“I like how it feels,” I murmur to Cole. “It’s so cool compared to the fire.”
“It’s as silky as your skin,” Cole says, running his fingers up my bare forearm.
The wet clay streaks across my flesh.
I link my fingers into Cole’s, feeling the clay squish between our hands.
The cone collapses, but neither of us cares.
Cole rubs it between his palms, then runs both hands up my arms, plastering my skin. Painting me with the clay.
I turn to face him, straddling his lap, pulling my shirt over my head. Dropping it down to the floor.
Cole smears my bare breasts with the clay. It’s slick and cool on my burning flesh, my skin glowing pink in the firelight.
I let him paint me all over. I let him cover my face like a mud mask, leaving only my eyes and lips bare. He covers my neck, my chest, my back and belly.
The ancient Egyptians thought that humans were formed of clay. Their ram-headed god turned them on a potter’s wheel with mud from the banks of the Nile.
Cole is shaping me under the clay. Massaging my flesh, reforming my body.
I give myself over to him. I let him work.
I close my eyes, bathed in the heat and light of the fire. I’m laying on the rug now, Cole’s hands roaming over me. He’s stripped off my clothes. I’m naked as the day I was born.
I used to be Mara the victim. Mara the damaged. Mara the disposable.
The day I met Cole, I was dying.
Maybe I did die.
Through Cole, I was reborn.
Now I’m Mara the artist. Mara the star. Mara the unbreakable.
Only Cole could make this possible.
He wants to be the center of my universe.
I want that, too.
I want to worship him as the Egyptians worshipped their gods. I want to pray to him for help and protection.
I want to give him my mind, body, and soul.
Cole strips off his clothes and climbs on top of me. He slides his cock inside me, arms braced on either side, looking down into my face.
He’s made my body so warm and relaxed that each stroke of his cock is pure molten pleasure. He slides in and out of me, watching my eyes roll back in bliss.
“Cole …” I groan. “I … I … I …”
“I know,” he says.
He can’t hold back his grin. He knows exactly what kind of effect he’s having on me.
I gaze up at him.
“I love you,” I say.
If I’d thought first, I would have been too afraid to say it.
Cole looks down at me, his eyes black and flickering, full of reflected flame.
“What does it feel like?”
“It feels like I’ll do anything for you. Jump off a bridge for you, turn myself inside out for you. It feels like madness, and I never want it to end.”
Cole considers this, his dark eyes roaming over my face.
“Then I must be in love,” he says. “Because that’s what I feel, too.”
A week later, while Cole and I are taking a stroll through Golden Gate Park, his phone rings in his pocket.
He pulls it out and answers the call.
It’s still a little disturbing hearing Cole talk with his usual level of animation, while his face remains flat and smooth. He doesn’t bother to make expressions when he’s on the phone and the other person can’t see.
“Good to know,” he says. And then, after a pause, “Yes, I agree.”
He ends the call, slipping the phone back into the pocket of his peacoat.
I have my arm tucked in his, so I have to crane my neck to look up into his face. I’m trying to guess who it was and what they said—an exercise much more difficult with Cole than with anyone else, because he gives me no hints, only looking down at me with that enigmatic smile playing at the corners of his lips.
I can’t tell if he’s pleased from the call, or only because I’m looking at him so curiously. He loves when my attention is fixed on him.
“Well?” I say when I can’t stand it any longer.
“That was York,” Cole replies.
He’s still giving me no clue from his tone or expression.
I’m jumping on the balls of my feet, bubbling over with anticipation and mounting fury that he won’t break the suspense.
“And? AND?” I shout.
“And I got it,” Cole says simply.
It’s my shriek of excitement, my sprinting around and around him in circles that makes him grin. He doesn’t register the triumph of the moment until I leap into his arms, my legs around his waist, my wrists locked about his neck, making him kiss me again and again.
“You got it!” I shout. “YOU FUCKING GOT IT!!!”
“I always thought I would,” Cole says, tossing his dark hair.
He doesn’t fool me. I know he didn’t really expect the win. The art world is all about momentum. While Cole has been distracted, Shaw has been putting out piece after piece, each more impressive than the last. He’s working almost entirely in sculpture now, deliberately stepping on Cole’s toes. Shouting his bid for Corona Heights Park in every way possible.
I think we both know how narrow a victory it probably was, Cole’s longstanding supremacy in this space just barely trumping Shaw’s rising star.
“They probably didn’t want to have to deal with him,” Cole says. “I may be an asshole, but Shaw’s fucking obnoxious.”
There might be truth in that. Shaw’s relentless drive for self-promotion would overshadow the sculpture and everyone else involved in the project. Besides, he doesn’t have the experience. He can’t make something that size out of wool.
“What’s the point of this project, anyway?” I ask. “Like, what’s it supposed to represent?”
“I dunno, unity and peace or some bullshit.” Cole shrugs. “I’m just doing what I want.”
I feel a deep thrill knowing that I gave Cole the idea. Or, I should say, David Bowie did.
Cole’s labyrinth is as dark and enigmatic as himself. One true path through to the center, and a dozen false trails that only turn back on themselves.
“I’m surprised they’re willing to make it,” I say to Cole. “Aren’t they worried about people getting lost?”
Cole laughs wickedly. “I told them it was like a corn maze. They think people will love it.”
“You’re a sadist.”
He kisses me, biting my lip hard enough to draw blood.
“You fucking know it.”
10
Cole
November flows into December, each day passing quicker than the last.
I’m already regretting winning the bid for the sculpture.
York is demanding I build it as quickly as possible, before the next round of elections in the spring.
And just as I expected, I’m fucking hating it.
I have to command an entire crew of construction workers, none of whom know the first fucking thing about working with these kinds of materials.
I’m out on the frigid, whistling flat top of Corona Heights Park, in the goddamned coldest December since 1932, shouting at welders who have already shattered a dozen of the smoked glass plates that make up the walls of the labyrinth.
This might possibly be tolerable if Mara was with me, but she’s not. She’s back at the studio, finishing up her series in time for the show I’m throwing next week.