GREG SAID WHEN I walked into his barbershop twenty minutes later. There wasn’t an ounce of humor in his voice, and I knew that I was going to be fighting an uphill battle getting him to talk to me. There was a man in his sixties in the chair getting the finishing touches on a flattop, and the crown of his head was so smooth you could land a toy airplane on it. “That’s good, because that’s not why I’m here,” I said with a smile. Greg nodded, and the electric clippers in his hand bobbed with him. If the man in the chair noticed it, he didn’t say anything, and if he did, I had to admire him for not even flinching. “Talking is extra,” he said as he pointed to a sign mounted on the brick wall behind me. It had been clearly hand-lettered, and after listing the price of a haircut, it said, “If you take a cell phone call in the chair, it’s going to cost you a dollar a minute. If you complain about it, get your hair cut somewhere else.” Below that, he had added, “If you want to talk to me and not get your hair cut, that’s a dollar a minute, too.”
