Past the Tyler Pierson installation (doll babies on spikes), past the Monica Acinom installation (TV sets without tuners showing fuzz) and into the Fletcher Yardman installation: 17 Vaginas. It was 16 canvases, all of them white, all of them with a single black line painted down the center. In some of the paintings, the line started almost at the top of the canvas, and continued almost all the way to the bottom. In many of them, the line was not quite centered either vertically or horizontally. But not so off-center that one would notice without staring, studying. And Cory had been studying, staring, for a week now.

Of course, most reviews call 17 Vaginas a complete waste of time, space. “The artists is trying to make a statement with just the title, and the art itself be damned. It’s politics for politics sake” suggested Edwin Oldson of the Times. “I realize we’re well past the sorts of environments that gave us a Caravaggio, or a Reubens,” said Lisa Forrester, of the Herald. “But this isn’t even Pollock. This isn’t even Grant Wiggins. It’s filth.” And Michael Gavbok, of the Post, wrote: “Modern art can challenge, and can do so through modes that make us uncomfortable, embarrassed, ashamed of ourselves. Modern art should do these things, should punch us in the dick. But Fletcher Yardman’s 17 Vaginas does no such thing. It’s not even the tawdriness of junior high school boys drawing fuck pics. It’s art’s greatest curse: laziness.”

And yet, in the week he’d been visiting the installation, Cory saw several people react. There was something about the lines, something about the way they were shaded, that evoked what the title described. Cory saw people walk in with a look on their face of expectation, then curios disappointment, and on the ones who stayed for more than a few seconds: dawning realization. These paintings did, somehow, remind one of vulva.

Virtually no one seemed to notice there were only 16 canvases. Virtually, although one elderly gentleman had sat next to Cory one day, gazed as Cory gazed, until he finally harumphed. “They’re not vagina, they’re labia majora. And one’s missing.” Some people just didn’t get art.

Cory was old, tired, and sat down on one of the benches in the gallery. He gazed at the vaginas. Or was the plural vagina. One of the words that shouldn’t have to work in plural. No man should know so many vagina that he need to say vaginas. Not even a gynecologist. Those guys would have to use a collective noun. Vaginopoly. Cory concentrated on the fifth vagina from the left. This was average, amongst the lot. Used, but not abused. A regular, every-day, non-descript vagina. Occasional sex, no children. Next to it, an old and battered vagina. Mother of six. Big burly husband, given to drinking and late night sessions with meaty fingers and bad aim. A sloppy, sad vagina. Next to that, a young one, not too young, but young enough. Each one represent by a single black line.

He’d read about the installation in the newspaper. Stupid newspaper. An old habit, subscribing to the newspaper, and he never read them. They came, he recycled them. But one day, he’d opened one in an idle fashion, skimmed a few pages with his morning toast. Bathrobe, burnt coffee, slippers, talk radio in the background. A few pages. The City and Local section. The Arts page. Opening this week at the Morgan: 17 Vaginas by Fletcher Yardman. So Cory got dressed and went.

Walked out the door, made an incredibly successful effort not to glace at his neighbor’s house, waited for the bus, made no eye contact with anyone, got off two stop early, took a few handy detours on the way there. Just happened to walk by the Morgan. Oh, what’s this, a modern art gallery? Checked his watch. Well, okay. Went in, did not look at the directory. Wandered the floors, pretended to accidentally come across the installation. It was more or less exactly how he’d bumped into the woman he’d gone one his only ever date with. Except for the ending, except for the vagina.

He’d just sat and stared, exactly as he was doing today. And then came back the next day, different routine: bus, off at the right stop, straight to the gallery, right in, right up, right in, sat down, Because who’s going to say something about a guy coming back a second time to look at a bunch of stupid black lines? Or a third time? A fourth?

By the fifth it was a routine, by the sixth it was a rut, and on this, the seventh, it was an out and out chore. And Cory was becoming intimately familiar with the Morgan. It’s every nook and cranny. He’d already looked thoroughly at Tyler Pierson’s doll babies on spikes (Oldson, Times: “Pierson achieves through shock and awe a gentle caressing of our limbic system, and reminds us that there’s nothing more terrible than imagination,”) and spent a few hours with Monica Acinom’s TV Fuzz (Forrester, Herald: “If T.S Eliot could be resurrected as a universal remote, and then tortured until he was phobic around pen and paper, this is how he’d rewrite The Wasteland,” and even wandered through the tiny galleries named for local philanthropists and stuffed with paints splatters, woodchips glued to formica, wire mesh bend and shaped to represent vomit (Gavbok, Post: “But never fear, The Morgan is not overcome by Yardman’s flagging attempt at resurrecting his spiritual; tumescence… her other corridors are still waiting to be explored by curious intellect and a comfort in her rotating catalog of Modern Arts latest staples.”) But Cory always returned to his Vaginas.

