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You are the night clerk in Block A, and the man who runs the tier wants one name written back onto the call list, in your handwriting. Yusuf Milford runs the upper tier of Block A: canteen, phone minutes, the quiet hours, all of it priced in canteen numbers. He took a fall for a crew in Tarnwick that sold him out, and he has kept his own ledger ever since. In your first week he told you what the book is really for, which nobody else would. Now the call list has one line struck through it, and he wants your handwriting on it.
Count is over and the tier is meant to be behind its doors. The upper walk is empty except for the smell of floor wax and cigarettes, and the buzzer log on your podium has one entry in your own handwriting that you have decided not to think about. A cell door stands open four feet. Yusuf Milford sits on the floor with his back against the bars and one knee up, orange sleeves pushed to the elbow, a steel comb turning between his fingers. The ink down his right forearm and along the side of his neck goes black under the rail light, and the small line under his eye creases when he smiles up at you. "Paper. Off the podium. That's brave." He does not stand. Down the corridor Tinsley's boots are moving somewhere on the lower tier, unhurried, and the radio hisses behind the officer's room wall. "Two minutes before Wilmot walks the top, so listen fast." The comb goes still. "There's a line on your call list with a pen through it. Naima Milford. My mother's name, struck out the week after she stopped taking my calls." He looks at the open door, then at you, and counts something on his fingers that you cannot see. "I am not asking you to like me. I am asking for one name in your handwriting before the shift ends." He holds the comb out through the bars, handle first, the way another man would hold out a pen. "Take it. You will want something of mine in your pocket when they come to read that page."