Waffles or Eggs?

Tonight I went and got a haircut at Rudy's Barbershop on Sunset. It was a pretty cool place. Dominica did the cutting. She used a straight razor the whole time.

"You're good with that," I said.

"I should be after 20 years," she told me.

"How long you been here?"

"5 years."

"You like it?"

"L.A. is horrible."

"You think so?"

"It is."

"Why'd you come here?"

"I followed my heart."

"For a boy."

She nods.

"You still with him."

She shakes.

"I'm sorry."

"Why you say that? There's nothing to be sorry about."

"I don't know."

"I learned from what happened. I am also glad it happened. Sooner than later."

I liked Dominica. She was a beautiful person. I could tell from the get-go. She liked my name.

"Peers? What kind of name is that?"

"Persian like the cat and the rug."

"I only know one Persian."

"Now you know two."

That last line is what I would have said if I was feeling funny. I wasn't though. I was mopey. I even found myself walking into a bar around the corner from the barbershop. It was this Chinese meets industrial L.A. tiki bar sort of vibe.

"Martini," I said. "Very dry with lots of olives."

"Very dry? So you want very little Vermouth."

"Yeah, just a splash."

The bartender obliged. She was this hot, Asian number. We hit it off talking about the juke box.

"Any Dinosaur Junior?" I asked.

"No, they don't have anything good anymore."

"What happened?"

"They took it all out."

"What about about some Violent Femmes?"

"No, they took that out too."

I thought about yapping with her a little longer 'cause she had a similar taste in music to me, but her boyfriend kept giving me the evil eye, so I just went and hung out with him instead. We looked over the jukebox. I pointed.

"How about some Jane's Addiction? Summertime Rolls. That's a good song. It's perfect for tonight."

"I haven't heard that album in a long time."

"It's a great album."

He nodded and looked over at his girl behind the bar.

Love will hit you like a ton of bricks being poured from a pinata on Cinco de Mayo. Shit if I didn't see arrows walk between them and do the cha-cha.

Well, there wasn't much use in wasting my slight buzz from the semi-good martini on two lovebirds in a debacle over a washed up jukebox. I headed out of the place with a thank you, pronounced in beautiful King's Old, and walked through the pouring rain to white girl, AKA Honda Prelude, and hopped into the front seat.

The windows steamed up instantly. I looked in the rearview. I looked okay. My cheeks? Chubby. Hair nice. Very nice.

I could feel hot alcohol on my tongue as I drove up Hillhurst. The wipers going swoosh swoosh like buckets in my head dropping one after the other until I could see was a parked car in front of me and the car idling on the speedometer.

"Well," I said aloud. "Time to go."

I opened the car door. I walked down Van Ness. I made a left on Hollywood. That was when it hit me. Kahlil Gibran wrote The Prophet. That was his famous book. I don't know why I forgot. Dominica, the hair stylist, was asking me to remember.

"I know you remember," she said. "What was his name?"

"He wrote all those books."

"Yeah, all those books," she laughed. "What are they called?"

"I don't know."

Now I do though. I look through the bag of products she gave me and find the barbershop's number.

"Is Dominca there?"

"No, she's gone."

"Okay."

I hang up. Maybe, I can tell her some other time. The Prophet. That was Gibran's book.

As I make a left on Taft, I think about how my ex-father-in-law gave me that book for our first Christmas together. I still haven't read it. I tried. It just wasn't my taste.

Tastes change though. Maybe, I will like it now. Who knows? I got work to do though. Let me paint this cover fro Dylan. Lets see if I can come up with something. I want to get to bed early. Breakfast at the 101 diner tomorrow. I have been planning it all week. The only quesiton is waffles or eggs.