“These were Carey’s,” I said without thinking, reaching for it. But it was too high for me to grasp. I glanced around, checking for film canisters. There were only shining red bodies.

“Uh…yeah,” he said, surprised. “How’d you, uh, know that?”

“They’re the hands in Max’s house.”

“Oh—of course. Yes. Only the organs are mine.” He turned abruptly and ushered me back into the studio. I brushed past him. Our shoulders touched, and once again I felt a liquid blush travel from the center of my body to the ends of my fingers and toes.

“I thought you sold the real organs, covered in metal—not copies.”

“I do. I still make a mold first. They don’t all survive the process.”

He moved a propane torch to the side and set his gloves in front of an empty ceramic crucible.

“Careful. It’s still hot,” he said, gesturing to the crucible.

“It’s empty,” I noticed. “What did you make?”

He pointed to a long sand mold, running the whole back of the table where molten aluminum shimmered like mercury in a long, skinny line, five or six feet of it. I peered at it but didn’t understand.

“What is it?”

“It’s a brush. Well, it’s a brush-holder, like a cigarette holder. When I was in Vilnius, we visited a studio outside of town where they were painting the sets for an opera at Bregenz. They stood above the fabric and used these long sticks with brushes on the end. I don’t know if you’ll use it, but I wanted to make it. It’s a rod, essentially. Lightweight. And I put your name on the end.”

“Thank—thank you.” I stammered. “That—that’s incredibly kind of you.”

He leaned, pointing at the end of it, grazing the edge of my arm.

“It’s on the bottom side of the mold. It should be okay to take out tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” I said, one more time. He glanced at me over his shoulder, and I smiled, wondering, in the back of my mind, if he had done this for Carey.

“It’s nothing. I like to make stuff,” he said with a shrug. Nervously, he cleared a stack of metal scraps from a chair and gestured for me to sit. I looked down at it and frowned, then hopped up onto a clear spot on the opposite workbench. Sitting like this I was tall, almost even with him.

“What have you been doing with yourself?” he asked. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

“Work,” I replied. “Only work.”

“I felt badly, leaving you.” He looked at me—and I looked back. The air grew thick between us, humid and dense in the way that a car window fogs up if you sit and talk for too long after killing the engine.

“You missed me,” I tried to joke, my words tripping over each other again.