Brave Andrew and the Crop-Haired Lass

by Marian Allen

This story originally appeared in E2K's November 2003 issue. It is still archived there, but something is wonky with the coding, so I am archiving it here, as well.

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Once upon a time, there was an accountant named Andrew Cashel, which is a funny enough name for an accountant, and you may be sure he heard many a joke on the subject. Andrew had clear and attainable career goals, but the desire of his heart was to find and marry his one true love. Unfortunately, although he could force himself to attend school and interact in class and to function satisfactorily at work, the young man suffered from severe social anxiety which made dating unpleasant, to say the least. By the time he reached the age of thirty, Andrew's career was right on track, and he had resigned himself to bachelorhood. He was not the man to believe in magic carpets, yet there was one in his future, as you will soon see.

One day it chanced, when Andrew was sorting through the newspaper sections in search of the financial news, that his hand fell upon a K-Mart ad, and one of the items advertised was a "three-by-five-foot Persian-type area rug carpet, many patterns available."

Andrew's principal reading had long been the newspaper, biographies, and Westerns, but his childhood library had consisted mainly of the works of another Andrew: Andrew Lang's rainbow of Fairy Books. The words "Persian-type area rug carpet" conjured up visions of barefoot princesses draped in layers of film and brocade, their knee-length hair spilling from under bejeweled turbans, their bare arms encircled with spirals of gold, marrying Serpent Kings and pointing accusatory fingers at cringing Evil Councilors and whatnot.

Andrew prudently clipped the advertisement with its promised discount price, tucked it in his pocket, and drove to K-Mart. There, he not only found a rug of intricate design that couldn't have matched his living room colors better if it had been woven to order, he also found a clerk who told him the price would be reduced a final time the next day, and that he could bring his receipt and be given the difference in cash.

That night, Andrew dreamed of a figure in a black cloak carrying a rolled-up area rug. The figure unrolled the rug at Andrew's feet, and a fortune in jewels scattered across his penny-loafers.

It was with a shock of recognition, then, that he saw the woman in K-Mart's parking lot the next afternoon. She wore a black pants suit, and her waist-length hair veiled her lowered face as she rummaged in her purse. Under her arm, she carried a rolled-up rug the twin of his own. She pulled out a set of keys, unlocked her car door, heaved the rug into the back seat, and turned, tossing her head so that her hair flipped behind her shoulders.

She looked up. Her eyes met Andrew's.

She had, he thought, eyes like emeralds, lips like rubies, teeth like pearls, and her skin had the soft warm gleam of ivory. Every other part of her was probably like something else precious and beautiful. His heart turned over in his chest, which was not something you would want to have happen all that often.

She laughed as she gathered her hair and clipped it with a gold doo-dah from her purse, fastening the black mass at the nape of her neck. "I'm getting it cut tomorrow after work. The Shearing Shed is having a cut-in for Locks of Love." As she spoke, she opened the driver's door of her car and slid in.

Then she was gone, and Andrew had neither spoken nor moved nor breathed, from the moment he first saw her.

That evening, he read nothing but his rug, staring at it, finding in it the colors of her hair, her eyes, her lips, her teeth, her skin, tracing in it the curve of her cheek, the arch of her eyebrow, the angle of her chin. He thought of her hair, pouring over her shoulders like ebony silk, then falling in a lifeless heap under the beautician's blades. That night he dreamed of Rapunzel, shorn of her crowning glory, mournfully wandering the world in search of her blinded Prince.

How he got through the morning, Andrew never knew. He was in the company lunchroom, where he sat -- as usual -- alone, when he heard the enchanted words: Shearing Shed. He listened closely as a long-haired male gave a long-haired female directions to the cut-in. He listened to them both explain to another worker how the Shed gave free cuts on Wednesdays to people who could muster a 10-inch braid, giving the hair to a charity which made wigs for children who had lost their hair through illness.

A worthy cause. A noble lady.

