My brother did not die quickly. I had shot him three times in the chest and once just below the stomach. Since it was a small-caliber weapon, the bullets didn’t pass through his body. I felt with my fingers for the entry points: the little frayed holes in his shirt. The wounds were sealed at the surface, cauterized from the heat of the slug but still seeping, and the slugs lay lodged underneath. It seemed one of the bullets had penetrated his lung somewhere near his heart, in the chest cavity. I guessed this because there was blood in his sputum. It hurt for him to breathe, let alone speak. I didn’t know what else to do, so I wrapped myself around him and cooed and petted and tried to keep him calm. He moaned and swore softly, over and over, my name mixed into his obscenities, and as the hour grew later and he grew weaker, his voice grew more incoherent until it was just the sound of him rasping into the floor. I thought of Dazio and his girl out there in the streets. If I meant to join them I should go soon, before Lodovico and his cronies found the back entrance—but whenever I moved, my brother tightened his grip on my hand. Outside, the light drained from the sky, not all at once but slowly, until finally it was dark and the sound of my brother’s muttering grew so faint it was indecipherable from the vibrations of the surrounding apartments, from the televisions and the white noise of the Avenida and the catcalls in the park. His body coiled and spasmed, and his hand tightened more fiercely around mine. He voided himself and his skin grew cold. Something came over me then. It had happened before. I could have left, but something held me, and I lay for a long time in the stink of him, cooing and petting. Finally I separated myself. Outside, Lodovico’s companions lingered—one by the terrace wall, the other by the stoop—but Lodovico himself had disappeared. I went to Dazio’s room to study the courtyard below. There was no light other than that which fell from the upper floors, from behind the curtains and slatted window shades of the adjoining flats.

Then, in the slumping shadows, the sudden glow of a cigarette.

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It is late. The situation outside hasn’t changed. The two men maintain their stations across the way. Meanwhile, below, in the courtyard, the smoker remains. The ash glows faint, then bright. After a while he extinguishes the cigarette. Then he lights another, holding the flame longer than necessary, so the flare of the lighter illuminates his features. His head tilts upward, toward me.

Then the flame goes out.

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