She didn’t answer my questions. She just squinted and said, “Tell me your idea.”
“OK. Like I said, if you hate it, it’s not too late to dial it back. But here’s what I was thinking: What if I put a mechanism on the cage so that as the night rolls on—we have what, two hours? So, imagine as those two hours tick by, the cage is literally closing in on you. It’ll happen slowly and be barely perceptible, but perceptible enough, like if it wasn’t for the base sticking further and further out from the bottom of the bars, people might not even notice it until the cage is pressing up against you. But they’ll sense it. It will make them uncomfortable. And by the end of the night, you won’t be able to move. You know, as a sort of interpretation of how women seem to have all this freedom but are still caged in a lot of ways, and it’s stifling, and some people are still trying to take it away.”
Her expression had been expanding as I spoke. Her eyes were huge and sparkly, and she was pointing at me, pressing her finger into my chest. “Joseph Harper, do not get me excited about this unless you’re confident you can build it in a couple of weeks.”
“If this is all I’m doing, then yes, I’m confident I can.”
She pursed her lips as though she were holding a secret between them.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing.” She was smiling now, big and bright. “I just love this idea so much.”
“You do?”
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.
At some point later in the day, it must have been around four o’clock, Cal burst into the studio like he’d been shot out of a cannon and declared the workday over.“Enough of your toiling,” he said. “I’m only here for two more days. I want to hang out.”
October and I were at opposite ends of the room. We both stopped what we were doing and looked at him.
“Which one of us are you talking to?” she asked.
“Both of you. Come on. Let’s do something.”
October didn’t make a move, so Cal sauntered over to her, lifted her up, and flung her over his shoulder.
“All right,” she laughed. “Put me down.”
He slid her back to the ground. Then he rested his hands on her shoulders, looked at me and
