There Is No Devil: Chapter 9

After our drink together, Cole and I briefly part ways so he can deliver his submission to the sculpture committee.

This is one of our first moments apart since I moved in with him. I know he’s only allowing it because I’m holed up safely in the studio, with Janice on guard downstairs and security cameras everywhere.

I can never tell how much of his possessiveness is because of Shaw and how much is his own obsession.

Whatever the reason, it’s not a one-way street.

I’m also becoming unhealthily attached to Cole.

When he’s close by, I feel invincible. I can turn to him for help or advice. I’m completely safe for the first time in my life. No one would dare fuck with me, or even shoot a dirty look in my direction, under Cole’s terrifying stare.

Even though we’re so different from each other, I’m deeply comfortable in his company. His absence feels like a piece of me torn away. I want it reattached as soon as possible.

The minutes tick by slowly.

I work on my painting for a while, but I feel dull and listless. I keep staring at the robin’s breast, now just the right shade of dusty orange.

I like that Cole put his mark on my work in a small, subtle way.

It makes me love this painting all the more.

My work was never self-referential. I kept my memories stuffed down inside me. I didn’t mine them for material—I couldn’t look at them at all.

It was Cole who picked at the lock, finally forcing me to crack it open.

Like Pandora’s box, all the evil and ugliness came pouring out.

I thought it would kill me.

Instead, I pulled a splinter from my chest and a whole goddamn stake came out. I’m bleeding, but maybe now I’ll finally heal.

Painting these scenes doesn’t depress me. It feels like catharsis, like therapy. Once I have it down on canvas, the memory lives outside of me. Where I can view it when I want, but it no longer festers, poisoning me from the inside.

The paintings are so much better than anything I made before. They’re dark and compelling. They pull you in. You stare and stare, a kaleidoscope of emotions turning before your eyes. Each angle a new image.

I’m proud of them.

I’m proud of myself.

I never would have gotten here without Cole. Not to the studio, the shows, or even the point of putting brush to canvas with this fount of inspiration surging through me.

Cole says that I light him up, that I fill him with energy.

Well, the same is true for me.

His dark power surges through me: strong, persuasive, compelling. You can’t deny Cole what he wants. And you can’t deny me, either. Not anymore.

My phone buzzes in the pocket of my overalls.

I pull it out, feeling a leap of excitement at the sight of Cole’s name, even though he’s only been gone an hour.

“What did they say?” I cry, by way of greeting.

“Marcus York seemed to like it,” Cole replies.

“When will you hear back?”

“Soon. York is pushing this thing through as quickly as possible. He’s got some finger in the pie, I don’t know what exactly—probably a kickback on the construction.”

“Do you want to win?” I ask him, wondering how disappointed he’ll be if Shaw takes it instead.

“I always want to win.”

“And if you don’t?”

Cole laughs. “I don’t know how I’ll feel—I’ve never lost before.”

I like the sound of his voice over the phone—like he’s murmuring right in my ear. It makes the little hairs on my arms stand up. I don’t want to hang up.

“Are you coming back now?” I ask him.

“I’m almost there already. I’m driving like it’s the Grand Prix. Come stand at the window so I can see you as I pull up.”

Impulsively, I unfasten the straps of my overalls and step out of them. I pull off my shirt and my underwear as well.

Then I step up onto the window frame, completely nude, looking down at the street below.

I see Cole’s black Tesla zoom up to the curb, stopping short with a jerk. He steps out, tall and lean, his long dark hair tossed back by the wind.

He looks up at me.

I press my palm against the glass, phone to my ear.

“Fucking hell,” Cole breathes. “You’re a goddess.”

We head back to Cole’s house, which is beginning to feel like my house. Not because I own it, but because I love it so much. I love the stark, forbidding face, the jumble of pointed dormers and dark gables. The ornate woodwork and the black stone.

Most of all, I love this perch high up on the cliffs, with the endless cycle of waves crashing below.

The wind blows off the bay, wild and cold. It’s the chilliest November on record. People keep making stupid jokes about how we could really use that global warming right now. Janice said it to me this morning.

As Cole opens the door for me, I think perhaps I like the smell of his house best of all.

He’s lived here alone for more than a decade. The scent is all his: leather and clay, the spice of his cologne, ocean salt, wet rock after rain. And running through it like a vein, my own scent as well. As perfect a pairing as any I’ve created with food. More delicious than banana and bacon, or avocado and jam.

The textures and colors of his house soothe me. Everything is muted and dark, but so lovely. Cole could never bear anything garish or loud.

The deep chocolate boards creak beneath my feet. The diaphanous curtains blow back from the open windows with a sound like a sigh, letting the sea breeze into the house.

Cole heads up to his room to change out of his clothes. He’s fastidious and doesn’t like to wear the same shoes and trousers that made contact with the outside world. He’ll come down in a minute, probably wearing some old-fashioned smoking jacket and a pair of velvet slippers.

I’ll have to change clothes as well, as I’m still covered in paint.

For the moment, my attention is caught by my laptop, still open on the table where Cole left it.

I don’t care that he was reading my emails. I would have been incensed if anyone had done it a few weeks ago, but we’re well past that now.

I walk over to the laptop, intending to close the screen.

Right as my fingers make contact, I hear the soft chime of another email arriving.

