As the week passed, Albert continued to use his new shampoo sparingly.  At the rate he was consuming it, he probably could make the bottle last more than a month, maybe even two months.  He did not grow tired of its odor, nor did it cease to perk him up in the morning, though he found he was not requiring a pick-me-up as much as usual.  The walking was clearly doing him a world of good.

In his off-time, when he had the chance and the ability, he ducked into other stores to look at their shampoos.  It was harder to do than it might have been if he had his car back yet, but he found that his energy level was greater than usual—probably because he was getting exercise for the first time in over a decade—and so he got more done than he expected.  There was a Target less than a mile from the office, and he found that he was able to get there, look at their shampoo selection—bigger than that at Winn-Dixie—sniff around a bit and then get back to the office before lunch hour had passed.  He didn’t even feel winded after the endeavor, though he developed a bit of sweat that the tried to wipe off in the bathroom before returning to his desk.

He also examined the bus schedules well enough to realize that he really could stop off on the way home, duck into stores, and catch the next bus if he wanted; in the evenings, the main north-south routes were frequent and ran quite late.  So, as the week’s remaining days passed, he took a few occasions to hop off the bus, check out some stores—including places like Ross and Beall’s—as well as Publix and Whole Foods, and some drug stores as well.

He had a few minor encounters such as he’d had with Bianca in Winn-Dixie, but mostly he was left alone.  This was at least partly because his actions were becoming more streamlined.  He no longer felt the need to explore every possible bottle, nor to sniff at every brand.  He repeated looks and smells a few times with many of them, just in case there were variations in batches—he could not discern any—but after a bit, he no longer even considered standard brands that he’d seen and smelled before.  This significantly shortened his search time, because shampoo brands, it turned out, were extremely redundant.  He only forced himself even to look at and smell Head and Shoulders after he’d found a store in which he’d ruled out every other brand already.  Of course, Head and Shoulders turned out to look and smell exactly the way he remembered it from his childhood, when his father had briefly used it.  It might as well have been an entirely different type of product from the V-42.

He had some high hopes when he went into Whole Foods, because they tended to carry different brands than other people did.  And, indeed, though they didn’t have a huge shampoo selection, it was respectable and it was esoteric.  However, nothing looked remotely like the V-42.  They didn’t even carry VO5 at that branch of Whole Foods.  He sniffed a few vague contenders, none of which smelled anything like what he was seeking, but he didn’t want to waste too much time.  He was worried that, if he caught the attention of a clerk in Whole Foods, they would probably try to talk him into some oat-based, organic, gluten-free shampoo as the best possible way to take good care of his hair.

By the time the week ended, he had found not a hint of anyone selling anything like his new shampoo.  He was mentally discouraged, though physically he was feeling better and better, probably because of the extra exercise his shopping gave him on top of his walking to and from the bus.

His car was supposed to be available from the shop the next day, which was Saturday.  Then he would be able to expand his search, at least.

***

The car was ready on schedule, a fact for which Albert was quite grateful.  Indeed, he was able to pick it up early on Saturday, because it had been finished on Friday afternoon, but the shop had been closed before he could get there without leaving work very early.  So, he caught the two buses that took him to the neighborhood of the mechanic’s shop—using Uber or Lyft or a cab to go get his own car would feel too ironic—and in short order paid the bill and was leaving in his modest vehicle, which was running almost as well as it had when new.

He did not go back home immediately, but instead drove to a nearby mall, which would have been much more inconvenient to reach on the bus.  He parked near J.C. Penney’s then went into the store and sought out the hair care products.  Not all such department stores even carried them, which surprised him a bit.

He had, by that day, developed a more useful “cover story” for seeking out a particular shampoo, though he knew it was silly to care what store clerks thought of him.  He told the first few that he had stayed over at a relative’s house and had used a shampoo there that looked like VO5 but smelled different, and which really worked well, and that he was hoping to find the same shampoo.

After only the second time using this story, someone asked if he had been in contact with his relative, and if they had told him where they had gotten it.  He’d had to hem and haw a bit, not needing to pretend to be embarrassed when he admitted that he hadn’t thought to ask his fictional family member.

