“Tomorrow we’ll get you clothes,” he said. “I know a good tailor in Dadang, and I’m not sending you anywhere in that scrap of lettuce leaf.”

“Just wrap me in a rug.”

“Lillian would skin me.”

“Lillian’s seen me in a rougher state.” He rolled and put his face into the sofa cushions. “Let me sleep.”

“You don’t want to get undressed? Sleep in the bed?”

Blearily, Cyril glared out from under his own arm. “You’re not seriously—”

Aristide realized a moment too late how his meaning had been misconstrued, and stood unsteadily from the coffee table, desperate to put distance between them. “Queen’s sake, of course not. I just—I can take the sofa, if you like.”

“I’ve slept on worse.” Cyril squirmed deeper into the cushions and spoke more softly, so that Aristide almost didn’t hear him add, “And anyway. You’ve got a bad back.”

A visceral memory struck him then: Cyril’s thumbs pressed into the knot that still lurked at the base of his spine, ready to spring into a full spasm if he stood too long, or sat, or turned too fast in the wrong direction. The way the snarled muscles held their tension under pressure until suddenly, blissfully, they didn’t. Cyril’s warm hands spreading, palms down, over the tender place left behind in the wake of pain.

Cyril remembered, too, or he wouldn’t have said. And that made the memory hurt worse than his bad back ever had.

“Oh,” managed Aristide. “Thank you.” He took Cyril’s empty tumbler for himself, and filled it at the bar before he closed the bedroom door.

It was strangely like being saddled with a child or a pet. Cyril was petulant and cranky, apt to snatch up things that didn’t belong to him. At the tailor, when he removed his sweat-stained jacket, three monogrammed pens and a small wooden spoon fell from the pockets, along with several books of matches. The monograms were all different. The spoon, Aristide found upon closer examination, had been sharpened at the handle end.

Cyril shattered the impression of vexing but innocent once he was down to his shirt and trousers.

“You can go,” he said, not looking at Aristide. But he clearly didn’t mean the tailor, who was holding a book of fabric samples open for him.

“Oh, please. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.” As soon as it was out of his mouth, Aristide knew it was wrong. First, instead of a saucy note, he’d struck a little to the left of nagging. Second, he remembered Cyril’s horror at his perceived flirtation the previous night.

He got no better results this time. Worse, in fact.

“Get out,” said Cyril, between clenched teeth.