quiet as the grave.

I decided the table was the stupidest piece of furniture I had ever laid eyes on.

Here was the picture of moral negligence,

in a frenzy of commerce,

It was cold, but the cold did not have what I have heard called ‘winter weight’—it chilled your flesh, but not your muscle and bone.

Now a pregnant and markedly ugly young girl emerged from behind the curtain with a steaming cloth in her hand.

She stomped from the room, in a hurry I suspected to tell some or all of her employees of this latest moral victory,

which is not to say the roles were reversed, but destroyed.

I smelled and then licked this and identified it as dirt. People will often describe something as ‘tasting like’ dirt, but this was not the case, here—my cup held earth and hot water, nothing more.