“Howie,” Marsha said, sipping green tea at the kitchen dinette table of their little bungalow in the village of Grubsky, “if you keep fiddling with that old thing, you’ll be late for your appointment.”

“Late? It’s just Hyman. Hyman’s Hair, he makes no appointments, Marsha. Just walk-ins. One Hyman, two pairs of scissors, just three dollars, because I mended his barber pole for free. This you know.”

Howie Fine, robust, woolly, disheveled, spoke slowly, while peering at the inner workings of a strange gadget through reading glasses as thick as lighthouse Fresnel lenses. He sat at the kitchen table, his nose just inches from exposed live electrical wires, because he’d neglected to unplug the mysterious contraption before opening it. Howie trusted electricity more than anything else. Certainly, more than people. Electricity, after all, was predictable.

“Why can’t you go to a real salon? They do men’s cuts and pedicures at the salon next door to Hyman’s. You know, CeCe’s, where I go for nails.”

“Because I don’t go to Sissy’s, Marsha. I go to Hyman’s. That’s what I do. I am a man. I like a man to cut my hair.”

“Alright, Samson, but Hyman gives you a Forrest Gump haircut every time. And it’s CeCe’s, not Sissy’s. Lots of men go to salons nowadays. Ruben used to go, before the motorcycle accid-”

There was an awkward pause in the conversation.

“You’re such a dinosaur. A hairy dinosaur. You can employ a little self-care and still be manly, Howie. Times have changed, you know, since the mastodons got haircuts.”

“I haven’t changed.”

“Mastodon. Why not get a nice ’do? A men’s pedicure? You’ve got rough, hairy man feet. No offense. I just want you to look nice for the funeral.”

“I’ll wear shoes,” Howie said.

“And your hair?”

“I’ll wear a yarmulka.”

Marsha became teary.

“Alright, alright, I’ll go to Hyman’s as soon as I fix this.”

Marsha slowly traced her fingers—one at a time—along the rim of the white porcelain teacup. A cup from a set her grandparents brought to America when they fled pogroms in Ukraine. It was the only keepsake she had from them. Once, many years ago, she dropped one of the cups in the kitchen sink when Howie startled her with a kiss from behind as she was washing dishes. That was when they were still trying to have a baby. There were many surprise kisses, for such had been the happy couple in their early years. The cup fell in the sink and broke into several pieces. Howie later repaired it with a special porcelain glaze so that it looked new. Friends could not even tell where the breaks had been. It was magic.
Howie could repair anything. Before founding Five Fine Brothers repair shop, Howie, an only child, earned dual degrees in electrical and mechanical engineering, all with honors. When Wally, their neighbor Mr. Wimple’s son, broke his automated wiffle ball pitching machine, no one could mend it but Howie. When his dear friend, the great virtuoso Daniela Rubinstein’s prized violin developed a hairline crack, it was only Howie he entrusted for the repair, for Howie Fine was known throughout Grubsky to be a repair and maintenance genius. Whenever his friend Ruben’s Honda motorcycle wouldn’t start—generally every time they went for a ride together—Howie repaired that, too. Then they’d ride, just two Jews on Hondas—or Guns and Moses, as Ruben named the gang of two—for bagels or pastrami sandwiches at Zayde’s Deli, before riding to visit their mothers, who shared a two-bedroom apartment at Hemlock Ponds retirement home. Yeah, we’re bad, real bad, Ruben would say, as they swaggered into the lobby of the nursing home carrying a bag filled with sesame bagels, chive cream cheese, and lox for their moms.

When they first met and courted and fell in love, Howie adored everything about Marsha. How her hair smelled like cinnamon babka. How her eyes twinkled like raisins in a freshly baked loaf of challah. And how Marsha’s delicate, slender fingers, the nails often painted purple, flitted about like butterflies on the wing as she told stories. As Howie sat in the kitchen now, decades later, tinkering with an old blender, he glanced at Marsha’s fingers as she wrapped them around her teacup. Her once pretty hands had grown thick over the years, with wiry hairs sprouting up from the knurled knuckles like the tufts of crabgrass in Mr. Wimple’s front lawn.

