For the next thirty minutes, cutting my hair became a secondary task. Occasionally, she would do some work, taking a small section off here and another small section off there. But her primary goal, it seemed, was to get to know me better. She often leaned against her counter, the clippers still buzzing through the air as she talked with her hands.
This type of unnecessary slowness usually pisses me off. But with Tracy, I loved it. Perhaps the pizza was still numbing the section of my brain that controls cynicism. But I think it was really her seemingly genuine interest in my admittedly boring life.
I explained to her that I had just moved to the area, no more than a week ago. We talked about the area. We talked about our mutual disdain for packing and unpacking. She told me about her plans to go to the shore for the weekend and how she and her girlfriends go to the shore every year for Memorial Day weekend. Then I told her about how I went to the shore every summer when I was a kid and about how I had lived at the beach for the past three years.