But the room was pure, it was cool, it was glass. We filled it with the thin, hard things we had collected-old Iggy Pop and Velvet Underground albums, narrow volumes of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, posters of Picasso’s blue, bony, ravaged, absinthe-poisoned saltimbanques, a wine bottle holding dried flowers. The room smelled of new paint and the sweet straw mat on the floor.