The man who enters her room to walk around it walking around picks
up an object to inquire after and lays it down, and then another, and
another, failing each time to find the thing that he is looking for——(for
he has only his arm by which to know the real weight of it, his palms
the shape, his whole hands the texture, turning each over until he has
touched every surface), making acquaintance with a merry array of
objects, and all the while with a little edge of wry because of the certain
disapproval he holds for every object contains within it the question of
why she had selected it, which weighs on him a little, or that’s how she
looks at it, watching him, and imagining how he would undress her,
article by article, examining each part as if it were emerging from a
sleeve, or bra——that brass elephant, for instance. Sometimes he asks
a question; the tile, she offers, was purchased in Amsterdam, and over
there there’s a clay egg the color of putty.
