The second time, I just left it uneven.

Every time after that was a choice between the two. I tried hard to get it right, but I never had the touch. He was so frustrated with me, and I just laughed.

“I was such a dick,” I say to the hair. The last of my brother. “You just wanted to look better than what we were.”

My fist curls around the hair. I can’t feel it, no matter how tightly I grip. It’s too light to mean anything. It should be in a vacuum bag or between the bristles of a broom, but it’s as tenacious as Nico, and it’s all I have of him. Bending, I put my fist between my forehead and the floor, trying to broker a deal between memory and guilt where he can exist in an unbroken peace.

My knees ache. I fall over, next to the drain, and stare at the ceiling. The red light of the camera glows, and if he’s up there, I hope he can’t see me. I hope he’s too busy being happy to think of me or worry that I’m cut off like a strand of hair the world doesn’t need anymore.

I am alone and I will miss him.

On the cold floor, I fall into a kind of slumber.

A clack wakes me a few minutes, hours, or days later. I’m still on the floor, in the same position. My joints ache the way they did when I slept on the sidewalk with a knife in my sleeve, alert and dreaming at the same time.

I sit up, shirtless and exposed. The bandages on my side fold into the wound. A tray of food slides through the open hatch at the bottom of the metal door. The hatch closes. A face appears in the square of netted glass. A man.

Marco Caliveri.

I give him a one-fingered salute. His face disappears. I hope I pissed him off.

I slide the tray toward me. Lentil soup. Bread. Water. All of it could be poisoned or drugged. Could taste like shit, but I’m starving, so the fact is, I’m going to eat it anyway.

And I do. Right on the floor. I grunt with approval, because you can say a lot of things about Colonia women, but they can fucking cook.

Sarah should make me lentil soup as soon as I get back.

Before I stop myself, I imagine her at the stove, stirring a big pot, steam collecting around her face. She asks me if I want to try it. What do I think? Does it need salt?

And it needs nothing, because it’s perfect, just like she’s perfect with her erotic drawings and her quietly clever plans and her sweaty palms.

Hope is the most excruciating torture.

The taste of the soup dies on my tongue. I leave the tray at the bottom of the door, and it disappears. I have no sense of time besides the needs of my body. The boredom is so intense I give the cinderblocks names, grouping them into families based on the particular nuance in their exact shade of gray.