It was morning and he was in the bathroom shaving, shaving for the first time that day but not the last, no, never the last; the hairs kept coming, tiny hairs and black and there was nothing for it, nothing for it at all but shaving, razor bright-edged clean on skin and cutting through the hairs and the soap ... . There were the hairs and he was shaving because a man shaves. Main thing a man did. Made him into a man. No bloody hairs.
She came in then, rich and tall and American in that way they have, her face a picture of a face, an American face, and she leaned into Gibbs Adams in that way she had of leaning, and he looked away from her American face in the mirror and down at the sink where she had just dropped the matchbook, a matchbook from Harry's Bar & American Grill.
'There wasn't going to be any of that,' he said. 'You promised there wouldn't be.'
'Well, there is now,' she said.
He looked at her bored American face in the mirror and knew they would eat, and there would be the wine, but there would never be the time in Venice, no, not that time again and no other. It was too late for that.
He turned again to the mirror, to his American face in the mirror, his strong thin American face in the mirror with soap now drying on his skin, and the razor moving, scraping ... and he saw his hand trembling in the glass and he felt the white-hot, blinding flash of metal, and that was all he ever felt.
He had cut himself about two inches up and a little to one side of the base of his chin.
He was bleeding now, the good, rich thin American blood red on his chin, on the razor, cold, gleaming, dripping ... and he was afraid.
She turned, lifting her thin American lip over those thin white perfect American teeth in that thin American sneer. 'It's only a nick, Adams,' she said.
for the hemingway haters
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Originally Posted by Keith Wilson
