The Pastel Cover

The linemen's tool room of a telegraph company in Lower Manhattan at noon in October, bright autumn sun through a dusty window, beyond the glass a wooden pole crowded with crossarms and a dense web of black wires soft in focus, on a worn workbench a large illustrated weekly lying at a steep angle half under a coil of copper wire, its plain cream cover thirty-four centimetres tall, the visible part only soft pastel patches of colour, a dark upright pole and a fine net of black lines, coils of copper wire and steel pliers on the bench, leather climbing irons hanging from a peg on the wall.