Nude Men

and straight, facing me, next to the Humpty Dumpty of me, and starts reciting: “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall...”
    At this point she slides her finger behind the little egg with my face on it, and pushes it off the shelf. It falls and breaks on the wood floor. Thick red shiny goo pours out of it.
    Sara continues her recitation: “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put him back together again.”
    I stand there stunned, feeling insulted.
    “Wasn’t it nice?” she asks.
    “It’s too bad you broke my face.”
    “But wasn’t it nice, the show with the blood? Wasn’t it
    surprising?”
    “Very surprising. How did you make the blood?”
    “Mercurochrome and olive oil.”
    “It’s too bad you broke my face, though. Especially if it took you nine hours to make. It was so well done.”
    “Don’t worry,” she says, picking up a closed half-carton of eggs. She opens the carton, and I am confronted with six more Humpty Dumpties of me, each one expressing a different emotion, which I can more or less decipher as Fear, Surprise, Anger, Sadness, Boredom, and, the last one, Guilt, with bright-red cheeks of shame.
    I look at the little broken face on the floor, the seventh egg, and I realize that it was Happiness.
    “They’re beautiful,” I tell her.
    “Don’t think it took me sixty-three hours to make all these eggs of you. It took me nine. You can have one, but I must warn you that the one you pick will reveal more about your personality than would nine hours of conversation.”
    I try to decide if I should pick the one I like most or the one that will incriminate me least. The one I like most is Guilt. It is the funniest and most expressive, with its bright-red shamed cheeks, but it also happens to be the most embarrassing one to choose, so I decide to pick the least incriminating, most innocent one.
    “I think I’ll take Boredom,” I say, pointing.
    “It’s not Boredom; it’s Sleepiness. It’s extremely revealing that you interpreted it as Boredom. But you’re lying. It is not your favorite one, because it is obviously the least well painted. This is very revealing, Jeremy, and doesn’t put you in a very good light. It shows that you are a bit of a coward and dishonest. Admit it. The bored one is not your favorite.”
    I find her unpleasantly clever for a child her age.
    “You’re right,” I say, hiding my annoyance. “I chose the bored one because I didn’t want you to think I was afraid, surprised, angry, sad, or guilty.”
    “You’re revealing more of yourself every minute. Why in the world would you not want me to think you were surprised? That’s not a negative or embarrassing emotion, but obviously it is for you, for some deep, strange, and mysterious reason.”
    She caught me. She’s right. I did not want her to think I was surprised by her behavior toward me, by her excessive familiarity, which troubles and confuses me. I must lie. “No, you’re right; surprise is not a negative or embarrassing emotion. I just happened to think of boredom first. I was negligent.”
    She looks at me suspiciously through half-closed eyes. “So tell me, which is your favorite egg?”
    “The happy one that’s on the floor.”
    “That’s too easy. Anyway, I can’t give you that one; it’s broken. Which one in this carton do you like the most?”
    “That one,” I say, pointing to the guilty one. “I like his red cheeks.”
    “You don’t need to justify your choice by saying you like the red cheeks. There’s no reason for you to feel guilty about choosing guilt.”
    “I’m not justifying my choice. I really like the red cheeks.”
     
    I visit Lady Henrietta twice a week, every Saturday and Wednesday night, because she says I can stop by whenever I feel like it. She must enjoy my presence. I think our relationship is growing deeper, slowly but surely. I hope her affection for me will become romantic soon, if it isn’t already.
    Laura is starting to show up once in a while. She tries to talk to me a bit, saying nice normal things, like: “Jeremy, I loved that movie you chose, We Are the Taurus and “Jeremy, I like your jacket,” and “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” To Henrietta and Sara, she says, “Your painting is coming along nicely, Henrietta,” and “Are you learning interesting things in school, Sara?”
    I grab the first chance I get to play with Sara, which I like a lot more than talking to Laura. I don’t