'Are you Australian?' he asks.
'I'm from England,' I say, though I find the word unsavoury somehow.
'Do you know Jason Statham?'
So begins my encounter with Michael, owner of 'crops for girls', a hairdressers in alphabet city that I picked just for the name.

Michael is deliberate about his choice of music.
'Banjo or ukelele?' I ask about the track. I don't know the difference.
'Banjo,' her says and then 'wait, wait'. He starts the track again. 'It's a story,' he says. King Arnold's lady is playing away, someone dobs her in, and the king kills lover in a duel (two swords, cost dear, to a penknife) and then cleaves his lady's head in two before killing himself. 'The Nightingale cries as beautiful as it sings,' Michael repeats the final lyric, 'what does that mean?'

I don't know. I wish I could tell him. Instead I talk about Nick Cave and the Murder Ballads but Michael is unhappy: 'that's not how they're supposed to be sung. He makes them scary.'

Michael and I while away the time of the haircut listening to murder ballads, he turns off the hairdryer at times so I can hear the lyrics. I'm especially glad to hear the murderess trying to bribe, with a gold cage, the parrot that saw her foul deed, but the parrot is too smart to be taken in.

As I start putting on my jumper and coat, Michael tells me about another film (not starring Jason Statham), one set in Scotland where the characters sell cadavers. 'The man says he'll pay for any other 'misfortunes'' Michael says, and he finds the film on the TV next to his register to show me. We watch five minutes of Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis together, laughing companionably before I pay and leave. I half wish I could stay and watch the whole thing with him.

'He's good, isn't he?'
I'm a few doors away from the salon.
'But he doesn't like me.'
'Oh,' I say to the woman, 'maybe he's just particular about showing it?'
She talks as much in three minutes flat as Michael has spoken in forty. She'll tell me two jokes, normally she does four, but today she's tired. Both jokes are too rude to print. She cuts her own hair, by feel, no mirror. She's going around the corner for her Snapple. It mixes her vodka, which she needs to get to sleep. She's Italian, and Italian babies learn mama, papa, fucker. Her friend made her a badge saying 'fuck'. She breaks up fights, you know: people listen to her. She could kill and bury a man and he'd never be found. She's Italian! People call her Mom. She can't decide if today is a mom day or a fuck day.

A smile goes a long way in alphabet city.