The Gargoyle

XXX.

– looked up into the eyes of Marianne Engel.

My body was wrapped in layers of wet cloth, to lower my fever. I was back in her bed, in our home, and her hand was resting on my cheek. She told me that it was over and I told her that I had been in Hell. She said that it sure looked that way, and handed me a cup of tea. I felt as if I hadn’t had a drink in years. “How long was I…?”

“Three days, but nothing is better than having suffered. It is a short hardship that ends in joy.” Same old Marianne Engel.

“Let’s agree to disagree.”

She steadied my hand on the cup, as it was shaking badly. “How do you feel?”

“Like a brand plucked out of the fire.”

She smiled. “Zechariah 3:2.”

I checked my body: my skin had returned to its damaged state; my face had tightened; my lips had receded; fingers were missing; my knee was stiff; the hair on my forearms was gone and there were only wisps on my head.

My hand, just as it always had, went to my chest. Where I expected to find my angel coin, I found nothing, despite the fact that it had not been off my body since Marianne Engel had given it to me almost fourteen months earlier.

“Your coin served its purpose,” she said.

I checked in the sheets, under the bed, all around, but my neck chain was nowhere to be found. Marianne Engel must have removed it during my withdrawal. I told myself it was only a strange coincidence that she had done so while I was hallucinating about handing it over to Charon.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll replace your necklace with a better one.”

I felt better than I had in years, even before the accident, by simple virtue of an undrugged mind and veins not sluggish with narcotic syrup. This is not to say that I never felt a twinge of desire rising for the old drug-I did; the habit had been with me too long-but it was different. I could do without morphine; I wanted to do without it. I looked forward to my sessions with Sayuri and progressed faster with my exercises.

But best of all, the bitchsnake really was gone.

I was better able to look after myself than at any time since my accident, and Marianne Engel returned to her carving. She took up exactly where she’d left off, resuming an immediately unhealthy velocity. All I could do was to clean her ashtrays and try to curb her intake of coffee on the spoon. I brought her bowls of fruit that became still lifes rather than meals, and when she finished a statue, only to collapse onto the next block of stone, I washed her body. I promised myself that if she approached physical collapse again, I would do anything and everything necessary to stop her. I promised myself.

From February nineteenth to the twenty-first, she pulled statue 16 out of the stone. On the twenty-second, she slept and absorbed; from the twenty-third to the twenty-fifth, she extracted number 15. She took a day of rest and then she worked until the first day of March, producing number 14. One does not need to be a mathematician to realize that this brought her past the halfway point of the final twenty-seven hearts: thirteen more hearts and she would be finished. Thirteen more hearts until she thought she would die.

Her return to carving seemed to affect even Bougatsa, who lacked his usual bounce. When we came back from our daily walks, he would eat a huge bowl of food before settling lethargically to drool on my orthopedic shoes.

In early March, I had a routine checkup with Dr. Edwards. We reviewed my charts and talked about a minor surgery that was scheduled for the end of the month. She seemed genuinely pleased. “You’ve been out of the hospital for over a year and things couldn’t be going any better.”

I kept my mouth shut about the fact that Marianne Engel was, at that very moment, stretched out on new stone, readying herself. Lucky 13 was calling.

“You know,” Nan added, “it just goes to show how wrong a doctor can be. There was a point when I thought you had given up, and then you became one of our hardest-working patients. And when you left, I was certain that Marianne wouldn’t be able to look after you.”

Marianne Engel produced statues 13, 12, and 11 (an old woman with donkey ears; a horned demon with its sloppy tongue hanging out; and a lion’s head with elephant tusks), taking only a few hours off during the process. She had already lost the weight she’d gained after Christmas, and her speech was becoming confused again. Statue 10 came into existence around March twentieth.

I was scheduled to enter the hospital for surgery on the twenty-sixth. Before I went in, I needed to decide what to do with Bougatsa. Not only did I doubt Marianne Engel’s ability to look after him when she could not even look after herself, but also the dog, perhaps in an example of animal empathy, was losing weight. I wondered whether I could use this to induce enough guilt to get her out of the basement, and decided to give it a try.

