Re: Sitting area; sofa
The bottle was a random choice for him. Our writer wasn't a big-picture kind of man. It wasn't that he doubted there was a greater force of some kind, but it wasn't his concern. The world turned, and he was a passenger and not a pilot.
He wasn't hounded or haunted, not precisely. He was uncomfortable. Discomfort was a good way to describe his present state. It might be a side effect of the drink. Historically, writers were sickly, doomed and tubercular. Modern writers weren't those things, but illness had gone out with the Romantics. The liquid in the bottle was open to interpretation, or he thought it was. Everyone wasn't walking around acting precisely the same, and he surmised that individual thought and personality played a heavy role.
Her sleeve drew across his forehead, but he didn't flinch away. Caretakers were nothing new for him, and it didn't distract him from the scrape of pen to napkin. He was manic in his movements. His elbow jittered. The words attempted to sprint off the page. "Sceenplays aren't as pure," he told her without looking up. "Stage direction only muddies the work."
She came close, and he sought out an unspoiled bit of white on another storied rectangle. They were strewn out on the table now, his opus in pieces. "Why lye?" He'd considered asking about the baby, but it seemed too direct. He wanted her feelings, not her facts. "Do you like the smell of dirt?"