“The thin towels.

Leave the good ones.”

I dripped on his kitchen linoleum while he dug a dry shirt out of an ironing basket.

“Thirty-four, thirty-five,” he said, holding it against my shoulders.

“I’m not a large man.

You’ll be a medium until Friday.”

The shirt smelled of cedar and hung on me like a tent, and Arthur said that was close enough for a Friday.

The papers on his table were laid out in rows, each stack squared to the one beside it, and his red pen lay across the top like a plumb line.