// Do you mind if I smoke? she asks him, to which he says he doesn’t. She then grabs a chair and drags it to the window. It opens, slightly, at a margin—and at once there is the sound of traffic, and of the wind, moving between buildings: the sound of the city. But there is a coolness to the wind, and a smell too. She looks into the sky and sees a giant cloud, a large, monstrous column, towering before her. The colour is a dark kind of rouge, darker than the rouge of her coat; it is the colour of rain, waiting in the night. It flickers with lightning, off and on, like a broken bulb.