Smoke Rushes at You? Buried Kin Lack Three Things

Professor Finch took off his reading glasses, wiped the lenses on the hem of his shirt, and put them back on. His hands were shaking a little, as if he had Parkinson's. When his fingertips touched the rim of that grimy little bowl, he jerked them back, as though it weren't porcelain at all but a bar of iron heated red-hot. The room was so quiet that all you could hear was the old wall clock ticking, tick, tock.