Orange Cap (An Excursion-Diversion)

It’s an orange cap, right in front of me where I’m sitting, an orange cap with a white tiger paw logo. It’s lying upside down, so that we only see the back stitching of the logo, in the upturned lid of a white cardboard banker’s box. Draped over the far edge of the box lid, so that the fingers fall out of sight and the lower part touches the cap, is a lady’s pair of soft black gloves. A painter comes in, Jan van Eyck or Jan Vermeer perhaps — anyway, Jan comes in and expertly paints this little tableau into the far corner of a canvas filled with many such set-pieces. There’s an ornate round mirror beyond the window on the left wall, a lacrosse stick leaning up in a corner, a dusty black wood stove, a shelf with a small plastic treasure chest, and, on the right wall, a framed print of wild turkeys in a field of tall yellow grass. Jan leaves, and takes his painting with him.