I can hear Jimmy hovering outside the door. It’s another one of those abilities I’ve never quite been able to let go of—the pricking of ears to sounds: footfalls, hands on doorknobs, elevated breath. He’s probably waiting for my approval to come back into the office, to finish the project he’s going to try so desperately hard to impress me with. It makes me anxious to know how pointless his task is. Surely there has to be something around here that I actually need from him. Other than self-redemption, of course.
There’s a bookshelf that runs along the south wall of my office. I have no idea what the actual count is, but to say there are hundreds of books would not be an exaggeration. Most of them are there for show—non-fiction, technical, dry—and are not something I would ever read or nee
