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for all of that long summer David had been unable to work. His novel had come out in the spring, and he had gone out on the road as the writer. Returning from the hoopla and weirdness of the tour to the rooftop hut in which he had written, he was no longer sure what he was. The dread of not working hadn't gone away, of course, and this alone had locked him to his desk all summer. But now it was August and still nothing.
Some years before, David had rented out the derelict laundry hut on the roof of his apartment building in San Francisco. The hut was a ten-by-ten cubicle on a raised platform, the whole thing enclosed, quaintly enough, by a picket fence. Here in years past the ladies had hung out their wash. Now everyone did wash in the two machines in the parking garage, sometimes in the middle of the night. And David labored in the old laundry hut, working and now not working on the roof.
Over the years he had furnished the hut and made a little garden on the deck. He'd put out his succulents first, then had cajoled a plumbing contractor,who was in the building to do other work, into putting a spigot with a hose coupling up there, and David was able then to keep leafy plants alive in the wind and sun. Driftwood and stones, brought back from outings, he'd arranged around the deck, so that in the end — which this seemed to be — David could step from the studio, as he came to call the place, into a kind of bower, a shady garden inside that picket fence, the bright terrain of the city rising beyond. In such a setting, he had managed to do his work.
But then the roof sprang a leak. In bad storms that winter, rainwater had run down the walls in 301. No easy solution had presented itself, and the manager informed him that the building had to be re-roofed. The deck with its little fence had to be torn up, he said, as he suspected that the leak was somewhere beneath it. Even the hut might have to go.
 NEXT: Breaking up the tub
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