Aristide retreated to the front of the shop and pushed at the door so that the bell chimed. He stayed inside and waited for it to close, then settled softly onto one of the caned chairs along the wall. Between the slats of the folding screen that sheltered the fitting room from the street-facing windows, he caught glimpses of the process. He lost the conversation after Cyril’s first line:

«I do not care a damn what cloth,» he said. Then, one of the only bits of Shedengue Aristide knew, which was Do you speak, except instead of saying the Shedengue word for “Geddan,” Cyril said the word for Shedengue itself. Whatever information they exchanged after that was beyond Aristide’s reach, though from the sound, it wasn’t much. In the lengthening silences between the tailor’s tentative questions and Cyril’s terse replies, the hiss of the tape measure was the only sound in the shop.

Aristide leaned against the wall, changing the angle of his vantage point. A sliver of angled mirror slid into view, and with it, a section of Cyril’s reflection.

His undershirt—what Aristide could see of it—was splotchy and snaggled. No wonder he’d worn that horrible suit to sleep, and given Aristide the bottom of his boot just now.

And then he shifted on the riser and put the crook of his elbow into view, the underside of his forearm. Just for a moment but long enough to show livid pink. Track marks? Suicide scars? Did Aristide want to know?

He wished he had gone when he’d pretended to. Now there was no way out—if he truly left he’d ring the bell over the door, and Cyril would believe he’d come back, then figure out his ruse. In lieu of an exit, he averted his eyes from the crack between the hinges.

And something—some shift in the angle of his ribs, the tentative breath he let out as he moved—tickled his chest and woke the cough that had begun to plague him. He felt phlegm catch as he tried to inhale—

“Damnation, Aristide!”

Cyril, sock footed, in shorts and his holey undershirt, slammed back the screen. One wobbly decorative newel met its end and clattered to the floor.

And that was what he had been trying to hide. Scars, yes, but not the kind that Aristide had feared. Not the straight lines of a razor, but the ragged, puckered swathes of burns.

“Mother and sons,” said Aristide. He had his handkerchief to his mouth, from coughing, and his voice came out rough. He could have been a mourning widow in a scene from a melodrama. A mother whose son had come back from a war. He cleared his throat and put away the hankie.

“I told you they burned the camp,” said Cyril. “With me still tied to a post inside. I’m lucky: The roof fell on my legs, not my head.”