After that, he said he’d used the shampoo in an Air-BNB, and that he’d been unable and rather unwilling to admit that he’d used the hosts’ shampoo, since he was not sure it was okay.  This got sympathetic nods as often as it got blank looks, so he figured it must be a good story.

Still, his quick alibi adaptation, while mildly beneficial to his ego, was not fruitful, for in none of the department stores of the mall did he find anything remotely resembling the V-42, other than the usual superficial look of VO5.  Nothing smelled much like it, either.  His nose even felt mildly stuffy after a while, and he wondered whether all those inhaled, artificial smells could damage his nasal passages.  He decided it was probably a coincidence, but even if it wasn’t, it wasn’t as though he meant to keep such olfactory searches up as a habit.  Once he had found the source of the V-42, he wouldn’t need to keep looking.

When he went out into the mall, he found a few shops worth checking.  The Bath and Body Works and one of its competitors were both quite daunting as he first regarded the astonishing array of soaps and moisturizers and essential oils and who knew what else in colors that surely were more numerous than those found in any rainbow.  Nonetheless, he forced himself to approach a clerk—he wasn’t going to wade in without guidance—and presented his cover story.  The clerk in the first shop appeared, if anything, even more clueless than he about possible sources for a shampoo that was a lot like Alberto VO5 but looked and smelled slightly different.  Evidently, the store did not carry such mediocrity.

Albert ended up seeking anything remotely resembling the color, but this was only a minor aid in narrowing his search; many of the bottles in the shampoo section were opaque, and he couldn’t be sure that the color of the bottle actually matched the color of the liquid within.  He hoped, briefly, that his earlier thought might be correct, that someone had changed the label on a VO5 bottle, but that also they had poured shampoo from some other source into it before playfully putting it on a shelf in a convenience store.

Unfortunately, though he smelled so many little pop-open bottles that they became all but indistinguishable to him, there was nothing even close to the sharp but pleasant zing he got from the V-42.  He finally had to give up and shrug at the clerk, and he didn’t feel too bad when he left without buying anything.

After ruling out such places, he finally forced himself to go to a hair salon in the mall.  He hadn’t been to one of those in years, preferring to get his hair done at places like Supercuts on the rare occasions when he needed it; his hair did not grow very quickly anymore.  When he went into the one he had found, the young woman who came to attend the front desk asked if he was in for a cut and style.  Albert thought that was at best an optimistic question—his hair had long since passed the days when it could seriously benefit from such things—but he was nevertheless rather disappointed to have to say “no”.

“Are you sure?” she asked, looking at his head in way that felt almost prurient to him, though he supposed it was merely professional.  “You have such nice hair, I think with a little trim and style it could look terrific.”

Albert had to control himself to keep from looking at her as if she were insane.  He admired the woman’s good sales tactics, but it had been a long time since he’d had such things addressed to the subject of his own coiffure.  Forcing what he hoped was an amiable smile, he replied, “No, I, uh…I’m not due for a haircut yet.  But I was looking for a particular haircare product.”

Tilting her head with more obvious professional interest, the woman asked, “What sort?”

Albert went into his tale of Air-BNBs and surreptitious shampoo use, and he described the shampoo he was seeking, being clear to indicate that he thought it hadn’t been in its original bottle.  The woman plainly paid close attention to his story, and she looked pensive and, perhaps, a bit disappointed.  Soon, it became apparent why that might be the case.  She said she didn’t think they carried any such shampoo, but she directed him to the limited set of shelving near the door in which they offered for sale a modest number of products.  None of them looked much like the various others he had seen that day, but even more so, none of them seemed to resemble his “HoG V-42”.  The woman very kindly invited him to sniff at any of them if he liked, and he did, but he was as disappointed as she seemed to be.

She was so kind that Albert decided to buy something so as not to waste her generous time.

“I don’t need any shampoo,” he said, “but is there something here you might recommend for a middle-aged man who works in an office?”  He hoped his self-deprecation came off as charmingly humble rather than too self-derogatory.

The woman seemed to take it as he intended, and she gave a brief chuckle before replying, “Well, it doesn’t look like you need conditioner or anything, and I’m guessing you’re not a mousse kind of guy, but…well, we have a men’s hairspray there that would probably work better and be more gentle than what you’d likely find in a regular store.”

