[...] Apart from the blank and unsullied aspect lent by its newness, the apartment was mediocre in every way. The appliances were shiny but midgrade, the floors were of a synthetic wood-like substance rather than real wood, the windows creaked, the sinks were raised basins that spilled water everywhere, and really the whole place seemed to suggest that the slightest disturbance, seismic or meteorological or familial, might reduce it to rubble.