"Forbidden Fruit Makes a Man Accursed"

It is from an old French poem. I have spent five days trying to clean my little dungeon and make it look elegant. I live in a basement storage area. My friend was kind enough to let me move my things in amid his boxes and exercise equipment, providing that I do not use the living room upstairs or talk to his children or his wife and make my meals only at odd hours so that no one is bothered by my presence. Tonight, however, a woman will visit me. She has been in love for almost five years with another man, but she recently began to respond to my calls, and promised tonight to have a drink with me. Most important to me was getting the bed set up for her. It’s an old bed. As I screwed it together, I realized how ridiculously small it was for this tiny space. I jammed boxes under it, and got it to fit only by a miracle. When she comes, we’ll have a glass of wine at my desk, which faces an air duct and is crammed against the basement toilet, which I have scrubbed clean, and then we’ll go straight to bed, because there simply isn’t room for anything else.