“Howie, are you daydreaming again?” Marsha said, lifting a hand to tap him on the shoulder. “You need to go get that haircut.”

“Yes, but I promised Bobbie I’d fix this. I dunno, she’s got this screwy idea. She wants to know her baby’s gender. But this thing has some kind of wiring and parts I’ve never seen.”

“What are you talking about?” Marsha said. “What gender? You said that’s an old blender.”

“I’m not sure what it is, Marsha.”

“Howie, you’re talking crazy.”

Howie held up several cathodes, diodes, and other electrical bits to the front of his glasses.

“I have to get this working,” Howie said. “I think with Ruben passing, and the baby coming, you know, Bobbie, she’s very emotional. A traveling salesman told her this thing can tell the gender. I know it’s crazy.”

Howie thought about Bobbie. How much can one young woman take? She shouldn’t have to deal with her dad passing while she’s getting ready for her first baby. Sometimes it’s too much, just too much. Like when Marsha lost the baby years ago. Really, God, if you’re up there, I just don’t know what’s wrong with you, sometimes. Can’t you give a Jew a break?

“It’s just a blender, Howie. You must tell her the truth, not nonsense.”

“I know, I know. But still, what if—”

“What if what?”

“What if it’s more, more than a blender?”

“Maybe you need to cut down on the cannabis, Howie. I think your mind is going.”

Howie looked through the kitchen window, into the garden outside, at his pride and joy. His cannabis plants, in full sun, tall, leafy, strong. He watered the plants with religious precision every day, shooed away little bugs from their leaves, and sometimes put light jazz on the wireless speaker for them.
With a hot soldering iron Howie was now melting solder to meld together some electrical bits to some electrical bobs. He glanced for just a flash at Marsha’s hands; the fingers wrapped around the teacup. Marsha used to be sensitive, delicate, so beautiful. Now her hands look like a man’s.

“You can’t sugar coat things, Howie,” Marsha said.

“Some traveling salesman, he told her this story. She’s vulnerable, Marsha, vulnerable, we need to play along.”

Just then sparks flew out from the end of the soldering gun, little jolts of electricity arced like tiny lightning bolts, and puffs of smoke spread out across the air above the kitchen table. The inside of the blender began turning slowly, then faster and faster. It whirred now like a ceiling fan in a smoky bar, while emitting a rapid thrumming sound.

“What now?” Marsha said loudly.

The lights throughout the house blinked rapidly several times then went out. Howie got up from the table, walked to the outlet on the wall, unplugged the contraption. He waved his arms back and forth to clear the smoke.

“I’ll have to make some adjustments,” he said.

“No kidding, Einstein.”

A month earlier, a stranger came to Grubsky. He drove a white van which had a bed and small kitchenette. A black poodle rode shotgun. The stranger parked on Main Street, stepped out, and walked up to the nearest house. He was thin, in a nondescript black suit and black hat. He placed a large valise full of small home appliances on the stoop, then knocked on the door. Young Bobbie Bernstein, the Grubsky synagogue treasurer who also worked in marketing, daughter of Howie’s friend, Ruben, stuck her head past the screen door for a moment, listened to the man’s speech, then said no, no thank you, there’s nothing I need to buy today. No, I have a toaster already. No, sorry, don’t need a coffee maker either. Really, can’t you take no for an answer? I don’t need a flibbidy-jibbit or a doohickey, not another doohickey. My partner, Rayne, he gets me a new doohickey every year for Hanukkah. The man nodded, reached down into the travel case by his feet, and rose with a strange looking kitchen gadget.

“Um, is that some old blender? I have a blender,” Bobbie said.

“But surely, you would have use for this,” said the stranger, standing close to her and holding out the blender with two hands while staring into Bobbie’s eyes. Bobbie looked at him. There was something odd yet familiar.

“Do I know you?” Bobbie said.

“Many ask. I have that look. But few have been from whence I have come.”

The most prominent feature of the stranger’s thin, pale face were large, round eyes, black and lifeless. They appeared to mesmerize Bobbie, who kept her gaze fixed upon them as she cocked her head to one side, then the other.

“You are thinking about baby names,” said the salesman.

