MATERIAL WITNESSES
If my winter boots didn’t hold up until the spring, I was going to have a problem. I studied my footwear on the metro. They were a workman’s boots, boots of construction sites and mud: they were covered in whitish streaks of salt, the shoelaces were threadbare, the leather was knobby and warped. These were not the boots I could take off in full view in a well-to-do hallway. A clod of mud stuck to the left one; no matter how much I tried to flick it off, how often I rubbed it off with snow — it came back, and always showed up on that left boot.
I counted days until spring. I let myself daydream about an office with a large reception area, and a secretary in there who would bring me jasmine tea ever morning, Bride’s Choice from the tea boutique on Gogol Boulevard, and te
