Midshave

Rumors abound of a ghost who haunts the third dining room, which purportedly was once a barber shop where a local mobster was cut down midshave.

“What did he say? The barber.” / “Not a word. He stopped midshave, straight-blade razor in his hand, and he went to his cabinet and got them for me.[…]”

There was just one slight wrinkle: The best-known justice of the peace was also the town barber. That meant that barbershop customers were often pressed into service as witnesses to a short-notice marriage ceremony, sometimes standing up for a couple midshave.

“Okay,” I say, “I guess we can put it on the credit card, but I can’t take it in tomorrow morning because I have a banana job.” / This stops him midshave.

And then at 1:00 a.m., as if a switch had been flipped, the night turned to a sea of flame. Addison stood midshave, transfixed by the sight.

I needed to quickly establish what kind of character the gunman was. To do so, I came up with a scene in a barbershop, where an enemy attacks the main character midshave.

Dom Denario caught Cotton’s eye in the reflection of the pocket-sized mirror that hung on the cinderblock wall. A pit-stained, stretched-out undershirt struggled to contain his fat belly (only doing so with the help of black suspenders), while globs of shaving cream adhered to his face like melted marshmallows. He stopped what he was doing, midshave.

THE TENTATIVE KNOCK on his door made Gabe pause, midshave.