She pointed at a plastic bottle with a clear cap over a push-plunger top, and Albert agreed to himself that he’d never seen the brand.  He thought he might as well buy it.  Who knew, maybe it would give a slight lift to his thinning hair.  He asked her how much it was—expecting it to be ridiculously expensive—but it turned out only to be very expensive for a modest bottle of hairspray.  He bought a bottle and thanked her before leaving the salon, and then the mall.

After he got back to his place, he went into the bathroom to put away his new hairspray.  He left the light off for a moment, glancing at the shower to ensure, for what was likely the dozenth time, that the V-42 did not in fact glow.  It didn’t.  Smiling at his silliness, Albert turned on the light and put the bottle of hairspray in his toiletries cabinet.

Well…he started to do that.  Then, thinking about what the woman in the hair salon had said about the fact that his hair looked “nice”, he decided he’d give it a brush and maybe try this new spray.  He didn’t expect to get much out of the process, but he didn’t mind a bit of fun.

As he picked up his hairbrush and looked in the mirror, holding the new hairspray in his left hand, Albert stopped and looked more closely at himself.

He realized a few things in quick succession, things that he supposed must have been available to see before, but which perhaps in his morning grogginess he hadn’t noticed.  First, his reflection looked clearer than it usually did.  He usually looked at himself after his shower, without his reading glasses, so the sight that normally greeted him was ever so slightly blurred.

The sharper image of himself, though, brought information that was surprising in more ways than merely its clarity.  Albert looked at his hair, which the woman in the shop had complimented, and even before touching it with his brush, he thought…was it thicker?  It looked…fuller, bouncier, more springy, if that was the right word.  He also thought, just maybe, that it didn’t look quite so thin at the temples and above his forehead.

He leaned in closer, which should have made things blurrier, but did not.

Yes, he thought, just maybe, his hair wasn’t quite as sparse in the upper left and right areas of his forehead.  He also thought, now that he was looking more closely, that the color wasn’t as dull, as faded, as he thought of it being.  And, yes, it certainly did seem thicker, as if the hairs themselves had increased in diameter and in elasticity.  But that couldn’t be true, of course.  After all, even if he took some miracle version of Rogaine or something, the hairs might get thicker starting from the base, but it wasn’t as if they could thicken along strands that had already grown.  It wasn’t as if the color could have gotten richer in hairs that had been squeezed from his scalp over the past weeks and months.

It also wasn’t as if inactive follicles could have sprouted full-length hairs from places where there had been no growth before, but, as he looked at his hair, Albert could almost swear that had happened.  He not only saw that the hairs that he knew had been thinning seemed to be thicker, but places where he had ceased to grow hair seemed almost to have regrown full strands.

That couldn’t be right.  His memory must have been faulty.  It must have been so long since he’d been able to look at himself well and clearly that he’d created false and blurry images in his mind of what he actually looked like.

But, wait.  That didn’t explain that fact that he could see himself better than he used to be able to see himself.  Were his eyes better just from a week of modest walking?  Could that even happen?  He knew exercise was good for a person, but could it actually improve his vision?  He knew that diabetes could interfere with someone’s eyesight, and so perhaps a person with diabetes who got his blood sugar under control could notice an improvement.  But Albert was not diabetic.  He was not even pre-diabetic.  However unimpressive his health had been, his doctor had always confirmed that neither his blood pressure nor his blood sugar was worrisome.

He thought back to earlier in the week, when he’d gotten some shampoo in his eye, and he joked inwardly that maybe the stuff had cleaned his corneas.  Then he stopped, looking back up at his hair.

The shampoo’s subtype was “Extra Body”, after all.  That was the type of shampoo he tended to choose, even before he’d settled on his preferred VO5.  His hair had always tended to be a little limp and lifeless, so—though he had never thought there really was much behind the special claims of haircare products—he tended to buy shampoos that were supposedly formulated to give it some more life.

He looked back over at the shower.  There, in the corner, sat the bottle, roughly the same shape and roughly the same color as Alberto VO5.

“Extra body…” muttered to himself, as a strange idea began to form in his now more richly decorated head.

