Suitable Precautions by Laura Boudreau

“This is not a gallery. It’s a hallway,” the guide says. We are both sympathetic towards the guide, who wears trousers one inch too short for her long and spindly legs. Such a trouser-wearer cannot be expected to know the difference between a gallery and a hallway, but having an inch less than us, as she does in several respects—not that we are bragging; we are not those kinds of men—we are inclined to think of her fondly as she studies us, the study in itself proving, among other things, that we are not in a hallway at all. We did not pay twenty dollars to see a hallway. And if we did, we will certainly demand our money back. We confer and decide to see where the gallery that may be a hallway will lead before we launch our tirade of righteous indignation upon a woman who is in need of pants with a longer inseam. We are not unnecessarily cruel. We have questions.

    â€œNo, that’s an umbrella stand,” the guide says.
    â€œYes, for umbrellas,” another woman says, bobbing her head around as though she thinks this is the function of a head on a neck. Her bulgy forehead lolls towards the ground like a slave to gravity, forcing her to snap her head back every once in a while in order to keep up with the conversation. “It’s just not raining today, that’s probably why you were confused,” she explains to us, her fat fingers dancing in a grotesque parody of raindrops, as though we did not speak the same language. Come to think of it, we do not. Come to think of it, we cannot understand a single thing she says, dancing fingers or no. She babbles on incomprehensibly and we exchange knowing glances, because we know that an astonishingly high percentage of New Yorkers are insane. Seventy-nine percent, at last count. It just happens to be the case that we are employed in the business of celebrating that fact. And we are on assignment.
    â€œThis way to the second floor,” the guide says with an air of superiority.
    â€œBaa,” you and I say to each other. The insane woman overhears and raises the corners of her mouth, expressing amusement, pleasure, or approval with her face. It is amazing how barnyard animal noises can bridge barriers. Even though I am ready to crucify myself with umbrellas (there are a few) to prove my willingness to suffer for art, we follow our guide. We did not pay twenty dollars to be left behind.
    But there is a problem in the hamburger room:
    â€œI don’t get it,” says an old man with a cane. “What is it?”
    â€œIt’s a giant hamburger,” his wife says.
    â€œI know it’s a hamburger. I’m not an idiot.”
    â€œWell then, why did you ask me?” she says.

    â€œWhat do you think of this?” (He is asking us, for he can sense that we are arbiters of taste.) “Is this what passes for art nowadays?”
    Some questions answer themselves by being asked. We say nothing except to each other.
    â€œDo you think they have hamburgers in the restaurant here?”
    â€œThey have a restaurant here?”
    â€œYes, and I could really go for a hamburger.” Somebody famous said that. Not the part about the hamburgers. The part about questions answering themselves. I said it. At least I thought it. Being that it is much harder to think something than it is to say it, and also much harder to say a thing than it is to do it, I think it is fairly self-evident that I do a lot of hard work. My position as a contributing member of society cannot be disputed.
    â€œHow much do you think this’d sell for?” the old man asks with a persistence that must have been instilled in the Great Depression or the Great War, whenever it was that he ate nothing but cabbage and wore his malnourished flesh like a badge of honour.
    â€œI think I’ll have a cheeseburger,” you say.
    â€œSeriously, this is what passes for art nowadays? Giant hamburgers?” the old man says again to no one in