the parting

by Andrew Eastwick

Seized one morning by an impulse, Joel parted his hair on the right instead of the left. He stood before the bathroom mirror appraising the result. Though a little uncertain, he convinced himself he liked it. Maybe it was a long-overdue change.

During his commute he kept sneaking glances in the rearview mirror. It occurred to him that his reflection now looked the way other people used to see him with the old part, and the new part would let them see him as he’d always seen himself. He grew excited wondering if anyone would notice.

Chuck at the concierge station in the lobby didn’t notice, but Chuck was someone who only saw Joel for a few seconds each day as he passed by on his way in and again on his way out. Joel had higher hopes for Eusebia, the office manager at his company, who sat at the reception desk in their suite. But she just greeted him like always and smiled through their chitchat and didn’t say anything about, or even appear to glance at, his hair.

Through meetings, work-related conversations, casual interactions, and lunch, he spent the day in nervous anticipation, his mind half on his job and half on the lookout for any sign that someone had noticed his change. No one said anything, and he reminded himself it was a pretty minor change. He still looked the same. He went home a little disappointed, but at the same time relieved not to have become the center of attention.

The next morning he hesitated before combing his hair, and at last decided to try the experiment again. Still, no one noticed. And after a few days he assumed no one would ever notice. Or else they had noticed and just didn’t care enough to say anything about it.

The thing was, Joel thought the right-side part was an improvement, however slight. He decided to keep it. He grew so accustomed to the new style that he’d nearly forgotten about it when one morning Eusebia asked him, with a puzzled smile, “Is there something different about you, Joel?”

He was surprised, but recovered and smiled back. “You tell me,” he said.

“New suit?”

“Nope.”

“New shoes?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Something’s different, I can tell. I just can’t put my finger on it. But I’m going to figure it out.”

“Good luck,” he said with another smile, and went to his desk, pleased with how cool he had played it.

Throughout the day, other coworkers looked at him with similar puzzled smiles. He was itching to tell them, but he enjoyed the aura of mystique that suddenly swirled around him, and he realized the truth might come as a letdown. He decided to string them along a little more.

“New glasses,” Eusebia exclaimed when he entered the next morning.

He made a sound like a game show buzzer.

“I know—you’ve been working out.”

“Wrong again. Want me to tell you?”

“No, I want to guess! Ugh, this is killing me!”

Eusebia made further guesses, and so did other coworkers. Even Barry, Joel’s direct supervisor, who was always the last to catch on to what everyone else was talking about, got in on the action. But no one figured it out. The excitement began to wane, and Joel realized he’d better tell them before they lost interest. He had come to believe that, rather than a letdown, the revelation would be startling in its simplicity.

Eusebia gave him an opening. “We give up, Joel,” she said at lunch. “What did you do?”

He smiled. “All right. I’ve held out long enough. It’s just a little thing, really. You want one more chance?”

“Tell us!” She swatted his arm.

“I changed the part in my hair.”

Everyone stared at him. Brows furrowed as if they were all trying to remember what he had looked like before.

“It’s like that song,” Barry chimed in.

“What song?” asked Joel.

“You know, that Who song.”

“Which one?”

“You know … how’s it go? ‘The parting on the left, is now parting on the right!’” And Barry waved his arm in a motion meant to evoke Roger Daltrey swinging the microphone but which looked more like Pete Townshend’s windmill strumming.

“‘Won’t Get Fooled Again,’” Joel said.

“Yeah! That’s the one!”

“No,” Kwame said. “I noticed the new part already. Like two weeks ago.”

“It’s something else,” Michelle added.

Everyone looked at Joel again, scrutinizing not only his hair but also his face and, it seemed, some deeper element of his being. They all looked uncomfortable. Disturbed, even. Joel began to feel disturbed, too.

“Sorry, I’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said, gathering his plate and napkins and leaving the table.

The stares continued. His coworkers said they knew he had changed, and it was more than just the part in his hair. He had changed in some deep but elusive way.

“But all I did was make a change, a very slight change, to my hair,” he complained to Eusebia.

“I don’t know. I mean, it happened around the same time. But I’m not sure if the hair was the cause, or an effect, or just a coincidence.”

After a while everyone gave up trying to figure out what was different about him. They didn’t stare at him anymore, at least not openly. But sometimes he would be in deep concentration and sense eyes on him, and he’d look up to catch someone quickly looking away.

Barry called him into his office.

“How are you feeling, Joel?”

“Fine. A little busy but, you know, doing all right. Just like usual.”

“That’s the thing, Joel. Things aren’t like usual. Not anymore.”

“Are you still talking about my hair part? And this idea that everyone thinks I’ve changed even though I don’t feel any different?”

“You have changed, Joel. And, well, it frankly isn’t our responsibility, the rest of us, to define that change. Suffice it to say you have indeed changed.”

“And that’s a problem?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I mean, it’s a problem that everyone keeps insisting that I’ve changed and won’t say how.”

“Can’t say how, Joel. We want to, but we can’t.”

“Okay, well, still I’m not the problem.”

