Potboiler

“Fine,” Pfefferkorn said weakly. He had been somewhat successful. His finger did feel looser. He climbed out of the shower, took hold of his hand, and braced himself for another go.

In retrospect he would not be able to decide which was worse: the pain or the wet, ripping sound. It took all his willpower not to scream. He bent over, silently heaving, his eyes finally (and pointlessly) blurring, blood dripping from his lip onto the tiles. He wasn’t finished, either. The very tip of his finger was still attached. With a grunt he pulled it free. He wadded toilet tissue against his bleeding face.

“The early goat gets the peels,” Fyothor called.

Pfefferkorn used the Q-tip to apply a fresh coat of adhesive. It stung going on, and he realized he had smeared an assuredly toxic substance directly into his bloodstream. The epoxy worked like a chemical cauterization, coagulating the blood on contact. With trembling hands, he pressed the two matching pieces of moustache to his lip. He held them in place for a ten count, then tested each side with a gentle tug. The right side was fine. The left side yodeled with pain, but it, too, remained secure.

He ran to the bed, swept the spilled moustaches into the wheelie bag, replaced the first false panel, zipped the bag up, and threw on his clothes. By now Fyothor was pounding loud enough to compete with the pipes.

“Must I break down the door?”

“Ha ha ha ha ha.”

Pfefferkorn ran back to the bathroom for one final mirror check and recoiled.

He had glued his moustache on upside down. Instead of following the downward curve of his upper lip, it shot upward, like a set of surprised eyebrows. Seeing this did in fact surprise him, and when his actual eyebrows went up, he seemed to have two sets of surprised eyebrows, one above his eyes and the other above his lip. “I didn’t expect this,” the top of his face seemed to be saying. “Me neither,” the bottom half seemed to be agreeing, “any of it.” He tried to bring his moustache back into alignment by frowning, hard. It worked, sort of. Assuming he could keep it up all day long, Fyothor might not notice anything amiss.

“I am counting to three. One.”

Still frowning, Pfefferkorn ran from the bathroom.

“Two—”

Frowning, he threw open the door. Fyothor was waiting, smiling, his big hand raised with two fingers up. Pfefferkorn then saw himself in his mind’s eye, frowning and staring back fearfully. It wasn’t very convincing. As if to confirm this, Fyothor’s smile faltered—the tiniest flicker imaginable, but more than enough for Pfefferkorn to know that the jig was up. His cover was blown. He was a dead man. With any luck he could get to his weapons. He was reasonably adept with the toothbrush knife. The deodorant stun gun was neater but more cumbersome, as it entailed the added step of removing the cap. He wasn’t sure it would work on a man of Fyothor’s girth, either. He decided to go with the knife, cleanup be damned. As he had been trained to do, he visualized himself diving to the floor, rolling to the closet, grabbing the bag, opening the zipper, flinging aside the first false panel, flinging aside the second false panel, flinging aside the third false panel, seizing the toothbrush, flicking open the blade, driving it home. It was a lot to contend with. Still frowning, he started to move backward. Fyothor smiled wider and took him firmly by the arm.

“We will be late,” he said, drawing him toward the elevator.

78.

Frowning for hours at a stretch was more physically taxing than Pfefferkorn would have guessed. As they squelched through the goat stalls, ankle-deep in muck, his face pulsed hotly with exertion. He was distracted, too, by something that had escaped earlier notice: the pad of his left index finger was totally smooth, having gained a thin new layer of skin, grafted there from his upper lip. In theory he could commit a crime without leaving prints, provided he just used that one finger. Fleetingly he wondered if this might make an interesting premise, not for a novel, perhaps, but for a screenplay. Then he refocused on frowning.

At the end of the tour, he received a parting gift, three vials of nutrient-rich animal waste.

He and Fyothor stood under a tree by the side of the road, waiting for the driver to return and take them back to town. On another day, Pfefferkorn might have found the smell of hay and the clang of neck bells relaxing. Still frowning, he remarked upon the resemblance between the farm’s interim ancillary director of droppings and the tertiary auditor-adjutant of the Ministry of Gas-Emitting Semisolids, with whom they had met the previous day.

“Cousins,” Fyothor said.

Pfefferkorn raised his eyebrows—his real ones—at this frank admission of nepotism.

“We are all related. Geography is destiny, yes?” Fyothor gestured to the steep hills that bounded the Zlabian valley, cupping its inhabitants in uncomfortably close proximity. “In this light, our tragic history appears even more tragic. We harm no one but ourselves.”