Work is a cool white room with a ticking clock. The light is pale, blocked by thick curtains that look like they were whitewashed by professionals going for some industrial chic. The bars on the windows are also white, as are the lighting fixtures. The floor is scuffed cement painted pale yellow and chilly in the summer heat. Along one wall are a short row of wooden supply shelves, papers and binder books filling every nook. I sit facing a computer in an L of desks put together in a corner of the foyer, with a phone to my right and a fax machine and copier behind me on a pink trestle table. It is pleasant, familiar through the conglomerated memory of a hundred offices. There is even a tall tropical plant in dubious health and a corkboard covered in pictures cut from magazines.
This morning I was upstairs sitting cross-legged on a chest high pile of foam sheets putting slips of information paper in with packaged silk duvets with my boss, Linda. She’s a lovely young woman, only 29, and engaged to be married. She’s incredibly well traveled, growing up first in China, then New York, then Madrid, and traveling every year. We talked about photography and where she used to live, education and thinking ahead. I’m young, but I think we get along. Now we’re eating ice-cream from the Casa Gelato across the street. It’s lunch-time, and I should find my sandwich.