I made her stop carving long enough to explain that if she chose sculpting over Bougatsa’s care, I would have to place him in a kennel. (This was not only a bargaining tactic, but also the truth.) Marianne Engel took a look at me, and a look at Bougatsa, and she shrugged. Then she returned to her work on statue 9.

There was a large puddle of shit on the floor. It was not mine.

In all the time I’d lived in the fortress, Bougatsa had never once relieved himself inside. I am somewhat loath to write a detailed description of the stool, but two things need mentioning. First, the stool was more liquid than solid. Second, it contained leafy remains.

The only plant in the house was the one that Jack had brought. (Perhaps there had been others before my time, but they had become casualties of Marianne Engel’s negligence while carving.) When I inspected it, it was quickly apparent that Bougatsa had been making a meal of its leaves. Most were gone, and the ones that remained all had jagged edges in the shape of teeth marks.

I tracked the dog down and found him stretched out in the study, breathing shallowly. When I swept my hand along his side to comfort him, fur came off in my fingers. His ribs were a story of starvation and I was shocked: not strictly at his thinness, but because I didn’t understand how it could be possible. In recent weeks, Bougatsa had been eating much more than usual; in fact, he never seemed to stop eating.

I headed into the basement to inform Marianne Engel that her dog was seriously ill, because I wanted to shame her into coming with me to the veterinary clinic. But it didn’t work out quite like that. She was hunched over a beast whose eyes seemed to be issuing a stern warning to keep away. I spoke anyway. “There’s something wrong with Bougatsa. He’s sick.”

She looked up at me, as if she had heard some mysterious clatter coming from an area of the room that was supposed to be empty. Blood was flowing from one of her wrists where the chisel had gone wrong, and streaks of red were painted across her forehead where she’d wiped it. “What?”

“You’re bleeding.”

“I am a thorn prick on Christ’s temple.”

“No,” I said, pointing. “Your wrist.”

“Oh.” She looked at it, and some blood flowed into her open palm. “It’s like a rose.”

“Did you hear me? Bougatsa is sick.”

She tried to pull a strand of her hair away from her breast, where it was awkwardly pasted with sweat and stone dust, but her fingers couldn’t quite gauge the distance. She missed, over and over. “Then go to the infirmary.”

“You mean the vet?”

“Yes.” Drops of her blood fell into the rock chips at her feet. “Vet.”

“Let me look at that.” I reached towards her wrist.

Marianne Engel, with a sudden look of terror in her eyes, raised the chisel in my direction. Only once before had she threatened me with violence, when she’d thrown the jar of coffee at me in the belfry. At that time I was certain she meant to miss me but I could tell that if she lunged at me now, with the chisel, she would mean it. She looked as though she didn’t know where she was, or who I was; she looked as though she would do anything to defend her ability to keep working.

I took a step back, lifting my hands in the gesture people automatically make to show they mean no harm. “He’s your dog, Marianne. Don’t you want to come with us? With me and your dog, Bougatsa?”

The name seemed to stir her memory. The knots of her hunched shoulders released and she let out the breath she’d been holding. Most important, she lowered the chisel as the fear left her eyes.

“No.”

There had been no anger in her voice, but also no regret. Her voice was simply dull and hollow, lacking any nuance of compassion, as if her words were not new sounds but echoes.

By the time I had my foot on the stairway’s bottom step, all her attention was once again focused on the stone in front of her.

The veterinarian was a plump woman named Cheryl with red hair and bright eyes, probably of Irish heritage. One of the first things she asked was why I looked the way that I do, which was so much better than trying to pretend that there was nothing wrong with my appearance. “Car accident.”

“I see. So when did you start noticing the problem with, ah”-she glanced at the chart that her receptionist had filled out-“Bougatsa? Greek pastry, right?”

“Yeah. Same color. I found diarrhea on the floor this morning, and I think he’s been eating leaves.”

“I see.” Cheryl nodded. “His coat always like this? It seems to be lacking luster.”

“You’re right,” I answered, “and it feels kind of greasier than usual. His problems started recently, but this morning it was like they just jumped up a level. He’s definitely losing weight.”

