[Untitled], Statue of a Woman

In a sundrenched loft resting high above the city, there lives a sculptor and the woman he claims to love. The Sculptor is not, by and large, unhappy. Quite the contrary; when he sits framed in the picture window, as he does now, feeling the warmth of the sun on his face and the earthy squelch of the clay between his fingers, he is often filled with an overwhelming sense of calm. Of peace. The Sculptor has had little peace in his life, and so he makes a point to claim these moments in his mind. The quiet of the loft wraps him in a feeling of timelessness. Drifts of dust suspended in the air. The muffled sounds of traffic from the street far below. The cool, mineral scent of his next masterwork taking form beneath his palms. He has earned this, a balm for his soul. He deserves it.

The woman he claims to love lounges on the loveseat, supine, magazine dangling from her porcelain fingers. The sunlight spilling through the bay window pools in the hollows of her collar bones. As he looks at her, the Sculptor feels a rush in his body, a wash of the feeling he always feels when he looks at her in reverie. His hands massage the clay in sensual circles. The curve of her breasts begins to take shape beneath his palms.

“Oh my god, Alona and Mirage are back together.”

She drops the magazine to the carpet beside discarded socks and a styrofoam cup of half-eaten noodles. She stares into the glow of her phone, submerging her face in its pool. She coughs twice, her tongue hard and stuck out like a toddler’s, the tail end of a cold that’s refused to let go. It is hard for the Sculptor to decide which aspect of this tableau is more an affront to his constitution. Her words tinge the muted sun streaking across the floor.

“Honestly, if they aren’t going to make it, what hope do the rest of us have,” she says. “She was all in for Setty. I would have bet money.”

“Is that right?”

Most days, the Sculptor did his best to tune out her gossipmongering. But today he has little patience. His self control is not what it usually is. And so, despite the protestations of his better self, he engages.

“Who is Setty, again?”

“Seriously?” she asks, this time looking at him, her eyebrows a wave of incredulity. “Setty, Bug. You know who Setty is. We listened to that song. Remember, last night? That was Setty.”

“Of course,” says the Sculptor. “How could I have forgotten?”

His fists clench around the clay until it squishes out between his fingers, destroyed. He molds it back to nothing and begins again.

She had not always been this, had she? Before she’d come to share the space that had once been his home. Before she’d become so comfortable to use the restroom with the door open, to leave her soiled athletic shorts and damp towels on the hallway floor. Before he’d claimed to love her. When they’d spent endless nights roaming the downtown streets, discussing ideas, philosophy, politics. Her upbringing had been more expansive than his, and he’d drunk in her perspective like a deep, foreign coffee, the adrenaline of her lighting up his brain. He’d learned the shape of the world through her eyes. Your blue is not my blue. When he’d wanted to know every word for every color she had ever seen.

But that was before. Before they had said all there was to say. Nothing left but current events. Royal weddings. He said, she said.

“I swear,” she says, chuckling softly. “You’re lucky you have me around to keep you from sounding like an idiot.”

“Yes, I would surely be lost without your encyclopedic knowledge of internet garbage.”

He does not intend for it to come out so harshly, but it is how he feels. She will make him regret saying it, of course. In the end, however, the Sculptor decides not to apologize. Many worse things have passed between them, and would again. Best not to set a precedent. By now, she has picked her magazine up again and is paging through it roughly.

“What are you working on over there?” she asks, again without glancing in his direction.

The Sculptor looks down at his clay. He had been absently forming it into some sort of obelisk, which he now flattens down again into nothing.

“It’s still taking form,” he says.

“You’ve never sculpted me, you know.”

“I thought you weren’t interested in art.”

“Of course I like art,” she says. “Everyone likes art. That’s why they call it art.”

The Sculptor did not know what this meant, but he let it go.

“Would you like me to sculpt you?” he asks.

“I mean, I don’t know. It’s just nice to be asked, you know?”

The Sculptor turns the clay over in his hands. He asks it, silently, what secrets it is hiding from him. 

“Alright then,” he says.

“Alright?” She lays her magazine on the couch beside her and sits up. He waits a moment to respond, reveling in her wide-eyed attentiveness. He’d forgotten what it felt like to have her hanging on his words, waiting with bated breath for him to provide.

“Up you get,” he says, gesturing with his hands. “Over there.”

She stands as if on strings and follows his fingers to the center of the open loft room. The waning sunlight from the window coats her shift dress in pale pinks and oranges. It hangs from her bones like Spanish moss. The Sculptor rises and pulls a milk crate from beneath the kitchen counter. He empties the putty knives and other sundries onto the floor, and flips it over on the hardwood in front of her. He pats it, as one would for a dog, and she rises onto it.

“You sure about this?” he asks.

“Why would you ask that?”

“Okay then,” he says, and grabs the hem of her dress.

