The skeletal echo of his as yet unanswered question remains suspended between them
Skunk (the voice a mere croak): What do I do now?
until eventually
deleted name: Shave. That’s it; make sure you shave, every day.
Skunk: Says you.
indicating the several days’ growth upon the face of his host who he knows has yet to shave since his arrival, which comment deleted name bats away with a gesture.
deleted name: This isn’t permanent. This is... temporary.
He refills the pair of shotglasses upon the table between them.
deleted name: But I’m serious:
raising his glass as if to toast the concept
deleted name: shave every day.
and then setting it back down.
deleted name: When I was your age, a little older maybe, I forget, I went through a, a time in my life where there wasn’t any sort of need to pre- to be visible, and I stopped shaving. And at some point I realised that shaving was the only point of the day where I’d had to look at myself in a mirror, and I ended up going for days, weeks, where that didn’t happen. What did happen was I lost a certain sense of myself, a sense of what I looked like, and along with that went any sort of ability to connect with the words coming out of my mouth, and how their being spoken might appear to someone else.
He watches Brother Skunk wince as the undilute whiskey burns at the raw wall of his throat.
deleted name: If you shave every day you’re forced to look at yourself, you can’t not. It’s a functional thing, but you are forced to confront yourself, and with that comes some sort of comprehension which I can’t really... I can’t describe it.
reaching again for his own little glass,
deleted name: Without it you lose something, you lose a sense of yourself, you become dissociated, there’s a sense of disconnect which, take my word for it, is not healthy. Not healthy.
draining it, holding it up to examine against the light the slow descent of its remnant heeltaps.
deleted name: So, you want to know what to do now? That, shave every day.
