Aristide ran errands. Cyril assumed they had to do with him. They certainly resulted in a new suitcase, clean shorts and undershirts, pyjamas, toiletries. He refused to go for a shave, because he didn’t like the idea of a razor wielded by a stranger’s hand so near his neck. Even less, the idea that he couldn’t trust himself to hold still.

On the evening before Cyril’s departure, Aristide returned to the hotel with another stack of paper-wrapped packages and said, “I won’t send you to your sister like this. If you won’t go to a barber, I’ll shave you myself.”

“Your hands shake,” said Cyril from the sofa, where he had remained for too many hours, dug in like a soldier in a trench.

Aristide held one of the offending extremities in front of him and said, too keenly for humor, “Steady now. I’ve been to the bar.”

That shouldn’t have been reassuring. “I can do it myself.”

“You haven’t yet.” Aristide set the packages on the sideboard and plucked delicately at the strings that held one of them shut. The brown wrapping fell away to reveal a gold stamp on white cardboard. Aristide’s fingers were indeed steady as he unfolded the lid to reveal a badger brush, a silver-banded cake of soap, and a gleaming safety razor packed in pristine white tissue.

“It isn’t even a cutthroat,” Ari said, lifting the razor with a particular grace that pulled Cyril back through time, to a past that had seemed impossibly distant until this moment. When Aristide raised his eyes he left his chin tucked, so his gaze came filtered through his lashes. “Tell me you aren’t afraid.”

Cyril’s throat was dry, when he tried to swallow whatever threatened to rise from his chest. “Not of the razor, anyway. Pour me a drink first?”

What Ari brought him from the cocktail cart was more tranquilizer than aperitif. As he put it away, steadily, he watched Aristide unwrap another package. The slow reveal had an air of burlesque to it. One sheet of newsprint pulled away showed translucent tissue paper and the shadow of a chalk-striped cashmere Cyril didn’t remember choosing for himself. Then there was the neatly folded shirt, the sound of Aristide’s palms spread across the twill, the teasing slide of one finger beneath the band, and ultimately the snap of paper as it tore.

Cyril drank his whiskey and tried not to be intrigued. He didn’t have the energy for it.

By the time Aristide hung his suit and shirt to air and straighten, and laid out a pair of simple cap-toe derbies, Cyril was anesthetized with whiskey.

“I threw your boots in a wastebasket,” said Aristide. “There’s a few pairs of socks as well—I put them in your bag.”