In the picture stood Bert, brown, poised, my childhood friend’s childhood companion. The horse allowed her to ride but bucked as if insulted when I climbed on with her. Two skinny young girls not too much weight to carry but our double load beyond his permission. Bert, long dead now, the subject of a new experiment in the Second Parallel. A room full of people, banking their interest on a new development, waited to see the horse, immortalized in a picture above the door, come back from the dead. Dick, in charge of the experiment and not relishing forced retirement to the Third Parallel in the case of failure, raised his Bulleit Bourbon in toast. “To Bert, a fine specimen.” When the door opened at the appointed hour, gasps galvanized the air but succumbed to sighs when not a horse but a young woman entered, long black hair straggled across the left side of her face, clothes smelling of straw and manure. I looked from girl to picture to faces in the crowd. Dick and company turned away to finish cocktails and conversations, while the girl, eyes stabbing, shuffled to one then another then another, begging for work. Could she walk their dog? Wash their car? Brush their hair? One said, “No.” Another shook his head. Dick, downing his disappointment with one last chug, said, “She’s not quite right.” The girl’s head pressed closer to the floor with the weight of each rejection, and as she turned to go, a new picture, a tail tucked between buttocks.