Two pieces dominate the room: the massive desk of granite and reclaimed mahogany commissioned from the artist whose name he forgets, and the coffin. The desk is so abstract that his phone slides right off the edge where he lay it to distance himself from his mother’s monologue. Charlie dives and cracks his forehead against an artful angle of chemi-petrified wood, missing the device, which splunks into Butler’s water dish. He gropes through fireworks to fish out the phone before it sinks, in time to hear his mother’s rebuke: Really, Charlie, it’s quite inexcusable, talking to your mother while you’re on the toilet. I don’t want to know everything. Owens, the goddamn desk is a Rick Owens. Fucking postmodernists. The coffin belonged to his father, who liked old fashioned things before he melted in the first experiments, leaving nothing to bury. And now nowhere to bury. Incredible craftmanship, and comfy—Charlie often naps in it, discoloring the white satin with his precious fluids. He’s glad of it, most days, though another artifact might have provided more distraction, a dictionary, say, or a trombone, something to puzzle out. He could bring only the one thing. Some space-takers—the water gel, the nutra-jerky, the perpetual virtual cell phone—sustain him. Other stuff—the desk, the bonsai—are markers to indicate where to pick up where they left off, if they get back and pull themselves together. “When they get back,” says Charlie to Butler, who responds with a canny Bark! “I meant to think, when.”