[wrinkles. 5.]

The room is nearly empty. White walls, metal ribs running down the one exposed
brick wall. Hard, clean wood floor.

There are black and white photographs every three or four inches, hung with
clothespins on simple twine.

The highest of them are well above my head. They nearly touch the floor.

A dozen people are sipping wine, nearly broadcasting their attention to the
arts to the world by means of a glass in their left hand, gestured as they talk
about Important Things, anything NPR sees fit to air.

I'm standing in the corner, ignoring them. There are three photographs, one
nearly abstract texture, folds and mottled surface. I wonder if it's paper or
cloth that it's a photograph of.

The second is softer, somehow. Perhaps taken from further away.

The third reveals it all. There's a picture of an Italian family, ready for
church, dressed up in black finery, standing with the priest and various other
churchgoers. The woman in the foreground looks to be about a hundred and ten,
her face a mass of wrinkles and lines, so much so that her eyes seem buried.

She has no teeth, and she has pulled her lower lip over her nose and puffed out
her cheeks, and the entire family and priest is looking on, trying not to laugh
out loud.