Ben saw that he had to shave against the grain to get the proper shortness, and he worked the edges of the clipper around Ahmed’s ears like getting the knife in the leg joint the one time his dad let him carve the turkey. He made several passes over the back corners of the skull, where the hair grew in a swirl and longer pieces kept sticking up no matter what he did. The skin was getting red where he had worked it over again and again.

Ben finally had to accept that this was going to be Ahmed’s hair. His inability to make Ahmed look better, less haphazard, made his throat close. He pictured Ennis laughing jaggedly with Fitz and Ian.

Ahmed looked like a tired monk wearing someone else’s beautiful sweater. Ben switched off the clipper and Ahmed touched his head gingerly, as though it might burn his fingers, then with new familiarity. He passed his hand over his scalp, back and forth, and even though his face stayed grim, Ben thought he had to partially relish the new sensation.

“I’m sorry, Ahmed.”

“Usually I like having my hair cut.” He kept feeling his head. “The air moves.”

They both stayed quiet, and Ahmed turned to look at himself from the left side, then the right, then left, then right again. Already he had grown incrementally more used to it. Finally he moved his eyes from his own face to Ben’s eyes. Ben looked ashamed.

“Have I been doing a bad job?” Ahmed asked.

Ben tilted his head to one side.

“A bad job of knowing how to be?”

Ben thought about how to put it.

“Please help me improve.”

“You’re doing better, Ahmed.”

“Please help me.”

Ahmed had endured enough for one day. “You’re doing well, really.”

Ahmed undressed to take a shower. In his towel, with his back turned to Ben and his bare shoulders covered in short hairs, Ben saw what he would look like as an older man.

Ben got the broom from the staff closet and swept up the hair. He moved the smaller and smaller piles onto a manila folder and then into the trash. When he was done he stared into the wastebasket, and it looked like Ahmed’s proud head was down in there.

*  *  *