His hand had crept to his groin as he perused himself, and he’d idly teased himself semierect. He hadn’t been thinking of Charmaine. If there was any lust in his arousal it was narcissistic. Many of the cons he’d lived with had found it easy to slake their sexual thirst with their cellmates, but Marty had never been comfortable with the idea. Not simply out of distaste for the acts-though he felt that acutely-but because that unnaturalness was forced upon him. It was just another way that prison humiliated a man. Instead, he’d locked his sexuality away, and used his cock for pissing and little else. Now, toying with it like a vain adolescent, he wondered if he could still use the damn thing.
He ran the shower lukewarm and stepped in, slicking himself down from head to foot with lemon-scented soap. In a day of pleasures this was perhaps the best. The water was stimulating, like standing in a spring rain. His body began to wake. Yes, that was it, he thought: I’ve been dead, and I’m coming back to life. He’d been buried in the asshole of the world, a hole so deep he thought he’d never scramble out of it, but he had, damn it. He was out. He rinsed, and then indulged himself with a repeat of the ritual, this time running the water considerably hotter and harder. The bathroom filled with steam and the slap of the water on the shower tiles.
When he stepped out and turned the flow off, his head buzzed with heat, whisky and fatigue. He moved to the mirror and cleared an oval in the condensation with the ball of his fist. The water had brought new color to his cheeks. His hair was plastered to his head like a brown-blond skullcap. He’d let it grow, he thought, as long as Whitehead didn’t object; get it styled perhaps. But there was more pressing business now; the removal of the condemned mustache. He wasn’t particularly hirsute. The mustache had taken him several weeks to grow, and he’d had to tolerate the usual run of witless remarks while he was doing it. But if the boss man wanted him barefaced, who was he to argue? Whitehead’s opinion on the matter had sounded more like an order than a suggestion.
Despite the well-supplied cabinet in the bathroom (everything from aspirin to crab-killing preparations), there were no scissors, and he had to soap the hairs thoroughly to soften them and then go at them directly with the razor. The blade protested, and so did his skin, but stroke by stroke his upper lip came back into view, the hard-earned mustache hitting the sink in a slop of suds, only to be sucked away down the drain. It took him half an hour to do the job to his satisfaction. He nicked himself in two or three places, and sealed the cuts as best he could with spit.
By the time he’d finished the steam had cleared from the bathroom, and only patches of mist marred his reflection. He looked at his face in the mirror. His naked upper lip was pink and vulnerable, and the groove at its center curiously overperfect in its formation, but his sudden nudity wasn’t such a bad sight.
Content, he sluiced the remains of his mustache from the sides of the sink, wrapped a towel about his middle and sauntered back into the bedroom. In the centrally heated warmth of the house, he was practically dry: no need for toweling. Weariness and hunger fought in him as he sat on the edge of the bed. There was food downstairs for him, or so Toy had said. Well, maybe he’d just lie back on this virginal sheet, head on the scented pillow, and close his eyes for half an hour, then get up and wander down to eat supper. He slung off the towel and lay on the bed, half-pulling the duvet over him, and in the act of doing so, fell asleep. There were no dreams; or if there were he slept too securely to remember them.
It was morning in moments.
13
If he had forgotten the geography of the house from his brief tour the previous night, it took only a sense of smell to lead him back to the kitchen. Bacon was frying, fresh coffee was being perked. At the stove stood a redhaired woman. She turned from her work and nodded.