The corridor was longer than it had been, but that was only because I was walking it slowly. I had a key in my pocket. I knew this the way you know things in the morning before you are properly awake, not by checking but by a kind of trust, and I trusted it completely,…

The table is the first thing to be set, but the stage is always being dismantled by some Joe with no remorse for the carpentry involved in that particular sorrow. He's always standing in the wings with his cardboard box in his hands waiting to sweep the…