Miss America screams.

And the Countless Foresight shouts, “If that's a joke, it's not funny . . .”

The invisible carrot, the story left over from Saint Gut-Free.

And from the hallway, Chef Assassin shouts, “Calm down. Of course it's a joke.” He says, “We don't have any potatoes or carrots . . .”

Shortsighted

A Poem About the Countess Foresight

“An electronic tracking sensor,” says the Countess Foresight, shaking her plastic bracelet.

A condition included in the terms of her recent parole from prison.

The Countess Foresight onstage, she's folded inside the webs of a black lace shawl.

A turban of blue velvet wrapped around her head.

A ring with different-colored stones on every finger.

Her turban, pinned in front with a polished black stone,

onyx or jet or sardonyx,

some stone that absorbs everything. Reflects nothing.

Onstage, instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment:

The shadows of dead movie stars, the residue of electrons bounced off them

a hundred years ago.

Those electrons passed through a film of cellulose,

to change the chemical nature of silver oxide

and re-create chariot races, Robin Hood, Greta Garbo.

“Radar,” says the Countess. “Global positioning systems. X-ray imaging . . .”

Two hundred years ago, these would get you burned as a witch.

A century ago, at least laughed at. Called a fool or a liar.

Even today, if you predict the future or read the past from indicators

not everyone can recognize . . .

it's the prison or the asylum you'll eventually call home.

The world will always punish the few people with special talents

the rest of us don't recognize as real.

A psychologist at her parole hearing called her crime “acute stress-induced psychosis.”

An “isolated, atypical episode.”

A crime of passion.

That would never, ever, ever happen again.

Knock wood.

At that point, she'd served four years of a twenty-year sentence.

Her husband was gone with her kids in tow.

Two hundred years from today, when what she saw, and read, and knew,

when it all makes sense.

By then, the Countess will be nothing but a prisoner number.

A case file.

The ash of a witch.

Something's Got to Give

A Story by the Countess Foresight

Claire Upton phones from a bathroom stall in the back of an antique store. From behind a locked door, her voice echoes off the walls and floor. She asks her husband: How tough is it to get into a video surveillance camera? To steal a security videotape? she says, and starts to cry.

This is the third or fourth time Claire's been to this shop in the past week. It's one of those shops where you have to leave your purse with the cashier to get inside. You have to check your coat, too, if it has deep, roomy pockets. And your umbrella, because some people might drop small items, combs, jewelry, knickknacks, inside the folds. A sign next to the old-man cashier, written with black felt-tipped pen on gray cardboard, it says: “We don't like you stealing from us!”

Taking her coat off, Claire said, “I'm not a thief.”

The old-man cashier looked her up and down. He clicked his tongue and said, “What makes you the exception?”

He gave Claire half a playing card for each item she left behind. For her purse, the ace of hearts. For her coat, the nine of clubs. Her umbrella, the three of spades.

The cashier eyed Claire's hands, the lines of her breast pockets and pantyhose, for bulges that might be something stolen. Behind the front counter, all over the store, hung little signs telling you not to shoplift. Video cameras watched every aisle and corner, showing it on a little screen, stacked with other screens, a bank of little television monitors where the old-man cashier could sit behind the cash register and watch them all.

He could watch her every move, in black and white. He'd know where Claire was at any moment. He'd know everything she touched.

The shop was one of those antique-selling cooperatives where a lot of small dealers band together under one roof. The old-man cashier was the only person working that day, and Claire was his only customer. The store was big as a supermarket, but broken up into small stalls. Clocks everywhere made a wallpaper of sound, a din of tick, tick, ticking. Everywhere were brass trophies tarnished dark orange. Cracked and curled leather shoes. Cut-glass candy dishes. Books fuzzy with gray mold. Wicker rocking chairs and picnic hampers. Woven straw hats.

A cardboard sign, taped to the edge of a shelf, said: “Lovely to Look At, Delightful to Hold, But If You Should Break It, Consider It SOLD!”

Another sign said: “See it. Try it. Break it. BUY IT!”

Another sign says, “You break it here . . . YOU TAKE IT HOME!”

Even with the security cameras watching her, Claire treats an antique shop as a psychic petting zoo. A museum where you can touch each exhibit.

According to Claire, everything ever seen in a mirror is still there. Layered. Everything ever reflected in a Christmas ornament or a silver tray, she says she can still see it. Everything shiny is a psychic photo album or a home movie of the images that occurred around it. In an antique store, Claire can fondle objects all afternoon, reading them the way people read books. Looking for the past still reflected there.

“It's a science,” the Countess Foresight says. “It's called psychometry.”

Claire will tell you not to pick up a silver-handled carving knife because she can still see the reflection of a murder victim screaming in its blade. She can see the blood on the policeman's glove as he pulls it out of someone's dead chest. Claire can see the darkness of the evidence room. Then a wood-paneled courtroom. A judge in black robes. A long wash in warm, soapy water. Then the police auction. This is all still reflected in the blade. The next reflection is right now, you standing here in an antique store ready to pick up the knife and take it home. You just thinking it's pretty. Not knowing its past.

“Anything pretty,” Claire will tell you, “it's only for sale because no one wants it.”

And if no one wants something pretty and polished and old, there's a terrible reason why.

With all the shoplifting video cameras watching her, Claire could tell you all about surveillance.

When she went back to get her coat, she gave the old-man cashier his three playing cards cut in half. The ace of hearts. The nine of clubs. The three of spades.

From behind his cash register, the old man said, “Were you looking to buy something?” He hands her purse across the counter, nodding his head toward the bank of little televisions. The proof he'd been watching her touch everything.

It's then she sees it, in a glass case behind the old man, in a curio cabinet crowded with salt and pepper shakers and porcelain thimbles, surrounded by junk jewelry, there's a jar full of murky white liquid. Inside the haze, a tiny fist, lined with four perfect fingers, was just touching the glass.

Claire points past the old man, looking from him to the curio case, and she says, “What's that?”

The man turns to look. He takes a ring of keys from a hook behind the counter and goes back to open the cabinet. Reaching in, past the jewelry and thimbles, he says, “What would you say it is?”

Claire couldn't say. All she knows is, it gives off an incredible energy.

As the old man carries the jar toward her, the dirty white liquid sloshes inside. The top is white plastic, screwed down and sealed with a band of tape striped red and white. The old man sets one elbow on the counter in front of Claire, holding the jar near her face. With a twist of his wrist, he turns the jar until she can see a small dark eye looking out. An eye and the outline of a small nose.