The initial cut was ragged enough to require a great deal of trimming, which took a long time. An hour. But she could not make the hairs come to the same length, and finally she got out the razor from the shower, and finished by shaving, patting with toilet paper the cuts that bled copiously, ignoring the old scars revealed, the awful bumps and hollows of the bare skull, so close under the skin. It was hard to do it all without ever looking at the monstrous face hanging from the front of the skull.

When she was done she stared ruthlessly at the freak in the mirror— androgynous, withered, insane. The eagle become vulture: skin head, wattled neck, beady eyes, hook nose, and the lipless downturned little mouth. Staring at this hideous face, there were long, long moments when she could not remember a single thing about Maya Toitovna. She stood frozen in the present, a stranger to everything.

• • •

A knock at the door made her jump, and released her. She hesitated, suddenly ashamed, even frightened. Another part of her croaked, “Come in.”

The door opened. It was Michel. He saw her and stopped in the doorway. “Well?” she said, staring at him and feeling naked.

He swallowed, cocked his head. “Beautiful as ever.” With a crooked grin.

She had to laugh. She sat on her bed and began to weep. She sniffed and sniffed. “Sometimes,” she said, wiping her eyes, “sometimes I wish I could stop being Toitovna. I get so tired of it, of everything that I’ve done.”

Michel sat beside her. “We’re locked in our selves to the end. This is the price one pays for thought. But which would you rather be— convict, or idiot?”

Maya shook her head. “I was down in the park with Vlad and Ursula and Marina and Sax who hates me, and looking at them all, and we have to do something, we really do, but looking at them and remembering everything— trying to remember— we suddenly all seemed such damaged people.”

“A lot has happened,” Michel said, and put his hand on hers.

“Do you have trouble remembering?” Maya shivered, and clasped his hand like a life raft. “Sometimes I get so scared that I’ll forget everything.” She sniffed a laugh. “I guess that means I’d rather be a convict than an idiot, to answer your question. If you forget, you’re free of the past, but nothing means anything. So there’s no escape”— she started to cry again—”remember or forget, it hurts just as bad.”

“Memory problems are pretty common at our age,” Michel said gently. “Especially events in the middle distance, so to speak. There are exercises that help.”

“It’s not a muscle.”