EPISODE 56

A couple of other attendees had shown up by then, but Bosco had too and he was chatting them up.  I was free to continue my tête-à-tête with Joey.  He put his right hand against the middle of my back and steered me toward the back of the room.  I separated a couple of chairs from one of the stacks I made and we sat down.  He leaned toward me, his voice low.

“Listen, Michael.  I need to apologize to you.” 

I was astonished.  Joey was actually humbling himself to me.  Before I could reflect on that though, his mood turned.  The familiar snarl returned and he continued.

“I been bad-mouthing you so long, I can’t even remember.  You and Bosco fucking pissed me off.  You always screwing around with my managers’ minds at those seminars you run and then telling them all that I’m fucked in the head because I don’t know nothin’ about the Internet.  Oh man, I was mad at the two of you!”

Only Joey Romano could turn an attempted apology into a verbal indictment. But I noticed that he hadn’t raised his voice.  I kept my mouth shut and waited.  Joey looked over at the doorway, where Bosco stood with Frank Rotella and Raoul Liston.  The three of them looked back at us and waved.  Joey offered them a curt nod and turned back to face me.  As soon as he made eye contact, that toothy grin returned.  It was dawning on me that this was far from a natural condition for Joey and that turning the corners of his mouth upward took some real effort on his part.  His “happy mask” in place, Joey soldiered on.

“So, Michael.  The reason I wanna talk to you is about my Internet site.  You won’t believe it, but I had a guy build me one and it’s working great!  After all those times I cursed you and Bosco about that!  But, when I finally get around to doing some advertising on the Internet, it’s unbelievable!  You gotta see it!”

“Cool, let’s do that.” 

I stood up and led Joey over to the speaker’s podium at the front of the room.  I had a laptop set up on it with a connection to an overhead projector.  I tapped the touchpad on the computer and the screen lit up.  I opened an Internet browser and waited for the connection to bring me to theresnohaironmyhead.com.  My presentation to the attendees that morning was going to be on how the site was going to help them all give away the hair they bought from SlipNot and still make tons of money, so I had set the laptop’s browser preferences to default to it as the home page.

“What’s the URL?” I asked.

“The what?”

“The address of the site, Joey.  I need to enter it.”

“Oh yeah.”  Joey reached into his pocket and pulled out a slip of paper and began to read off it.

“Michael, you type in ‘romanosbighairsalon.com’.”

What the hell was it with everyone in the hair business and the way they named things?  I always thought that theresnohaironmyhead.com had been awful, but Joey’s URL only made me think of those puffed up, over-teased hairstyles from the mid-1980’s, like the ones that Melanie Griffith and Joan Cusak sported in Working Girl. I’d seen worse URLs though: eternalhairlines.com, littledeucetoupe.com, offandonagain.com, and the infamous lickitysnip.com were among my favorites of the genre.  I suppressed the urge to engage Joey any further on this point and typed the address into the browser.  After a few seconds, the landing page appeared.  And that was all it was too, a landing page.  The graphic was a photo of Joey standing in front of his studio, baring his teeth at the camera in that vaguely threatening grimace that passed for his smile.  Above his head appeared the words: “Has losing your hair got you down?”  Below him, it read: “Call Joey Romano: 1-800-555-HAIR.”  That was it.  It was about as interactive as a highway billboard. 

“Pretty nice, huh?” he asked.

I was speechless.  Unfortunately, the mere fact that I might not have something to say has never impeded me from blurting something out.  I managed however, through sheer will power to force my reaction into the form of a question, as if I was playing some Bizarro World version of Jeopardy (“I’ll take ‘Inappropriate Responses’ for $100, Alex!”).

“Are you actually getting anything from this, Joey?” I managed to spit out.

“Oh, yeah!  It’s great!  The phone rings all day!  I wish I’d listened to you and Bosco years ago.  This Internet stuff is the best.  It was cheaper than hell too!  I got my nephew to design the thing and he’s running it off his PC at home.  I toss him a few bucks every time I see him, so he’s happy.”

“Wait a minute, when you say he’s running it off his PC, what do you mean?”

“That ‘hosting’ thing that you and Bosco always tell us we have to pay 10 bucks, 15 bucks – whatever the fuck it is a month.  I don’t have to pay it!  Dennis just has it running on his computer.  He doesn’t have to do anything either.  It’s just there all the time.  Pretty slick?”

“What happens when Dennis turns off his PC?”

“Huh?”

I realized I’d gone too far.  I could picture it though.  After losing another round against the murdering hordes while playing God of War with his new pals in Serbia, Dennis would logoff, power down, and Joey’s site would be no more for that day.  I felt I should warn him of this, thought better of it, and quickly changed the subject.  The last thing I wanted was for Joey to get pissed off before we’d landed the bomb on him that SlipNot wanted him to start giving product away. The realization that his Web page might disappear from view any time Dennis decided to log off for the day might give Joey an aneurism. 

“So how are you tracking the leads, Joey?”

“Waddaya mean?”

“When the phone rings, how do you know where the lead comes from?  I mean, you’re still running TV and radio, right?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you know whether the person calling in came to you from a TV ad or from your Web site?”

“I dunno.”  Joey paused for a second or two, apparently mulling this over.  After considering it though, his reply was more like the response to a ‘knock-knock” joke.  “Okay, Michael.  How do you tell?”

I smiled wanly.  “Well Joey, you’re in luck.  I’m going to be talking about that later today.  Make sure you stick around for the seminar I’m teaching this afternoon.”

“Another of your fucking classes?” Joey said grinning – I swear he looked more lupine every time he did that.  “What’s it gonna cost me this time?”

“Nothing, Joey.  You get in for free!” 

Just like everybody else who’s registered for this conference, I thought silently.

He slapped me on the shoulder and gave me a thumbs-up.  “That’s what I like to hear!” he exclaimed.  Abruptly, he turned away and walked over to the door, where Keith had just entered.  Keith gave him a big smile and shook Joey’s hand in greeting.  I looked at the overhead screen and shuddered as I saw that Joey’s Web page was still up there.  I clicked the browser on the laptop off and the screen went blank.

The next episode of SlipNot will be published on September 22nd.

If you'd like to read SlipNot in its entirety, GO HERE.