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reflection—perhaps you saw it?—is as disappointing as ever. I still cannot lay claim to a chin, or a smaller nose. But since this is clearly not Heaven, what can I expect? I suppose I should be grateful that I do not have plague welts sprouting from my cheeks. (I just knocked on wood, though the protective effects of that are doubtful.) My eyes, like yours, are turning blue and, like you, I cannot begin to guess why. It is a very strange thing to be terrified by the sight of your own eyes. But then again, when I think about it, I realize that this feeling is nothing new.
    My hands are killing me—no pun intended. I pushed back two of my knuckles trying to pound my way out of here. I have never punched anything before. Once I started, I could not stop. It was like some manner of frenzy possessed me, the way animals become possessed without care or reason. My right hand split open and I got blood on my white shirtfront, and some on my suit jacket, but it is black—the jacket, not the blood—so it is not visible. Not that it matters. But I really hate blood, and I have this thing about being clean—I always washed my shirts twice in scalding hot water (and my dresses, but that is a different story)—so I have taken off the jacket and shirt and put them in the closet. Although I suppose scientifically speaking blood is not unhygienic, but it might be once it makes contact with wool and cotton—forgive me, I digress. I closed the closet door, but I know the bloody stuff is in there and it is really driving me crazy. I have always been a pacer when I get upset, but in here—well, what else is there to do? I get so frantic at times that I throw open the closet door, thinking there is something for me to organize, and then I am confronted with the pierce of space between the empty shelves, and the blot of bloody jacket and shirt. I have been remaking the bed, trying to get the bulges out, but the lumps keep coming back. The sheets have red and blue and yellow cars all over them, like the kind I had when I was a child. A painful sight. I still like them.
    Will you describe your neighbourhood to me, please? How long had you worked at that café? Did you live alone?
    Yours very truly,
    Brinkley

    His dresses? Was he a drag queen? Somehow, I doubted it. So did he play dress-up alone in his room? Well, I can hardly fault anyone for that. Maybe I’m next door to a nouveau version of Ed Wood.
    I sat in front of the Chinese screen cross-legged, tracing the green flicks of bamboo leaves with my finger. There were characters on the right side, which I imagined comprised a poem, or instructions on how to escape. At the bottom, two small birds, nearly invisible in shades of green and brown, their beaks delicate needlepoints, gazed at one another as if across a bamboo-filled chasm.
    My mother had kept a similar screen in the living room, with the same bends of foliage and tea tones tinged with gold, except there were three birds instead of two. She said it was the only gift that my father ever bought her.
    I ran my finger over the characters, as though I might decipher their meaning by touch. The single eye on each of the birds shone satiny black. I wished for some sort of post-mortem mail delivery system, a vent through which I could push a letter to my mother. The flats of my hands came to rest on the cool parchment, as I imagined them against her face.

    Dear Brinkley,
    I saw you too! It must have been you. Green eyes (bluish borders), brown, very neatly parted hair. (How does your hair stay so neat when you’re trying to punch your way out of the room? Obviously, you have hair tips that I’m missing.) You looked so familiar to me as well, familiar and strange at once, like the picture of a longing for some fragile figment of memory.
    Before you appeared to me, I smashed the mirror. At least I think I did, though the only evidence of that now is the bloodstain on my dress. The mirror is once again whole and perfect on the wall