Free Lost Girls by Andrew Pyper Page A

within the plaster walls echo for long moments, while a cleared throat or spoken voice is immediately drawn away.
    Slip boxers off into a ring around my feet, step over to the bathroom, and crank up the hot water. But for a while there's nothing but a thundering expulsion of icy white.
    ''Don't do this to me, goddammit, '' I say to no particular person or deity, but something must be listening, for the water instantly becomes steam and my finger, which a second before was turning blue, is now pulled back a blistered red. Just as the burn's first flash of pain arrives I manage to turn and stick it under the tap in the sink. Take the opportunity to check myself out in the mirror, my face already fogging over at the edges. The glass is old, its surface spotted black where the silver has been chipped away, and the reflection it returns isn't quite right. Accentuates the shadows in a way that turns the circles under my eyes into bulging pouches and deepens the few wrinkles at the edges of brow and mouth into withering cracks. Pull back a bit and force a smile. Still a little bleached and inflated, but nothing to be alarmed about.
    In fact I could say I'm not bad looking, but that's what all good-looking people say of themselves, hedging their bets behind the double negative of not bad . So to avoid this false modesty I should simply say that I think I'm good looking, in a certain way. The way of preppy boyishness, good posture, high foreheads, and self-congratulatory smiles. Something in the way of the Kennedy boys in their early thirties (more Jack than Bobby). I have even been told this by others, although I think the likeness is fairly subtle, more an interpretation of aura than a description of physical detail. I've spent enough time in front of mirrors to know that I don't look like Bobby or Jack, not really, but I admit the three of us might have stood comfortably next to each other in some school portrait or Cape Cod snapshot. It's that look of satisfaction and easy purpose carried within a single strand of DNA that is in turn bundled in with the other strands that predetermine the less important factors like intelligence, integrity, and foot size. That's why people say I look like a Kennedy when I only remind them of a Kennedy, for in fact there's more of the prematurely debauched Irish rugby player in my face than the shining American aristocrat.
    I circle my palm over the glass surface and wipe my face back into focus. So what, specifically, does the mirror say these days? Good things mostly, although good things in a state just prior to--or in the beginning stage of--the decline from young-man firm to middle-aged sag. Beneath this, however, the fundamental elements resist and, for the most part, prevail: pronounced cheekbones, organized white teeth (apparently self-cleaning), thin as a homework excuse and tall as an undertaker. Even from adolescence I recognized that mine was a build made for dark overcoats.
    But the distinguishing flaws, the markings of ''character''--let's not forget them either. There's the Crane nose: too wide and crooked as a boxer's. Not a pretty thing to situate in the center of a face but suggestive of a tough-guy history that I've had occasion to be glad of. Thin lips more cobalt than crimson, eyes blue enough to go by violet. Brows turned up slightly at the corners to indicate vulnerability or, more likely, mischief. And a couple of things just plainly unfortunate: smallish ears whose tips pixie up and away from the sides of my head, a restless Adam's apple that leaps and dives the length of my neck. But before I can go too far down the list of aesthetic regrets the mirror steams over again, leaving only a wavering shadow deep within the glass.
    I turn off the cold at the sink and do the same to the hot at the tub, the water now up to within a foot of the edge. While showers are my preference as a rule, seeing as I'm freezing my ass off I decide to step in and have a bath instead. It's one of