He had an idea that the story he was going to write would require some
perambulatory cogitation, and he wanted to be able to take his laptop
anywhere in the market and sit down and write and hop online and check
out little factoids with a search engine so he wouldn't get hung up on
stupid details.
The house on Wales Avenue was done. He'd repainted the exterior a lovely
robin's-egg blue, fixed the front step, and planted a low-maintenance
combination of outsized rocks from the Canadian Shield and wild grasses
on the front lawn. On July first, Alan celebrated Canada Day by crawling
out of the attic window onto the roof and watching the fireworks and
listening to the collective sighs of the people densely packed around
him in the Market, then he went back into the house and walked from room
to room, looking for something out of place, some spot still rough and
unsanded, and found none. The books and the collections lined the walls,
the fans whirred softly in the ceilings, the filters beneath the open
windows hummed as they sucked the pollen and particulate out of the
rooms -- Alan's retail experience had convinced him long ago of the
selling power of fresh air and street sounds, so he refused to keep the
windows closed, despite the fantastic volume of city dust that blew in.
The house was perfect. The ergonomic marvel of a chair that UPS had
dropped off the previous day was tucked under the wooden sideboard he'd
set up as a desk in the second-floor den.
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