The Inner Circle

89

Twenty-six years ago

Journey, Ohio

It was Thursday, and the barbershop was open late.

The young barber wasn’t thrilled-in fact, if it were any other client, he would’ve already locked up and left. Especially tonight. Tonight was card night, and with Vincent hosting, that meant they’d be playing bid whist and eating those good pierogies Vincent always ordered from around the corner. They were probably already eating them now, Laurent thought as he glanced down at his digital watch and then out the plate glass window where the rain had just started to springboard from the black sky.

Ten more minutes. I’m not waiting a minute more than that, he promised himself, even though he made the same promise ten minutes ago.

And ten minutes before that.

Again, if it were anyone else, Laurent would’ve already left. But he wasn’t waiting on just any client. This was one of Laurent’s first clients-back from when Laurent was still in high school and his dad first gave him the scissors and a chair of his own.

In a town like Journey, where the same man has been cutting the same hair for nearly four decades, it takes more than just bravery to try out the untested new barber.

It takes trust.

And like his father with his own first clients, Laurent would never-not ever-forget that fact, not even years later when he was asked to stay late on a cold, rainy card night, when every store on the block was closed and every second waiting here decreased the chances of him seeing a pierogi or-

Diiiing, the bell rang at the front of the barbershop.

Laurent turned as the door slammed hard into the wall, nearly shattering the plate glass. It wasn’t his client. It was a crush of young men in their twenties rushing in from the rain, stumbling at the threshold. They were soaked… slipping… dripping puddles across the black-and-white tile floor.

For those first seconds, Laurent was pissed. He hated dealing with drunks, especially drunk college kids who suddenly see a barbershop and think they want a Mr. T mohawk. But it wasn’t until they tumbled inside that Laurent finally saw the true cause of their lack of balance: The young man in the middle sagged facedown to the ground. His friends weren’t walking with him. They were carrying him.

As he lay there, not moving, his right arm was bent awkwardly in a way that arms don’t bend. Sliding down from his soaked hair, drips of blood tumbled into the new puddle of rainwater, seeping outward as they turned the floor a strangely beautiful light pink. But even in the midst of the chaos, even with the blood still coming, the young barber, who would forever regret staying late that night, immediately recognized the tattoo on the bleeding man’s forearm.

An eight-ball.

He’d cut the hair of one other person with the same mark. He knew what it meant-and what gang it came from.

“Get inside! Shut the door!” one of the boys said, screaming at the overweight boy-no, that was a girl-who was still standing out in the rain, looking like a chubby phantom and not saying a word.

“They’re gonna kill us!” the other boy called out, his haunting gray eyes locking on the barber with an almost spiritual clarity. Laurent knew him too-he’d known him for years-back from when the boy was little and his father would bring all sorts of trouble to the shop. Even back then, even when it got bad, Laurent never saw the boy get riled. Until now.

“I mean it, Laurent. Please…” the young twenty-year-old who would one day be the President of the United States pleaded as his gray eyes went wet with tears. “Please can you help us?”