'A Gift for the Collection of Dr. Chevalier Quixote Jackson' by Maria Robinson

At the Mütter Museum we saw a case of sand-dollar-delicate inner ears preserved by an otologist named Hyrtl and a set of drawers filled with all manner of swallowed objects removed and catalogued by a pioneering ambidextrous laryngologist named Chevalier. We saw a movie about a movie by the Quay Brothers and then the Quay Brothers’ movie itself. We saw a colon the size of a just-fed anaconda and a face stripped from its substrate floating bloat-lipped in a jar. CeeCee sat down and took six deep breaths after we looked at the barbarous instruments used for trepanation. I wrote the word “bertillonage” in a notebook. We peered at a forearm peeled to expose its musculature and vasculature. I said it looked like something someone’d gnaw on at a barbecue and she agreed.

Somewhere else her girlfriend was looking at an ovarian cyst the size of a basketball. Bisected kidneys. Noodle-y brains swollen white with formaldehyde.

Back outside we all looked at our feet. I watched a bird coil a worm around its beak like a strand of spaghetti.

CeeCee’s girlfriend spat on the sidewalk and said “That place is fucked.”

“I liked the swallowed objects,” CeeCee said. “From that otolaryngologist—”

“Laryngologist.”

“That’s what I said.”

“You said ‘oto-.’”

“Fucking so what, Renee.”

“Bitch, you wouldn’t be talking to me like that if she wasn’t here.”

CeeCee looked at me. “Sorry,” she said.

“It’s ok,” I said.

Renee’s gaze pinched me like a caliper. Then she spat again and walked south on 22nd. CeeCee stepped closer and held my eyes with hers until I felt it in my throat. Then she went after Renee and I followed behind, breath tight around whatever she’d lodged in me, wondering who would pluck it free when I choked.