Ten o’clock is yours.
Straight razor, square point. Autoclaved at 250°F, stropped thirty laps.
One chair, one flight up on Front Street in Marietta. Hollis Ives books it five times a day, seventy-five minutes each. This is your ten o’clock, from the door to the mirror.
Nobody else is in the room.
9:58. The street door is the narrow one between two shop windows, and the stairwell behind it is lined with pressed tin from 1891.
Upstairs: one porcelain chair, a tall window over Front Street, and no waiting room. The eight-thirty left at a quarter to ten. The tray is already reset.
- Grain
- Down on the cheeks, sideways on the neck.
- Grain
- A whorl under the left jaw.
- Skin
- Dry. Pinks fast at the throat.
- Towel
- Hot, not the hottest.
- Passes
- With, then across. Never against.
- Next
- Same hour, three weeks.
First, he reads the grain.
10:04. Hollis runs two fingers against your beard and writes down which way it grows.
It goes on an index card with notes on your skin and how hot you like the towel, filed in an oak drawer with a card for every face since 2014.
Before barber school he spent eleven years as a surgical technologist. He still lays out his tray the way he did in the operating room, and he still counts it.
Three towels. Each one tested on his wrist.
- 10:08. The first warms the skin for two minutes.
- The second, wrapped tighter, softens the beard for three.
- The third comes after the razor, and it is cold.
Between the first two: pre-shave oil, then lather, worked in for two full minutes.
Thirty laps on the leather.
10:24. Every razor is stropped right before it touches a face: thirty laps a client, not thirty a morning.
No music plays in the room. He listens to the edge on the leather as he counts.
With the grain. Then across it.
10:30. Two passes, never more. The first follows the direction on your card; the second crosses it. On a first visit he never goes against the grain. That is where razor burn and ingrown hairs start.
11:12. He raises the chair and hands you the mirror.
A cold towel, then alum and an unscented balm. Before you stand up, he offers you the same hour three weeks out.
There you are.
Your hour, and his whole attention.
Or call (740) 555-0119.