“I’ll find some place for it,” she says, putting it on the corner of the table with other found objects—shells, rubber bands, shards of who knows what.

“That looks good,” I say. “I like that one.”

“No, it’s not right; it’s still not right.”

“I don’t think you ever want to finish it.”

I think she likes destroying and recreating it. I think she’d like to go on forever.

“It’s not right.”

It’s not right: You’re not supposed to take communion unless you’re right, they say in the Jehovah’s Witnesses church I grew up in. So no one ever takes it because no one’s ever right. Except sometimes a real old man or a real old woman will take it. I couldn’t believe that all you had to do was get old to get right.

When I was in Brazil, Catherine wrote me a letter: “I miss you, old girl. I miss seeing your smiling face. We’re living on the white-washed island of Ibiza, land of expatriates, of mirages, of fortresses. Come stay with us.”

My face is not always smiling, but whenever she asks me to come stay with them, I come. Sometimes I come frowning, wondering what new shit Catherine will pull.

Ernest says my presence makes Catherine happy, but Catherine always reminds me of de Kooning’s Woman and Bicycle; you never know where the real smile is supposed to be; smile = laughing teeth.

“What would we do without you,” Catherine says as I arrive.

Ernest kisses my jaw and there’s Catherine standing in the door wearing a yellow dress. Ever since that medium told her that her aura was yellow, she’s worn yellow. She smiles at me and I smile back, then go give her a kiss too.

“Did you have a good time in Brazil?” she asks. “Did you enjoy yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“Meet anyone special?”

“No.”

“Sure you did.”

“You look like a canary.”

“But you wouldn’t tell us, would you?”

Her brown nose contains two freckles and a mole.

She hugs me and stands close to my face. I back away like I always do, to keep at least some of my own territory.

“Do you know how happy you make me?”

I follow her into the house.

Today I notice gray in Catherine’s hair. She reaches up and brushes sweat from her forehead. She has gray sideburns, edges.

Ernest peeks his head in the door of Catherine’s studio.

“Oh, you’re working.” He comes inside, stands watching Catherine a moment. “You’re still on that wretched thing? Every one looks the same to me. Why don’t you move onto something else? That’s just holding you back, it seems to me. Move on to something else.”

“You used to say I was too impatient, rushing to the next thing.”

“Well, there’s a mean, Baby; there’s such a thing as a mean.”

She looks at him like she’s the mean baby.

“I want to get it,” mumbles Catherine.

“Suit yourself.”

He turns to me. I look at the mole on his cheek, then his playful brown eyes.