She asked whether he was lacking energy, and I confirmed he was. Then she performed a few little tests on him, shining a light into his mouth and eyes, with Bougatsa whimpering passively throughout the process. I asked what she thought the problem was.

“Does he seem tender in this region?” She asked this while pressing at Bougatsa’s stomach, and then answered her own question. “Actually, he doesn’t seem to mind it too much. Were there any signs of undigested fat in his stool?”

Who-other than a veterinarian-knows what undigested fat looks like in dog shit? I answered that I’d forgotten to run a chemical analysis before arriving, so I couldn’t say definitively. Cheryl gave me a scowl before lifting Boogie’s tail to inspect his anus. “Has he been eating his own excrement?”

“Jesus Christ.” Once again, Cheryl expected far more from my observational skills than I felt was reasonable. “I don’t know. Maybe?”

“I can’t be sure what the problem is,” Cheryl said, “without running a few tests. Would you consent to leaving him here for a day or two?”

This wasn’t the time to explain that Bougatsa was not actually my dog, so I just signed the release forms. When I asked whether the tests would be painful, the good vet looked offended. “Not if I can help it.”

I told the dog to be good for Dr. Cheryl and he slopped his tongue out to lick my hand. Some people might view this as a sign of affection, but I’m fully aware that dogs do it only because it is an inborn instinct for grooming.

When I called a few days later, Cheryl still hadn’t found the cause of Bougatsa’s problems but assured me she was getting close. She sounded apologetic but, truthfully, this was actually what I’d been hoping for.

The clinic would be convenient housing while I had my operation, so I explained my situation and asked whether Bougatsa could remain until I got out of the hospital. The vet was agreeable, saying it would provide time to do a thorough diagnostic workup.

Now I only had Marianne Engel to contend with. I didn’t want to leave her alone at home, but she was an adult and I was only going to be in the hospital one night, two at the most. Should she follow her regular schedule, she would be carving the entire time. Had I been home, she would only have ignored me anyway.

As soon as I was settled in at the hospital, all the old faces filled my room. Both Connie (ending her shift) and Beth (starting) dropped in to say hello. Nan was there, and after a few minutes Sayuri and Gregor entered at a respectable distance from each other, touching hands only when they thought no one was looking. When I said the only person missing was Maddy, Beth informed me that she’d recently married and moved away. My first assumption was that her new husband must be some sort of bad boy-perhaps a Hell’s Angel or a corporate lawyer-but, much to my surprise, he was a graduate student in archaeology and Maddy was accompanying him to a dig on the coast of Sumatra.

Everyone asked about Marianne Engel; and I lied, sort of. I said she had a pressing deadline for a statue, seeing no need to add that her Three Masters were the ones who now set her timetable. Everyone nodded but I could see that Sayuri, at least, was not buying my story. I couldn’t look her in the eyes, and this alerted Gregor to my deception as well.

When only Nan and I remained in the room, I asked-since I still had a few hours before my surgery-if she wanted to go for a walk around the hospital grounds. She looked at her schedule, checked her pager and cell phone, and called the nurse’s station before she finally agreed. Halfway through our stroll, she even slipped her arm into the crook of mine and pointed out some patterns in the clouds that she said reminded her of a school of sea horses. I treated her to a hot dog from a vendor and we sat on a bench as the people walked by. Nan got a mustard stain on her shirt and I thought it looked good on her.

I counted backwards when the mask was placed over my mouth. By this point, I was an anesthesia expert and I knew I’d wake up in a few hours. Undoubtedly there would be residual soreness, but I was used to pain and had been through enough surgeries to know that I would be fine. At least, as fine as I ever was.

Except it didn’t work out that way. My routine surgery had a complication: sepsis. Such infections are not uncommon in burn patients, even those as far along in their recovery as I was, but luckily the infection was not particularly severe and my body-so much stronger because of my exercise regimen-would be able to cope. Nevertheless, I needed to remain in the hospital until it passed.

Sayuri called Cheryl to extend Bougatsa’s stay, while Gregor volunteered to inform Marianne Engel of my situation. He decided to drive to the fortress to tell her in person, since she was not answering her phone. I warned him that there was a good chance that she wouldn’t answer the door and, as it turned out, I was correct. After ten minutes of pounding, Gregor gave up even though he could hear Bessie Smith wailing at full volume from the basement.

