In the great green room there was a couch and a small table and a lamp and a very expensive ergonomic chair, the kind that is supposed to make you grow taller by three inches when you sit in it. Or something. Maybe not exactly that. I’d been going to the green room for almost three months, twice a week. It was a dark mossy green, which I supposed was in the calming section of the colour chart, far away from the angry, knife wielding reds and eye burning sun yellows. I lay on the couch (it’s very traditional) and Dr Coffin (yes! His real name!) sat in the chair. Sometimes I lay there just looking at the quality of the decorating, you know, where the green walls met the off white cornice. Very straight lines. Mesmerising. I could get caught up for endless minutes thinking about the man (most likely a man) with his steady hand and paint kettle, up a ladder, or maybe on stilts, or on a movable scaffolding rig, taking pains to get the line just right. Dr Coffin was a patient man. Though he was paid at the end of the hour regardless so I guess it might have been as much smugness as patience. I besmirch him. Unfairly. He really wanted to help.
(Inspired by a phrase in a column in Time Out, with thanks to Goodnight Moon.)