The Sculptor has often thought, in his darker moments, that were he to find himself on his deathbed, his mind casting about for any image that might bring him comfort, that this, right here, is where he would land. The shift dress slides up over the generous curve of her hips, caresses the dark fluff nestled in her armpits. He sees her face obscured, the sunlight projecting her image as if through gauze. Her featurelessness a statement in itself. And then she is unsheathed, the unbroken tawney of her skin a buffet on which his eyes are pleased to feast. She stands before him, cocks a hip, flips her hair.

“Is that art enough for you?” she asks. The Sculptor puts a finger to her lips. He begins to walk around her, slowly, his fingers trailing along the under curve of her buttock, up the ridge of her spine, the wrinkled flesh of her elbow. The mole on her inner thigh. He does his best to feel these elements through his fingers, understand the braille of her. They have always spoken the language of touch.

The Sculptor turns his back on her, walks to his clay by the window. He hefts a cool hunk in his hands. Beside him sits the pedestal, striped in sunlight. He sits in the windowbox and throws the clay down in a heap. He looks up to where she stands, across the room, already fidgeting on the crate, arms crossed over her chest.

“You have to put your arms down,” he says. 

She does as she’s told.

“Actually,” says the Sculptor, “take your left arm and sort of drape it over your head. Yes, like that. Relax your fingers.”

The effect is delicate and glib all at once. If he squints his eyes, he might be able to see a sort of elegance in her. 

He adds more clay to the misshapen lump, scooping from the bucket at his feet and beating her form into shape. The bend of her knee, the curve of her breast, her sharp chin. Minutes pass; his hands work quickly. She is not the first woman he has sculpted in this way. There was a time, in fact, that this very loft had housed many of his subjects, standing on the very crate on which she stood now. Each one more thankful than the last.

“No, you can’t move.”

“Bug, I’m tired,” she says. “Can’t we take a break?”

Her arms hang limp at her sides.

“You said you wanted me to sculpt you.”

“I know, I know. Just give me a minute.”

She scratches her nose with the heel of her hand.

“We don’t have to do this, you know.”

“I said give me a minute.”

She steps down off of the crate, crosses to the couch, picks up her phone once again. She swipes at the glass with her thumb, then starts.

“Oh, you remember Antony, right?”

The Sculptor does not remember Antony. He tries to picture the bend of her elbow, the delicate drape of her fingers, but he can not.

“I totally forgot; I was texting with my mom the other day,” she says, cocking her hip to the other side, disrupting. “Apparently he was supposed to get married. Down in Tijuana of all places.”

The Sculptor carefully pushes the mid section of the clay to the left. The hips displace. He will have to start over.

“Anyway, his fiancée I knew from college. She was always kind of wild, but I never expected this. So he flew down there, right? Him and his whole family to set up the venue; it was at this all-inclusive resort. And like, so many people showed up. Uncles and cousins and the whole thing. So anyway, his fiancée gets down there—just her. No family. Apparently she hadn’t told a single person. She lied to him the whole time, saying she was in contact with all these people. Even messaged him from accounts pretending to be her cousins. Like, the whole thing. And then she gets down there, waits until he’s standing at the altar right in front of her, and then tells him she can’t go through with it. Apparently she’s been sleeping with some guy from her work. A server, I think. Can you believe that? She went through all that just for a couple days of free vacation?”

The Sculptor rises from his stool and turns to face the window. The afternoon sun is beginning to set, turning the city skyline to dark jagged teeth. They are at once both sinister and broken. She calls his name once, twice, but he does not answer.

“This isn’t working,” he says to the window.

“Just give me another minute. I can hold still. I just need the feeling back in my fingers.”

“No.” The Sculptor turns to face her. She has returned to the crate, phone again abandoned, and is shaking her hand at her side, face screwed up in concentration. “This isn’t going to work.”

She stops shaking, looks at him quietly as if trying to discern his meaning. He looks back at her, doing the same. But after a silent moment, the Sculptor is struck with an idea. Without a word, he hoists the misshapen lump of clay in his hands and crosses the room, quick as ever, to kneel at her feet. He looks up at her, the prostrate Christ ready to demonstrate His servant’s heart.

“Ready?” he asks.

“You’d have to tell me what we’re doing first.” She laughs nervously.

The Sculptor slops the clay down onto her feet, covering her toes. 

“Oh, it’s cold!”

“You have to stay still.”

She squirms in place, but keeps her feet planted. Slowly, the sculptor begins to work the wet clay up over her ankles, wrapping her heels.

“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” she says. “Have you ever done this before?”

“Many times,” says the Sculptor. “Trust me. You move too much. This is the only way we can make it work.”

Still crouched at her feet with his hands around her ankles, he looks up at her and smirks with half of his mouth, giving his best imitation of the man he used to be. She doesn’t respond, but neither does she move.