In front of me, a mahogany table. On it, a piece of fabric, folded over in random curls, like the eddies in oil or heavy cream. The fabric is dense, dark in color—forest green or burgundy, run through with golden thread. Contrasting colors bring out a subtle pattern of paisleys or maybe intricate traceries similar to a Persian carpet. On the fabric are a few isolated items: an audiocassette, a cheap paperback detective novel, a map or tourist directory to a city we can’t identify. Beside them is a small plate, littered with crumbs, smalls drops of strawberry jam, honey and orange peels.

The story of a writer. He lives alone, cloistered away like a monk, visited only by his obstreperous housekeeper, hunched and jerky in her movements, shriveled less by age than meanness. Books are piled around the writer, the air thick and heavy. Smoke drifts and rambles, hanging in milky pools around a table lamp at the desk, where the writer, crab-like himself, spins out his fantasies in thin, pedantic strokes, scratched on parchment with a fountain pen.

He rubs his eyes, tired certainly, but also from habit. Of course he wears glasses, which fit badly, pinching his nose. He’s annoyed by the banging and clanging coming from the kitchenette, where the housekeeper extracts her daily revenge. “I’m hungry,” he says, his voice thin and rasping.

“What do you want me to do about it?” she answers in sharp response. “I’m not your cook, you know.” She lets the top to the dustbin fall with a loud crash, knowing it will annoy him, then picks up her broom to sweep the floor again. As she starts, her attention is caught by a spider web in the corner of the room, and she raises the broom to destroy it.

“Leave that alone!” says the writer, rising from his chair.

“It’s a spider,” she says, as if that were all the explanation necessary.

“I know what it is,” he says. “Leave it alone. They’re good to have around.”

“It’s a spider,” she says again, raising the broom one more time. As she does, flecks of dust shake loose. The writer starts to cough.

“The dust is making me cough,” he says, although his cough is unconvincing.

She looks at him with a sideways glance, then turns away in disgust. “Bah!” she says in a way calculated to let him know he’s not even worthy of disdain, but leaving the web alone.

He returns to his writing, realizing, for perhaps the first time, that his handwriting is beautiful, but illegible. “Like hieroglyphics,” his mother had said to him once, in a memory just now recalled. “Reading your letters is like hieroglyphics. They’re beautiful to look at, but I can’t make head nor tails of them.” He smiles at the recollection, smiles too at the pretty pattern his regular pen-strokes make on the page. Looking at them, holding the paper up to the light, one could almost detect a drawing just emerging out of the crossed t’s, flourished y’s and o’s with tails that circled back on themselves.

“What’s it about this time, then?” the housekeeper asks, rubbing her dirty hands on her apron. She sits down for a rest, not bothering to ask if it’s all right, pulling out a cigarette, lighting it and blowing the smoke into the air. For a moment, hair pulled back, tied beneath a dirty, oily scarf; apron soiled; teeth yellowed with nicotine; dress florid with bright, tropical flowers, she seems to have stepped out of a poster for the British Labour Party, c.1948. “Well, out with it.”

“You won’t like it,” says the writer, stuffing the paper back into the pile.

“How do you know what I’ll like?” she asks, her voice full of contempt for her employer. “Course, you’re probably right. Haven’t liked one damn thing of yours.”

“Then why do you ask?” he says tremulously, shuffling the papers about in annoyance, taking his glasses off, cleaning them, succeeding only in spreading the smears more evenly. “Get back to work!” he says with a peremptory gesture, insecurely waved, thus ineffectual.

The housekeeper puts out her cigarette and turns slowly to face the writer. Her face is twisted with amusement. “Are you ordering me or something?”

He isn’t able to face her straight on. “I pay you, don’t I?” He fumbles about some more with his papers. He hasn’t lost anything, he just can’t find his nerve.

She rises from her seat and goes to the window. He ignores her as she crosses the room. He has decided to pretend she isn’t there and forget her insolence. But she isn’t quite so forgiving. She looks at him, puttering about, scrupulously avoiding his glance. With a sudden, straight movement, miraculously precise for one so stooped over with resentment, she pulls the blinds open.

Light floods the room and the writer rises from his chair, his hand jerking to his face to shield his eyes from the sun. Like a vampire faced with the dawn, he turns away in terror. “Shut those blinds!” he shrieks, his voice thin and fearful. “How many times do I have to tell you? They must remain shut.”

He turns away. The housekeeper, having had her little joke, snickers, and shuts the blinds as quickly as she opened them. The writer, still turned away from the window, tries to catch his breath. He may even be whimpering.

“What’s it about this time, then?” she asks again, deliberately choosing the same words as before.

As he speaks, it’s clear he has been crying. “It’s a crime story, sort of,” he says, sniffling.

The housekeeper shows more interest. “Like a mystery?” she asks, surprised.

“Sort of,” he says, still turned away, but taking solace in his books, starting to put them in an imagined order, as he had with the pile of papers.

She notices what he’s doing, and looks at the stack of books on the table, perfunctorily brushing the top one with her feather-duster. “You’re always only reading mysteries,” she says, picking up one of the titles. “I love a good one. There, it’s not so hard to please me,” she says in a tone almost friendly.

Perhaps deceived by the tone, perhaps desperate for company, he turns back to her. “But you haven’t read it yet.”

“Read it to me,” she says. “I’ve got a feeling if I read it, I’ll need a dictionary.”

“It’s not finished yet,” he says sitting down.

She moves again, angry. “You mean it ain’t got an ending?”

“No, I mean…”

“What goods a mystery without the ending?” she asks. “Ain’t that you all over?”

“No,” he says raising his voice. For a moment, they’re both taken aback by the volume. “No, I mean it’s only a first draft.”

She smiles again, and pulls up a chair next to him. “That’s different,” she says. “Let her rip.”

“Are you sure?” he asks.

“Maybe I can improve it.”

And maybe she can. He isn’t sure anymore. He takes a deep breath, picks up the pile of papers, looks at the housekeeper, then starts to read.