I trudge from my bed to face the mirror man. Should I shave his beard or let him look like Hell all day long? He doesn't much care and I can't bring myself to punish him anyway.
I trudge to my car and adjust the mirror man's tie as I sit. I drive with him all the way to work. He is a mindless, boring, inattentive companion, precursor, forerunner, omen of my daily toil.
The mirror man paces me in the polished walls as I stalk the stairs that twist their way to the floor supports my hotbox of a cube. The mirror man's already there staring out at me from my tube. I blank him out with a background '95 and an attitude '45. I peck and click and dial-tone my way through the morning e-mail, v-mail and female. They all have important messages for me. Sure, like they couldn't handle it if the mirror man and I weren't here.
The mirror man and I check our clothes in the men's room before we go down to put ourselves on display for lunch. I've left the bottom button of his shirt unbuttoned and a flap of cloth folded back. He doesn't care. The unrevealing opening shows the same white beneath as the shirt above.
At lunch I watch the mirror man munching on unappetizing, healthful food intended more to impress the others with his membership in the "cult of fitness" than for any other reason. The mirror man's not fat, he's just not a model.
The mirror man stares ghostily back at me from my monitor all afternoon. He never does any less work than I do but I still feel he's not helping me much.
Off to the john for one more quick check before I offer up my appearance as a sacrifice in the five o'clock parade. They watch the mirror man and me as I cross the lobby and he slithers around the silvered walls and passes like a thought across the polished granite slabs.
Back in the car, I always remove the mirror man's tie. I can't say why I do it for him when I could just take off my own noose. We ramble home after a drive-through at some purveyor of not-particularly-fast pseudo-food that no one will ever know I like. As the girl with the perky cap and the unhappy, distasteful, sniveling grin hands me my food, The mirror man smiles and nods in the drive-through window just as though she could see him.
At home I step up to turn on the TV and find the mirror man's removed his shirt and socks just as I. He looks at me through the one-eyed monster and I glare back until I hit the switch and blur him out with color and sound.
Bedtime comes and when the TV blackens again I see the mirror man's still looking out at me. He follows me to the bathroom where we weigh our selves on our reversed scales, express reversed satisfactions with our diet plan and sit down back to back on our reversed toilets to take reversed shits before we retire.
I see the mirror man's face in the mirror as I turn out the light. Each night he's the last sight I see before I dream. I never much liked the mirror man, but we've only each other and who else could understand me half so well? Who else ushers in my dreams each night?