Jack had an extra set of keys, so I called her to request that she check in on, and feed, Marianne Engel. Jack assured me that she would do so, and even asked whether I needed anything brought to the hospital. There wasn’t, because I’d made so many visits that I habitually packed a full bag (fresh pajamas, toiletries, books, etc.) for even the smallest of operations.

With these few things put in order, there was nothing left to do but lie in my bed (which, by the way, no longer felt like a skeleton’s rib cage) and heal. Each evening, Gregor brought me new books, and once he even sneaked in a few beers. Because, as he explained with a glint in his eye, he was a bit of a rebel. I assured him that he most certainly was.

After a week I was released, and Gregor booked off an hour to drive me home. When we arrived at the fortress, all was silent. Normally this would mean nothing-maybe Marianne Engel was out for a walk, or preparing on a fresh slab of stone-but I had a bad feeling. I didn’t even bother to check her bedroom; I headed directly for the basement, with Gregor following.

Even though I had lived with her for more than a year, I was not prepared for what I saw. First, there were three newly completed statues: numbers 8, 7, and 6. Given that I’d been gone only a week and it usually took her more than seventy hours to complete a single piece, the arithmetic suggested that she’d been working not only without a break but also with greater fervor than usual. This I could hardly believe.

Marianne Engel was not working or asleep on new stone. She was sitting in the middle of her three new grotesques, covered entirely in stone dust that emphasized her every emaciated bone. She had been skinny when I’d left for the hospital, but she was much thinner now. She must have eaten nothing since I’d last seen her. Her chest heaved a wretched little victory with each breath, and her skin, which was so bright when she was healthy, looked as though it had been rubbed over with old paraffin. Her face was a skeletal mirror of what it once had been, with such large dark circles under her eyes that they gave the impression of gaping sockets.

A crimson gloss of blood coated the medieval cross tattooed on her stomach, oozing from a series of deep gashes on her chest. Her right hand lay open on the floor, cradling a gory chisel in fingers that looked like an old lady’s, ready to snap under even the slightest pressure.

Across the flaming heart on her left breast, Marianne Engel had carved my name deeply into her flesh.

I have no doubt that Gregor Hnatiuk is a good doctor but his practice mostly involves speaking to people, trying to figure out their problems, maybe prescribing a few pills. He was not prepared to see what Marianne Engel had done. He didn’t seem to be able to accept the scene as real, perhaps in part because she had long since stopped being a patient and had grown into a fond acquaintance. He was unable to distance himself and kept blinking as if trying to reset the wayward gyroscope of his mind, surprised each time he opened his eyes to find that nothing had changed.

Marianne Engel turned her euphoric face towards me, her eyes filled with tears not of pain but of joy. Her face was filled with vacant wonder, as if she had seen something far too marvelous for mere words to describe.

“God sent an immense fire into my soul.” Her voice quivered with delight, as the blood continued to flow out of my name on her breast. “My heart was utterly inflamed with love, and I hardly noticed the pain.”

Despite his initial shock, Gregor recovered first and ran upstairs to phone emergency services. Meanwhile, I tried to convince Marianne Engel to rest calmly, but she just kept talking. “That which abides the fire shall become clean.” She stared at me wildly, as if waiting for agreement. “The water of separation shall purify.”

Gregor returned, bringing with him a blanket to cover her shaking body. As we draped it over her, he tried to reassure her. “The paramedics are coming, and everything will be okay. You just need to relax.”

Marianne Engel paid no attention to the words. “The Lord is a consuming fire.” Ten minutes later, when the EMS team arrived and Gregor led them into the basement, she was still going on. “That which can’t abide the fire shall go through water.”

The female paramedic asked whether there was a history of substance abuse and I assured her there was not; she nodded, but I’m not sure she believed me.

“The skies sent out a sound,” Marianne Engel was saying, as they knelt beside her and checked her vitals, and it was as though she were trying to convince them. “The arrows went abroad.”

