He took off his jacket and his collar, tossing the celluloid collar away and hanging the jacket on the back of a chair. The shoulders wouldn't lay right, he knew. He should hang it, but he could not make himself care. He lay down on his made bed and stared at the ceiling.
He turned the experience over in his mind. Could it have been real? Could Peter the doppelgänger actually be another person and not some horrible Freudian version of himself? In retrospect, Peter had not really looked that much like Henri. The similarities were superficial: blond hair worn slicked back with pomade, blue eyes, a narrow face... If it had been real these things could all be coincidence. He would not have been struck by such a person if he'd met him on the street. The hair was simple and fashionable in style and the man's clothes were so unremarkable as to be nearly remarkable again. Peter could be someone not a product of a drugged imagination.
He could. Did that mean he was?
Henri pinched the bridge of his nose. He could worry about it all night, chasing himself (ha!) in circles. Nothing could prove or disprove what he had seen was imagination. He shuddered, thinking again of the horrible, cyclopean thing in the cloak. He had to stop thinking about it, had to get some sleep. He had clients in the morning.
He put his mind to thinking about his ladies, and how he would dress them. It helped him sleep, though the back of his mind still worried and fussed and hoped he would not have nightmares.