He scribbled down the Shed's address on the spiral notepad he always kept in his shirt pocket. As soon as he left work, he would drive to the Shearing Shed. He would find her and ransom her hair. He imagined throwing himself between the beautician and her prey, offering twice the cost of a wig for his lady's release. He imagined the emerald-eyed woman stepping from the chair, casting aside that plastic body-bib as if it were a shabby disguise, rising joyfully into his heroic arms, her tresses swirling around them both like a sable shawl.

Cruel reality shared the car with him on the way. The closer he came to the scene of his fantasy, the clearer grew his realization that his dream would never come true. He, Andrew Cashel, put himself forward? He, who had never initiated a conversation in his life, thwart someone's intent, stop someone's action, speak an unstuttered word to a stranger? It was more likely that a raven would perch on a parking meter and tell him where the wicked uncle had hidden the caliph's youngest daughter.

There was a line when he got there, and he had to park down the block and around the corner. People of all shapes, ages, genders, and hair colors, pony-tailed and braided, waited for the clippers.

He didn't see her in line. Suppose she were already inside!

Social anxiety be damned! He had a greater anxiety to cope with, now. What if he were too late! Feverishly, he plucked the door from the customer holding it open.

Boldly, he spoke thus: "I'm picking someone up." Magically, the customer waved him in.

He strode through the filled waiting room, glancing around in the forlorn hope that SHE might still be there. He passed the pert receptionist, passed the manicure station. Still he advanced.

A woman in a white coat printed with primary-colored scissors held a shining black braid aloft and folded it into a gallon plastic bag. Only one braid in all the world could have that liquid sheen. He was too late.

The beautician stepped aside.

The lady rose with fluid grace, ruffling her feathery curls. "Good riddance!" She met his eyes and laughed. "Hello again. You picked a bad day for a trim. They have their hands full, wouldn't you say?"

As she passed, her curls became part of the pattern on his rug, and the pattern became curls of steam over black liquid.

She had reached the desk when he recovered his power of speech.

"You're right," he said. "Might as well go for a cup of coffee. Care to join me?" She looked back over her shoulder and smiled. "Don't mind if I do."

World Bean, which featured organic coffees and teas grown in the shade of various rain forests, was only a couple of doors down, so they went there.

Andrew introduced himself on the way, and she replied that her name was Sheri Zahn and that she worked in the typing pool of a local major business.

Her hands couldn't seem to stop running themselves over her shorn locks. "I'm sorry I keep messing with my hair. I can't get used to it."

Andrew couldn't get used to it, either, though he had enough wit not to say so. It was with a sense of inevitability that he realized he had only been able to ask her for coffee because, like Samson, her power had been in her hair. Now she was no longer an enchantress, and now they could be friends. It was as if a color print on the cover of a book were reproduced in grayscale as an interior plate.

There was a crowd in the shop. A generality of raw, blunt-ended stylings and the pervasive odor of talcum suggested that World Bean was benefiting from the cut-in down the block. Sheri exchanged shy smiles with other self-conscious patrons.

Andrew felt a sudden desire to grow his own hair long, so he could share with her the communion she now shared with these other people, these people who were not himself.

As suddenly as if a magic word had been spoken, she was transformed. The phantom of her lost tresses slipped from Andrew's inner sight as finally as the real ones had done. When she looked up at him and asked him what he wanted, he knew. Not a grayscale, not a color print, not an image of any kind. He wanted the dull, the terrifying, the losable, the actual, the real.

They ordered green tea chai steamers, for the place was as chill as a cave, and almond biscotti. Andrew insisted on paying for both of them. As the counterman prepared their drinks, Andrew gazed at Sheri.

I wish I could not mess this up. I wish I could be brave and honest for once in my life. I wish I had the guts to just be the way I am and trust her to like it.

She looked at him again and blinked, as if startled. Andrew was appalled to realize he had dropped his guard, and had been smiling at her in open hope and admiration.

Her eyes crinkled at the edges. The corners of her mouth turned up. In an instant, Andrew was transformed from the shambling beast in the corner of his own life into a handsome prince.

The counterman directed a final whoosh into one cup and then the other. Steam billowed around him as he handed Andrew his order.

"You got it," he said.

And they lived happily ever after.

The End