This collage starts with a story: one day Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas called on Picasso, but he was out. When he returned, he found their calling card, with the corner turned down to signify that they had been there in person. Picasso made this collage, pasting their card into the work, then called on Stein and Toklas to present his clever gift. They were not at home, so he left it, as a calling card. Fictively, we are looking at part of a table, and upon it lies a pair of dice, a packet of Élégantes cigarettes, and Stein and Toklas’s carte-de-visite. By gluing the label from the cigarette packet alongside its cover, reading “contributions indirectes” (the label refers to the tax on consumable goods), Picasso puns in English and in French, honoring Stein and Toklas’s “contributions” to his art, which—ever protective of his independence—remain “indirect.”