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It hadn't meant anything to Anton, I realized. Anton was one of the richest men in the world, and yet so poor in love that he had to buy a wife because love hurt him so badly he didn't want to feel it again. I pitied him. I wanted to help him. My fingers itched.
"What do you want?" my father asked. "Tell me, I'll give it to you."
I looked at him, old and bent and penniless, his greed causing him to overreach so far that he had lost everything. I pitied him, too. But I couldn't help him. And I didn't really want to.
"Nothing," I said. "Go away. If you come back, I'll call the police."
I started to close the door again, but he shoved his way inside. "Felicia!" he shouted. "Felicia, you have to help me!" His hands found my shoulders, and he was shaking me so hard my teeth rattled. My father never touched me. Shocked, I let him shake me before snapping back to reality, twisting out of his grip. He was so weak now, so small. He couldn't hurt me any more. I heaved, pushing him away, and ran to my tools. One of my salvaged two-by-fours leaned against the wall, and I grabbed it, brandishing it in front of me.
"Leave," I told him.
He started to cry, but I found he couldn't move me any more. I knew what was really important, and it wasn't the past and the damage already done.
Eventually, he left, and I locked the door behind him.
With trembling hands I went back to work.
*
I stopped sleeping so much. I dreamed about Anton too frequently: his voice, his smile, his surprised laugh. I dreamed about his hands on me, racing up my thighs, his breath on my pussy, his tongue deep inside me, clinging to me wherever he could find purchase, like a man afraid of being swept away. I dreamed of grinding my clit into his face. I dreamed of being tied up, wrapped in plastic, fucked until neither of us was afraid any more.
Stranger things have happened.
I made love to my clay. My fingers caressed it, thinking of Anton's skin. I pushed a
gainst it with my heels, my back arching, my mind wandering to our couplings. My thighs always rubbed together at inconvenient times, and I would flush as I tried to carve out the patterns of my head into the flesh of my creation.
It was beautiful, if I did say so myself. Beautiful and dangerous. Everything was there that made me think of Anton. No one who looked at it would think I was speaking of anyone else. It was my greatest work to date. Midday, when I should have been sleeping but couldn't stop thinking about it, I would get up and touch it through the wet towels I'd laid over it, preserving its plasticity until the last moment when I would dry it and fire it. I'd peek at it, and I would see all my hopes and dreams in it. My hands would wander my body, and I would grind my fingers into my pussy, thinking about Anton, but every time I came I never felt satisfied. Release eluded me.
I chased my memories of Anton, carved them into the clay, and hoped it would be enough.
*
In the middle of the third week the major part of my sculpture was done, hollowed out and in pieces, ready to be fired and put back together again. Then I would paint it. In the meantime, I had to get to the rest of it. But first I had to figure out how to get it to the kiln. I have a good friend who owns a great kiln for firing clay, but getting a piece there was usually a product of several friends helping me load it into borrowed or rented trucks. Right now, I didn't want to talk to anyone. My voice was rusty with disuse. I had to go to the only person I knew who could maybe help. Luckily he was right across the street, hanging out in an empty apartment across from mine.
"Hey, Jake," I said when he opened the door. The smell of take-out Chinese hit my nose, and my mouth watered.
He smiled at me, a huge predatory grin. Not half as sexy on him as the one that Anton sported. My heart gave a little twist, but I shoved it away. "Felicia!" he said, clearly happy to see me. And why not? I'd probably already made him gobs of money. Good for him.
"I need help to get part of my work to the kiln."
"Can I take pictures?"
I rolled my eyes. "Yes, god, of course. Just give me a hand."
Within the hour he procured a truck, and together we loaded it in. He stood back and took a few photos as I hauled a couple of the smaller pieces into the truck myself, presumably to send off to the tabloid he'd contracted with, but it didn't take long with his help. Hauling the big pieces downstairs is a lot easier if you have a second person.
"So what is it?" he asked me as we drove to my friend's studio.
"It's a sculpture," I said.
He blew air out his nose, clearly unimpressed with my clever sidestepping of his question. "Yes, I know, but... oh, forget it. Why is it in pieces?"
"Because it's too big to fire in one piece, duh."
"I haven't been able to get a good shot of it through the window," he said after a moment.
"Good," I told him. "You have my butt, though, right?"