The paramedics strapped Marianne Engel to a board and carried her out. I was allowed to ride in the ambulance with her, while Gregor followed in his car. I held her hand as they slipped an IV tube into her arm. “When the rock was opened,” she slurred, “the waters gushed out.”

In a few moments, the drugs put her to sleep. As soon as she was under, I gave a more detailed medical history-as much as I knew, in any case-so the paramedics could radio ahead to the hospital. When we arrived at the emergency entrance, two doctors and the on-duty psychiatrist met us and Gregor took over the task of admitting her. I continued to hold her unconscious hand and talk soothingly, saying all the things I wanted to tell her, but still couldn’t, when she was conscious.

When I finally returned to the veterinary clinic, Cheryl sat me down. “Do you know what pancreatic insufficiency is?”

I said I did, if it was anything like pancreatitis in humans.

“Dogs can get pancreatitis as well, but that’s not quite what Bougatsa has. Pancreatic insufficiency is common in large breeds like German Shepherds, and symptoms come on quickly, which sounds like what happened here. To put it simply, he can’t break down his food into smaller molecules because he lacks the proper enzymes. As a result, he’s not absorbing any nutrients, and that’s why he’s hungry all the time. He’s been eating as much as he can, even plants, to make up for the lack, but no matter how much he eats, he isn’t getting the nutritional benefits. It’s kind of like he’s been starving to death.”

“But that’s the bad news,” she said. “The good news is you caught it quickly and it’s completely treatable, controllable with diet. He’ll be his old self in no time.”

She took me to the kennel and I would almost swear there was a sparkle in Bougatsa’s eyes when he saw me coming. But it was probably only because Cheryl had given him some food he could finally digest.

The doctors told Marianne Engel they were only treating her for exhaustion, but the truth was that they were also monitoring her mental state closely. Gregor came by her hospital room often, but his visits were driven by friendship rather than professional interest. Because of his personal involvement, a different psychiatrist was handling the case.

I came every day and the doctors even let me bring Bougatsa by the hospital once. Canine therapy, they called it. Marianne Engel came out to sit on a bench in the sunlight and pet him a bit. She seemed shocked by his thinness, as if she didn’t remember that his condition had developed in front of her eyes. The dog, for his part, forgave her completely for deserting him when he needed her most. Dogs are stupid like that.

When she was released at the end of the week, it was against the strongest recommendations of her doctor. I was hesitant, as well: of all the damage she’d inflicted on herself, most had come through simple disregard for her own body. Carving my name into her chest was a willful and horrifying act, which made me feel I was no longer simply neglectful of her but also a cause of her pain. As she was physically recovered, the hospital couldn’t keep her without a court order, however, and no matter what I said I couldn’t talk her into a few more days. When we returned home, Bougatsa ran all around the house, knocking over the plant that a few weeks earlier he’d been eating.

Marianne Engel had been home only two days before she started peeling off her clothing to prepare for her next stone. When she came to the bandages wrapped around her chest, she removed those as well. “I can’t communicate with these on.”

I was not going to let her do this again. I had already watched her collapse twice. I would not fail her a third time; I would not allow my name to become infected on her flesh.

What followed could not properly be called an argument, because arguments involve an exchange of opposing ideas. This was all me. I spoke softly; I yelled; I cajoled; I threatened; I pleaded; I demanded; I spoke with logic; I spoke with emotion; I spoke word after word after word after word that she completely ignored. She gave the same answer repeatedly: “Only five statues left. I’ll rest when they’re finished.”

As I could not talk her out of it-logic is useless in the face of obsession-I would have to find another way to protect her. I decided to visit Jack, even though she had broken her promise to care for Marianne Engel while I was in the hospital.

When I walked into the gallery I saw a trio of familiar grotesques and, on the wall behind them, a picture of a healthy Marianne Engel. Chisel in hand, her mutant hair artfully tousled, she was leaning against one of her early creations. The short caption under the photo mentioned nothing about her mental illness: “Unlike most modern sculptors, this local artist with an international reputation refuses to use any pneumatic tools, preferring to carve in the medieval tradition…”

A young couple walked around one of the larger works, running their fingers over the edges. They were discussing its “wonderfully tactile sense”-but where could they put it? Nothing turns the stomach quite like moneyed thirtysomethings discussing art. Jack, seeing a prospective sale, attempted to walk right past me with a dismissive hand lifted in my direction and said, “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

“Why did you abandon her?” I asked. For once, I was pleased with the rasping quality of my voice-it made my proclamation of her failure sound all the worse.

