He didn’t ask who the gentleman was; there was only one it might have been. Stephen was on the list, but he’d likely only come with his mother, and Markert would hardly call him a gentleman.

Cyril lifted a hand to smooth his hair. The last shear he’d had in the jungle had grown out slowly, but it had grown, and without the guiding hand of a barber. Now it had a tendency to flop in his eyes and stick out at strange angles. There was nothing in the cell he could use as a looking glass—the windows were too high, and they certainly hadn’t given him a mirror.

As if it mattered. Hand-combing his uneven mop wasn’t going to make him look any less a prisoner.

Maybe he would ask Rinko about getting cleaned up a little before they hauled him into a courtroom. When she came next—was that tomorrow? Would he have asked her sooner if he expected to get gentleman callers?

“Let’s go,” said Markert, banging his truncheon on the bars. So Cyril went.

A fine scrim of smoke already hung in the still air of the visiting room. Its source was a slim turquoise straight, gold-banded, held in Ari’s kid-gloved hand. Purple kid, too: the color of heavy red wine. Under the smoke, Cyril smelled a faint trace of white flowers and an animalic base. Had Padgett and Sons made it through and carried on selling perfume? He wondered if any Ospies had been partial to vanilla musk.

Aristide wore a mink coat with the collar turned up, fur thick enough to sink into. A mauve ascot embroidered with metallic thread was tucked not-quite-neatly into his open silk collar, and there might have been a touch of rouge on his cheeks.

Even older, out of makeup and offstage, he carried the sweep of the spotlight with him, the echo of applause.

Without breaking eye contact, he took a long drag on the ridiculous straight and said, “We have got to stop meeting like this.”

Cyril dropped into the opposite chair and said, “You never gave me a chance to come see you.”

“You didn’t try very hard to catch me, or I might have.”

“Careful,” said Cyril. “What’s the statute of limitations on … oh, I don’t know, pick something. What didn’t you do?”

“Nothing so bad as you.”

It punctured the soap bubbles of their banter. Aristide looked away first, though he was the one who had said it. Once he’d recovered, he asked, “Would you like a cigarette?”

“More than anything. Even if they are … what, green?”

“There are pink ones, too. Or purple, if you’d rather.” Aristide flipped his case open.

“Hey,” said Markert.

“Relax,” said Aristide. “I’ve paid your little sop, and I mean to get something out of it. Stand there if you must, but please be silent.”