Maya lets go of her cane, reaches offscreen for a glass of water, begins to drink from it, seems to be losing her balance…
Charity Party II: Charity Parties
A Yachts Joint
May and June, 2013, Chicagoland USA
[3 minutes, 1 second]
Close-up of a urinal’s basin. A cure’s ankles and wrists are zip-tied through the holes in the soap-cake holder.
CUT.
Two minutes later. Medium shot of the urinal. An obese man approaches. Starts to urinate. Painsinging is heard. The man looks down and starts to laugh, continues to urinate. The painsinging gargles. The man zips up, laughs harder, presses the flush lever, presses it again. The painsinging stops.
The Yachts burst out of two bathroom stalls, shouting, “Compliments of the Yachts!” in unison.
The obese man shrieks in alarm and falls to his knees, panting.
* * *
—
A painsinging cure is attached along its back to the wall-length mirror above three sinks in a public restroom. The cure is facing away from the mirror, affixed to it by what appears to be a slather of rubber cement. Its broken tail points sideways, at a nonorganic angle.
CUT.
Three minutes later. A teenage girl in shorts and a halter top enters the restroom, reaching into her purse, from which she produces a wire hairbrush. Seeing the cure on the mirror, she sets the brush down beside the sink she’s in front of and goes over to it, softly cooing. “Aww. Look. Look at…Why are you here?” she says, scratching its head with a long, pink nail. She turns around slowly. “Okay then,” she says, and, leaning toward the cure, obscuring it from view, fiddles around, causing the volume of the painsong to escalate. Her hand, reaching for the hairbrush, knocks it to the floor. “Shit shit shit,” she says, and crouches down to retrieve the hairbrush, momentarily decongesting the camera’s sightlines, and we see the cure’s legs and arms, though still attached, have been pulled from their sockets, and its broken tail has been broken further and tied in a simple knot around its knees and elbows.
The girl stands, bearing the wire hairbrush. She takes a step back, measures her distance from the mirror with a slow, backhanded wave of her arm, then swings just hard enough to produce a high bang. The painsinging stops. The hairbrush’s bristles have impaled the cure, and the brush now covers its body entirely; is hanging there, on the mirror, as if being held against it by a ghost.
Four Yachts jump out of two bathroom stalls, shouting, “Compliments of the Yachts!” in unison.
The girl seems unfazed. “What the fuck, you guys?” she says. “You’re not supposed to be in—oh, hey Triple-J,” she says to Triple-J, who steps out of the third stall. “This your idea?”
“What do you think?” he says.
“I don’t know,” the girl says, blushing vibrantly.
* * *
—
A Curio, crucified with hat pins to the crown of a bowler hat hanging from a hat rack between a pair of doorways in a narrow hallway, painsings.
CUT.
One minute later. Fondajane Henry exits one of the doorways, saying, “What is going on out here?” She sees the hat, sighs, removes it from the hat rack.
Triple-J exits the other doorway, whispers, “Fon, come on. Put it back.”
“What are you doing?”
“You’ll see,” he says. “It’s great. Come here.”
She shrugs, replaces the hat, and follows Triple-J back through the doorway from which he had come out of.
CUT.
Forty seconds later. A slim, elderly man in black, three-piece livery approaches the hat rack, removes the hat, holds it at his abdomen, sighs, reaches under the hat and into the crown, removes the three pins from the cure’s soles and palms, takes the cure off the hat, and sets the hat on his head.
“Hello?” the man says. “Is anyone here? Ms. Henry? Mr. Pellmore-Jason? Burroughs?”
He looks into the doorway from which Fondajane Henry originally appeared, then moves on to the next one.
“Oh, hello!” says the man, his back to the viewer. “I found this Curio pinned to the top of my hat.”
“It’s for you, Oliver,” Triple-J says, offscreen. “Compliments of the Yachts.”
“And what did I do to deserve such a lovely surprise?”
“Everything,” Triple-J says. “All of it. You’re just this great, loyal guy. I wanted to give you something.”
“You have a very generous son,” says Oliver.
“I do,” says Fondajane Henry, offscreen.
“Now, what am I to do with this?” Oliver says.
“Do whatever you want,” Triple-J says. “It’s yours.”
“Well, then,” says Oliver, and moves his arms around.
“That’s great,” says Triple-J. “Just great.”
“Very cute,” says Fondajane Henry.
Oliver turns around, reenters the hallway. The painsinging cure, pinned through the belly, hangs over Oliver’s pocket square like a leaking, writhing, boutonnière.
Silver-Medaling US National Science Fair Entry, Part 2
Home Video
September 9 and September 12, 1991, USA
[18 minutes]
Maya lets go of her cane, reaches offscreen for a glass of water, begins to drink from it, seems to be losing her balance…
The screen blinks.
Second tableau. It is the same as the original tableau—same table, same cane, same dress—except the wrist of Maya’s “good” hand is splinted, a new scar (the stitches at the ends of which are visible) runs along her jawline, and the lighting appears to be a bit brighter.
“Please forgive my appearance,” she says. “I had a small accident with that glass of water. Believe me, it looks much much worse than it really is. I am a trooper!
“What I was about to tell you was my hypothesis.”
The screen blinks. The word HYPOTHESIS—green digital letters on a black background in which is visible the reflection of Maya’s father holding the camcorder up to what is presumably the computer screen on which HYPOTHESIS appears—flashes three times.