She nodded. “It’s perfect.” Then she tilted her head to the side and stared at me, and I saw a glimmer of something return. A pillowy softness in her eyes that I recognized as the kind of affection a person can’t hide even if they try.

“What?” I said again.

She caught herself, regained her composure. “Nothing. You’re a genius. I’m excited about this, that’s all.”

I escorted her into the cage. The space was tight for two people and we had to stand close. “I’m going to hang a bar in the center, right here, with a perch. It will look nice, don’t worry.” I pointed to the spot on the drawing too, so she could reference where we were. “It may or may not be weight-bearing, I’m not sure yet. For you, it will probably be fine. But you definitely won’t want Diego sitting on it.”

She laughed and said, “Duly noted.”

“Oh. Wait. I have to show you my favorite part.” I put the sketches down and walked to the corner of the room, where I’d left a long cardboard box. “I found this wallpaper to put on the bottom.” I opened the box and unrolled the paper for her to see. It was made to look like old editions of the New York Times. “Get it? Every birdcage I’ve ever seen has newspaper on the bottom. And these aren’t random newspapers. I got to pick the year when I ordered it. These are headlines from 1973, the year of the Supreme Court’s decision on Roe v. Wade.”

“Incredible. Honestly, you’re blowing me away.”

We drank our awful, now cold cappuccinos and talked more about how I was going to make the mechanics work, as well as how the night would unfold. October told me we were having a meeting with the audiovisual engineer from the gallery the following day, and she couldn’t wait for me to explain this to him.

We worked separately for the rest of the day. I concentrated on the birdcage, and October concentrated on a selfie. She spent over an hour photographing her eyes in extreme close-up with a forensic camera. Then she edited the photos into a video montage, put a bunch of weird filters on them, and intercut the video with images of masochistic, hard-core pornography. The porn flashed by in quick, short bursts so that if you blinked you missed it and if you didn’t blink you weren’t quite sure you’d seen it at all. It made me uncomfortable when she showed it to me, mainly because it reminded me of the fantasy I’d had of her and Cal on the beach, and even though I knew it was impossible for October to have gleaned those thoughts from me, or sensed my shame all the way from Big Sur, I couldn’t exactly put it past her.