Looking for the Reader

My love sends instant messages while she works: “I hope the reader might surface from a sea of paper.

I lost the cable too, but it has just emerged— along with a packet of tissues, a lip salve & a hair comb— from beneath an ancient layer on my desk.”

Five minutes later: “No reader yet, but two keys, three xd memory cards, one paperclip, two buttons, three elastic bands & a pair of buttonhole scissors. A small stapler, two passport pictures of A., a nintendo stylus, a medication prescription form & a folding plastic fork. Oh, & a reel of pink sewing cotton. But no reader.

The tissues, I see, came from Hotel Metro Heights, 8/35 WE A. Padam Singh Road, Karol Bagh, New Delhi-5.

Here’s a receipt for milk & biscuits for work which I should have claimed in March last year & an un- signed credit card. Here’s my prefect’s badge from school, a short piece of six-core copper wiring, the top from a bottle of bath ales & an apple pip—make that two apple pips. No reader.

Another credit card I didn’t know I had! This one is signed. I suppose I should cut them up.”