Because that’s how he was beginning to see these canvases. They did not belong to The Morgan. They did not belong to the taxpayers who tithed for the museum’s electric bill. They certainly didn’t belong to Fletcher Yardman. Cory was old, and broken, and would be 38 in several months, and he was tired, worn out by the job of protecting these several Vaginas.

Cory sat on a bench and fixed his gaze on one vagina in particular. 5th from the right, an inauspicious location. An afterthought, a place of least importance. Take, for example, a list of everyone in the world, ordered by how interesting they were… the person at the bottom of the list, the least interesting person in the world, that person would at least be interesting by virtue of being on the bottom of the list. So he wouldn’t really be the least interesting person. And if you, therefore, moved him up the list, the next person up from the bottom would not be the bottom, and therefor now also sort of interesting. And you could keep doing this, but soon the calculus of boredom would find a tangent to the curve of doing this exercise, and there really would be a person who was the least interesting person and not even as interesting as the person who was the actual least interesting. Maybe it was a guy who knew, instinctively, how many times an actor would say the words “goddamnit” in movies before his career tanked. “Collin Ferrel, 38,” and go watch all his movies, and count the scripted goddamnits, and the ad-lib goddamnits, and sure enough, as of two films ago he was at 35, and two films later: horrible box office draws, an exotic but unromantic skin condition, married to his agent’s cousin who was slightly overweight, living on residuals and obsessed with fantasy baseball. That guy, the one who could instinctively make those predictions, was probably the one right after the last one on the list of interesting people you’d bother moving from the bottom. He was, for all intents and purposes, the 5th vagina from the right.

But there was some about this vagina in particular that was starting to fill Cory with dread. This one was different, even if it was in the least interesting spot on the wall. It was not a particularly interesting vagina, just a black line, maybe smaller than most of the others, but not smaller in a genetic sense, just smaller in the sense that some things are bigger than others and some things are smaller, there’s no significance to size. Cory stared at it, eyes slit but unblinking. Was there something there? On the canvas? Other than the black line? Was there a dot of ink, just off to the left a bit? Cory refused to get up and take a closer look.

Just a dot of ink? Or maybe an errant collection of dust from the ceiling, casting just the barest hint of a shadow? Was that how freckles worked, hormonally speaking? A smooth and perfect little vulva, creamy and innocent, and just the barest hint of color, just a spot, a small dot, not even a color, just a variation in the skin tone, right there under the surface, easier to see when you didn’t really look at directly? A small smudge of melanin, not ruining the image but making it perfect, exchanging perfection for unique identification? Was this a picture of a real woman’s real vagina?

Cory shoved his hand into his pocket, pulled out the newspaper clippings, internet printouts, a wad of creased and wrinkled pages and papers, all about Fletcher Yardman. He was about 37, about Cory’s age. He was from around here. He had gone to the same school as Cory. When he’d discovered this, after his 5th visit, Cory had gone to his bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. Was he Fletcher Yardman? No, he was not… it was just a coincidence. Well, not really: it made sense that a local artist who had received some sort of national notoriety would be able to get a showing in his hometown. After looking at himself in the mirror, Cory had pulled down his pants ot see if he had a single black line for a vulva. No, he had his usual penis.

Cory glance up at the one vagina on particular, back to his notes. Something he’d read. Here it was, an article from Post, probably before Gavbok worked there. Something about Yardman’s influences, something about a vacant lot and a gigantic withered tree. This, in reference to an earlier work, something to do with old women, some kinda thing using coat hangers. A vacant lot, an old withered tree… Cory new that tree. He lived right next to that lot.

He glanced up at the Vaginas, looked at his hands. Ink stains? Paint smears? No, none of that. Peered again at the one vagina in particular. Did he know that painting because he’d painted it? No. Did he know that vagina? A blackness, a cold blackness gripped Cory by his bowels and he stood up, started screaming.

“This isn’t a coincidence! He shouted. I was sent here! I was sent here and this is not a coincidence!”

A few heads poked in from the doorway. Cory stood up, began waving his arms. “I know who Fletcher Yardman is! I know what he did! He has to be stopped! He has to be punished! Listen to me!”

Cory jumped off the bench, but stumbled and fell. Two security guards ran into the gallery. Cory got to his feet and tried to lunge at the painting, the one vagina in particular. The two guards grabbed him. Cory struggled, the twoa guards held him to the ground. “Let me go! He has to be stopped! This isn’t a coincidence! That vagina, that’s my neighbor’s vagina! She’s only fifteen, are you listening to me? Fletcher Yardman has painted that vagina, he’s seen that vagina, he has to be stopped, he has to be punished! Let go of me I said!”