I’m very clumsy, forever treading on people’s toes, wringing bloodcurdling cries of pain from their lips, sitting in chairs and “two-dimensionalizing” them. Things crumble, tear, shatter, and snap in my great clumsy paws. At a party, someone will pass me a family heirloom, I’ll murmur “how interesting,” and the next thing you know the hostess is in tears in the bedroom. Well, one look at Les’s dollhouse apartment, with its toy furniture, rattan chairs, antiques, framed pictures, knick-knacks, curios, and, I swear to God, a glass menagerie, and I knew I was in trouble. Gingerly, I entered, a bull on tiptoe in a china shop. “It’s not much, but it’s home,” Les said, with a touching combination of humility and house-pride. “Oh, no, Les, it’s great,” I murmured, and with the accompanying gesture — a magnanimous, all-inclusive sweep of the hand — sent a half-full wineglass cartwheeling through the air, to shatter against the wall, spilling red, red wine everywhere.