It was ridiculous.  Of course it was ridiculous.  Such a thing couldn’t happen.

But this shampoo was different.  It was not what he usually used.  He had not been able to find it anywhere else.  It smelled and felt different than any shampoo he had known.

And since using it, he’d felt stronger, had more endurance, had felt more upbeat.  People at work had thought he’d gotten some kind of makeover.  The woman in the salon had said he had nice hair.

He looked at his face.  He could see it better, and now that he looked, he thought…could it be that his middle-aged wrinkles, which had never been horrible, were more effaced?  Were the chronic bags under his eyes lighter?

Were the very slight conjoined freckles fainter, the general pattern more even?

He looked at his eyebrows.  He had noticed, over time, that some of the bristly hairs within them had started to go white, as had some of his whiskers when he did not shave.  Now, though, he thought—he couldn’t be sure—that maybe there were fewer of those white eyebrow hairs, and that the ones that remained were not so much white as a slightly paler version of the color of his other, unchanged eyebrow hairs.

“That’s impossible,” he muttered to himself out loud.

Moving quickly, as though he needed to confront facts before they changed, he unbuttoned the neck of his shirt and then pulled it off over his head, so he could look at his chest hair.  He had noticed over time a similar graying—really, a whitening—of a substantial fraction of his body hair as in his beard and eyebrows.

Looking at his chest, and able to see it clearly and sharply as he couldn’t recall being able to see it for quite some time, he was amazed to note the clearest change from what he remembered.  There was not a single gray or whitening hair on his torso.  Also, the hair seemed thicker and curlier than it had been in a while.  He could almost swear that his chest was as hirsute as it had been in his mid-twenties.

“That’s…how can that be possible?” he asked, slightly dialing back his degree of incredulity in the face of what seemed to be unreasonably clear visible evidence.

Only two possibilities seemed worth considering.  First, he might be losing his mind, falling prey to some curious version of a mid-life crisis or some other, more severe, psychiatric disorder.  He didn’t know how likely that was, but he didn’t feel like he was losing his mind.  And though the tongue-in-cheek popular wisdom was that it was precisely the people who didn’t think they were crazy who were crazy, Albert thought that was never a legitimate guiding principle.  He thought someone who was cracking up would probably feel much more paranoid, much more put-upon, more anxious and confused than he felt.

Even in light of the things he was seeing, he felt no trace of panic, no true worries about his sanity.  If anything, his head felt clearer than usual.  Perhaps even his brain was as rejuvenated as his hair and skin seemed to be.

He turned now to look at the other possible explanation for the change, the only new thing that he had recently applied to his hair and his body, other than his walking to and from the bus.  That change in activity level had ceased to be a viable explanation to him.  Walking was good for a person, there was no doubt about that, but if it were that good, he felt sure that more people would know about it.  He’d heard claims about the benefits of exercise, but none of the ones he could recall had ever seemed as preposterous as what he was considering.

He looked at the corner of his shower stall, where the V-42 sat, nearly glowing in the fluorescent light of the bathroom.  He had not made a very sizable dent in its contents; he’d only been using it for a week, and after the first day he’d been trying to use it sparingly, helped along by its tendency to produce copious lather with only a little bit of liquid.

Stepping over to the shower, his shirt still off, Albert picked up the bottle and looked at it.  The front, as he confirmed, still just read, “HoG V-42 shampoo.  Extra body.”

He turned it over and read the back of the bottle, which he’d done cursorily before, hoping to find information that might help him locate more of the stuff.  It just read, as it had the previous time, “V-42 shampoo.  An HoG creation,” under which were a few simple instructions:  “Apply a small amount to wet hair, lather up, scrub in, and then rinse.  No need to repeat!”

He realized, as he looked at this and then back at the front of the bottle, that there was no trademark symbol, whether the encircled “R” or the more general little TM.  That was pretty much unheard of on any real product, as far as he knew, which was consistent with the idea that someone had made these labels themselves, affixing them to a bottle filled with some other brand of shampoo.

But what could this stuff be?  If it really was the source of the improvements in Albert’s overall condition, especially the condition of his hair, then he definitely wanted to find more of it.