“Yes, but how—”

“Ah,” said the stranger. “So sweet, yesssss,” he hissed softly, and his words drifted like feathery puffs upon Bobbie’s ears. His tiny tongue slithered in and out as he spoke, never removing his gaze from Bobbie’s.

“This will tell if the baby is a boy or girl,” he said, handing the blender to Bobbie. “Just a snip from the hair of either parent, placed inside, flip of the switch, then the counter in front will tell. One if a girl, two if a boy.”

“Sounds a little like Paul Revere,” Bobbie said, with a slight chuckle, while still staring into the dead black eyes.

“Paul Revere, he is a neighbor?”

“You know, the midnight ride,” Bobbie said, with a wave of a hand, “one if by land, two if by sea. Paul Revere. Didn’t you go to school? Where did you say you are from again?”

“A place few here have been.”

“Ah, someplace exotic,” said Bobbie.

“Canada,” the man said.

When Rayne got home from work, Bobbie hurriedly showed him the device.

“I can’t see how this will work,” Rayne said. “And besides, we’ve been discussing a gender-neutral name, remember? We don’t want to impose societal gender stereotypes on the baby, babe. I mean, we just saw the Barbie movie. This salesman guy, Bobbie, he’s probably from some cult or something.”

“No, no,” Bobbie said, “he said he was from Canada.”

When Rayne plugged in the device, to investigate further, electrical sparks flew, smoke filled the kitchen, and the lights flickered and then went out. In the basement, Rayne switched all the breakers back and forth, but the lights did not return. He said to Bobbie, waiting for him upstairs, “you’ve been duped, babe. We’ll have to call your dad’s friend, Howie, to fix the electrical.”

Howie had replaced the blown main breaker for Bobbie and Rayne, then brought the blender back to his house, where the device then blew his breakers, too, after first filling the kitchen with smoke. When the smoke cleared, Howie replaced the damaged breakers in the basement, for he always kept every imaginable repair part on hand. Then he returned to the kitchen table. He told Marsha, still sipping green tea, that he had an ingenious idea.

“I shall reverse the polarity!” Howie said, sounding as if he had just struck gold or invented potato latkes.

He handed a red wire sticking out from the blender to Marsha, while he held a black wire.

“Here, hold this for a moment, while I make the adjustment. Just don’t touch the—”

It was too late.

The skies outside the window darkened.  The winds howled and swirled in great gusts all about the bungalow. A thick bolt of lightning cleaved in two the ancient oak tree by the side of the cannabis garden. Howie and Marsha shook violently from head to toe. They were unable to speak. Looking through the kitchen window while shaking, Howie beheld a strange, otherworldly vision. Although it made no sense to him, recounting the story for years to the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker—anyone who would listen—he would say that it had looked like a black poodle, which, when it laughed, revealed a little forked tongue.

Howie wasn’t sure how long he and Marsha shook. It may have been a minute, or even just a moment, although Howie later told anyone who would listen that it felt like two thousand years. Then the newly installed main house breaker in the basement circuit panel blew, the flow of current to the strange blender was halted, and Howie and Marsha were released from the misery of their electrical bondage. The wires slipped onto the table from their immobile hands. The skies cleared, the howling winds ceased, and in the room, now again lit by sunlight shining in through slats of the open blinds, Howie looked at Marsha and said, “well, how about that haircut?”

“Howie, you need to fix the electricity first. I don’t know how to, Einstein.”

“I’ll do it as soon as I’m back. Want to look nice for the funeral later.”

Howie rose from the kitchen table, padded to the door, opened it. He looked back at Marsha, whose just electrified hair looked akin to the happy bride in Bride of Frankenstein. He then said words he had never in his life uttered before.

“Ta-ta,” Howie said.

Howie was still too weak for his motorcycle, so he drove his truck to downtown Grubsky. He parked on Main Street, just across from Hyman’s. As he walked up to the front of the barbershop, he saw a sign taped to the door.

“Closed Until I’m Open.”