Jack immediately aborted her approach to the customers and pulled me into an alcove to launch into a vigorous defense against my accusation. The way she spoke reminded me of a train derailing: all her words were boxcars, hurtling frantically forward, threatening to fly off the tracks and burst through the end of each sentence in a devastating mess. She claimed that she had gone to the fortress every night I was in the hospital, forcing her way in past the furniture piled up against the front door. Once inside, she had stood between Marianne Engel and her statues, refusing to move until she at least ate some fruit.

“You found her in the middle of the afternoon, right?” Jack was referring to the time of day when Gregor and I arrived at the fortress. “I work, you know. I’m not like you-I pay my own bills. I can’t shut down the gallery to fritter away the day with her. And if you’d bothered to call, I would have rushed right down to the hospital. But no…”

We debated who was responsible for what, until the young couple couldn’t help but stare in our direction. I shot them my most monstrous look, the one that would let them know to mind their own goddamn business.

Jack viewed this as an excellent opportunity to point out that her customers funded my life. I countered that they paid for her life as well, while she piggybacked on Marianne Engel’s talent. “You’re probably overjoyed that she’s already carving again.”

In that instant, all the anger on Jack’s face was replaced by genuine surprise. “She’s what?”

It became impossible for me to continue my attack: there could be no denying Jack’s concern. “She’s never had manic sessions so close together before. Once a year, maybe. Twice, in a bad year.”

In that moment, I hated Jack for the fact that she’d shared twenty years of her life with Marianne Engel. It was the very worst kind of hate, built upon envy, but it was also hate that I had to put aside. Jack’s experience would be invaluable, so I leveled my voice as well as I could. “What do I do now?”

“I don’t know.” She flipped the sign from “Open” to “Closed,” shooing out the remaining customers, and I followed her out of the shop. “But we have to do something.”

Jack knew a lawyer who specialized in matters of involuntary hospitalization. I suppose this was only natural, after all her years of dealing with psychiatric patients-first her mother, then Marianne Engel.

Clancy McRand was an old man who sat behind a big wooden desk that sported a computer covered with small yellow Post-it notes. He kept pulling down on the lapels of his coat, as if doing so would allow him to close his jacket over a stomach that he refused to admit was as large as it really was. McRand cleared his throat a lot, even though I was doing most of the talking. He jotted down the facts on his big yellow legal pad, and Jack offered a few comments when he asked questions to which I didn’t know the answers. He seemed to know a fair amount about Marianne Engel already, from the thick file he had pulled out of the cabinet when we first arrived. It was clear that Jack had engaged McRand’s services in the past, perhaps in setting up the conservatorship.

When we had told him everything that might be relevant, he said we might have a case but that it wouldn’t be easy. Things never are, I thought, if lawyers can drag it out for a fat payday. However, as he explained the process, I came to understand that it was not his greed that would delay things. It really was the system.

Usually, a relative of the patient filed the petition for emergency commitment. While it was legally possible for anyone to file, McRand explained, the process was slowed if the petitioner was not a close family member. Because Marianne Engel had no family, she would need to be examined by two physicians before the petition could even be filed. If she refused to be examined-as I knew she would-I’d be forced to submit a sworn statement that she was “gravely disabled.” McRand looked at me inquisitively to ensure that I’d be willing to do so and I assured him that I would, but I’m certain he caught the hesitation in my voice as I said it.

“Umm hmm,” McRand harrumphed, before he continued. Once my petition was properly filed, Marianne Engel would be required to appear before an examining physician at a hospital. If she refused-as, again, I knew she would-law officers would compel her to attend. In my imagination, I saw two beefy cops placing her into a straitjacket and dragging her by the elbows into court.

