The time wasn’t completely wasted. Arlette’s wild-goose chases at least kept her out of my hair while I taped up the pouches of heroin and sewed them into my clothing. The jacket got the greater portion of them. I took up the lining, flattened the pouches and sewed them here and there inside it, then replaced the lining. The end product of all this effort was nothing geared to win hysterical applause from a tailors’ convention – I wound up with a pretty lumpy jacket. Still, it was a way to transport the junk with some degree of secrecy, and it left my hands free.
It took the Frankenstein mask to convince me that a removable disguise was an unrealistic goal. I put it on and Arlette went into a laughing fit. I couldn’t see the expression on her face – I couldn’t see anything because my eyes didn’t happen to be placed as close together as Frankenstein’s – but the laughter came through the mask. The air didn’t; I was sweating furiously in less than ten seconds. I took off the mask and told Arlette I didn’t think it would do.
“But it is lovely,” she insisted. “You must someday wear such a mask when we make love.”
I sent her out again – it was that or hit her – and she came back with a long list of things and helped me use them to remake my face. We started off with my hair, cutting off quite a bit of it, raising the sideburns three-eighths of an inch, and working black dye into what hair remained. I thought I looked pretty terrible, but Arlette insisted that it wasn’t that bad.
“I myself could become a blonde,” she said.
“No.”
“But otherwise they will recognize me.”
“Arlette, they’re not looking for you. That’s the whole point.”
“But they will not recognize you at Point X, and they will recognize me.”
“They’re supposed to.”
“They will see us together and wonder who I am with. They will-”
I shifted gears. “Arlette, the picture on your identification card is of a girl with dark hair. It wouldn’t do to-”
“I could wear a wig, then-”
“Arlette-”
“-or we could have a new photograph taken. Evan, is something wrong? You feel I would appear unattractive as a blonde? You do not think I would have more fun?”
Fool, I told myself, you’ve been trying to reason with her! I said, “We shall someday find out, my apple of love. We will taste the fruits of love together, you with blonde hair and I in my Frankenstein mask.” I swallowed. “But you must help me now. I am not finished with my disguise, and you must help me.”
I didn’t need her help. I just needed her to shut the hell up. I sat in front of her mirror and played with all the nice toys she had brought me. I used theatrical putty on my nose and ears. I had once read somewhere that ears are the most difficult feature to disguise, and that trained law-enforcement officers always pay close attention to people’s ears. They’re way ahead of me on that score. I hardly ever notice ears unless they stick out or one of them is missing, or something like that.
So I puttied my ears. I didn’t want to do anything too extreme. I figured that funny-looking ears would attract attention almost as well as the Frankenstein mask, but on second thought I decided that all ears are funny-looking to a greater or lesser degree. I enlarged the lobes of mine, and built things up here and there, and gave the tops a slight peak. The hard part was making them both come out the same, which, now that I think about it, was probably unnecessary, as few people see both of one’s ears at the same time. I did a good job, though, and when I was through, Arlette told me I looked different. I didn’t see it myself. “You mean my ears look different,” I said.
“So it must be, but I do not recall how they looked before. No, your face has changed.”
I guess the police know what they’re doing, at least insofar as ears are concerned.
I fixed my nose, too, making it a little longer and straightening out the slight bump just below the bridge. I preferred my ears as they had been before, but I had to admit that the new nose was more becoming than the original model.
“Your eyebrows, Evan.”
I had forgotten to dye them. I did this, getting only a little bit of hair dye in my eye and swearing only for a few minutes. I tried on the clear glass spectacles Arlette had bought me. The only trouble with them was that they looked fake. The light reflected oddly off the flat surface of the glass. The sunglasses were much better and hid my eyes in the bargain but might look odd after dark, assuming I still wanted to be disguised by then.
I put my new cap on my head. It was similar to the wino’s cap but infinitely cleaner. Too clean, I decided. It looked as if it had been hatched that morning. I threw it on the floor and stepped on it while Arlette looked at me as though I had gone suddenly mad.
The phone rang. I grabbed it, and it was Seth. “Oh, no,” I said. “It can’t be six yet. It’s impossible.”
“It isn’t. You okay, man?”
It was three thirty and once I found that out, I was okay and said so. I asked him if anything had gone wrong.
“Nothing serious. We’ve got twenty-three bodies for sure and a batch of maybes. From past experience, I’d say one out of three maybes will show. That’s in the States, in a typical antiwar march. It could be different with Canadians for a Modonoland protest, but I don’t know whether it would be more or less.”
“You’ll know in a couple of hours.”
“I’m hip. The reason I called-”
“How are you doing on boats?”
“Not too bad. Randy’s out on a lead now, and there’s a chick from Nova Scotia who’s getting in touch with a friend who’s supposed to know somebody. You know how it goes. I don’t honestly know how many we have lined up, but I think we’ll make it. I’ll know better at six o’clock.”
“Good.”
“Uh, the reason I called-”
“How about money? Are you running low?”
“No, that’s no problem. Evan, why I called-”
“I’m sorry.” I was turning into Arlette. “Go ahead.”