered on the counter, the microwave mended and full of food stains, and lastly, he took a look at Yessi's fat girl. He never played the hero, so he wasn't raised in the army, he continued on his way to the door. He would not give her the advice to stay away from Mr. Dorco.
When he came back for a new cut, surely the girl would not be with the barber. That would depend on the decisions they would make from that point on.
“Go and buy the bread, I'm already hungry," Yessi shouted.
As on every occasion, she expected to find them so lively. Mr. Augusto left, dragging his feet like a child not wanting to leave his grandparents' house.
