· The desk
A long wick and the harbor draft
The door at 71 Market Street does not close like a new door. There is a gap at the latch side, enough for a thread of cold air when the wind is coming up from the water. On 14 January the wind was doing that all afternoon. Salt and grit sat on the sill. Every time the door opened, the flame on the counter jar leaned toward Market Street.
The jar was a twelve-ounce dry cedar we had poured the week before and lit so the room would not smell only of hot wax. The wick had been trimmed at noon. By three it had curled a cap of carbon, and the cap stood high enough to catch the draft. The flame flattened. The tip smoked. A gray film gathered on the glass above the melt pool, and a faint mark showed on the plaster just over the shelf, no bigger than a coin.
That film is soot. It is carbon that did not finish burning. Wax vapor has to pass through a hot, steady flame. When the flame is bent, or the wick is too tall, some of that carbon leaves as smoke and lands on the nearest cool surface. In this room the nearest surface is the inside of the glass. In a closed apartment it is often the ceiling.
We put the lid on, let the wax skin over, and cut the wick back to 6 mm with the brass trimmer. The cap came off with it. The next lighting, with the door latched and nobody standing in the gap, stood up straight and left the glass clean. The plaster mark did not grow.
People blame the wax when this happens. The wax in that jar was the same coconut and soy blend we pour at 62°C, with the oil at 7 percent by weight. It had burned clean at ten in the morning, before the wind picked up and before the wick grew a hat. The change was the wick and the draft, not a bad pour.
Market Street takes weather straight off the harbor. A candle that sits in the path of the door will lean every time someone comes in for a jar. We keep the lit one on the counter, back from the swing, and we still have to watch it on days like that. At home on a January afternoon, do not put a flame on the sill and do not put it under a window that whistles. The length we cut to is the same one on the trim page, and the reason a cap smokes is on Wicks. If the flame is flicking and the tip is drawing a thread of smoke, put it out, cut the wick, and move it. The ceiling will tell you later if you decide to wait.
The coin of soot over our shelf is still there. We left it. It is a better reminder than a sign.