In the salvage bin at the grocery store, he finds slimy mushrooms, soft cucumbers, and wounded strawberries. He buys these things with pennies. He goes to have his hair cut at the salon--not the barbershop. His friends sometimes tease him for going to the salon, especially since he has so little hair. But he likes the salon because Sadie washes his hair before she cuts it. She gives him a scalp massage. It must be easy for her to massage his scalp because his baldness affords her so much access. As she massages him, he often asks her to tell him about vacations she'd like to take.
After she washes his hair, she cuts it. After she cuts it, she washes his hair again. When she washes his hair the second time, he asks her how her vacations were. She says she never took them, but he pleads with her to pretend and tell him what it was like. It's the second wash that he most loves because, when he used to go to the barbershop, the first thing he'd have to do when he got home would be to take a shower to rid himself of all the hair bits that were itching him. Sadie is seven months pregnant, and he relishes the feel of her pregnant stomach against his back when she cuts the hair at the back of his head. Or when she shaves his neck. He pretends he feels the baby kick him. He says, "Ooh--that was a good one." And Sadie says, "One what?" And he tells her it was a kick. When he used to go to the barbershop, he'd feel a belly against his back, too--only it would be the belly of the fat barber.
He buys his salvage vegetables and fruit.
He has his hair cut by Sadie.
After his haircut, he drives around the lake that's in town. He drives through the cemetery and tries to find the stones that have the oldest dates. He knows where all the newest dates are because he hasn't missed a burial in decades.
He looks at the Vietnam helicopters that are posed all over the town. The helicopters are no longer functional. Their working parts have been frozen by welders or filled in with cement.
Years ago, he could have been the one who delivered Sadie's baby, but he no longer practices medicine. Instead, he's devoted himself to finding a boyhood friend of his who disappeared fifteen years ago. He himself had dredged the lake with three types of dredgers. The first dredger was a weighted net. The next one had dull hooks on it. The last one had sharp, barbed hooks on it. He has hired several private detectives, none of whom have found anything. One detective, in fact, had the gall to say that he had made up the disappearance.
He fries his mushrooms and eats them. He eats his terrible strawberries. He slices his cucumber, takes off his shirt, lies on the couch in the parlor, and puts the slices on his chest. He imagines that each slice is someone kissing him. His wife comes home.
"Take those cucumbers off yourself," she tells him.
"I will not take these off," he says.
He continues to lie on the couch. A window opens, someone hunches through the open frame, and steps into the room. It's his boyhood friend--the one who had disappeared so many years ago. His friend wears a long wig, a bridesmaid's dress, and workboots.
"Let's get you a haircut," he says to his friend.
"Will you be my wife?" his friend says to him.
"He's already married," his wife says.
He plucks the cucumbers off his chest and asks if anyone present would like to kiss his places.
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