Page 68 of Devil

She’s working a medium chisel over the shoulder of the impenitent criminal, and the tap of her mallet echoes through the open space, atap-tap-tap-tapand a pause, and then anothertap-tap-tap-tap.

In less than a week, she’s shaped the statue in its entirety—the cross, the lashed arms, the defiant head. Details now are starting to emerge, shaped by the chips and scoops of her chisels and gouges. I can see what will be the nails in the criminal’s heels, which are positioned on the other side of the cross’s upright beam. I can also see the newly carved tips of his elbows pointing up to the sky, leading to the arms hooked over the back of the crossbar—a patibulum, Birdie had informed me absently a couple days ago while I’d been again watching her work under the pretense of catching up on my own. I can see now that the criminal’s stomach is contracted with the labor of breathing, exposing the creeping failure of his diaphragm to the viewer.

Birdie gets down off the stepladder and steps back, staring. She does this often, and I wish I could slip inside her mind to know what she’s thinking.

Is she comparing the version in her head with the crude hulk in front of her? Is she mentally revising the sketch she’s working from as the wood shows her more about itself?

On paper, we should have similar gifts; she summons her art from paper and clay and wood, and I summon mine from earth and steel and plat maps.

But she works in a way that’s an utter mystery to me, moving from one part of the block to the other with something that seems to be born of instinct, of intuition. Sometimes she circles it with a restless curiosity; other times she presses her hand to some embryonic ridge or bump and closes her eyes.

What I suspected years and years ago is true: God still talks to her. And when she’s making art most of all.

“It’s balanced, if that’s what you’re checking for,” I say.

A small movement ripples through her—not a flinch, just a renewed awareness. She forgot I was here, and as greedy as I am for attention, I don’t find this upsetting in the least. I find this gratifying,welcome, because it means she feels safe enough to lose herself to her work with me around. It bodes well for the future, but it also bodes well for my voyeurism, the voyeurism so esurient that it’s not sated with her nakedness, her daily life, her moments of vulnerability and courage.

No, I have wanted this for longer than she can even guess, and precisely this: to watch her render a whisper from God’s lips into a form that the rest of us can see and touch. To watch her coax something sublime out of lignin and cellulose, with nothing more than the strength of her body and a cutting edge.

She nods a moment after I speak. “Yes, the balance is good. I just want to make sure the feeling is right—the emotion carried in the shape. I want fury but not melodrama. Mortality but not resignation.”

When she taught that studio class, she’d been a quiet but endless well of method and technique. Any answers or suggestions she gave were almost always framed in the technical—finding lines, finding depth, when to stipple, hatch, and blend. So hearing her speak like this about her own work is riveting. Like all the craft and technique are so wholly ingrained that she’s once again reached that dreamy incipience we all start with, guided by a voice only she can hear.

She looks back at me and her cheeks bloom pink.

“Am I making you self-conscious?” I ask. “I can leave. This studio is meant to be yours. Fully.”

“No,” she says shyly. “I’m a little nervous when I think about you watching me, but I like you being here. Even though you don’t seem to get much work done while you’re with me.” Her lovely eyebrows pull together as if she’s worried for me and my work. Sweet Birdie.

“Can I tell you something?” I say, hopping off the workbench and strolling toward her.

She nods, looking at me as I approach with those incredible eyes, every shade of blue.

“I knew I wouldn’t get any work done, baby, because I like watching you too much. It’s mesmerizing. Erotic.”

Her nose scrunches a little. She’s genuinely confused. “Erotic?”

I’ll never get tired of showing her what she does to me. I take her hand and press it against the front of my pants, watch with smoky pleasure as her eyes widen.

“But I’ve just been carving… I’m not…” She looks down at the jeans and tank top she’s wearing, the nicer, well-made versions of her favorite clothes that I gave her. “There are wood chips everywhere,” she finally adds, like it’s impossible to get hard in the presence of wood chips.

I laugh a little and kiss the apple of her cheek. She’s worked up a little glow swinging the mallet back and forth, and a few strands of copper silk have caught on her damp temple just above where I kiss.

“It doesn’t matter,” I inform her, not bothering to disguise the fondness in my face or in my voice, not caring if she’s starting to see how besotted I am. “Watching you work is so fucking sexy. The muscles in your hands and arms, the sweat building on your throat, the physicality of it. But more than any of that is seeing your thoughts in action, your ideas, your mysterious little soul. It’s as close as I can be to getting inside you, and we both know how much I want that.”

Her cheeks are even pinker now. Because yes, she knows.

I find the button of her jeans and pop it open, slide my fingers to her cunt to play with it while I talk to her. “Did you masturbate today?”

That blush, both alarmed and ardent now, crawls down her throat to her chest. But I’ve learned something wonderful over the last week, and it’s that you can make Birdie Cooper tell you anything if you’ve got your hand down her pants while you do it. Or perhaps up her shirt. Or drawing little circles on her neck. She’s so touch starved that any stimulation, no matter how light or recently begun, overrides all her good sense. Pet her, and she will purr.

“Yes,” she says, her hands coming up to my biceps. She squeezes them a little, as if testing the size and strength of them without meaning to, and the jolt of raw pride I feel at that almost has me ripping off my shirt so she can look and squeeze her fill.

I manage to restrain myself for now. There will be plenty of time for my vanity.

“How did you do it?” I ask, dipping my head closer. Thanks to the cameras, I already know the answer—a vibrator while sitting in my office chair—but I want to hear it from her. A dirty little confession.

“I used a toy. A vibrator.”