Frank blew out a stream of smoke and then erupted into a fit of coughing. He held the lit cigarette away from himself, disgusted, but he had nowhere to stub it out.
"I remember why I quit these things," he croaked.
Cal dropped the mustache to the floor.
"What the fuck?" Cal imagined his confusion was writ large across his face. He didn't know which was swirling more: his mind or his stomach.
Frank crossed the room and opened the blinds and then the window, flooding the room with morning light, but doing little to erase the pungent smell of the burning cigarette. He stubbed it out on the windowsill and then flicked the butt out into the street below.
Cal's senses were under attack, his brain panicking to make sense of it all: the tickle of the smoke in the back of his throat, the way it stung his eyes, and the—apparently—fake mustache lying on the floor like an alien creature.
Cal stepped back to give it space.
Frank's face was the face of a stranger, red from the coughing fit, and there was a scrape of crusted blood across his temple, and then there was his actual face: smooth from cheek to cheek except for a morning growth of silver stubble. Cal had not seen that face since the summer after high school forty years ago. By the end of that summer, Cal had gone off to college in Tallahassee and Frank had joined the Army, and when they'd reunited later that year for the holidays, Frank was already trying on an army-regulation mustache. Over the years and into civilian service, Frank had grown it out further and had styled it differently as the decades changed, but the stache had always been there.
Until it was on the floor at Cal's feet.
"I can tell you have a lot of questions," Frank said as he brushed past Cal, down the hall, and into the bathroom.
"No shit." Cal followed him and hovered outside the open door, crossing his arms.
Frank washed his face, dried his hands—infuriatingly slow—and inspected himself in the mirror. Wet gauze drooped now from his right hand; he discarded it into the bin and went about cleaning the long, red scrape along the edge of his hand. It looked like he'd karate-chopped a window.
Frank made eye contact via the reflection in the mirror.
"First, you're wondering how I got banged up last night."
"No, Frank, I'm wondering why your mustache is on the fucking floor."
Frank turned to him and frowned.
"I thought you'd be more concerned with my physical well-being."
"I'm concerned about your headspace, man! What the hell is going on?"
Frank brushed past him again and entered the salon. When Cal caught up, Frank was in the kitchen discarding the remnants of his bourbon and cigarette butts into the sink and neatly putting the bottle of bourbon on the counter next to the half-empty wine rack. He leaned his back against the counter, looked at Cal with his stupid, clean-shaven face, and then took a deep breath.
"It's a disguise," he said matter-of-factly.
"Excuse me?"
"The mustache. It must have got stuck when I pulled off the pantyhose."
"Yeah, and I have questions about the pantyhose, too!" said Cal, louder than he intended. "But you've been wearing your fake, Spy Hard mustache in front of me for weeks like a crazy person. Jesus help me."
Cal stomped back into the salon and flopped onto the couch. Cal's shoe bumped the long, black case wedged under the coffee table. Inside was obviously a rifle, considering the silver SIG Sauer now resting on the table. Exactly why Frank had a pistol and a rifle case was still a mystery, one that Cal had no reserve of energy or patience to investigate.
Frank followed him silent as a ghost and sat at the opposite end.
"No," Frank said and then he pointed to his shaved face, "I mean that this is the disguise."
"What are you talking about? I'm serious, Frank. If you don't start making sense I'm going to walk out of here or maybe jump out the window like you flicked that cigarette."
Frank huffed like this was hard for him. The fucking nerve of this guy. Cal shook his head with impatience and disbelief.
"Would you recognize me like this if I passed you on the street? If I maybe wore a hat or had on a pair of shades?"
Cal stared at him, imagining.
"I've known you my whole life," Cal said, "and I hardly recognize you sitting right next to me."
"Exactly."
"Frank!" Cal shouted and then pressed his lips together to regain some semblance of control. Then it was his turn to take a deep breath. "A disguise is supposed to fool the people you're spying on, not the people who already know who you are. Now, I'm not an expert spy—"
"—spook."
"—but I'm pretty fucking sure, Frank—that you have it backwards. You put the disguise on when you go to work, and then you take it off when you come home."
Frank shook his head and gesticulated in the air like he was the one getting frustrated. "No, you're not getting it! I get that this is a shock for you, but I'm trying to explain."
Cal crossed his arms again. "I'm waiting."
"How many pictures of Frank Fumagalli are there on the internet?"
"Not many."
"Right, but there are some. It's unavoidable these days, but how many more pictures of me are there in the minds of people I've met? Foreign dignitaries and foreign spooks? Internal memos and dossiers? CCTV? I get around, you know. And what is the first thing that comes to mind when you picture me in your mind's eye?"
"The mustache."
"Exactly."
Frank relaxed into the couch and crossed one leg over his knee like the matter was settled. He looked like he wanted another cigarette.
Cal closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. He was going on nearly twenty-four hours of no sleep and, after the highs of the previous night and the lows of this morning, his mind and body were crashing. Frank was crazy but was he literally crazy or was this one of Frank's so-smart-it's-insane moments of manic genius?
"Let me get this straight," Cal said at last. "You wear a fake mustache, so the people you know and the people you meet get used to it. They get your face stuck in their minds—your face with a mustache—so, when someone who knows you sees you—without the mustache—they don't give you a second look."
Frank clicked his tongue and winked.
"Jesus, Frank, that's . . . I don't know what that is."
"It works."
"Oh, I bet. What—do you keep in your pocket? Do you stick it on, peel it off, and then stick it back on again? Like a cartoon character trying to get another free sample at the supermarket? Frank, how long have you been doing this?"
He seemed to consider the question before answering. "Off and on for a few years now. More than a few."
"Unbelievable."
"Oh, and it's not a fake mustache," said Frank.
"The deception deepens. Enlighten me, my man."
"It's actually my mustache."
Cal could only stare blankly.
"I clipped it off and wove it into a nylon base like they do for human-hair wigs. So, it's not fake—it's my mustache—it's just removable."
Cal stood to his feet. "You're a psychopath. You know that, right?"
"Do you mean that in a good way?"
A bark of a laugh escaped Cal's lips. Then a thought occurred to him.
"Does Lilith know?"
Frank frowned. "We're no longer married, remember? I don't think it's any of her business what I—."
"—Please don't tell me that you wore a removable mustache when you were married and your wife, somehow, didn't know. That's impossible."
"Listen," Frank said. He also stood and put a hand on Cal's shoulder, and it took all that Cal had not to recoil from the touch. "I know this is a shock. I should have told you a long time ago. I'm sorry."
Cal inspected his friend's face. His new face. His true face. It was both familiar and foreign. Frank's hazel eyes were wide with concern, red and watery with shame and hangover, and this was a face that Cal knew well from their teenage years when Frank's controlled chaos had more than once gotten Cal caught up in the shenanigans. Hell, Cal had been grounded for an entire month one summer before their junior year, no thanks to some bullshit Frank had dragged him into.
Cal was suddenly very tired. The man seated on the couch in front of him was a freak, a liar, and also his best friend—the only person who'd offered him a lifeline and a chance to start over. All those facts would have to be reconciled at some point, but right then, Cal could hardly stay on his feet.
Cal shook off Frank's hand still resting on his shoulder and put some space between them by walking away and pausing at the threshold of the bedroom hallway. "Did you die last night?" he asked rhetorically.
"No, obviously."
"Did you kill someone?"
Frank paused. "I don't think so."
"Then I'm going to bed. Wake me if the police show up."