Tiny Ewell after detox
The man’s raptly amused profile appears in the mirror on the wall beside the dresser the two in-patients share. The man, like Tiny Ewell, has the rouged-corpse look that attends detox from late-stage alcoholism. The man is in addition a burnt-yellow beneath his flush, from chronic hepatitis. The mirror he appears in is treated with shatterproof Lucite polymers.
Context
Carlisle's Mirrors catch in the St. Mel's detox paragraph: Ewell's roommate has spent all day watching the air conditioner — gazing "with rapt intensity into its screen of horizontal vents," face producing "the little smiles and grimaces of a person who's being thoroughly entertained" — and the mirror is where this spectator becomes a picture himself, his "raptly amused profile" framed on the wall like the reaction shot of a man at a viewer. The one specification the raw gives the mirror is institutional: "treated with shatterproof Lucite polymers" — a detox ward's mirror is built on the assumption that someone will eventually go through it. (The air-conditioner-as-entertainment parody around the sighting is entertainment-self territory; only the mirror is carried here.)