PJ cut hair. She was a middle-aged woman in bib overalls. Her shop, barely advertising itself as such (PJ’s For Men), was on Second Avenue. She was leery about taking new clients. She never did women. “Too much trouble.” She scored markings—eighths of an inch, like a ruler—onto the spine of her comb, so she could accurately measure the length of each individual strand. She was brusque, all business, but after you got to know her she would talk. She had wanted to become a makeup artist but at the time the union was closed to blacks. She cut hair in Harlem for many years, then relocated “downtown,” as she called it, to the Upper East Side. She had no idea who her father was. Her mother “never knew what to do with a child.” During World War II she joined the WACs. They were shuttled to different camps all over the country, put on trains but never told where they were going. She would look out the window and wonder where she was. A city would appear, but the name of the station was covered up. Eventually, she was discharged for an offense she wouldn’t talk about.

She had a female assistant she was obviously crazy about, but they argued and the girl left. 

“Got married,” she spat. 

PJ, the only name she went by, was prickly, a loner, lavishing elaborate care on her pure-bred sheepdog. She drove a Porsche. Cut the hair of celebrities. 

Eventually, she quarreled with the landlord and moved to a nearby side street. Walk-in trade faltered. Another of her clients was a reporter. He wrote a human interest piece about her. It would have helped get new business. But she read it first and refused to let him submit it because “he made me out to be some little old lady who cuts hair.” 

When she closed the shop, she agreed to continue seeing me at her home. I went to Penn Station and took a train to Little Neck in Queens. She had only been able to buy a house there by having a light-skinned friend go around with the realtor. When PJ appeared at the closing the owners went ballistic but there was nothing they could do. She worked in her kitchen, draping a towel over my shoulders, snipping way, measuring with the calibrated comb. The house was frozen in 1950s chic. The bathroom had fancy bottles of perfume—Arpége, I remember in particular—arrayed on shelves, more for display than use. Like the car and the dog, another strictly private indulgence. Did she ever dab a little behind her ears? The bottles themselves were the essence of femininity, shaped like rippling drapery, or with arty curves, frozen in glass. You sensed deep emotion, stashed where no one could see.

She painted portraits. I didn’t see them as conscious attempts at fine art, just people, painted by a person, an attempt to connect. They were in the shop and, later, lined the walls of her house, several canvasses deep, many turned to the wall. I always wondered how she found her subjects, if they were part of another life. 

She had no relatives, no heirs. In memory of the dog, who had died, she decided to leave her money to a veterinary school in the South. When the school administration found out about the proposed bequest they wanted to fête her, fly her down, but she refused. She got quite angry when they persisted. 

She began to exhibit strange symptoms, railing at “Chinese drivers.” They were everywhere! She showed me a picture she had printed off the internet of Michael Jackson but with huge breasts. One day she informed me that I couldn’t come back. She had recast me as one of the many people she had been betrayed by. I never knew why. 

Coincidentally, the artist who initially taught PJ how to paint lived in my neighborhood. She had broken with him, had a terrible fight, over what I can’t remember. Long after our last conversation I would see flyers, offering lessons, with reproductions of his work. I recognized her style, where she had gotten it from. It made me think of her, long after the fact. Then the flyers stopped appearing. 

But I can still feel her warm thumb pressing insistently behind my ear, hear the ping of individual hairs, held taut as they were snipped, one by one, all the same exact length. The skin is so thin there, the skull so close to the surface. 

***

Thomas Rayfiel is the author of eight novels, including In Pinelight and Genius.