Surely, though, if a product like this really was available on the market, he would have heard of it.  If this product could be bought by the general public, almost everyone would be using it.  It would be the front page headline on any physical newspaper.  It would be the top of anyone’s news feed.  It would be…well, it would probably be “trending” on Twitter, or “X”, or whatever that website was called now.

Could this not be a prank?  Maybe…maybe some brilliant chemist had created this miraculous new product when working for some subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, or whoever the big name was in the field, and the company had decided not to market it, because it would put them out of business with respect to all their other products.  Maybe that creator had been miffed and had decided to sneak out samples of their new creation and had put one of them at his local convenience store, either to prove to the company that the product worked, or just as a bit of revenge.

Or maybe the company itself had done it, performing an unofficial test by seeding occasional non-franchised shops with the stuff to see how consumers liked it.  But then, how would they gather any results?  Was there tracking hardware hidden in the bottle somewhere?

That felt more farfetched than the other things Albert had considered.  A company with a revolutionary product like this would see its market share and stock price skyrocket.  There would be no incentive, at least in the short run, for investors to curtail production.

Unless it was illegal in some way.  Unless it was dangerous.  Unless it was prohibited.  He briefly returned to his notion of radioactive material being involved, but that was readily dismissed.  As far as he knew, radiation tended to make people’s hair fall out, not regrow, not become fuller and younger-looking.

Thinking about companies testing such products led Albert to come upon a possible source of information that he hadn’t considered before.  One of his college roommates—Walter Roguski—had gone on to get an advanced degree in something like biochemistry or molecular biology or some such.  Albert and Walter still kept in touch from time to time.  It had been a few years since they had met in person, but as far as Albert knew, Walter worked for some big company in the area, doing research and development.  He couldn’t remember which company it was; it wasn’t the Scripts Institute or whatever that place was, but it was something along those lines.

Albert still had Walter’s number in his contacts, transferred from one cell phone to the next as he’d made necessary upgrades.  Mostly they tended to keep in touch via email, but Albert didn’t think Walter would mind a call.

After a moment of vacillation, in which he worried that Walter might think he was losing his mind, Albert thought of a way around that minor obstacle and then threw his shirt back on, not bothering to tuck it in, and walked back into his main room, where his smartphone lay on his desk.  He tapped in his code, opened up his contacts, scrolled to Walter’s name and then—with only a bit more hesitation—pressed the button to dial.

He half expected to get Walter’s voicemail, but after only three rings, the other line picked up, and he heard a familiar voice say, “Hey, Albert.  What’s up?”

“Walter?” Albert asked, though he knew his friend’s voice.

“That’s me,” Walter replied.  “Were you trying to call someone else?”

Albert laughed, remembering fondly Walter’s rather quirky conversation style.  “No, no,” he said.  “No, I was calling you.  Just making sure someone else hadn’t picked up your phone.”

He could almost hear Walter raising his eyebrows in skepticism.  Walter said, “No one else is likely to pick up my phone for me on the weekend.  Actually, no one’s likely to pick up my smartphone for me during the week.”

“Fair enough,” Albert admitted.  Then, after a brief pause, feeling oddly nervous, he asked, “So, how’s everything going with you?”

Again, he had a vivid imaginary picture of Walter’s form, shrugging this time, as he replied, “Eh, nothing much.  Just lazing around and wondering whether I should try to find some show to binge-watch or try to catch up on some recent journal articles.  How ‘bout you?”

Albert was briefly distracted by this strangely bleak picture of Walter’s weekend life—though, honestly, it was no less interesting than his own spare time tended to be.  He shook such thoughts from his head, then he said, “I’m…well, I called you because I wanted to go over something with you, or…or, well, ask for your input on something.  You still work in biotech, or pharmaceuticals, or something like that, right?”

Walter half-laughed and half-sighed, apparently slightly amused by his friend’s ignorance of his field.  “Something like that,” he agreed.  “Why?”

“Well, I have a…well, something very interesting has happened, and I…I wanted to run it by you, see what you thought,” Albert replied, thinking that he must sound idiotic, but not wanting to get too specific too quickly.

After a brief, probably puzzled, pause, Walter said, “Sure, why not?  Shoot.”

