The Paperboy Hat Addendum

A Continuation of “Residual Consequences of Friday the 13th”
Absurd Geometry Field Notes No. 00.1

I was finally issued my refund and released back into society after the failure of several ambitious rural engineering efforts involving my Italian art piece on wheels.

At that point, the man in the paperboy hat offered to walk me to my car, like any decent man would.

I accepted.

As we started toward my car, I set the chicken down on the asphalt and gave him the last of the caviar I had packed for him. He accepted it immediately. As he pecked, the eggs made soft popping sounds that settled beneath the moment like ambient ASMR, as though the entire conversation had been given a luxury sound design. It was an unexpectedly refined soundtrack for an O’Reilly Auto Parts parking lot.

The man in the paperboy hat watched this calmly.

Then he asked whether I would permit him to help me with my posture.

“But you’re seeing me clinically, correct?” I asked.

I felt this was an important distinction.

“Of course,” he said.

Only then did I allow him to proceed.

He lifted one of my arms slightly, extended my hand outward, and with the back of his hand tilted my hip to the left with the confidence of a man who had spent years correcting forms not meant to move.

“Are you a chiropractor?” I asked.

He seemed almost offended.

“No,” he said. “I’m the owner of an elite mannequin school.”

This was not the answer I had anticipated, though by then anticipation had ceased to be a serious method of navigating reality.

He explained that before entering the mannequin industry, he had owned a school for mimes. According to him, the mimes did outstanding work. Several had even gone on to assist underfunded police departments with cases that psychics had been unable to solve due to missing audio and compromised body-language analysis. Unfortunately, they became so good at what they did that the word never got out. The business, for that reason, did not expand in the way he had hoped.

He said this without bitterness. Just the quiet administrative sadness of a man who had once invested heavily in silence.

The mannequin school, however, had flourished.

The elite, he explained, paid astonishing sums for the companionship of mannequins, provided the mannequins had been properly trained. His school specialized in pose refinement, stillness, and distinction. No two mannequins were ever allowed to hold the exact same pose. Each one had to project a unique internal life despite having no rights, no speech, and no meaningful capacity for intervention. They were also trained never to speak, react, interrupt, or interfere, regardless of how awkward, tense, or morally unstable the situation became.

One of his biggest clients, he told me, was the owner of the Bates Motel chain.

I told him I believed I had encountered some of his work before.

Once, I said, I had spent time with the Watcher who lived in what could only be described as a bat cave. We had a contract. I was to be there for forty-five minutes while he sketched me. He described himself as a collector of experiences and had apparently decided I should be his next subject of study.

The terms were clear. For forty-five minutes, I would grant him temporary access to my trust. In return, he was required to make me feel safe, secure, and cared for during every minute of the appointment. This, in my understanding, was binding.

Everything remained within acceptable limits until I asked to use the bathroom.

He agreed and walked me toward it. Just before I entered, he told me to look around.

At first, I saw nothing. The house was so dark it seemed to have been arranged against human perception. Then he flashed a light toward the walls, and I realized the bathroom was lined with mannequins.

Not one or two mannequins. Not even a troubling cluster.

The mannequins covered nearly every edge of the room shoulder to shoulder, with the density and quiet force of a private terracotta army assembled by a man with no internal brakes. They lined the walls, occupied the corners, and extended around the bathroom in a way that suggested both intention and a complete collapse of judgment.

That, I told him, was a line I could not cross.

I reminded him that our contract required him to make me feel safe, secure, and cared for throughout the duration of my visit. Since the mannequins were interfering with all three, he would need to remove them.

He had no choice. To refuse would have placed him in breach of contract.
So he began taking the mannequins out of the bathroom one by one.
It took approximately thirty five minutes.
When he finished, he remarked that at least he would not need to go to the gym that day.
Only after the final mannequin had been extracted was I able to use the toilet. By the time I came out, exactly two minutes later, the session had been critically reduced. He had only eight minutes left to sketch me, which meant he only had time to sketch my torso

The man in the paperboy hat listened to this with the solemn recognition of a professional hearing about familiar workmanship.

Then he nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “That does sound like one of ours.”

I remember thinking then that some men offer flowers, some offer compliments, and some, under the residual consequences of Friday the 13th, reveal that they once operated a mime academy before moving into elite mannequin education.