Mr. N opened the drawer where he kept his pencils. He didn’t like the one in his hand. It was some cheap model that required him to press down harder than he liked in order to make the words clear—not to mention the fact that the thing slowed him down and hurt his fingers. He had explained to Miss Zahra exactly what type of pencil he wanted, Faber-Castell 2B, and she had brought him a box of this Chinese junk that barely wrote. He took out the box, replaced the one he was holding, and threw the whole package in the wastebasket. But no, he thought, she might not see it there. She ought to realize what she’s done wrong. So he took the box back out and dumped out the six pencils inside. He broke them, one after another. Then he set them beside the box on the table so she would notice them as soon as she entered. Miss Zahra had clearly forgotten who he was, had forgotten that she was there to carry out his requests. She needed to be cut down to size. He was the customer there, she was the employee, and the customer is always right. He had explained to her exactly how pencils were classified. He had taken out a piece of paper and written:

And she had folded the piece of paper and put it in her pocket so as not to forget. Nevertheless, she had forgotten or ignored it. It’s true that Mr. N had taken a liking to her; that she was good and kind to him; that he sometimes surprised himself by dreaming the kind of dreams about her that made him wake up embarrassed and damp. But the episode of her taking his papers without permission was sufficient to make Mr. N reevaluate their relationship. As did her perfume and her other recent lapses.

With his last remaining Faber-Castell 2B pencil, which he had sharpened so many times that it was no longer than his pinky, Mr. N scratched out his frustration with Miss Zahra and resumed writing: