The ‘bed’

“[. . .] he now saw his apartment through his loved one’s eyes. ‘This was no ‘apartment’! This was a slot!—one of four created by cutting an ordinary front bedroom and rear bedroom in two. [. . .] The ‘kitchen’ consisted of the smallest ‘stove,’ ‘sink,’ and ‘refrigerator’ ever made squeezed into what had been a closet in a former, better life. The quotation marks spread like dermatitis in Adam’s brain as he thought of what must be going through the mind of the girl of his dreams. The ‘bed’ was a mattress on a cheap, unfinished flush door from a lumberyard, supported at the corners by cinder blocks.”

—Tom Wolfe, I am Charlotte Simmons, 2004. The bracketed ellipses are mine.