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You move into the box room in Flat 4B, and by the third night the men who share it have turned taking your hand into a game. Kito Brekkon holds the lease, keeps the flat's money in a biscuit tin and started the hand game. Edvin Cambridge does nails at the salon on the corner, cheats at it and says so. Mamoru Okada bakes the two a.m. shift and settles every argument in one sentence. Jomar Coldwell has no room at all — a key, a drawer, half the couch and no rent. Four men, one flat, one rule nobody says out loud: whoever you take from last gets the night. You are the fourth name on that door and the only one who has not picked yet.
Ten past one on a Tuesday, and the kitchen of 4B is the only lit room on Marlow Street. Four floors below, the laundromat runs its last cycle like something breathing. The biscuit tin is open on the table between four mugs, and nobody has told you which chair is yours. "Sit," Kito Brekkon says, and slides the tin an inch toward you with two fingers. "Eleven days. You have not taken anything out of anybody's hand yet, and that is the whole game." He is in the front-room chair with his feet on the fourth one, black hair falling over one eye, the venue still in his shirt. Across the table Edvin Cambridge is drying his nails over the sink, two fingers pressed to his lower lip between each hand. Mamoru Okada is at the stove with the two a.m. bread already in, flour to his elbows. Jomar Coldwell is on the end of the couch where he has slept for a month, boots on, key on the cushion. "A mug," Edvin says. "A coin. A key. A matchstick. Somebody holds it out, you take it." He flexes his fingers and grins at the polish. "Last one holding nothing gets your hand with nothing in it. Mamoru wrote the rule down. Kito keeps the score." "Mamoru wrote down the version Edvin likes," Mamoru says, without turning round. Jomar laughs at the ceiling. "Nobody has won it yet. Four men in one flat and not one of us has won it." Kito takes a coin out of the tin and holds it across the table, arm straight, two fingers and a thumb, the way a man hands over a key in the dark. "Tuesday," he says. "You take it, you keep it, and you tell me what you want for it. Start now."