wash it away

There's unrationed running water in the bathroom, just like Curtis said. Unrationed hot running water, as well as cold. A sink for washing just your hands, and a booth sort of thing big enough for two or three people, for washing all over. Pale blue soap to wash with. Pristine white towels, incredibly soft and fluffy, to dry off with after you've washed. A roll of flimsy paper that he can't figure out the use of, next to ... something that looks like a latrine seat but doesn't smell like one, and there's clean water in it.

(Curtis has to explain.)

He turns the shower spray as hot as it will get, and then has to adjust it back down to something he can stand in. Steam billows around the room, like smoke but paler. Soap has a smell he can't give a name to, sharp and sweet at the same time, and foams into brilliant rainbow-hued bubbles; he spends a few fascinated minutes just turning over handfuls of froth in the light, watching the colors gleam and vanish.

Soap also stings like a bastard in cuts and scrapes, it turns out. And tastes foul.

He studies his body under the running water, arms and legs and bony chest: pale even against that expanse of white tile, marred by red wounds and brown scabs and purple-black bruises, all more visible than ever without the grime.

(He can't see his own back. He can't find any sign of that last blow, and his groping fingers find only smooth skin.)

Afterward, drying himself with one of the preposterously soft and spotless towels, he hesitates -- and then reaches out to wipe clear as much of the mirror as he can, and studies his own face.

It's something of a relief to see that even like this, as clean as he's ever been in his life, he doesn't look like a front-sectioner.