I used to be Marilyn Monroe. I’m sitting in a bedroom with white curtains and pale walls that remind me of coffee with heavy cream. Not quite brown but not quite beige either. I’ve been sitting in this room for twenty years, staring at the same rotten, dried landscape all day, every day. It gets quite boring, but it passes the time. The time always passes, no matter what I do. On Wednesdays, I get to go for a ride to the park. The big gray bus that picks us up smells like rotten potatoes, and the driver sometimes forgets that we’re old. The way he flies over those bumps and potholes is enough to make anyone dizzy. Sometimes we get to feed the birds. We watch the waves rise and fall, and they look so beautiful. The waves can swallow you whole and drag you to the depths, if you’re not careful. Yet the deep blue of the water calms me. One day at the park, a group of school children were visiting, and we crossed paths. There was a little boy in the group with mousy brown hair...