See You in Paradise (20 page)

AN ACCOMPLISHED FORGERY of a famous painting lost in a 1965 mansion fire, which now hangs in the largest gallery of a major American art museum

THE METAL PAIL from which the last traces of blood could not be scrubbed

AN ICICLE preserved in the freezer by a child, which, when discovered months later, is thought to be evidence of a problem with the appliance, leading to a costly and inconclusive diagnostic exam by a repairman

A GAY PORNO MAGAZINE thrown onto a baseball field from a car window and perused with great interest by the adolescent members of both teams, two of whom meet in the woods some weeks later to reproduce the tableaux they have seen, leading to a gradual understanding that they are in fact gay: an incident the memory of which causes one of the two, when he is well into a life that is disappointing emotionally, professionally, and sexually, to fling a gay porno magazine out his car window as he passes an occupied baseball field on his way to what will be an unsuccessful job interview

A RÉSUMÉ that betrays its author as utterly unqualified for the position for which she has applied, but which, because it smells good, leads its reader, a desperate, experientially undernourished middle manager at an internet-based retail corporation, to invite her into the office for an interview that, although it further betrays the applicant’s complete unsuitability for the job, provides the middle manager with a physical impression to complement the good smell, which impression is intensely exciting, forcing him to hire her as a supplemental secretary, much to the bafflement, chagrin, and eventual disgust of his extant secretary, who, during her employer’s lunch hour, removes the résumé in question from his files and personally delivers it to the CEO, and who is with the CEO when he barges into the middle manager’s office and finds the unsuitable supplemental secretary standing beside him, crying silently with her dress half off, while he sits in his reclining office chair sweating profusely and holding a plastic letter opener in a threatening manner

THE MORTAR spilled by the mason, hardened onto the rubberized plastic strips of your chaise longue

AN UPTURNED BIRD’S NEST, blown from a tree into a snowbank

AN OVERTURNED CAN OF PAINT, unnoticed for months, which when found is lifted whole from the floor, the spilled liquid hardened into the shape of a puddle in an accidental imitation of the fake-spilled-drink gags available in any gift or joke shop

MEAT, left out on the butcher block by an unidentified tenant in the eight-bedroom house, which each tenant, insisting that he is not responsible, refuses to dispose of, and which within a day begins to reek, and within three days has drawn flies, and within a week, maggots, but which by now has become a symbol of the mistrust each tenant feels for his housemates and its continued putrefaction a point of pride, so that each tenant eats his meals locked in his room or out of the house, until the meat has nearly been consumed by the insects that have occupied it, and the house fills with flies, and the meat disappears almost entirely, save for a few dried strings of sinew and a dark stain that, at the semester’s end, cannot be bleached out by the landlord, who retains the tenants’ security deposit to cover the cost of replacing the block

SHOULDER PADS her mother tore from an otherwise stylish dress, recovered from the garbage and employed to fill out her bra while she dances to pop music in front of the mirror

A TWENTY-FOOT LENGTH OF CEMENT PIPE, ten feet in diameter, abandoned in a farm field, which the farmer has plowed around and which will barely be visible, months later, above the rustling cornstalks