But now she was here, among all the rest of us. The former kinds of distinctions no longer existed.

Her movements were quick. Unfriendly? Maybe she didn’t like my watching her.

“Been here long?” I asked, sort of to explain my staring.

“A while.”

“Do you like it?”

“Excuse me?”

I laughed. “Sorry. Wrong question. I get it.”

She didn’t smile. Just kept rubbing her dress.

“Fine, fine.” I held up my hands to show that I was giving up, that I wouldn’t bother her anymore.

She continued washing with quick movements, putting more clothing into the tub. Only women’s clothing, I could see.

“Are you here alone?” I asked.

“I thought you were done talking,” she said.

“We’re alone too,” I said, pointing to Lou.

She stirred the contents of the tub a little. The suds foamed between her fingers. She stared at the clothes, then drew a breath and said, “You’re not alone,” she said. “There are two of you.”

She hid her face from me, but she couldn’t hide her voice. It wasn’t accusing. It wasn’t angry and dismissive like before. She just said it, plain and simple.

Abruptly I felt ashamed. She was right: I shouldn’t say that I was alone, because I had Lou. I still had Lou. Who at this moment was playing with the laundry water while talking softly to herself. Something about the ocean. The ocean at home?

The woman rinsed the soap out of her clothes with the last of the water from the jug she had brought along, wringing them out with rhythmic movements. Her hands were slender, delicate. The water gushed out of them.

Suddenly I wanted her to wring out our clothes too, in the same way. For my own part I hadn’t even made it to the rinse cycle yet.

“Would you like to eat with us?” I asked when she stood up to leave.

“You don’t give up, do you?” the woman said.

How should I reply? That I felt bad for her? That that was why I asked. Or that I liked her hands? You don’t say such things. Besides, I already regretted it, that I had asked. I shouldn’t invite other women to dinner. I had Anna.

“We have to dry our clothes first,” she said, without waiting for my answer.

Was that a yes?

“Can’t we eat while they’re drying?” I said. Because was there really anything wrong with our having a meal together? It wasn’t exactly as if I had asked her out on a date.

“You’re new here,” she said. “We have to guard them while they’re drying.”

“Huh?”

“They disappear.”

“Oh.”

I blushed. I should have understood that.

We sat there, the three of us, by the clotheslines beside the sanitary barracks, looking at our wet clothing hanging in the sun. There was no wind, so the garments hung limply from the line, but the heat did the job. And we just sat there.

She didn’t suggest taking turns, so we could watch each other’s clothing in shifts. Maybe she didn’t trust me. I hadn’t really given her any reason to. Or maybe she liked sitting like this. It was a way of killing time, maybe how people lived here.