Free Buzz Cut by James W. Hall Page B

your back. All those memories. But does that really work, Monica? Can you shave your head and get rid of the past? I don't think so."
    "What the fuck do you want?"
    "Want," he said. "Now there's another interesting word. We use it all the time, but what does it really mean?"
    Irma felt the blood burning her face as if she'd been slapped hard on both cheeks. Fight and flight battling to a standstill in her veins.
    "On the one hand, if you want something, you desire it. But then of course want also means lack. You desire what you lack. What you want is what you're wanting, the thing you're missing. The things that would complete you."
    "Look," she said. "Save the bullshit. I'm satisfied with my vocabulary like it is."
    "Electricity works like that. It seeks what it's missing. Positive charge seeks negative. Negative ions seek positive. What nature wants is to get even, get back to zero. Everything neutralized. But of course that never happens. There's always a negative charge floating around, or a positive one, looking to stir things up. Wanting the thing it doesn't have, that last little thing that would make its world complete. Everybody's searching, right down to the subatomic particles, we're yearning for something, some little bitty thing."
    "I'm leaving," Irma said, and started to rise. But he rested a hand on her forearm. Didn't restrain her exactly, didn't force her down, but his touch disarmed her just the same. He was staring at his hand against her flesh, studying it. His skin awake against hers, more than simple touching, like he was taking a reading of her radioactivity.
    "You remember," he said, "when you used to sit on the porch of your big house. Pink and blue dresses, lace around the collar. You'd sit on the swing and look out at us, standing around in the distance, holding our paper plates, waiting in the chow line. You sat there in the swing on your porch and you brushed your hand through your thick gold hair, very casual, like we weren't there, like we weren't all watching your every move. Do you remember, Monica? Remember the swing I'm talking about? Remember looking out at us, the children of your father's employees, the annual Thanksgiving cookout? Do you remember that?"
    She gave him nothing.
    "How about the ice turkeys? Those sculptures sitting in the middle of each picnic table. A turkey carved out of ice, each one filled with silver dollars. Fifty, sixty silver dollars in every one. Remember that?"
    Irma kept her face empty.
    He took his hand from her forearm. She looked down at the place where it had been, half expecting a welt.
    "While we ate, the ice melted in the sun, the heavy coins dropped into the silver trays. Pinjj, ping. "
    "My name is Irma Slater," she said.
    "And one day, you came down off the porch. You sat at my table. None of us knew what to say. Everybody went dead quiet. That ice melting. You sat there with the napkin in your lap, looking down at the plate of hot dogs and sauerkraut. Your bare arm right next to mine.
    "Remember? Remember telling us not to grab the money? You said your daddy was playing a trick. Trying to humiliate us, make us snatch the money from the weaker children. We should just let it sit there. Not take it. Not fall for his scheme. Don't give him the satisfaction."
    Irma looked out at the dark horizon, the spray of stars. "None of the others listened. They kept on grabbing. Not me. I sat there and watched the silver dollars fall onto the trays and I didn't try to snatch any of it away from the other boys. I didn't surrender to your father's game.
    " 'It's a war,' you said. ''You're on one side or the other.' " Irma swung around and peered into his eyes. The color of the Atlantic on a gusty day, turquoise stirred to a milky blue.
    "You might recall my mother. She worked in your father's office. His private secretary. Took his dictation, made decisions he didn't have time for. Remember her?"
    She slid the beer bottle forward a half inch, a pawn taking the center of