I woke again in a cold, humming room in the Big Luck Hotel. In the bathroom I opened the window and let the too-hot air seep into my pores. Flushed my skin with the hose in the shower recess. Emerged as clean as any other heartbroken girl in all the dirty hotels in Cambodia.

Breakfast was Diet Coke and a plain baguette on the roof of the hotel. I watched the river heave and pull at its banks and pretended for a minute that I don’t know you take two sugars in your coffee. I imagined the freedom of not knowing about the hair that grows in a circle, like a whirlpool, on your neck.