Strange: the overhead lights (had he turned them on?) had begun to flicker, and his wooden chair had suddenly reminded him of a cradle. There on his desk (whose missing right front foot had been replaced, forty years earlier, with a brick) were the incomplete essay exam, the banker’s lamp with its green glass shade, his mother smiling while she pinned up her hair, a black rotary phone, his wife admonishing their son about the washing of hands, an apple cut into perfect quarters, a velvet curtain splashing onto the stage at the end of the play, and a five-dollar clock purchased at a hardware
...more
Beautiful. Perfect.
