EPISODE 8

Joey Romano was the nastiest son of a bitch I ever met.  Actually I have to take that back.  He was really the biggest bully I had ever run across.  Joey wasn’t a very tall or terribly imposing looking man.  He stood about five feet, eight inches and weighed maybe 160 pounds.  He was just a prick, through and through and anyone who’d ever dealt with came away with the distinct impression that he enjoyed being a prick.  His white hair was always cut short, but it was hard to tell that most of what stood on top of his head was made from the finest quality yak hair.  Most of the human hair used in the hair replacement industry comes either from India or China.  The hair takes almost every color dye you can apply to it, except for gray and white.  When the dyes that are normally used to turn hair these two colors are applied to human hair, the hair becomes extremely brittle and it’s almost impossible to insert it into the fine mesh bases that are later attached to a client’s head with one of several adhesives.  So, hair systems that must be dyed either white or gray are made from the hair of yaks.  Yak hair is close enough to human hair in texture and feel, and it won’t go brittle when its color is changed.  Joey bought, sold and wore a lot of yak.  But that wasn’t on his mind as he came over to where I was standing.  He was pissed off.  I put out my hand to greet him and he grabbed it, pushing me back into the hallway and towards a vacant wall.

“You little fuck!” he whispered hoarsely. 

“Hi Joey, how are you?”

“Shut the hell up!  I’m talkin’ here.”

I learned a long time ago that when Joey told you to shut up, it was usually a very good idea to do so.  When he got worked up, you had to let him vent, although he could do so for such long periods that he would quite literally wear you down to a shell.  He liked to insult prospective customers when they first came into his studio, berating them over their appearance.  There was a famous story about his reducing a young woman to tears by asking her why she was hanging around her fiancé.

“Jesus, honey!  He looks like your damned father!  Worse, really.”

After hammering on the couple for all of 10 minutes, both the man and the woman were sobbing as they contemplated how miserable they were: him for apparently being such a loser and her for having settled for him in the first place.  Like many of the poor souls who walked into Joey’s studio looking for help, they were met with abuse and a blindingly fast $2500 a year program that would make their lives okay again.  Joey was in many ways a genius.  He tore folks down and then built them back up, according to his own specifications.

He had some excellent technicians on his staff and they were all very proficient at making the customers feel relaxed and then making them look great.  The only problem was, you had to go through Joey first.  He franchised places all over the mid-Atlantic and was opening new locations in Georgia that year.  He also ran his own marketing program as part of the package he sold with every franchise.  It was a classic trap.  He didn’t care where you bought your raw product, but you had to follow his formula.  Joey had a deal with a media buyer that he dealt with for example, who regularly kicked back a piece of every television or radio ad buy that one of Joey’s franchisees placed with her.  Joey made a lot of extra money that way.  He never lost sight of that and he hated the thought of anything or anyone getting in the way of it.  So now he was focused on me and he was working himself up to a real fury.

“Listen you little douche-bag!  I heard what you did in that class of yours.  You’re just like that dickhead, Bosco you used to work for.   Don’t think I don’t forget that.”

I kept me eyes on his eyes and resisted the urge to look away as he took a deep breath and launched back into me.

“I know just what you’re doing.  Bosco used to do the same thing.  You two pricks come into town and wow my people with all that candy coated, self-help, marketing bullshit and they eat it right up.  They come back to their stores…my fucking stores and they start screwing everything up.  It takes me forever to get them back on track because you’ve got their heads all filled up with that crap you spout like it’s the fucking word of God!

“Well it ain’t!” he roared. 

A few people who had been passing through the hallway had stopped to see what was happening.  That didn’t deter Joey a bit; in fact it only seemed to drive him on.

“I know what my people need, not you!  I treat them like mushrooms.  I keep them in the dark.  I shovel shit on them and they grow they way I want them to or they fucking die!”

He looked to his left, giving me a full view of his profile.  His eyes were hooded and his brow was creased with anger.  His mouth was in an ugly snarl and he seemed to gaze out at something a hundred yards away, although all that was in his line of sight was the wall on the opposite side of the hallway.

“Stay away from my people” he muttered and he abruptly walked away from me.

It was tempting to give Joey a cheerful: “Good seeing you, Joey!  My best to the little woman!” But I deferred.  I figured it might be like leaning into a right hook and who knew whether Joey might not actually take a swing at me.

**********

The next installment will be posted on October 27.

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