The fifth room, the grueling fifth room, had just been painted. That heady acrylic smell, a wall had been resurfaced with new drywall, and I was in this room the longest, long enough to get a terrific headache from the fumes, heaven help me. A close inspection of the corner revealed the freshness of the caulk. The bead had been evened out with a finger. I could see, here and there in the caulk’s tackiness, a worker’s partial fingerprint. But the odor made me hungry for green apples, how strange is that? Or green apple candy, the taste of it. Do you think, in the last room, that some traveler preceding me pinched the ten of clubs just to be a bastard? or that it had been intentionally removed but the designers of this wretched system? But then I’m assuming that scores of others have come through these rooms before me.