Maynard awakes with only the vaguest feeling that something is wrong. He looks at his feet. Nope, nothing wrong here. So he ups and showers and gets dressed for work. On the subway, a tall, beautiful black woman asks Maynard if he knows how those seat belts work, the kind that come out if you pull them slowly, but catch if you pull them hard.
"I--I've never really thought about it. Maybe there is a tiny speedometer that--
The woman is not amused.
On the way into the office, a young boy shouting "Extra, extra" offers Maynard four hundred dollars if he would explain the idea of the universe as a hologram to him, and how it explains psychic surgery.
Maynard is first flustered, then afraid. As he leaves the boy, he hears him yell, "But that doesn't explain the *string*. They always find *string*..."
On the elevator he sees that the people who were already on have struck up a conversation, and he wants to join in.
"But," says a red-cheeked brunette, "that still doesn't explain how Oswald could get off so many shots so quickly--"
"Or why he wasn't positioned farther down the street. It was a military-style takeout. Triangulated. And it also can't explain--"
"Why Lee Harvey Oswald and John Wilkes Booth both have the same number of letters..."
The crowd from the elevator all exit together and Maynard sees them head for the stairwell, laughing as the door closes.
"Maynard," says Molly, the receptionist with whom he had a dalliance some years ago, "did I ever tell you about my sister, Kathleen?"
"Religious nut?"
"She has been married eight years. They have three children. But here's the kicker. She is still a virgin."
"Galosh."
"Quite so. She only allowed herself to be artificially inseminated and all the kids were C-sections. She told me she is saving her hymen for Jesus."
"Galosh."
"She's a slut, too."
"But she--"
"Maynard," says Molly, smiling, "there are other things, you know..."
"Galosh."
"Did I tell you I got a tatoo?"
"Really?"
"Honest. I'd show you but I can't in here. Your office?"
In Maynard's office, Molly takes off all of her clothes and Maynard sees the tatoo--a wreath of flowers around her ankle.
"Did it hurt?"
"I had a morphine suppository. It felt great! Want one?" She pulls a suppository out of her purse.
"Um, maybe later."
"Wow. You shaved."
"Electrolysis. My mom did it." Molly starts doing step-ups on Maynard's knee.
"Molly, is something wrong? With the world?"
"You're funny Maynard. I have to pee. Join me?"
"Something is wrong," says Maynard, starting to shake and leaving the office and the troubled receptionist behind.
On the street, hucksters are barking, drawing, cajoling. Ne'er-do-wells are scheming, rapscallions targeting.
Maynard ducks into a tiny curio boutique and found himself pricing chatchkes.
The woman who owns the store dishes out a woeful harangue. "My eldest daughter has cystic fibrosis and her spine is misshapen."
"Misshapen?"
"It resembles nothing so much as a Klein bottle, as if one had been made by an idiot child, one who had never learned Euclidean geometry."
"Mimsy were the Borogoves."
"Point taken. You break it you buy it."
"Are there any advantages to having a spine that disappears into the fourth dimension then reappears just shy of the coccyx?"
"Well, only that she is very much in demand whenever they play the limbo--you know how kids are. Do I know you?"
"Name's Maynard. I'm looking for a paperweight in the shape of a large paper clip."
"Purple?"
"Yes, please."
"Get out."
Odd exchange, thinks Maynard. And how come I never ever saw that shop before? Curiouser and curiouser.
"Alms for the poor?" asks a scruffy homeless person, holding out a Greek sailor's cap. It is full of angel-hair pasta.
"It's pasta," says the man. "Nature's best insulator." The man empties the pasta into his baggy slacks and Maynard gives him a quarter.
Something is definitely amiss here, thinks Maynard as the bug-eye settles over a steam vent, chastising mourners.
"No ideas but in *things*," he Carlos-Williams, to the delight of the Espiscopalian priest.
"Yes, but you find me any imagist that even approaches Donne, or even Carlyle for that matter, *then* we'll talk."
"Talk?? Ha. Your speech acts leave me cold. Nothing you say is performative."
"But surely the Kaddish..."
What is *wrong*?? whispers Maynard to his sternum as he bought a hot dog from a vendor.
"Coney Island. The Cyclone. Now *that's* a roller coaster."
"The Beast at Six Flags King's Island has a 540 degree horizontal loop. As well as the longest vertical drop in the contiguous states."
"You're talking out your ass, boy," says the vendor, creating relish. "Iron and steel don't have the character of wood. The Cyclone gives you a different ride every time. You think Perot is gonna pull votes away from Bush?"
"I think that--"
"You can go now."
What has happened to my world, my world. I know, I'll rent a video. Something I've seen a gazillion times.
"Last year at Marienbade?" says the girl behind the counter. "I'd rather watch paint dry."
Maynard turned, disheartened by the rebuke. He stepped out of the store, leaned forward and drifted up, until he was only a speck in the sky.