- THE HAT -
A man needs a hat, Jeremiah thought as he changed his shirt. A man needs a good hat even if he isn't exactly a big shot. He looked in the mirror over the sink in the gents toilet. You can still be a large fish in the smallest pond in the world, he thought with a grin. He folded his uniform in a ball, dropped it in the bag with his apron and walked out into his domain - a franchised chicken restaurant in the food court of a medium-sized shopping centre. He had been working in there since relocating to the city four years before, in search of his true path.
He strode through the tables nodding goodbye at the guys of the night shift behind the counter, and headed straight to the accessory shop downstairs.
And that's where his true path had led him. Without stepping up in any way on the professional ladder, and still occasionally cursing and swearing between his teeth against his dead-end job, Jeremiah had acquired during the years a sort of unofficial seniority that allowed him a certain freedom in the restaurant. Very seldom he now took on the twenty kilos of onions that had to be cut every two or three days for the salads. One of the new guys did it. And he could take a break every couple of hours without really asking the manager, but rather informing him that he was off for a cigarette. He enjoyed that status even though in some recess of his mind he was aware that it was that same illusion of freedom that trapped him. It was a leverage on some flaws in his personality he vaguely sensed when he surveyed, during some sleepless night, where and how his life seemed to have left him stranded. But why look for another future-less job, he'd theorise at the first light of day, and start from scratch again? Until an opportunity arose he could stay in a place where nothing could happen that he hadn't seen before. What was wrong with that? He wasn't scared. No. He'd get out of there, sooner or later. He just needed one chance. He'd succeed in something, somehow. Maybe he'd start playing an instrument.
He walked out of the restaurant and across the food court and stepped on the escalator down to the first floor.
He had been mulling over the idea of the hat for a few weeks now, since he had lingered over a black and white picture of a trumpet player in a music magazine. He had visited a few shops and even surfed the web seeking the right hat. A fedora with a particular short, flat brim. And above all a hat that would fit his head, for Jeremiah had quite an impressive head.
He had calculated the exact circumference of his cranium using a silk ribbon found in Helen's stationery box, draping it around his head and then measuring the corresponding section with a folding rule. Sixty-two centimetres, the last frontier in commercial hat sizes. Beyond that, only the tailor-made. Most of the shops didn't even stock that size.
So the restrictions imposed by the width of his head, the particular shape of the hat he was looking for, and a limited budget, gradually turned such a simple desire into a more difficult quest than expected. That's when he noticed the new accessories shop under the escalator in the same shopping centre where he spent most of his waking hours.
He stepped into the small shop and turned at once to the rows of hats against the wall, as the Chinese woman who tended the shop kept on chatting with a man at the front door. Rapidly discarding the beanie and baseball cap section, the cowboy and outback section, and the berets and flat-hats section, he narrowed the choice down to two hats. One turned out to be too small even though it was labelled as an XL size, the second seemed to fit just right.
He was quite pleased by what he saw in the mirror, and was ready for the purchase even though it wasn't exactly what he had been looking for – the brim was a little too wide, and the band came in too bright a light blue for his tastes. He had in mind a flatter shape, rounder. A jazz-player kind of hat.
Then, half-hidden on the rack, he noticed another little pile of hats. He gently removed one and studied its shape. A black felt fedora with a minimal, flat brim and a dark silk band. It was perfect. He checked the sizes trying to curb his excitement, already nudging the idea, like an aching tooth, of having to renounce for lack of centimetres. Then he saw it: XL.
It felt just a little too tight. Nothing particularly bothering. Especially since he was used to hats that, no matter how hard he'd try to pull them down, would sit on the crown of his head like in an old slapstick movie.
Jeremiah heard the woman stepping back into the shop, and on the impulse he tried on the hat standing in front of her, arms dangling at his sides.
“What do you think”, he said with a large grin.
“That's the one”, she said, and turned around the counter to the till.
The woman shoved the hat in a plastic bag.
“I don't need that”, he said. “I'm going to wear it”.
He paid and walked out of the shop wearing a good hat.
At once he felt more lively, striding along with a spring in his step. A new person, wiser, distinguished and street-smart, alert and quick with his wits, and with his hands too. In fact, even slightly dangerous. A good humoured and interesting man, but one you don't mess with. The biggest fish in the smallest pond in the world.