If the examining physician agreed with my assessment that she was gravely disabled, an emergency commitment of seventy-two hours would be imposed. At the end of this time, the hospital director could file another petition for a longer-term commitment. This was essential because-once again, as we were not relatives-neither Jack nor I could do it ourselves. Without the cooperation of the director, we would have no legal right to proceed with the petition.

Assuming that the hospital director did agree, a hearing would come next. Here Marianne Engel would be compelled to testify, as would I, and Jack in her role as conservator. It was possible that others would be called as well, people who had observed Marianne Engel’s recent behavior. Perhaps Gregor Hnatiuk and Sayuri Mizumoto, for example. The mental health commission would preside over the hearing, although Marianne Engel would have the legal right to a jury trial. And, if it came to that, she could hire her own lawyer.

In court, Mr. McRand warned, there was little doubt that my character would be brought up. Given my career in pornography, my admitted drug addictions, and the fact that Marianne Engel was paying all my medical bills, any judge would be reluctant to suspend her legal rights just because I thought it was a good idea. Viewed objectively, she was the upstanding citizen, not I. The court might even find it amusing that I wanted her declared incompetent when she appeared to run her life so much better than I did mine. And-McRand seemed hesitant to bring this up but knew he’d be negligent if he didn’t-Marianne Engel could present an attractive face to a jury. “You, on the other hand…” It was not a sentence that needed finishing.

I pointed out that she had carved her chest with a chisel. What stronger proof could possibly be needed to prove that she was a danger to herself? McRand conceded with a sigh that the incident could possibly be “a good start for a case,” but that there was no evidence she posed a threat to anyone else. “If harming oneself were reason for commitment, psychiatric hospitals would be filled with smokers and fast food customers.”

How could I ask everyone we knew to testify against Marianne Engel in a case that we would almost certainly lose? More to the point, how could I testify against her? Given her conspiracy theories, the last thing she needed to believe was that her closest friends were actually enemy agents trying to prevent her from giving away her hearts.

“So…” Mr. McRand sighed in conclusion, pulling on his lapels one more time before resting his hands on his round stomach.

I thanked him for his time and Jack told him to send the bill to her gallery. As we walked out of the office, Jack reached up to put her arm around my shoulders. She told me that she was sorry, and I believed that she was.

Our sole consolation was that Marianne Engel had only five statues left in her countdown. Though it would be painful to watch her finish them, at least it wouldn’t take long. All I could do was look after her as well as I could. When she completed the final stroke on her final statue, she would discover that the effort hadn’t killed her after all.

Bougatsa’s new diet included a steady intake of raw cow pancreases, which allowed him to digest other food by replacing the pancreatic enzymes that his body lacked. While there are powdered dietary supplements that contain the necessary enzymes, Cheryl and I decided to use actual meat. I became well acquainted with the local butchers, who were puzzled by my order until I explained why I needed them, and then they were all pleased to know they were helping the dog on the end of my leash, because it’s not often that a butcher gets to feel like a doctor. Every day Bougatsa looked a little better and every day Marianne Engel looked a little worse.

She was pale from lack of sunlight, although she would occasionally wander up from the basement to grab more cigarettes or another jar of instant coffee. She was becoming a framework of bones etched permanently in dust, her flesh falling away under the force of her physical exertion. She was disappearing, ounce by ounce, like the rock chips that she chiseled off her grotesques. She finished statue 5 before the middle of April and immediately began preparing for 4.

The anniversary of my accident-my second Good Friday “birthday”-passed without her noticing. I visited the accident site alone, climbing down the embankment to find that the greenness of the grass had now completely overtaken the blackness of the burns. The candlestick from my previous birthday was still standing where we’d left it, grimy from a year’s weather, a testament that the site had remained unvisited since then.

I put down a second candlestick, another of Francesco’s alleged creations, and slipped a candle into its expectant iron mouth. I said a few words after lighting it-not a prayer, because I only pray when in Hell-as a remembrance of things past. If nothing else, living with Marianne Engel had instilled in me a certain fondness for ritual.

She kept working through the remainder of the month, but her pace was slowing considerably. This was inevitable. When she finished 4, she had to take two days off before starting 3. The revolt of her body could not be ignored. Even though she took extra time to prepare, statue 3 still took almost five full days to finish.

