Duncan

Named for two Duncans — my father, and my son, who is a barber.

The arrival: the tonic — warm barber's orange and bergamot, a fizz of pink pepper and gin-cool juniper, the chair still warm from the last man.

The heart: the shop itself. Clean lavender and shaving soap, hay-sweet coumarin, one saffron-leather breath off the strop — and through it all the cold steel of the scissors, working.

The settle: the father's half. Dry pipe tobacco, flint and cedar, worn bridle leather, moss in the shadows under warm towels and clean musk — two generations in one chair, the old craft and the young hands, and the same name on both.