It’s a comfortable enough chair, though designed for someone with a shorter spine than this instance possesses, with the consequence that my head is lolling back and my throat feels very exposed. Under my hands I find carved wood, very chichi and retrograde, very artisanal. I let the nerves on my fingers tell me about the grain. There are little pocks in the varnish—oh yes: an old parasitic infestation, dry and dusty apertures burrowed in the substrate. Wormholes, in fact.