The Red Booklets

The dispatch room of an electric lighting company's office in New York on a December afternoon, low orange winter sun through a tall window streaked with sleet, on a dark oak table a stack of thin booklets each twenty-three centimetres long lying at a flat angle, worn deep red paper covers with pale crease marks along the left edge, the top cover plain red with one faint grey band across its middle soft in focus, more booklets tied in bundles with string and seen edge-on, a sheet of brown wrapping paper, a ball of twine and a pair of scissors, a brass desk lamp with an unlit carbon-filament bulb.