His own stupidity was so much harder to bear in retrospect. He imagined it would grow harder every year, until it or he passed some critical point that made the whole thing seem humorous. A critical point he would never have reached, if not for the man whose elbow was currently pressed into his ribs.

“I was going to send him after you,” said Cyril. “I even took a bottle of peroxide for his hair, so he would match the papers.”

“What went wrong?”

“Me.”

Aristide waited for him to go on, fingers making a cage over the hem of the blanket.

“I—I had seen the name on the visa and I didn’t trust myself to keep my teeth shut.”

“Cordelia used to say it just like that.”

Her name conjured a warmth in Cyril’s chest that had lain dormant too long. But like blood returning to a senseless limb, it was agony. “Can you imagine? I told her she ought to pitch in with the Ospies. Said she’d make a good fox.”

“She would have.” Ari laughed, or almost. “Rather say, she did. You propped up the Ospies, in your way. But she tripped them and they stumbled down.”

“You said you saw her. After you left. Before she died.”

“Long story,” said Aristide, and when Cyril began to protest he put one hand up and said, “which I’ll be happy to tell, sometime. But the last I saw of you, you were waving a snubby around her dressing room and looking like someone had peeled you off their shoe. How in perdition did you get from there to an Orriba slum?”

“Who told you it was Orriba?”

“Asiyah. Said the hounds brought you in on a drunk and disorderly, and you gave them a false name. Paul—”

“Darling,” said Cyril. “A stupid work name. Sentimental. That’s the kind of thing that gets you caught.”

“I know.” He stared into dead space. “I couldn’t help it.”

“You could have,” said Cyril. “You just like being clever. It’ll get you into trouble.”

“Orriba, Cyril. How—?”

“A friend of yours, actually.” Not that he had known it at the time. Not like she knew him. How she’d recognized him, busted like an overripe fruit, and only from the description on a set of false papers … “Same friend who let you put that stupid name on my visa.”

“Zelda Peronides? How—?”