The Second Coming

nice—” he said, but he turned his face away.
    â€œWhat?” she asked in a very clear question. “Have a nice what?” But he was gone.
    At first, after she had changed her clothes and sat on the bench, she had watched passersby to see if they noticed anything unusual about her. They didn’t or at least gave no sign of it. She had felt like Rip Van Winkle coming down into town after a twenty-year nap. Surely dogs would bark at her and children would hoot and throw rocks. But nothing happened. She began to feel reassured. Only her hair felt like Rip’s. It was heavy and long and still damp after the rain, weighing on her head and falling down inside her collar. It was too thick for her pocket comb. Her scalp itched.
    Three women had gone into the barbershop and sat in the chair of the woman barber and got haircuts. One got a shampoo. When the third woman left, she felt confident enough to cross the street, open the door of the barbershop, go directly to the empty chair, and sit down.
    â€œHow you want it, honey?” asked the woman barber.
    She had rehearsed what she was going to say. Or ask. “Could you cut it first, then wash it, then dry it?”
    â€œOkay, honey. But how you want it?”
    Brief panic. Then she saw something. “Like hers?” Though she had wanted to make a statement, her voice rose in a question.
    â€œLike hers?”
    She nodded toward the movie poster on the sidewalk. The poster showed an actress with blond hair pulled to one side. The movie was Three Days of the Condor. It must have been an old movie. The poster was faded and torn. Perhaps the theater was closed.
    â€œYou got nice thick hair. You’d be a honey blonde like her if you stayed out in the sun.” The barber was a big mountain woman. She said nahce for nice and hahr for hair. The strong hands felt good on her scalp as they grabbed her heavy hair. She felt better every time a hunk of it was sheared off and hit the floor. The feel of the woman’s fingers on her scalp made her eyes stare. A wall of glass bricks across the street glittered in the sunlight. A sign above the door written in script read Le Club.
    When the woman barber finished, she swung her around to face the mirror and held a hand mirror behind her the way the man barber did for his customers. The steel base of the chair was ringed by windrows of dark blond hair.
    Now she did look something like the actress except that her hair was cut higher in back, like a boy’s, and showed more of her neck.
    â€œNice.” She risked a statement. “Could you wash it now?” She noticed a basin.
    â€œCome on over here, honey.” The woman’s eyes slid past her. “Don’t I know you? Have you been working here summers?” The woman barber couldn’t quite place her. Her unfashionable clothes made her look like a local. On the other hand, perhaps she talked like a tourist.
    The woman barber’s eyes reminded her of something she had forgotten. Strangers often thought they knew her. Was it her ordinary good looks or was it a way she had of listening to people and following them like a good dancer that made her seem familiar?
    â€œYou from around here?”
    â€œNo, I’m from—” She stopped. “Oh, by the way, what is today?”
    â€œWednesday.”
    â€œOctober—”
    â€œTwenty-second.”
    She didn’t dare ask the year.
    After the shampoo she sat on the bench again. Her hair felt good, light and warm in the sun.
    From the pocket of her jacket she took out the red spiral-bound notebook and opened it. At the top of the first page was written in blue ink and in her hand the following:
    Date: October 15
    Place: Room 212, Closed Wing, Valleyhead Sanatorium
    Below, printed in capital letters and underlined, was the following:
    INSTRUCTIONS FROM MYSELF TO MYSELF
    What followed was written in her ordinary script: As I write this to you, I don’t remember everything but I remember more than you will remember when you read this. You remember nothing now, do you? I know this from experience. Electroshock knocks out memory for a while. I don’t feel bad. To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure I’m sick. But they think I’m worse because I refuse to talk in group (because there is nothing to say) and won’t eat with the others, preferring to sit under the table (because a circle of knees is more interesting than a circle of