“On the contrary, Joel, the change you’ve undergone is a problem, and so is the fact that you don’t seem to recognize it.”

Joel just stared, dumbfounded.

“And your performance, frankly, has been …” Barry bugged his eyes and puffed his cheeks and slowly released the air in the universal sign of a situation so embarrassing it could not be expressed with words.

“What are you trying to say, Barry?”

“Joel, how long have we been working together?”

“Uh … three years?”

Barry did some mental math, frowned, and gave up. “Three years. Give or take. Long enough for you to know the kind of guy I am. I’m a straight shooter. What you see is what you get. I tell it like it is.”

“And what is … it?”

“I’ve spoken with HR. We’re putting you on probation. Little ninety-day period to give you some time to work out whatever it is that’s going on and bring your performance back up to where it was before this whole unfortunate situation.”

“But there’s no situation. I’m the same, I—”

“There’s a situation, Joel, and the sooner you admit that, the sooner you can start to fix it. We can fix it, Joel—I’m your partner in this. We’re on the same team. Whatever you need, I’m here to help.”

“I don’t even know where to start.”

“You might start by looking deep inside yourself. Now, why don’t you take the rest of the day off. You’ve been under a lot of strain. Get some rest, take some time to reflect. We’ll start on this fresh tomorrow. We’re in this together, Joel.”

It wasn’t even lunchtime yet, but Joel packed up and went home. He tried to reflect on the situation, which had spiraled so far beyond his understanding and control. But he couldn’t make any sense of it. Instead, he dwelled on the fact that all of a sudden his job was in jeopardy, and he had ninety days to figure out something that made no sense. All because he had changed the part in his hair.

Or … was there really something else? Had he really changed in some way he couldn’t recognize? The odds were against him: surely it must be he and not everyone else who was wrong. But he just couldn’t see it.

He slept fitfully and got up in the morning feeling even worse than he had when he’d left Barry’s office the day before. After his shower he looked at himself in the mirror. Ever since that fateful day, he’d been parting his hair on the right. He parted it on the left to see if that would make a difference.

It didn’t. No one noticed, and he still felt confused and afraid. He barely got any work done. If he was going to get through this ordeal and save his job, he would have to improve his performance. He couldn’t let this situation keep hurting his efficiency or else he’d surely get fired. It occurred to him that what he really needed to do was become a better worker than ever before, and just make up some bullshit for Barry about how he’d changed. Something related to self-improvement that would sound positive and impressive without making him come off like a crackpot.

He applied himself to his job with a vengeance. He’d never been a poor employee, but rarely had he gone above and beyond. Now he went above and beyond so regularly that above and beyond became his new standard and he had to work even harder to go above and beyond that. He kept surpassing himself. His results were off the charts. He was almost singlehandedly responsible for a record-breaking third quarter. His coworkers glared at him. He was making them look bad. It was all right—he’d ease off after the probationary period. For now he had to save his job.

He didn’t slack on the other front, either. He spent all his free time reading self-help books and formulating a story to tell Barry about the change he’d undergone. Something that would account for the difference others thought they saw in him, but that would seem natural, plausible. He needed to rehearse it until it seemed unrehearsed.

The big day came. He started by recapping how his performance had skyrocketed, and Barry had to admit that was true. Joel was now the most productive employee in the office by a wide margin. Then, in a calm, enlightened tone, Joel explained the simple yet profound transformation he’d undergone.

“It’s as if I’ve finally become my true self,” he concluded. “‘Becoming,’ I should say. It’s a process. The self is never fixed or complete.”

Barry was silent, frowning down at his desk. “No, that’s still not it.”

“What do you mean, that’s not it? Come on, Barry, what else can I say?”

“Joel.” Barry looked up but didn’t meet Joel’s eyes. “We feel that—and HR is with me on this—we’ve begun to feel that you’re no longer the person we hired.”

Joel felt as if the air had been sucked out of his lungs. After all the effort he’d put in during the past three months, he couldn’t believe they were still in the same place. In a worse place, it seemed.

“It’s all right, Joel. People change. It’s natural. We can’t always anticipate it, or know how to deal with it when it happens—”

“But Barry, my performance. I mean, astronomical, right?”

“Sure. But performance isn’t everything, Joel, you know that. There’s also the matter of alignment. Being part of a team, that counts for something. More important than individual performance, in the long run. We all need a line of sight on our shared objectives here.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Joel, I’ve tried to make myself clear. When we hired you, we were all aligned. Now … not so much.”

“Jesus Christ, Barry!” Joel exploded. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing! I mean, is this all some elaborate practical joke? Is everyone going to bust through that door and scream, ‘Ha ha, we got you!’?”

“No, unfortunately. That would be fun. But no.”

“Look, Barry, everything I said about becoming my true self, that was all a crock of shit. I haven’t changed. I know I haven’t changed. This got out of control.”

Barry sighed. “I’m deeply disappointed to hear you say that, Joel. After all this time. I thought you’d turned a corner—personally, at least. But you’re still in the same place you were when this whole sad thing started.”

