When I was a kid, on the first Saturday of every month, my father
took me with him to see Archie, the barber-bookie. In between snippets of
gossip and good horse sense, Archie would take my father's bets. The smell
of good soap and good cigars and steaming towels and fragrant after-shave
blended in a kind of ceremonial incense while the barber's pole spiraled
ever upwards like an eternal peppermint stick.
	It was in Archie's chair that I watched my little brother get his first
haircut. He sat in the booster chair with a solemn face and legs toothpick
straight and I watched as his neck appeared - slender and vulnerable and
dusted with white powder - and his ears became suddenly the size of pitcher
handles.
	And I recall one afternoon years after that, going into my brother's
room to kiss him good-bye after a family visit and catching my breath at the
sight of him. He slept on his stomach, his narrow hips and waist swelling
from low-rise jeans into an upper back tanned and muscular from a summer
spent working construction. The sun fell through the window, spilling light
across the thick ropes of chestnut hair that glowed and coiled across his
back.
	Instead of kissing him, I just stood there admiring this grown-up
young man who was once the little boy who emerged from the bathroom with
his hair plastered into patent leather perfection with half a tube of my
father's Brylcream. His face was shining and smiling as he asked, "How do I
look?"
"Beautiful," I whisper over and over to that child of memory, "you look
beautiful."

	I never did kiss him good-by. I wish I had. It was the last time I
saw him before an explosion of hot roofing tar took his face.