"What am I doing?" I asked my reflection.
My reflection, now sporting a dodgy mustache, and the haunted eyes of a man who’d made a series of escalating poor choices, offered no answers.
From the bedroom, Purrsephone let out a sound that was definitely, unmistakably, a laugh. I didn't know cats could laugh. This one had apparently learned specifically to mock me.
I adjusted the mustache, which immediately shifted slightly to the left. I adjusted it again. It shifted right. I pressed harder, and the tape made a concerning squelching sound.
"This might work," I said, with absolutely zero conviction.
I added the sunglasses. The baseball cap. The hideous Christmas sweater with the light-up reindeer nose, which I turned on because if I was going to commit, I was going to commit.
The man in the mirror looked like a cryptid. A holiday-themed cryptid who had wandered out of a fever dream and into a rural Virginia general store.
But he did not, definitively, look like Dr. Brock Blaze.
"Victory," I whispered, and the mustache wobbled.
I grabbed my keys, my wallet, and what remained of my dignity, and headed for the door.
Purrsephone followed me to the front porch, where she sat down and watched me with an expression that clearly said I'm going to tell everyone about this.
"You're a cat," I told her. "Who are you going to tell?"
She looked pointedly toward Farley's cabin.
"Don't you dare."
I was halfway to my car when I heard the crunch of gravel.
Farley stood at the edge of my driveway, wearing a navy peacoat and gray scarf, looking like he'd just stepped out of a J.Crew catalog. He was holding a canvas tote bag—the kind that screamed I shop at farmers markets—and had clearly been on his way somewhere before the sight of me stopped him in his tracks.
His mouth fell open. Then closed. Then opened again.
"Samuel?"
My mustache chose that exact moment to detach on one side and dangle limply from my upper lip.
"Hi," I said, like a man who hadn't just been caught looking like a festive serial killer. "I can explain."
Scene 2
I could not, as it turned out, explain. At least, not in any way that made me sound like a functioning adult.
"Is that..." Farley's voice had gone strange. Strangled, almost. Like he was trying very hard not to do something. "Is that a mustache?"
I pressed the dangling half back against my lip with as much dignity as I could muster, which was approximately none. "It's a disguise."
"A disguise."
"Yes. So I could go to the store. Without being recognized."
"The store."
"You're just repeating everything I say."
"I'm processing." Farley's hand had come up to cover his mouth, and his shoulders were shaking. "Give me a moment. I need to process the fact that you made yourself a mustache."
"My friend Chandra said you have to commit to disguises," I said defensively. "Half-assed disguises don't work. This is a fully-assed disguise."
