By Jace Brittain
That word: Fortune being relative, I was made to understand Mr. Sonnabend had spent more than he could afford on the thing: “Well, it is, uh,” he said, “I, look, I mean, you, listen,” and I was just passenger to: he holds up a, he says, human horn, and he says, “I can’t make heads or tails of—" and I stopped him right there because I won’t let someone make a mockery of human anatomy, its delicate or dim damp illusory curves and casts, where light loses ground at the inner ear, and said: “That thing is a projection, external, unusual,” while, after all, my grandfather, who kept alive so long a tusked rabbit, regretted it, we thought, later, when he died, so Mr. Sonnabend, flustered, dropped it under the table, when I hunkered down there to find him: hands and knees, elbows propped and arms encircling, a collection of such oddities: the electric lamp between his teeth beamed at the tilt flitting from object to object as if he thought a curiosity might save him, however, however, however, however,
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