He thought every passing glance he received in the street - a woman carrying some shopping bags, a boy with a skateboard, a man with a regular, boring baseball cap - were meant to say: how cool that hat is! And how well it fits that guy's head and general demeanour!
He walked to the bus stop across the street and tried to catch a glimpse of himself in the glass stand.
“Do you know how long the bus will be?”
He turned around to look at the middle aged woman who had addressed him.
Here we go, Jeremiah thought. People just want to talk to me, I look like an approachable, likeable guy who knows things other people don't, important stuff like the bus timetable and so on.
“I have no idea”, he said, “but I'm sure it won't be too long”.
The woman stepped closer to the stand.
Jeremiah glanced at her from the corner of the eye and decided she was still pleasant-looking.
“I forgot my glasses”, she said.
“Never-mind”, he said, realising the woman had wanted him to read the timetable. “They're not very punctual anyway”.
“Here it comes”, she said. And as Jeremiah looked down the street the bus was pulling over.
He sat near the window so he could take a look at his profile with the hat on. The afternoon light was still too bright, projecting too many reflections on the glass.
Jeremiah pulled out his mobile and, resting his arm on the front seat, looking elsewhere as if following a particular train of thoughts, took a picture of himself.
It sounded like an old camera on slow shutter-speed: C-C-CLACK. The woman who had gotten on the bus with him, sitting on the front seat, turned around and glanced at him.
“Sorry”, he said. “I must have accidentally pushed the button”.
The woman frowned and turned around. He noticed she had greasy hair.
He flipped through the images on the phone.
He hadn't got it right. The picture showed the lower half of his head, with only a minimal portion of the brim, slightly askew, above his eyes. He thought he looked older than he remembered. The skin of his cheeks was floppy like a hound-dog's, and covered by the grey shadow of a two days beard. Behind the glasses his eyes looked small, tired, and also something else he couldn't tell.
I should get a better phone, Jeremiah thought, and put it back in his pocket.
When he gets home Helen isn't there yet. He sits on the couch and turns the TV on, and he must doze off for a minute or two because, next thing he knows, he's startled by the squeak and slam of the front door.
Helen comes in, slightly hunched, carrying three bags of groceries.
“Hey”, she says.
“Hey there”.
She places the bags on the kitchen bench as Jeremiah gets up from the couch, losing his balance for a moment. It feels like a clamp has been tightened around his temples. He realises he's still wearing the hat.
He staggers over to the kitchen trying to smile: “Well, what do you say?”.
“What do I say about what”, says Helen without raising her eyes, methodically pulling out the groceries from the bags.
“How was your day?”
“Pretty bad”, she says, “the girls in the office keep on bitching about each other and I had to work on a spreadsheet all day. How about you?”
“Been going around”, he says, “here and there”.
“Found anything?”
“Not yet”, he says taking off his hat and hiding it under the bench, “but I've left a couple of CV's around”.
She glances at him across the kitchen bench as if about to say something, but she stops short and just stares above his eyes.
“What happened to your head?”, she says.
“Why, nothing”.
“You've got a red mark on your forehead, like you been wearing a helmet or something”.
“I dozed off on the couch”, he says, “maybe the pillow”.
Helen says nothing for a moment, and he finds himself unable to hold her gaze.
Then she goes back to the groceries and he sneaks out of the kitchen and into the bathroom.
He turns on the light and looks into the mirror above the sink.
A red mark runs around his forehead like a Latin inscription etched on the base of the bald dome above it. The light overhead projects a shadow underneath his eyes, which now look more frightened than tired. He can hear the rustling of the plastic bags from the kitchen, so he turns on both taps and sits on the edge of the bathtub.
There's a brown stain on the enamel under the tap, which has been leaking for a long time. He hasn't found the time to fix it yet.
Maybe he'll do it tonight.
He pulls out the clothes from the laundry-basket and drops the hat in. Then he dumps the dirty clothes back on top.
Helen knocks on the door. “Have you finished in there? Can I at least take a bath?”
She keeps on knocking, as if she could go on forever, and Jeremiah doesn't move, he doesn't say a word.
"Luca was born in Rome, Italy and lives in Sydney, Australia. Self-banned from life proper, he excretes stories and photographs of his surroundings..."
