I like his new haircut. If I imagine itâs Carmyâs hair, my mind goes straight to Syd cutting it.
I get this crazy idea about how they´re âjust friendsâ but sheâs the kind of friend who would cut your hair. You know? And so, Carmy probably hates to go to the barber shop because it reminds him of Michael. You´ll see, they used to go together.
I imagine that when they grew apart, Carmy started cutting his own hair in the bathroom. It´s not like he had the time to go get a haircut, anyway. He had a good pulse, trained in the kitchen with stainless steel knives that did as he pleased. He figured he could handle a pair of scissors and do a decent enough job. Sure! Why not? He wasn´t wrong, although his self-service hair cut days were few and far between since he got back to Chicago. He was just too burned out. Too far gone.
It seems to me that the last time he cut his own hair was right before The Bear´s opening, not the friends and family fiasco, the real thing. It was quick, not too short; he wanted to comb it Dandy-style and put gel in it, just like he did in New York. He wanted to emulate his old self. He wanted to get the call and make sure his unruly curls weren´t going to react in the process. He even thought about that that day, in front of the bathroom mirror cabinet. The call, the haircut he was gonna sport that day, the everything. I´m sure he wanted it all to be perfect, and that included his hair. That was not negotiable for someone like Carmen. I dare to think his mind was set on not letting her down again, regardless of how this turned out.
So I keep wallowing in my machinations about his hair and his haircuts, and of course, Syd keeps popping up in my head. I´m positive that she walked in on Carmy trimming his own curls in the restaurant's bathroom, very early in the morning, when they were still the only ones there. This was after Carmy pulled an all-nighter cookout, he was the only one invited to, trying new ingredients, naturally. When she saw the dark circles under his eyes and his determination to correctly style that hair swirl on the back of his head he was clearly fixating on, Sydney offered to help him. He refused. She insisted. Syd won.
She told him she used to cut her dad´s hair growing up when it was raining, and he didn´t let her go outside to play. Syd walked Carmy through her childhood stories as her expert hands ruled his cowlick. She elaborated on how Emmanuel offered himself as a customer of her Salon, and so she cut his hair, gave him mani-pedis, put colorful hairclips on him, all sorts of stickers, and even glitter sometimes. Carmy succumbed to her storytelling, and before he knew it, his hair was a done deal. Perfect. But he surely couldn´t care less about his hair by the time Syd was done with him. He was hung upon her hands in his hair. Her touch. Her.
This must have happened at least a dozen times after that first random hand she gave him.
They were friends. After all, what´s so wrong about a friend cutting another´s friend's hair, right? Innocent. Nothing to it. It was just hair.
Oh, but it wasn´t.
I figure it probably was such an intimate moment they shared now and then. They both enjoyed it, anticipated it, loved it.
I bet Syd couldn´t get enough of how right it felt for her to softly run her slender fingers through the sides of his head when she was done, and tug it carefully to make sure it was even.
In my musings, Carmy surely closed his eyes to her touch and let her do. He relaxed. He let go. For just a few moments, he just let go. He was putty in her hands. He tried to hide how deep his breathing got; sometimes he couldn´t, and she could tell. I´m categorically certain Syd noticed.
And then he was back. She put the scissors away. It was all over.
They went back to normal.
And waited for his hair to grow back.
And repeat.
