Nicholas gave me a weary look. “Honey, that’s all right. You’re being humorous enough for everyone.”

I kept shouting at him. Nicholas tried to shake out of my hold.

“May we break this pose, please?” he asked. “You’re getting my face wet.”

I let him go. I backed off.

Nicholas wiped his face with his sleeve.

“Do you want to get your shirt?” my brother asked me.

I had been wearing a kind of shirt that had not been allowed. It had occurred to me that Nicholas must have known that I would be made to check it. Nicholas, of course, had worn nothing that he had been made to check. It had seemed to me that he had encouraged me to check more than my shirt, and it had crossed my mind that in our adult lives my brother and I had not seen each other naked.

Inside, I thought about that while I buttoned my shirt.

On the street, my brother opened my collar.

He smiled at me while he did it.

He touched my throat.

He undid another button.

He put his hand inside my shirt.

“Sweetheart,” he said, “let’s don’t be uncomfy.”

Along one of these mirrored walls, if pressed in the right spots, mirrored doors spring open. The clothes within, some from my brother’s thinner years, vary in size. I am playing some Broadway scores while I try on my brother’s clothes.

I play the records loud, too loud for this time of night, but I do not belt out songs. The young men across the street might hear me if I did.

I have not hummed “Moon River” yet.

The truth is that I have never loved this time of night, when the day that is over will not give up, or give in, or be left behind.

Soon the young men will be gone. It will not be long, either, I expect, before the lights on the mannequins will be turned off. I am assuming that the mannequins do not stay lighted through the day.

Though that, I suppose, is an assumption.

It was this time of the night, seven years ago, that I parted from my brother on the street. We did not part when we left the all-night bar. After that, there was nothing to do but go somewhere.

“Let’s go to a charming bar,” Nicholas said. “Let’s discuss my life.”

Nicholas wanted to go to a piano bar. He insisted it would be charming. He said we could get a drink in a glass.