Page 24 of By Any Means

“It’s in the past.” He looked up and gestured. “If you won’t argue, will you eat? Here is the waiter. My treat, Laurie. No expectation.”

He said it like he meant the opposite, which was Laurie’s cue. He made to stand. “I should go, actually. Thanks for the drink.”

Raberding narrowed his eyes. “You will not stand me up twice? I came well out of my way.”

“Yep.” Came running, he might’ve said, but something told him it wasn’t wise to taunt this man too much. A dead ex-lover kind of something. Maybe Raberding had needed August alive, and maybe even had loved him, but every man had a breaking point.

Raberding threw his napkin. “You know nothing can be had for free in this world. Least of all information.”

“Honey,” Laurie said campily, in parting, leaving cash for the untouched drink, “I’m a socialist.”

7

CHARY

July

75 E 2nd St.

There was no summer pause at Wright Glass.

Four days a week, in the Bowery mid-mornings, when the Bleecker St. saloons were just starting to shut down and the respectable Broadway coffeehouses were pulling up grates, Chary sat down before the mirror of the vanity in his rooming house and pried off a false wig of a beard.

Today, though, it wouldn’t come. He braced his hands on either side of the miniature sink of the communal toilet and tried to steel himself.

His back ached. His thighs. His buttocks. His feet throbbed to every toe. His wrists burned, and when he swiveled them, they crunched alarmingly. He grasped anything, and the muscles around his elbow went twang, like a taut string snapped. The skin on his forehead was tight and dry and smeared in places with iron-black.

But those weren’t the worst things. They were the usual things. The worst thing was still stuck to his face.

Chary took a deep breath, reached up, and grasped the very edge of his wet, glued-on, slightly singed fake beard.

And he thought he would rather die.

Between yesterday’s beard application and now, he had grown his own cursed facial hair upon his own cursed face. It’d never really been a problem before.

Now he imagined, vividly, every one of those dirty-blond beard hairs ripped free, the real with the fake.

The problem was that instead of plain old spirit gum, in his hubris, he had used casein glue. It was what was used to affix paper labels to glass jars, and he’d modified the recipe to, unlike spirit gum, stand up to the constant heat of the furnaces. And when he got the acids and bases in proper proportion, its solvent was a soak in cold water.

Usually. He must have got this last batch backwards somehow and made it waterproof instead.

Chary turned the tap, scrubbed at his lip furiously, immersed his face in cupped hands. Tried once more to pull at the mustache, and only ended up bent over and moaning.

“Heavens,” he muttered, forehead against porcelain. What the dickens am I going to do?

If he could sit and soak in his own bath… eyes out, like a frog…

…but he couldn’t. He couldn’t go to the townhouse like this, furnace-burnt and fake-bearded; he wouldn’t make it through the front entry. They wouldn’t recognize him, for that was the point. Or they would recognize him, and never again would he be able to be who he needed to be.

There was a knock on the bathroom door. More of a bang.

A voice came: “Toilets ain’t for jerkin’ off!”

Cripes. Chary slithered down onto the tile and plunked his head back. “Go away!” he said hoarsely.

The interloper thumped the door once more, kicked the frame. “You got company?”

As though he ever did⁠—