Afterward, while we talked, he picked at the wallpaper by the side of the bed as carefully as his fingers allowed. “Just underneath, the paper is all the more beautiful,” he said. He’d uncovered a patch the size of a dinner plate, the pattern a circus scene drawn in a delicate, old-fashioned style: pink poodles leaping through a hoop; an elephant balanced on one leg atop a small stool; hobos clowning each other. “I’d like to excavate the entire wall before I die, but I won’t, will I?”