Statue 2 took her until the end of the month, and it was only a formidable display of willpower that kept her moving at all. After finishing, she crawled into the bathtub for a proper cleansing before (finally) climbing into bed to sleep for two straight days.

When she woke up, only the final statue would remain. I wasn’t sure whether I should fear this or be overjoyed; then again, Marianne Engel often made me feel that way.

She emerged from her bed on the first day of May and I was greatly relieved to see how much better she looked. I became doubly pleased when, rather than head directly into the basement to commence her final statue, she joined me for a meal. When we spoke, all her words were in the correct order and afterwards we went on a walk with Bougatsa, who was giddy with the long-anticipated return of her attention. We took turns throwing a tennis ball for him to chase down and return in a mouthful of slobber.

It was Marianne Engel who first broached the subject. “I have only one statue left.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know which one it is?”

“Another grotesque, I suppose.”

“No,” she said. “It’s you.”

During the previous months my statue had stood, covered in a white sheet like the caricature of a ghost, in the corner of her workshop. At first I had been disappointed that she’d lost interest in it, but as she grew thinner I was thankful that I didn’t have to sit for her while she wasted away.

I only had to think for a moment before I volunteered to sit for her again. While I wished that she would give up this idea of a final statue altogether, at least I could keep an eye on her while she worked. There was also the advantage that, if my earlier sittings were any indication, she would proceed with my statue at a much more relaxed pace. I was not a frantic beast screaming to be pulled out from under an avalanche of time and stone; I would allow her all the time at my disposal, never rushing.

Curiosity compelled me to ask Marianne Engel whether, when we’d started the statue so many months previous, she’d already known that it would be her final work. Yes, she answered, she had known. So I asked further, why did she bother starting it at all, knowing that she would need to put it aside?

“It was part of your preparation,” she answered. “If it was already under way, I thought there would be less chance you’d refuse now. It looks like I was right.”

We started that very day. Being naked in front of her always made me feel awkward, but I felt less self-conscious now that she, too, was physically imperfect. While her unhealthy thinness was not yet a match for my injuries, it did at least bring us somewhat closer in misshapenness.

Work on my statue continued for about ten days, with about half of that time spent on the fine details. Often Marianne Engel would come to my chair to run her fingers over my body, as if trying to memorize my burnt topography so she could map it on the stone as accurately as possible. Her attention to every nuance was so intense that I had to comment on it; she replied that it was vitally important that the finished statue be found perfect, with nothing lacking.

Things went more or less as I hoped that they would. She never approached the intensity of her other carving sessions, usually working for less than an hour at a time despite the fact that I could sit as long as was necessary now that my pressure suit was gone. She seemed to be savoring this, her final work. She smoked less, and the lids on the jars of coffee crystals remained shut. She leaned close while working the stone, whispering into it with a voice too low for me to hear. I leaned forward, trying to catch what she was saying but I never quite could; it didn’t help that my hearing had been so damaged in the accident. I tried to draw out the truth with a casual comment. “I thought the rock talked to you, not the other way around.”

Marianne Engel looked up at me. “You’re funny.”

And so it went, until she stepped back after the inevitable last stroke of her chisel. For what seemed an eternity, she inspected my stony doppelgдnger before deciding that there was no longer any difference between him and me. Satisfied, she said, “I want to add the inscription in private.”

She worked until late in the night and, although my curiosity was almost overwhelming, I respected her request for privacy. When the final word was engraved, Marianne Engel came upstairs. Naturally, I asked if I could read what she’d carved.

“There’ll be plenty of time for that later,” she answered. “Right now, we’re going to go to the beach to celebrate.”

I liked the idea. The oceanside always relaxed her and it would be a good way to mark the occasion. So she packed me into the car and we soon found ourselves among the driftwood.

The waves beat rhythmically against the shore and her body was pressed wonderfully up against mine. Bougatsa bounded around happily, kicking up sand everywhere. Down the way, teenage boys drank their beers and tried to impress girls by acting like jerks.

“So,” I said. “What now?”

“The last part of our story. Which, in case you’ve forgotten, begins with you being burned by the condotta.”