I thought of the one I had considered for my mother. And I had many other small works, even some watercolours, I used to paint watercolours too, before I abandoned them and worked only in oil. Although, I then thought: watercolours don’t go in this room, this office. No. A watercolour wouldn’t be right. I would find an oil. A darker, more sombre one, of those I had.

Howard’s law work was corporate, he had tried to explain it to me, but I wasn’t interested. Or, I didn’t understand it, not really. He worked for companies, large steel companies, and Anglo American, the mining conglomerate, was his client, I think he said that once. He didn’t do political work. His colleague, though, Jack Benator, did some small work on political cases, preparing papers, he worked for advocates defending people, Black people. I knew that. It’s Benator who had brought Joseph, the activist, to Howard, after all. Frederick Jones, the third partner, was in sympathy too, how could it have worked otherwise? But Jones did only corporate work, like Howard. They were a small firm, under the radar probably, and Jack Benator could take on the work that he wanted and believed in. Howard simply kept to his clients, and didn’t speak much further about it.

The black phone rang on Howard’s desk. Yes? he said. Okay, okay, thank you, Candace, will be out shortly. I have a client now, Jacqueline, he said, and looked at his watch. Thanks, darling, I said, thanks for having me here again. It’s quite nice, really — it is! And then I left, Howard leading me back down the passage, past the secretary who said goodbye, back to the reception room and Candace, goodbye Mrs. Kline, she said.

A man in a suit, some papers on the table in front of him, was sitting in the low, green chair. Howard pulled the heavy wooden door open, and was going to walk me to the elevator. I’m going to take the stairs, I said. Howard shook his head, silly, you know there’s nothing to be afraid about an elevator. He smiled. See you later, I said, and I walked to the stairwell. EXIT, it said, in red, with a black illustration of stairs, a stick figure walking down them.

The stairs, the six flights, wound in a circular route, a polished stone floor, down and down, I could look over the heavy iron railing and see the tiled floor, a maroon-and-beige floor, below. I remember my hand on the rail. Across that old floor then on the ground floor, past a man, a Black man lounging in the doorway, and out onto Rissik Street. How bright it seemed outside. For a moment I felt sorry for Howard, closed in that sombre space, doing sombre work, his papers, papers, all day. And then I found my car, it had a parking ticket, a tell-tale white slip curled on the dash under the wiper.

I was careless with time, things like that. I hadn’t thought, when I paid the meter, about the extra time, the unplanned visit to Howard’s office. Twenty rand. I would give the white slip to Howard that evening. Howard would never have got a ticket and he would be irritated. For a moment I thought of hiding it, the ticket, and paying it myself. But what was the point? Howard knew me, I say that — again.