July 2012
Ricky Hudson stared at Keanu Reeves and Keanu Reeves stared at Ricky Hudson.
Ricky Hudson smiled and Keanu Reeves smiled back.
Ricky Hudson turned half profile and casually flicked a loose strand of hair across his face and Keanu Reeves mirrored his action in perfect synchrony.
But the hair was wrong . . .
Yes, it was obviously the wrong colour – it was ginger when it should have been black – but the cut was all wrong as well. Ricky glanced from his reflection in the mirror to the life sized image blue-tacked to the wall beside it. Before he could get his hair cut just right he would have to grow it out considerably to create the long curtain of hair that swept across Keanu's face. But at least the high cheek bones were there, as were the soft brown eyes and the sensual lips; he had practised long into the night until he had perfected the image of sultry, super-intelligent power that epitomised his idol.
With the assistance of a patient but curious hairdresser and a few months of his life, Ricky worked to grow his hair closer and closer to the required style. This had caused some consternation at ASDA where he stacked shelves for a living, as his normally presentable hair was gradually metamorphosing through a variety of unacceptably unkempt stages. This had seriously irritated Mr Pargeter, the Warehouse Manager to whom he reported. Ricky had been reminded so many times that, although his job was to re-stock the shelves as if he was invisible – as if somehow the public could possibly conceive that the shelves filled themselves by magic – he was in fact directly in the public eye, wearing the ASDA uniform and was therefore required to be neat and presentable at all times.
Mr Pargeter had made various veiled threats, and also some that were not so veiled. If Ricky did not 'do something with that damned hair' he would be making new friends at the Job Centre very, very soon. He had also become somewhat of a laughing stock with the rest of the staff at the store; they were, on the whole, a very friendly and supportive bunch, but even they could not understand what Ricky was doing to his hair and why he seemed to be deliberately antagonising the notoriously short fused Mr Pargeter upon whom his continued employment depended. Ricky, of course, could not reveal to them the true reason for his apparently suicidal preoccupation, and took all of the banter and all of the criticism in good heart – excepting that old fogy Mr Pargeter, of course.
But now the time had finally come to complete the picture; one last trip to the hairdresser where Ricky sat in the hard plastic chair waiting impatiently for the big black padded chair to become vacant. The delightful Sharon was tasked with performing the transformation; she first studied the folded photograph Ricky pulled out of his pocket and then she studied Ricky himself. She shook her head – a little in disbelief and a quite a lot out of sympathy – but she dutifully set to work on the task in hand.
It took barely ten short minutes to completely remove the ginger – forever, Ricky fervently hoped – and to replace it with shiny jet black. Sharon even touched up his eyebrows to match, but grinned when she added that she could do nothing about the colour of his nasal hair or that within his ears, which he would have to keep meticulously trimmed himself.
Ricky didn't care; he was hardly listening in any case, he was staring incredulously at the transformation taking place before his very eyes. After the luxury of having someone wash and dry his hair for him, the scissors came out and, paying close attention to the photograph, Sharon shaved and trimmed, combed and shaved, trimmed and combed, until, finally, she stepped back with her head on one side to review the finished product. Even she had to admit that the hair did complete the image. At first she had doubted that it would ever have been possible to make a silk purse out of this unremarkable sow's ear, but the hair actually did make all the difference.
Ricky was in seventh heaven – he examined his hair in the mirror from every angle and he was ecstatic. He stepped down from the chair and gave Sharon what to him was a generous tip, then flounced out into the great wide world to gauge what the public reaction would be to his new alter-ego. There is, however, an expression with which Ricky Hudson was all too familiar: Sod's Law. In the short walk from the hairdressers to his home the only people he passed were crumblies – that section of society who were so removed from reality that they had probably never even heard of Neo or The Matrix.
He was devastated; he threw himself dejectedly into his chair with a can of ASDA Premium Belgian Lager. Was he fooling himself? Was he so Narcissist that he had allowed himself to sink completely into this childish fantasy? Perhaps Mr Pargeter had been right all along; perhaps it was all a stupid mistake . . .
When the time came for his afternoon shift, Ricky changed into his green T shirt and black trousers that were the traditional ASDA uniform and looked at himself in the mirror. Ricky Hudson looked back at him. That was who he really was – a shelf stacker at ASDA, who had had a dream of being someone else; someone much more glamorous than a mere shelf stacker. He knew that he had to put this childish fantasy behind him and grow to actually like the Ricky that he was inside.
Hanging up on the peg in the hall was his green uniform fleece . . . but beside it was the long black leather trench coat which he snapped up on E-Bay for a song . . .
He caressed the leather, revelling in the sensual touch, reawakening all of his yearnings . . .
He slipped a plain black t shirt over the green and pulled on the coat . . .
Ricky Hudson stared at Keanu Reeves and Keanu Reeves stared at Ricky Hudson.
Ricky Hudson smiled and Keanu Reeves smiled back.
Ricky Hudson turned half profile and casually flicked a loose strand of hair across his face and Keanu Reeves mirrored his action in perfect synchrony.
But this time the hair was perfect . . . this time Keanu Reeves remained in the mirror. Ricky turned up his lip in the hint of a sneer, 'What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge bullets?' He quoted, laughing – a short bubbling self conscious laugh – but a happy laugh nonetheless.
As he strode purposefully through the ASDA car park, his expression was enigmatic, his eyes were simultaneously ignoring the common people around him and trying to catch their admiring glances in his peripheral vision. He didn't have long to wait; two girls stepping out from the main doors stopped and stared in disbelief, blocking the exit and causing disagreement from the customers trying to push their laden trolleys past them.
Keanu Reeves smiled at the girls, absorbing their adoration greedily, sucking it in and inflating his ego. He had been right all along, it was just that it was too easy to doubt himself. As he swept into the store, the girls followed him, one scrabbling in her bag for something upon which to record the autograph, while her friend was busy trying to take a photograph with her mobile phone.
Three more girls abandoned the check-out queue to race across to him; before he had walked ten steps into the store he was totally surrounded by adoring womanhood, paper of all shapes and sizes being thrust into his hand to sign.
'What's going on here?' came the irritated voice behind him. The idyllic atmosphere was shattered as Mr Pargeter pushed his way through to confront him. 'Excuse me, sir . . .' he began, but then his face contorted, reddened; his eyebrows raised and his lip curled, 'Hudson! You imbecile – what in God's name do you think you are doing?' He began to shake uncontrollably, it was a fit of temper the likes of which even Ricky had never before experienced, 'You're fired!' he screamed, then took him by the elbow and dragged him bodily from the store.
Ricky Hudson was shattered, without his meagre income his flat would be vulnerable – his world was coming apart at the seams! As he walked away from the store, he twice had to fend off interested and persistent women, he no longer craved the attention. Ricky Hudson, ex-shelf-stacker no longer had the dream. His head was down and he was miserably trying to work out what his next move should be, when a car pulled up beside him and the window dropped with a whisper; he kept walking.
The car moved forwards and stopped again in front of him, 'Excuse me,' came the voice from within. Ricky kept walking.
The car moved forwards again, 'Stop, please stop,' the voice implored.
Ricky turned on the woman and snarled, 'Look, I'm done with autographs for the day; just go away – leave me alone!'
The car moved forwards again, 'I don't want your autograph – but I may have a proposition that might interest you financially.'
It took a few seconds to sink in, but Ricky eventually tossed the word financially around sufficiently to stop his feet from walking. He turned to the pale blue Jaguar; he took in the soft beige leather interior; then he stared at the middle aged woman in the grey striped suit, with the luxuriant red hair cascading around her shoulders, with the bright red lipstick drawn up into a warm smile . . .
In the car on the way to her office Carla knew she had made the right decision, 'Body doubles, Ricky - there's good money to be had in this game, you know.'