The lawyer from clips.com would not sit down. That was the first thing I learned about Desmond Achterberg, and for a long time it was the most important.
He stood in the middle of my grandfather's barbershop on Fennimore Street, holding a thick envelope.
Sal kept cutting. Benny kept reading. Rafi held the door shut against fifteen people with phones. I closed my laptop.
I am Gina Deluca. I was thirty-three, a first-year lawyer, and the only person in the room on Sal's side with a law degree. The other side had brought a man with a messenger bag that cost more than my car.
"Mr. Deluca," Desmond said. "May I explain what's in here?"
"After the Number Four," Sal said.
So Desmond Achterberg waited. He stood very still by the coat rack for eleven minutes while Sal finished a retired mail carrier named Gus.
He did not check his phone. He did not shift his weight. I had the impression he had once stood through an entire wedding without noticing there were chairs.
Benny turned a page of the newspaper. "Lorraine Fisk," he read. "Eighty-seven, avid gardener." He lowered the paper and looked at Desmond.
"Not me. Not yet."
Desmond nodded politely, as if this were a normal thing to say to a stranger. "Congratulations," he said.
"Thank you," said Benny.
When Gus had paid and been written into the green ledger, Sal turned his chair around and sat in it. He folded his arms. He nodded at the emergency chair, which was empty now except for the obituaries.
"Sit," he said. "We'll talk."
"I'm fine standing, thank you." Desmond opened the envelope.
"Clips.com would like to resolve this. Quickly and generously."
The offer was forty thousand dollars.
That was for Sal to change the name of the shop. Clips.com would also pay for a new sign, new business cards, and "any reasonable rebranding costs." Sal pointed out that he did not have business cards. Desmond wrote that down.
"Why do you care?" I asked. "Honestly, you're a video site. He cuts hair."
Desmond paused. He had a way of pausing that felt like a footnote coming.
"Next spring, clips.com is opening physical locations," he said. "We call them Clips Studios. Places where creators can film. Lighting, sound, and camera-ready styling."
"Styling," I said.
"Hair and makeup." He did not look at Sal when he said it. He looked at the floor, which I think was a kindness.
"The first one opens in Corwin. Nine miles from here."
I understood then. It was not a robot that wanted the name. Or not only a robot. Clips.com was about to start cutting hair, nine miles from a barbershop that had been called Clips since 1979.
"So I'm in your way," Sal said.
"I wouldn't put it like that."
"How would you put it?"
Desmond considered this. "You're in our way," he said.
Benny laughed out loud. It was the first time all week. Even Sal's mouth moved at one corner, which for him is a standing ovation.
"No," Sal said.
"You haven't heard the full—"
"Forty thousand. A new sign. Things I don't have."
Sal stood up. He is not tall, but he stands up like a man who has done it for seventy-one years and knows how. "I'm not changing my name."
"It's not your name, technically, Mr. Deluca. It's the business's—"
"It's on the window. It's my name."
Desmond looked at the window. From inside, the sign read backward. He looked at it for a while, and I noticed he read it twice, the way I do.
"No appointments," he read, slowly. "No phones. No nonsense."
"Correct."
"No phones at all? How do customers reach you?"
"They walk," said Sal.
Desmond put the papers back in the envelope. He put the envelope back in the messenger bag. He did it carefully, the way you put away a gift someone did not want.
"I'll pass that along," he said. "I'm just the messenger."
"Then pass this along too." Sal picked up his comb. "Tell whoever sent you that I was here first. And tell him he's welcome to come sit."
"I'm afraid it's not one person. It's a company."
"Every company is one person," Sal said, "if you go back far enough."
I walked Desmond out. The crowd on the sidewalk had thinned. A young man asked if Desmond was "the clips.com guy." Desmond said he was "a clips.com guy," which I thought was a careful distinction.
We stopped at the corner by the pharmacy. Upstairs, I could see Harriet's window. I was fairly sure she was watching, eating sunflower seeds, with the expression of a chess player watching a pawn wander off.
"Can I tell you something off the record?" Desmond said.
"I'm a first-year associate. I don't know what off the record means."
"It means I'd be grateful if you didn't tell your grandfather I said it." He sighed.
"The first letter was automatic. We use a brand-protection program. It searches public records for anything named Clips and drafts a letter. Last year, it sent eleven hundred of them."
"Eleven hundred?"
"Most people just change the name. A food truck, a hair salon, a man who sold paper clips online." He winced. "That one was a mistake."
"And the video takedown? Also automatic?"
"Also automatic. I apologize for that personally. It was mortifying."
He meant it. You could see it in his ears, which had gone slightly pink. "I'd have handled this differently. If anyone had asked me first."
"Then handle it differently now."
"I tried." He looked back at the shop.
"The board saw the national news. They don't like the word Barbergate. They voted this morning to file."
The complaint arrived on Monday. It was thirty-four pages long. I read it three times.
Clips.com, Inc. had sued Salvatore Deluca, doing business as Clips, in federal court. It asked the judge for something called a preliminary injunction. That meant it wanted the court to order Sal to stop using the name now, before the case was even decided. The hearing was set for twenty-two days away.
I brought the complaint into Harriet's office. She read it with a seed in her hand that she forgot to eat. I had never seen her forget a seed.
"Their argument is clever," she said finally. "They say you can only keep a name if you've used it continuously. Without breaks. And they say you can't prove it."
"He's never stopped. Not one day. He opened on a Tuesday in 1979, and he's been there every Tuesday since."
"Says who?"
"Says Benny."
"Benny reads obituaries aloud. A judge will like him. A judge will not rule on him."
She set the seed down. "What does your grandfather have? Old ads, phone book listings, phone records?"
"No phone."
"Website?"
"He doesn't believe in websites."
"Tax returns?"
"He keeps seven years in a shoebox. He says the government only wants seven."
I swallowed. "He burns the rest in the backyard every New Year's. It's a family tradition. We make s'mores."
Harriet was quiet for a long time.
"So the only proof of 1979," she said, "is a hand-painted sign. And a lot of people who remember it."
"Yes."
"Is it in writing?"
I opened my mouth. Then I closed it. For the first time all week, I did not have an answer for her.
I went back to the shop that evening. Sal was sweeping, because Rafi had gone home. He only sweeps when he is thinking.
I told him everything. The complaint. The hearing. The word continuous. The shoebox.
He listened without stopping the broom. When I finished, he leaned it against the wall.
"They want proof I was here," he said.
"Every year. Since 1979. On paper."
He looked at me the way he looks at a customer who asks for a fade.
"Gina," he said. "Why do you think I write everybody down?"
Up next: The Book
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