Usually, my mother’s emails are shunted over to a folder where I don’t have to see them. Because that folder is already open, I’m hit with her name and the heading: Your Mother’s Day Card.

I stare, confused, forced to parse that sentence.

I obviously do not receive Mother’s Day cards myself, and I certainly haven’t sent one to her.

My index finger moves without my consent, floating over to the trackpad and clicking once.

The email leaps up before my eyes.

For once, there’s no rambling diatribe.

Just an image, which appears to be an open card, scanned and copied.

I recognize the childish handwriting:

Each word is a slap across my cheek. I can hear my own voice, my own thoughts, immature and desperate, crying in my ear:

Even my name signed at the bottom makes my stomach clench, the bile rising in my throat.

Little Mara. Desperate, pathetic, begging.

Every word of it is true—I wrote it. I felt it, at the time.

My deepest fear was that she would leave like my father did. She used to threaten me with it when I fucked up. When I forgot something or broke something of hers.

Later, it was me who wanted to leave. Who dreamed of doing it.

She’s throwing it in my face, the intense connection I had to her. The love to which I clung no matter what she said to me, no matter what she did. It took years longer for that love to wither and die. Even now, some perverse remnant endures, lodged deep in my guts.

I still think about her. I still yearn for what I wanted her to be.

I hate that about myself.

I hate my weakness.

I hate that she wields it against me as a weapon. Shaming me because I loved her. Guilting me because I want to stop.

Cole comes into the kitchen, dressed as I expected in a dark brocade jacket.

“What is it?” he demands, seeing the look on my face.

Without waiting for an answer, he grabs the laptop and turns the screen toward him.

He reads the email in a glance. The look that falls over his face would make a grown man stagger.

“When did she send this?” he barks.

“Just now.”

I’m shaking. I feel like she walked into the room and spat in my face.

She still has so much power over me.

I’ll never be free of her. She’ll never allow it.

Cole slams the windows shut and strips off his jacket, wrapping it around my shoulders.

“I’m covered in paint,” I tell him.

“I don’t give a fuck.”

I feel him shaking too, with anger.

“Where does she get the fucking nerve,” he hisses.

“She has no shame.”

“The fact that she thinks that proves anything except how fucking brainwashed you were—” he cuts himself off, seeing that talking about it is only making me more upset. “Never mind. Come on—I’ve got an idea.”

Numbly, I follow him.

I thought Cole would take me upstairs to the bedroom, or maybe into the main living room.

Instead, he leads me down to the lower level, to a parlor we’ve never visited before.

Like all the rooms, its doors are thrown open. I’ve only seen one locked room in this house: the one leading down to the basement.

As in much of Cole’s house, the original purpose of this space has been altered to suit his eccentric preferences. While the far wall is a large stone hearth, and the usual sofas and chaises are present, the bulk of the room is given over to a potter’s wheel.

Cole lights a fire in the grate. The pale applewood logs give off a sweet scent reminiscent of their fruit. The flames leap up, bringing alive the figures in the many paintings on the walls.

“Relax a minute,” Cole says, pushing me gently down on the sofa closest to the fire.

I sink back against the cushions, soaking in the heat. I’m still shaking, but not as much.

Why in the fuck does she still have this effect on me?

I have her blocked on every platform, I haven’t seen her face in years.

She’s 5’5 and fifty years old. Why am I afraid of her?

How does she still have the ability to reduce me to a blubbering child in an instant?

I’m so fucking pathetic.

Cole returns to the room, carrying his supplies. He pauses to set a vinyl on an old record player.

I have a deep love for vinyl. It’s not just something pretentious hipsters say—it really does sound different. The slight scratchiness, the rhythm of the platter rotating … it gives the perfect flavor to old-school tunes.

Cole knows this. The music that flows out of the speakers is old-fashioned and romantic. Not at all what I expected from him.

The potter’s wheel spins clockwise because he’s left-handed. Moistening the center of the bat with a sponge, he sets a fresh lump of clay in place. He flattens the edges with his large palm, sealing with his index finger.

Once the clay is firmly in place, he increases the speed of the wheel and wets his hands until they glisten in the firelight.

I watch it all, mesmerized.

Cole’s hands are beautifully shaped and marvelously strong. I could watch them work for hours.

The way he strokes and manipulates the clay reminds me of how his hands move over my flesh. I feel my skin burning, and not from the heat of the fire.

“Do you want to try?” Cole asks.

“I’ve never made anything on a pottery wheel.”

“Come here. I’ll show you.”

He scoots back on his stool to make room for me. Shucking off his jacket so I don’t dirty the sleeves, I sit between his thighs, his arms around me.

Cole wets my hands as well, until they’re cool and slippery, his fingers gliding easily over mine. His warm chest presses against my back, his chin on my shoulder.

“Use your right hand to push the clay up,” he says. “That’s backward from normal, but it won’t matter to you because you’ve never done it either way. Your left hand is the support. That’s right—squeeze the clay inward, and let it rise up between your hands. That’s called ‘coning up.’ ”

Under his instruction, the softened clay does indeed rise between my hands like the cone of a volcano.

Cole’s hands cover mine, guiding me. Keeping my motions smooth and strong. Caressing my skin.

The earthy scent of the clay mingles with the sweet apple and the smoke of the fire. The crackle of the record player and the pop of the logs send a pleasant friction down my spine.

“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.”