The Mirror Man, стр. 55
“Now that that’s over with,” Pike said, “I believe you’ve earned those three food choices.”
“Sure,” Jeremiah mumbled through the cotton. “Now that you’ve seen to it I won’t be able to eat anything for three days. Just get me some decent beer.”
When Pike returned Jeremiah to his rooms, he found Charles Scott waiting for him with a dark-haired, impossibly thin woman he’d never seen before. They were standing in the middle of the living room. The woman had an oversize tote bag slung over one bony shoulder and was nearly dwarfed by its girth.
“It’s time for your haircut, Mr. Adams,” Scott told him. “Miss Phillips here will do the honors.” He handed the woman a photograph of the clone. “This is what we’re looking for,” Scott told her. “He needs to look precisely like this. Make it as exact as possible. No deviation.”
“Sure,” the woman told him, a substantial Boston accent making the word come out more like “Shoo-wah.”
“Can’t we do this another time?” Jeremiah mumbled through the soggy cotton in his mouth. “I need to lie down.”
“Now, Mr. Adams,” Scott said. “You can lie down afterward.”
“Pike just pulled a tooth out,” he said. “I’m in no mood for a shave.”
“Don’t worry,” the bony woman said. “I’ll be very gentle. You just sit yourself down and we’ll have you done in no time.” She patted the back of one of the kitchen stools, dragged in to serve as a barber chair, and Jeremiah reluctantly sat down.
“Accuracy is more important here than speed,” Scott told her, a hint of warning in his tone. “Precision is crucial. He needs to look exactly as he does in the photograph.”
She shrugged. “It’s a guy’s regular and a clean shave,” she said. “It’s not rocket science.” She took a plastic cape out of her tote bag and draped it around Jeremiah’s shoulders, fastening it behind his neck.
“Just make sure you’re meticulous,” Scott said. “That’s what you’re being paid for.” He shot a quick, stern look at Miss Phillips.
When Scott retreated into the kitchen, dialing his phone as he went, Jeremiah toyed with the idea of writing a note for Diana, slipping it to this woman and imploring her to get it into the right hands. But he couldn’t risk it. Not with Scott in the next room, and not with someone as chatty as this girl. It would take him too long, he decided, to make her understand.
“Jeepers,” she said, rolling her eyes toward the kitchen. “He’s a real a worrywart. Good thing he pays so well. I don’t usually do house calls, you know, but Dr. Scott there is paying me more for this one haircut than I’d make all day at the salon. And that includes tips! You must be someone pretty important. You famous or something, Mr. Adams?”
“No.”
“You live here?”
“For the time being.” Every time he spoke, Jeremiah had to suck in on the cotton and swallow a nauseating mix of saliva and blood.
“It’s pretty fancy for a basement apartment. Me, though? I couldn’t stand living without windows. I like to let the sun in, you know? It’s been proven that a lack of sunshine can make you depressed. You ever get depressed here?”
He wanted to tell her yes. Yes, he got depressed all the time. This wasn’t a basement apartment. He was a prisoner here. But he said nothing and just shook his head.
He was surprised Scott had let in a total outsider for something as simple as a shave. Everyone else involved in the project so far had been painstakingly vetted and probably made to sign an airtight nondisclosure agreement. But the urgency of the situation likely had left Scott little choice. He had to look completely like his double when he walked into ViMed. Scott needed a pro for this job. There was no way around it. In a way, he thought, it was nice to talk with someone who was unconnected to the whole thing, who didn’t know him as the guinea pig. Under different circumstances, he might have even enjoyed it.
She took her supplies out of the tote and laid them meticulously on the coffee table.
“I’m going to warm this up for you in the kitchen,” she said, grabbing one of the towels. “We’ll start with the shave before that mouth of yours swells up anymore.”
The steaming towel felt good on his aching jaw. Miss Phillips stopped talking and set right to work. As promised, she was very careful with the shave, lifting and angling his chin with a gentle touch and paying particular attention to his swollen right side. After a few minutes, Jeremiah began to relax.
She went on to the haircut, starting with wild chopping and then more precise snipping and, finally, tight shaping behind the neck and ears, the last of it with a razor. It was easily the most time he’d spent with a barber in decades. He had almost forgotten how long he’d gone without a haircut. When she was finished, and held a mirror up for his approval, Jeremiah was shocked to see the clone staring back at him. That’s what it felt like at first glance—like he was seeing someone else’s reflection. He hadn’t realized, until that moment, how successful he’d been at distinguishing himself from his double. It had been a conscious decision at the start, to grow a beard, but then it had become as much laziness as anything else. He’d gotten used to the scruff. Here he was now, clean shaven and cropped, and he looked like the man he’d been watching on the wall every day. He turned his face back and forth and quickly decided he didn’t like it. He looked older, and much more dignified than he felt he had a right to be.
“What do you think?” Miss Phillips asked with a grin.
“I look like a completely different man,” he said.
Jeremiah swallowed three pills