“All I did was change the part in my hair! My hair, Barry! And look, I changed it back! I’m the same person!”

“Joel, Joel. It isn’t as simple as that.”

“It is simple! It’s very, very simple! I always parted my hair on the left! I parted it on the right for a while, and now I’ve switched back to the left! Simple! It’s just hair! I’m still me, still Joel!”

“Joel, listen. It seems you’ve embarked on, well, I guess I’d call it a journey of self-discovery. You say you made up all that stuff about becoming your true self, but I think maybe there’s a grain of truth in there. All I know is you’re going through something, and you’re still in it. In deep. And while we want everyone in this company to grow and evolve and expand their horizons, well … what you’re doing isn’t quite what we had in mind. God knows I’m pulling for you, we all are. We want this for you. I have no doubt you’ll come through this better, happier, more certain of your place in the world than ever before. Now, I’ll give it to you straight. I’ll be the first to tell you this won’t be easy. But I’m sure it will be deeply meaningful. Profound. Beautiful, even. The only trouble is, this new self you’re becoming is, frankly, not aligned with your role here.”

“Barry. God. What are you saying?”

“I guess what I’m trying to say is it’s no longer a good fit at this point in time.”

“Meet the new boss,” Joel said. “Same as the old boss.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.”

Joel packed up his things and left that day. The farewells were muted, and Joel sensed that his coworkers felt a little guilty. Maybe they realized that if they’d left him alone, not pressed him and insisted that he was different when he didn’t believe he was, none of this would have happened. He could have just gone on doing his job, different or not.

He wasn’t much of a drinker, but when he left the office he went straight to a bar. He stayed there drinking through the afternoon doldrums, through happy hour, through the dinner rush and the new crowd that came in at night. There was a jukebox in the corner, not the digital kind that could play anything from a massive database or the antique kind that was stocked with 45-rpm records, but the intermediate kind that used CDs. People kept going over to it and entering songs, and Joel hadn’t paid any of them much mind until well into the night when one song thundered above the din and caught his attention.

Joel lurched to the jukebox. He punched the buttons that turned the carousel with the covers and track listings of the available CDs. They flapped until he saw the one he was looking for. Who’s Next, with the band members standing around some sort of stone structure they had just pissed on.

“The parting on the left,” Roger Daltrey sang, “is now parting on the right!”

There was a little display where Joel could see the CD spinning, with mirrors and plastic surfaces all around it. Joel leaned close and his face dissolved into a bewildering array of reflections. He laughed. He started feeling around on the machine and laughed again because it must have looked like he was fondling it, although no one appeared to notice. Then he found what he was searching for: the button that skipped to the next song in the queue.

No one seemed to notice that, either, at least not right away. But as he headed back to his stool someone blocked his path and jabbed a finger in his chest.

“What the fuck’d you skip my song for?”

Joel mumbled something.

“Speak up, pal! Fuck’s the matter with you? I paid my damn quarter and you came up and skipped my song, think I didn’t see that?”

“Look, I’m sorry,” Joel said. “I’m sorry. I just … I hate that song. I mean, I don’t hate it really, it just reminds me of something.”

“That’s not my problem. I put in my quarter, I get to hear my song.”

Joel dug a dollar out of his pocket and thrust it at the guy. “Here. Paid back with interest. Put it on four more times.”

The guy softened a little. “Buddy, you ought to sit down. Drink some water.”

“I’m all right. Just had a rough day. Make that a rough three months.”

Joel stumbled, even though he wasn’t trying to go anywhere. The guy caught him and enlisted a friend to help ease Joel onto a stool.

“Seems like you had a little too much. Want us to call you a cab or something?”

Joel shook his head. The guy and his friend helped him take a sip from the glass of water the bartender had brought.

“Here’s what I want you to do,” Joel said. “I want you to … to be honest with me. Do I seem different?”

“Different? How the hell would I know?”

“I mean, have I changed?”

“I never met you before, buddy. Christ, he’s pretty far gone,” the guy added to his friend, who had his phone pressed to his ear.

Joel felt annoyed that they were talking about him as if he weren’t right there. “Well,” he said, “what’s that got to do with anything? You can tell if someone’s different even if you don’t know them. People do it all the time. All the time.”

“Cab’s on the way,” the friend said, clicking off his phone. “Let’s get him outside.”

They lifted him off the stool and looped his arms over their shoulders. They had to stoop a little because they were both taller than Joel. They probably could have just carried him. His dragging feet weren’t helping much. But when they got outside, the cool night air perked him up a little. He lifted his sagging head.

“So, what do you think?” he asked.

“’Bout what?”

“You know. What we were just talking about. Oh, I see, you’re trying to weasel your way out of it. Afraid you’ll upset me?” He laughed and waved his hand, then became serious again. “Come on, you can tell me. Be honest. I can handle it.”

Photo of Andrew Eastwick

BIO: Andrew Eastwick's writing has appeared in Barely South Review, Kelp Journal, Please See Me, and Umbrella Factory Magazine. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter. Find him online at https://www.andreweastwick.com and https://www.facebook.com/andreweastwickauthor.