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stick out my own defiant bottom teeth. I gallop my fingers, a more padded gallop than hers given her advantage of long filed nails.
    Her twitching chin and tearless sob will be on display next. She will say, “What have I done to deserve this from my own son?” And, “After all I’ve done for him!”
    Then The Duke will raise his voice to me, “You show your mother some respect.”
    He will put his hand on her knee and let her lean in under his arm. At that point the little farce ends. I do as he asks, because he asks it, not her. The chain of command has been restored.

    The ceiling light hangs from a frayed, brown plait of rope. The only light for seeing in this toilet, bathroom, mirror place. Dim for shaving, but The Duke says he knows tricks. Tricks a father hands on to his son that makes the dark, when shaving, easy.
    He steers me, hand on shoulder, to the pink sink where cracks in its bowl are so fine and grainy they could be hairs shed from washing. I’m to bend at the hip, bend forward like so, till close enough to the mirror to see cheek pores.
    Off with my shirt, off with my singlet so when we wet the soap it only splatters onto skin.
    On the sink ledge his shaving brush with worn wooden stem. Its dried hairs candle-flame shaped with the foam of his last using it. Beside it his razor—a steel cross-bar whose miniature roof opens for blades, the ones he calls the Safetys.
    He opens the cross-bar to show how a blade is more like paper than blade, being so thin and therefore so sharp. It lies flat in its slot with the merest edge protruding for cutting.
    He runs water over his finger until the cold stream steams that it’s hot. He waters the candle-flame. It drips open into a greasy brush again, a paintbrush to smear the white lather.
    He taps me on the shoulder to lean back into his front. I do. Our breathing presses on each other. My stone-figure twin has paralysed me once more. He reaches across my right shoulder for me to take the candle-brush in my fingers and let his own fingers guide the way to make the circular rhythm as if mixing a spittle-froth on my jawline, throat, jaw again, chin, jaw.
    Bubbles burst and tingle on my skin.
    “Bite your lips back into your mouth,” he instructs, demonstrating the liplessness himself and watching me copy in the mirror.
    I’m to paint over the no-mouth three times; five times across my Adam’s apple so as not to take the top of it off with the blade, only whisker slime.
    Now grip the Safety’s handle, pinched between fingers limply, not as tight as I do. Again his hand guides mine. He repeats the word “limply”. Most things you never grip in a way you’d call limply—a handshake for instance—but this is one time the word is most suitably applied. He says it quietly as a whisper, and with sweet-tea breath. “The blade must glide your stubble away, not dig in and draw blood. Glide, not stiffly, not deeply.”
    I can hear the scratching carry faintly in my head. The almost-pain of cutting. The Duke reminds me that if I go too fast I’ll be wounded. If I go too slow the blade will tug instead of shave.
    He tells me to extend my middle finger and trace over the shaving path to feel for misses. You don’t need strong bulb light to check for misses. You just need a follow-up with your fingers. “Feel it?” he breathes. “Need another swipe for good measure?”
    “No,” I breathe back. “We got it all.”
    I’m to puff out my cheeks now, one cheek at a time. This is to get access to cheek whiskers which need to be coaxed from hiding in cheek softness. He peers into the mirror, his cheeks puffed out in leadership of mine.
    Now stick out the chin and screw the mouth up to push the chin forward further. The top lip should be stretched over top teeth. Now the feel-test. Then a final trim near the ears, squaring the sideburns with a firmer flicking downwards motion.
    “Rinse your face off,” he says.
    Foam smears the bottom lip of my ears. The Safety has