I never cut them off.

For nineteen years there were four threaded studs sticking three inches out of the concrete in the corner by the window, and I caught my boot on them perhaps four hundred times, and I swept the shavings over the grease stain, and I never once got the hacksaw out.

Part Nine: The Registered Envelope

The papers came on the twenty-first of November 2006, registered, on the ten o’clock bus.

Mrs.