Can you believe Hyman? As Howie stood wondering when Hyman might return, he happened to glance through the next-door window into CeCe’s Salon. He remembered that Marsha said CeCe’s gives men’s haircuts now. But when he looked through CeCe’s window, he saw something strange. A man sitting in a chair, while a pretty woman was doing something to his feet. Howie gave a little chuckle, said humph, then tried to walk back toward his car. But his feet wouldn’t turn. What the hell? He lifted his right leg. That’s OK. Then he tried to turn the foot. It wouldn’t budge. A stroke? Maybe some weird effect from the electric shock? He tried with the left foot, but it was no better. He stepped forward with his right foot. That worked OK, too. Then forward with his left. Then his right again. A few steps more and he was at the front door of CeCe’s. A woman opened the door and waved him in.

“I just need a haircut,” Howie said to the woman. “Got to go to a funeral tonight.”

“Sure, we can do that.”

The woman smiled and led him by the arm to a cushy, soft, blue leather chair. Howie plopped down heavily. The thick, cool cushions felt good against his aching back. He placed both arms on the puffy armrests. Those felt wonderful, light as air. Then the woman brought over another woman—Howie noticed the place was full of them—who said her name was Geneviève and asked what kind of style he favored.

“What kind of style I favor? I dunno. Usually, Hyman has a bowl and scissors. I think it’s a metal bowl.”

“But your hair is so luxurious,” said the woman, as she ran slender, cool fingers through Howie’s hair. She held a clump of hair on top of Howie’s head in her hands and said to the woman working on the man’s feet, “Colette, what do you think, a quiff would be sexy, no?”

Howie had no idea what language Geneviève was speaking.

“That could work,” said Colette, “or maybe a French Crop.”

The only French things Howie knew were French fries and French drains, and neither seemed fitting now.

“Wait,” Howie said, “I don’t want you putting anything French on me.”

But it was too late.

Geneviève escorted Howie over to Delphine. He sat in the hair washing chair, bent his head backwards into the sink, and gave a little giggle as the warm fizzy water tickled his scalp. Delphine then drizzled something she called Le Fluide Discipline onto Howie’s head.

“Your hair is wonderful, Howie,” Delphine said, “but if I may speak candidly, it’s unruly.”

She rubbed and massaged and kneaded and said, “this will enable fluid movement, smoothness, and anti-frizz.”

With his eyes kept shut, Howie felt the soft, supple, yet commanding fingertips performing a French ballet across his scalp. The elegant, graceful movements melting away years of stress. This is so relaxing. So wonderful. Such fluidity. Such elegance. Is this why women come to the salon? Why have I spent years letting Hyman throw a bowl on my head? I’ve known about French drains for a long time, but this, this is heaven!

After Delphine washed Howie’s hair, she escorted him back to Geneviève, who proceeded with the French Crop as he sat in the chair facing the wall mirror. She snipped and clipped and cropped and cut, all the while moving and messing and mussing the hair on top of his head.  She pirouetted, arabesqued, and petit-jete-dance-boutiqued around Howie like the Giselle of Grubsky. After a while, she put down the scissors and comb and spray bottle, then blow-dried Howie’s hair. Finally, she picked up a mirror with a handle, held it to the back of Howie’s head, and said, “voilà!”

Howie looked in the mirrors in front and back.

“That’s me? Really?”

Howie felt a strange new happiness. And a lightness—a giddiness—he had never known. What a transformation! What will Marsha say? She’s never seen me like this. I’ve never seen me like this. I feel like a schoolboy again. Then Howie glanced at the man whose feet were being worked on when he first arrived. Now the man was in another chair near Howie, having a manicure. Howie looked at the man’s feet. They appeared to be clean, smooth, the nails rounded and a little shiny. What if Marsha sees me now and says I still have man feet?

“Well,” said Geneviève, “shall I escort you to the checkout counter?”

“That man over there,” Howie said, “he was having something done to his feet when I got here.”

“Yes,” said Geneviève, “a men’s pedicure.”

“A men’s pedicure,” Howie said. “For men?”

Before you could say Bonaparte’s your uncle, Howie was being escorted to Colette’s chair. After Howie removed his boots and socks and rolled up his jeans, Colette picked up each foot, one at a time, placing it in a hot bubbling footbath. Howie’s eyes rolled into the back of his head.

“Oh, my,” he murmured.

