Our apartment in the city has four rooms, two desks, two PCs, and two authors. In the last 35 years, 18 books have been written there, twelve by me, six by my wife (her sixth is in process, but coming down the home stretch). I consider that moderately heavy traffic — neither the Anthony Trollope interstate, nor the Ralph Ellison turn-off to Death Valley. We have written simultaneously, and we have written out of sync. Just now we are out of sync.
My wife’s desk, at one end of the living room/dining room, is a beautiful thing, the gift of a generous father: dark, almost purplish rosewood with austere bronze fittings. Where the right hand grasps the mouse the finish has been bleached to a paler shade. Her chair has never been so handsome: We have gone through several contemporary office numbers in the hope of finding one that, after a few hours, does not make her back feel as if it had been massaged by an iron maiden. She also suffers from her view — four feet to a built-in closet. If she flipped everything around to look in the direction of the street windows, she would be sitting in a hallway. Her concentration is so intense she probably doesn’t miss it.
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