To enter, you must descend, circle around, and come up through the back. A side entrance — all respectable Upper East Side apartment buildings have one — subtly marked. Low ceilinged, hot and maze-like, the basement regulates the flow of workers in and out of daily service.  My business is in a pied-à-terre on the 8th floor, north side. To get there one must traverse long, narrow corridors of subterranean space. Follow the yellow line along the boiler room and service W.C., keep on past the dumpsters around a tiled corner to elevator B.  Elevator B is manned by a familiar face who chats before depositing me next to the trash cans outside a door that is slightly ajar. I slip through. 

***

My trade is ornament-production: I gild luxurious homes. One must not underestimate the effects of exposure to the elements inside this line of work. I am contracted to perform an exquisite process on the walls, and I, in turn, am exquisitely processed within them.

***

Here, a gold bar inserts itself, demanding attention. The bar is a wild card, a stand-in that animates objects and scenes belonging to the interior. Under pressure its meaning shifts, its course aerating a hermetically sealed environment. Pass through, and a terrain unfolds where something in excess of what is allowed can appear, detach and roam.