The Stub Aerial

The balcony of an old apartment house in Cologne at dusk in late summer, a deep blue sky, on a small round metal table beside a coffee cup a long slim cream-white handset with a grey earpiece at the top, a short black rubber aerial angled upward, round pale blank buttons, a hand reaching in from the edge toward it, through the open door in the dim hallway a flat cream-white base station with a sloping front and ventilation slots on a wooden chest of drawers, a thin black rod aerial with a brass foot, a black cord in loops, one small orange light glowing on the base.