[The small apartment on the east side of Manhattan was cramped quarters but inside it looked a lot less like an architect's imperfect partitioning of a family home, and a lot more like an actual one. The space had been opened up through the arrangement of furniture and the coat of cheap white paint on the walls. There was a couch, despite Preston's polite disbelief that it had been acquired, with its back to the wall and a cheap, hand-assembled coffee table that was usually drawn up to its edge had been pushed aside as well. The screen in the corner just about masked the mattress on the floor, but the corner of unmade sheets tumbled just beyond its reach.
It wasn't a studio. There were no wide open spaces and the music playing from a cheap stereo was classical piano rather than something that outright intended to help guide meditation. There were no mirrors on the walls and no abundance of women in stretchy pants but Saint had conceded already to the practicalities of practice, and wore loose, soft pants beneath a very faded t-shirt that advertized a band he had never heard of and didn't intend to see. Twilight came in fast and quick in the winter, even with the street-lights outside and that had been several hours previous. Now the dark had dropped outside, blanket-heavy and with it the chill of promised snow. Saint sat in the corner of the couch, with a sheaf of photographs spread loose over the cushions, and a cup of tea steaming, forgotten on the floor at his feet.
The show had been good. Not a headliner, and he hadn't sold as many photographs through it as the old days in Vegas and New York and London. But the old days had gone and there were few photographers making money from their cameras these days and Saint's contentment was easy. He waited for Louis, looking at pictures of street-corners and pockets of community within the broader city, one bare foot tucked beneath his thigh and a posture of comfortable languidness.]