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But I do not suck my creative force, like a vampire, from the hearts of lovers, as one headline read.
“Let me get that.”
I’m startled out of my thoughts by Eric, who’s been assigned, or volunteered, as some kind of pain in my butt safety manager for the duration of the build. I’m not sure what his deal is since he’s acting more like a lackey than the highfalutin engineer he actually is.
But I have to admit, I don’t hate having his company or his help. Even though I do hate the premise of why he’s in my space.
“It’s a legal requirement. Not any indication of my confidence in your ability to create a perfectly safe installation,” Mrs. Power had assured me.
“Just here to do the math so you can focus on the art,” Eric added.
I’d smiled and kept my thoughts to myself. I was confident my math skills were as good as, if not better than, his.
“Catherine, you okay? You seem distracted today.” Eric takes a piece of vine from my hair and pokes it into the structure I’ve been building.
I reach for my head where the straw just was, too late to touch his hand. Then quickly drop my arm, realizing what I just tried to do.
“Math,” I blurt. “You’re here to do the math.”
He gives me a quizzical look.
“My ‘on-hand, human calculator.’ That’s what you called yourself in our meeting with Mrs. Power.”
“Oh, right. You need something figured out?”
I give him an obvious once over and smile. In part, because I’m an artist and he has the rare body proportions that both science and art agree is “the golden ratio.” And I’d be lying if I didn’t also admit to myself that as a woman who is attracted to the male form, he sparks all my hormonal synapses.
If only he wasn’t so arrogant.
“Has it occurred to you that for the past four weeks that you’ve been here, ready to do math for me, I haven’t needed you one time? Not once. The nest is basically ready to install and I don’t think whatever you were paid added any value to the project.”
Eric places a hand on his hip and scowls.
“I was—”
“Yeah, yeah, legal requirement. I know. And it’s not that I didn’t appreciate the extra hands from time to time …,” my body shivers as it recalls the lower back rub he gave me just a few hours ago when I groaned after spending ninety-minutes hunched over, bending straw into the nest.
“You’re welcome,” he says, breaking what had become a silly silence.
I hate how he flusters me. I puff out a breath. “You know, back home, I’d have an art student earn class credits for the work you did. And you got paid, what? Two grand a day? Flat fee of fifty thousand dollars?”
“I actually volunteered for this,” he admits.
That stops the rant about privilege that I was about to deal him, dead in its tracks. “You’re not being paid to be here?”
“No, I want to be here.”
“I don’t understand,” I admit.
“Not your job to understand. I’m fortunate enough to be in a position in my career to only take jobs that interest me. The money is mostly irrelevant.”
“Why this project? And why free?”
“Because I believe in your work. I’m here because I want to be.”
My first instinct is to be flattered but then I’m irritated. “Wait, you know I don’t like you and yet you persist in showing up every day to my studio space where I can’t avoid you?”
He smiles and nods.
