I called Tyler the next morning, in case people arrived in the afternoon, to ask if he could help me move Prudence from her station in the lobby over to the studio so that she could be framed and crated along with the rest. He agreed readily and arrived ten minutes later without apologizing or acknowledging his disappearance from the night before. I let it go. When we were finished, we clicked her panels together and set her upright in the back, against the wall, overlooking the other six.

He asked what I wanted to do with the two older panels of First Prudence.

“Burn them,” I said.

“Can I keep them?”

I laughed. “Why?”

“Because they’re a piece of you.”

“They’re only a fragment,” I said, shaking my head.

“I’ll settle for fragments,” he told me.

As we kissed, I wondered how fragments could ever be enough—for him, or for anybody.

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

I sent Tyler away so I could work, but it didn’t go well. I was distracted and nervous. Everything felt like a mistake even though I was following my own instructions exactly. I worried, all day, that the feeling had gone out of them—that the feeling is the thing that made them real and not knockoffs. I felt extremely lost and under a great deal of pressure.

But I pushed through and did what I was supposed to. At the end of the day, I used two rocks to grind stray ribbons of aluminum into a sparkling dust. When I struck handfuls of it over Humility, she was finished.

Or at least, I think she was—I wanted her to be—and so it was true.

*  *  *

Tyler knocked while I had one leg in the kitchen sink, half covered in soap, a razor in my hand and rollers in my hair.

“Come on in,” I said, running the razor under the water. “I need five more minutes.”

He carried the silver brush-holder, weighted at one end and nicely balanced. “I meant to bring this earlier.”

“I can’t wait to use it.” He leaned against the wall. “You want to watch?” I teased, waving my razor at him.

“Absolutely,” he said, and then we kissed again. I wrapped one wet soapy leg around him, bubbles disappearing into his shirt, and it wasn’t until I felt the tenderness of my chin that I pulled back.

“I’m not going to dinner looking like”—I waved my hand at my mouth—“a teenager.”

“Fair enough,” he said, backing off. When I finished shaving, I unclipped the rollers and brushed out my curls. He watched me curiously as I added mascara and my purple lipstick.

“It’s funny to see you in makeup,” he said. “I don’t think of you as someone who wears makeup. You’re so natural.”