There were moments when David Starsky looked at himself in the mirror and wondered at the fact that he had survived so far. He stood bare-chested in his bathroom and examined his body carefully. The scars on his body were faded but they would never go away. He was thirty seven years old and he’d seen more violence in the past seventeen years than most citizens would see in a lifetime (and that included what they saw on the screen.)
I wonder when my luck will run out, he thought as he reached for the lather brush and started to prepare his stubble. He preferred an old-fashioned shave and had frightened plenty of girl-friends, not to say his partner and his mom, with his choice of razor. He used an old-fashioned barber’s ‘cut throat’. He poised the blade to start on his cheek before lowering it to his throat, just below his Adam’s apple.
It would be so easy.

He raised his left hand and gently touched the almost invisible scar high on his cheek and close to his ear.
So close.

The scar was faded now but it was still evident; he would always see it as it had been the first time they let him near a mirror. His mind went back to that day. He could see it all so clearly; the hospital room, the sweet nurse who had shaved him every day. “I’ll be careful not to touch the stitches” she said as she started to lather his chin.
“I want to see it.” She smiled. “The doctor doesn’t think you are ready for that yet. He reached out with his free hand, the one that wasn’t still encased in a plaster cast, his right hand, his weak hand. He grabbed her wrist firmly but gently. “I think I’m ready and I want to see it.”
She held the mirror steady for him and he looked at his face for the first time since he’d been shipped into this hospital. His face was gaunt; his deep blue eyes seemed to stare out at him from two caves; his nose was no longer swollen and he was relieved to see that they had managed to keep the cartilage straight. Then he saw the scar. Four ragged black stitches stood proud against the bright red C-shaped welt that seemed to echo the line of his ear. He closed his eyes for a moment and sighed.
“It looks worse than it is.” The nurse said.
“I’ll take your word for it.”

Light reflected on the blade as he raised it to scrape his cheek.
Flashing light….like the flash on a camera. One split second of life trapped inside a camera and imprinted on film….One split second of your life imprinted on your brain in a blinding flash. He would always be vulnerable; he knew that. A sudden flash of light could trigger a debilitating migraine, reducing him to a sobbing trembling wreck hunched over the toilet bowl heaving his guts up and trying not to think of the pain in his head. Or it could trigger off the terrible moment when he had thought that he was blinded.

He’d told Hutch about the scar on his face; but after all these years he still hadn’t told him about the one in his mind.

He finished shaving and dabbed the last few specks of lather off his face with a towel before taking one last look at himself.

The doorbell rang and he shrugged; he picked up his shirt and pulled it on as he walked to the door to let Hutch in.
Into my apartment…but not into all my secrets.