After the scrubbing and the sponging, the rubbing and the rinsing, the purifying and the polishing, Howie’s man feet were gone, defeated as soundly as Napoléon Bonaparte at The Battle of Waterloo.

Howie had never felt this way before. Never had he been pampered, at least not since he was in Pampers.

Then, something terrible happened.

The parts that came after all this magnificent pampering made him wonder just how women suffer so. For after all the sweetness of the shampoos and foot rubs, came the torture. The plucking of eyebrows, the waxing of his back, the vigorous facial massage in which the masseuse pushed and pulled his face into unnatural positions unintended by God. Then Howie had a glimpse of what so many women do, while men happily clomp about the house with their ugly man feet, scraggly hair, and dingy nails. How crass I have been. How unkind! Poor Marsha, suffering with this pulling and tweezing and waxing and ripping all those years, while I let myself go. But now, now look at me. He stood from the chair, looked into the wall mirror across from him, and marveled. Now I am nice to look at. Now Marsha will find me pleasing. He gazed at the beautiful new mirror man, with his sexy French Crop, smooth feet, and shiny nails. I’m rather sexy, aren’t I? Rather nice to look at if I may say. Pretty me!

After leaving generous tips and waving goodbye, goodbye dear friends to all those at CeCe’s, Howie jumped in his truck excitedly to dash home to Marsha. She would see him looking shinier and smoother and sexier and sweeter than ever in their life together. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps there is a God, after all. A benevolent, loving Being. A God who would give a Jew a break now and then, so late in life.

Or perhaps it was the strange machine, the mysterious blender. Somehow, the reversing of the polarity, could it have changed—everything? Whatever it may have been, Howie would go home, rekindle his romance with Marsha, start a new chapter of life together. And he would never again be crass or inattentive. Marsha will put on her flower dress, put her hair up in bows, and they would go to Ruben’s funeral tonight. It will be a sad time, the motorcycle accident such a shock, but still, tonight he will tell Marsha how lovely she is, always was, and what a fool he had been. But not anymore! Then tomorrow their new life together will begin.

Howie pushed his foot further down on the gas pedal, racing now with great speed along the little lanes and byways of Grubsky. He flew by Officer Leefman’s parked patrol car, where the speed trap always was, but the officer paid no heed, perhaps mesmerized by the pretty Adonis at the wheel.

At home, Howie burst through the front door. He called out for Marsha but heard no response. He walked to the kitchen, heard heavy footsteps thumping up the stairs. The thick wooden door to the basement swung open. Marsha stood at the threshold. She was wearing a dirty pair of Howie’s work overalls. Her long face was smudged with soot. She held a clunky metal toolbox in her left hand, the arm of which was longer than her right.

“So, Einstein’s home at last,” she said, not looking up at Howie. “I had to fix the electrical circuits. No lights. Now all is good. If you want a job done right …”

Howie looked at Marsha. Her shoulders were hunched. On her chin was a wispy beard. He could see by the yellow glow of the incandescent ceiling light a budding moustache sprouting across Marsha’s upper lip. Howie realized what he must do. The strange machine. The reversing of the polarity. He must undo it, put things right. Then all would return to normal. He would rectify this grave error at once. He looked at the kitchen table. A fat cigar, still lit and half-smoked, rested on a glass ashtray next to Marsha’s coffee mug. But the blender was not there.

“Marsha, where is the machine I was working on?”

“Hah! That stupid thing. No good. I fixed the circuit panel, but that blender was a menace. I threw it in the trash. Got picked up earlier while you were at Hyman’s. Good riddance!”

Marsha sat at the table, took a swig of cold black coffee, then a long, slow puff of the cigar. Finally, she glanced for a moment at Howie, then looked away.

“You call that a haircut?”

At the funeral, the rabbi spoke of love and loss, of renewal and a river, of heartache and hope. Dozens of mourners, clad in dark clothes, gathered around the gravesite. Rain began to pour from gray skies. Howie looked up at the heavens and wept like a baby. Marsha patted him on his back, rolled her eyes. He’s just so emotional these days.

When they got home, Howie threw himself onto their bed, buried his face in his pillow, while Marsha went to the kitchen to fix the leaky pipe under the sink.