The article David wrote finally appeared in the magazine after the two had been dating for four months. It came in the mail a few days before Halloween, and Jen read it while waiting for yet another interview, this one on the community radio station, in prelude to her new opening. She flipped through the pages quickly, skimming over the sentences and comparing the photographs of her works with the other photographs in the other articles. Hers looked pretty good in comparison. The shadows beneath her own sculptures were crisply defined, the surfaces perfectly smooth and unblemished. She had been working on animals lately, and they had come out just as she had wanted: mute, seamless, and immaculately crafted. She had an eyeless horse made of cola-colored glass. A smooth felt sparrow sitting on a barren felt tree. A pink ceramic deer broken into four pieces and splayed on the ground. She felt proud of the work she had done, if only briefly, her pieces dignified by the sharp pages of the magazine.

Jen enjoyed reading the article that David wrote—it was a celebration, really—though she found it hard to understand why anyone else would be interested. Often it seemed less like a profile or a review than an essay responding to an essay that she had never read before, nor for that matter, that she really wanted to read. In a way, it reminded her precisely of why she’d become a sculptor in the first place. Namely, her desire to make things that unquestionably existed in the world, real things that you could touch and care for and find comfort in. Not pictures of things or interpretations of things, or even clever commentaries on the vagaries of representation, as David relished, but things themselves. For things, Jen believed, at their most thoughtful and compressed, were inherently so complex that explanation seemed almost irrelevant. At their best, they made words disappear.

Writing, Jen thought, seemed like a very sad pursuit. Like painting, but worse. At least paintings had color. Writing, though was just black marks on paper, standing in for people and objects and events that could never be seen or felt. It seemed pathetic in a way. Nouns were the saddest words of all, trying so hard to summon real objects to life.

In the middle of Jen’s meditation the host of the radio show appeared in the doorway, an elegant, elderly woman with a beautiful cloud of white hair, a toothy smile, and a regal brooch on her apricot scarf. She was fixture in the local art scene, and Jen had admired her style as long as she could remember. “Are you ready?” she said.

“Ready,” Jen said.

In the studio, waiting quietly for the previous DJ to introduce them, the host congratulated Jen on her new show and mentioned David’s article, which she had read and admired. “It sounds like he fell in love with you a little bit,” she said, winking.