The Smoked Lid

An attic flat in Amsterdam on a rainy spring morning, grey daylight from a sloping roof window streaked with raindrops, on a low pine shelf a wide flat player of brushed aluminium with a ribbed ventilation field at the rear, at the upper left a raised hinged lid with a smoked glass window over a shallow round well with a silver clamping disc, slim upright silver keys at the right, every surface plain and unmarked, two fingertips holding a rainbow-shimmering silver disc by its rim above the well, the disc face bare and mirror-bright, plain card record sleeves standing edge-on beside it.