Albert took in a breath, then said, “Well…it’s not something I want to talk about on the phone.  I mean, not that it’s secret or anything, but…well, I think going over it in person would be better.  Are you…would you be willing to meet somewhere, maybe get a meal and even some drinks?  I’ll buy, if you want.”

Walter chuckled, obviously not too put off by Albert’s odd dithering, and said, “Well, no need for you to pay.  I think I probably make more than you, and I don’t want to feel guilty about it.  But, if it’s not secret, why can’t you tell me over the phone?”

“Well…because I’m not sure you’ll believe me unless you see for yourself,” Albert said, knowing it was an unenlightening reply.

There was a pause, then Walter responded, “Hmm.  That’s intriguing.  I have no idea what you might be talking about, but it does kind of pique my curiosity.  Can I ask what sort of thing it is?”

Now Albert felt just a bit more hesitant, but he thought it would be counterproductive to be too opaque, so he said, “Well, let’s just say I didn’t just call you because you’re my friend, but because of your…field of expertise.”

This seemed to throw Walter off a bit.  At least, he took a bit more time before replying, “You know, if it’s something medical or something, I’m really not qualified to…”

“No, nothing like that,” Albert interrupted, though he supposed there were some medical aspects to the matter.  “I know you’re not in any medical field.  I just want to see what you think about…about something that’s happened and that might have something to do with…well, with something related to what you do.”

He wondered if his last utterance had made any sense whatsoever, but Walter seemed at least not to be utterly perplexed, and with a chuckle, he said, “Okay, I…have no idea what you’re talking about, but I’m still intrigued.  When did you want to meet up, and where?”

“Could you do this evening?” Albert thought, not wanting to wait any longer than necessary.

“Uh…not tonight, I’m sorry,” Walter replied.  “I’m meeting some people from work.”

Slightly disappointed, but then thinking having more time would probably be better anyway, Albert said, “Okay, well…how about tomorrow for lunch?”

Walter paused, evidently giving the possibility actual thought and consideration, before replying, “Sure, that should be okay.  It’s not like I go to church or anything.  Where do you want to meet?”

“Well, are there any restaurants near you that are open on Sunday?” Albert asked, hoping to make things as easy for Walter as possible.

“Hmm…” Walter muttered, again seeming to give the trivial matter a surprisingly deep bit of thought.  “Well, there’s a Mexican place near Federal and Copenhagen that I’ve always wanted to try.  I wouldn’t want to go to a typical family restaurant for lunch on Sunday, because the after-church crowds get too thick.”

Albert had never thought of such a thing, but he supposed that made sense.  It would also never have occurred to him to go for Mexican food for lunch on a weekend—since it would be Sunday, it would really probably be his breakfast—but the thought was strangely enticing.  “Actually,” he said, “that sounds pretty good.  What time do you want to meet?”

Walter shrugged audibly—Albert could literally hear the shifting of the fabric of his shirt through the smartphone—and said, “How about…say about one o’clock?  I may not want to get up too early tomorrow.”

Albert chuckled.  “Sounds good to me.  You said it’s near Federal and Copenhagen?”

“Yeah,” Walter replied.  “Actually, it’s in the plaza in the southeast corner of the intersection.  I don’t remember the name, but it’s the only Mexican restaurant there.”

Albert closed his eyes for a moment, trying to remember which corner would be southeast—it was just like Walter to think of things that way—but then he recalled that there really was only one such plaza where those two streets met, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find.  “Got it,” he said.  “All right, well…thanks a lot.  I’m looking forward to getting your…well, input, I guess.”

“No problem,” Walter replied.  Then, with a chuckle he added, ‘”But I don’t put out on a first date, so don’t get your hopes up.”

That was definitely Walter’s old sense of humor, Albert thought, but he wondered if he interacted with his current, more adult coworkers using such lines now that he, like Albert, was in early middle-age.  Trying to keep up his end, Albert responded, “As if this would be our first date.”

Walter laughed, apparently pleased by a reply that took his own comment in stride.  “Fair enough,” he said.  “All right, I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

“Yep,” Albert said.  “Thanks.”  They both disconnected the call.