"Fine," I say. "Come after lunch. And don't bring anyone."
"Just me. I promise."
He arrives at two, slightly out of breath from the walk from the subway, wearing a scarf that's too long for him and carrying a paper bag.
"Pastries," he says, setting the bag on the workbench. "From that place on Atlantic. The almond ones you like."
"You remembered."
"I remember everything about the people I'm trying to keep happy." He grins, then turns toward the sculpture, and the grin fades.
He goes still. Completely still, the way Tess did, but different—Tess looked at it as a fellow artist. Nish is looking at it as someone who's spent his career finding work that matters and showing it to the world. He walks around it slowly. Touches oneof the lower ribs with his fingertips, then pulls his hand back like he's been shocked.
"Jess," he says, and his voice has changed. Quieter. Almost reverent. "This is—"
He doesn't finish. He walks around it again. Stands in front of it, then behind it, then crouches to look up through the ribs at the gap above.
When he stands, his eyes are bright. "This is the best piece in the show. And I haven't seen the other eleven yet, so I shouldn't say that, but I'm saying it anyway. This is extraordinary."
My throat tightens. I look at the floor because I don't know what to do with my face.
"The gap at the top," he says. "Are you closing it?"
"I don't know yet."
"Don't." He says it firmly, with a conviction that surprises me. "Leave it open. That's where the whole piece breathes. If you close it, it becomes a statement. Open, it's a question. Questions are always more powerful."
I look at the sculpture. At the gap. The ribs reaching, not touching.
A question.
"Also," Nish says, his voice returning to normal, business mode kicking in, "I should tell you—the show got a boost. An anonymous donor came through with a significant gift. We're getting professional lighting, a printed catalog, proper marketing. I've never had this kind of support for a group show."
"Anonymous?"
"Completely. Came through an arts patronage fund. My accountant nearly fell off his chair." He's beaming. "It means your work gets shown the way it deserves. Real lighting, Jess. Not my usual disaster with clip-on lamps."
I smile because his excitement is contagious, but something brushes against the edge of my attention. Anonymous donor. Anonymous latch repair. I'm collecting anonymities like loose change, and I don't know what they add up to.
Probably nothing. The art world runs on anonymous donations—rich people like tax deductions and the feeling of benevolence without the inconvenience of being thanked. It has nothing to do with a replaced latch on a warehouse in Brooklyn.
I push it aside and eat a pastry with Nish, and we talk about the catalog and the opening night and whether I should write an artist's statement, which I'd rather not do but apparently it's expected.
After he leaves, I clean up and realise I'm out of welding rods. Also low on grinding discs, and the clamp on my vice grip is slipping, which means I need a new one before it fails mid-weld and ruins a piece. The hardware store on Fourth is open until eight. I pull on my jacket and head out.
The store is the good kind of cluttered—narrow aisles stacked floor to ceiling, everything slightly dusty, staffed by a man named George who knows where every item is by some form of spatial memory that borders on supernatural. I like it here. It smells like metal and wood and machine oil, which is basically my perfume at this point.
I'm in the welding aisle, reaching for a box of 7018 rods on the top shelf—why do they always put the ones I need on thetop shelf, I'm not that short—when a hand reaches past me and lifts the box down.
I didn't ask for help. I was handling it.
"This one?" The voice is low. British. And close—closer than a stranger should be, close enough that I can feel the warmth of him behind me without him actually touching me.
I turn, and my first thought is:too much.
He's tall. Dark-haired. The coat I recognize from the bodega—expensive, out of place, the kind of thing that announces money without saying a word. But it's not the coat that bothers me. It's his face. His expression. The way he's looking at me with an attention so focused it feels like a physical thing, like a hand pressed flat against my sternum.
Nobody looks at strangers like that. Not in New York. Not in a hardware store. You look through people, past them, around them. You don't lookintothem, not with that kind of intensity, not unless you want something.
