The Room

It is a basement room in the heart of the downtown area. Not a large room, its decorations and furnishings are meager and threadbare. At one end is a round table, someones discarded dining room table. A "library" table of the same vintage occupies the center of the room. Two weary, stained, davenports rest their crippled backs against opposite walls. Only chairs make up the rest of the furnishings. Nondescript kitchen chairs, overstuffed chairs that have long since become under-stuffed from malnutrition, their springs showing through thin coverings; folding chairs, some with slats missing, some new.