At the end of every haircut a customer is shown the back of his own skull for three seconds, a view available at almost no other point in adult life, held up by a barber who already knows the answer will be that it looks fine. The mirror itself is round or oval, never square, mounted on a handle just long enough to clear a shoulder, and it appears at only one moment in the entire appointment: the last one, after the cape comes off and the chair turns back to face the wall.
The glass is unremarkable, standard silvered stock, the same as any drugstore compact, distinguished only by the ritual built around its single use. A second reflection sometimes appears inside it, the wall mirror catching the hand mirror catching the wall mirror again, folding an image back on itself two or three times before it gives out; as many as four repetitions have been counted in a shop with mirrors on opposing walls, each one dimmer and farther away than the last. The handle carries a band of tape near the base where the original grip cracked years ago, in a shop that otherwise replaces nothing until it fails outright. The mirror comes up, holds for the length of one nod, and goes back in the drawer before the customer has finished nodding.