When my brother told me that he was paying young men—when he called me a few nights after the night in the piano bar to tell me that he had paid a man for the first time—I told him there were limits.

I believed there were.

Even so, I found myself wondering that night seven years ago if he had waited until he was alone to call me, or if he was calling me from his bed, with the man still in it.

I asked him why he could not find someone to be equal with.

My brother made a sound into the telephone. The sound he made was not a word.

I told my brother that most people chose to be with peers. I asked why he did not.

“What peers?” Nicholas asked.

In the lacquer now I see my brother framed in red. I find his eyes in places where the red layers have worn away by nature, or, if I am wrong about the table, where the black base has been forced through by the industry of monks. I am hoping to learn that this table is the real item. Presents to Nicholas should have been authentic. My brother’s eyes, in life, were no less black than this.

The skull faces behind him, the ones along the wall of the ball court, compete in the red lacquer with my brother’s face, and it is my brother’s face prevailing.

Behind one of the mirrored doors, I find my brother’s robes. He had a collection, quite a number. Some, I think, are based on old designs; some, I think, are old. Reaching in, I touch the hanging silk and wonder which robe might be the one that my brother had on last.

I find myself wondering if Nicholas liked conversations with the young men, in intervals, if there were intervals, and if he gave a young man a robe to put on while they spoke.

I am wondering if the last young man wore one of these robes.

If he did, I find myself wondering why he, the last young man, did not take it. I find myself wondering why he did not take my brother’s netsukes, why not everything in malachite.

The man in Chichén Itzá’s diamond cuff links are still here, and there is money in my brother’s trousers on the floor.

Too much is here, and I find myself asking the last young man why he did not take things, why he did not smash the tequila bottle on the table and scratch broken glass across the lacquer, just to kill my brother thoroughly.

That is what I find myself wondering as I compare my brother’s robes.