Page 48 of Devil

I hunt for a fork and a glass for water, and soon I’m eating at the kitchen island, feeling like I’m eating a meal from a castle’s kitchen. It’s a delicious salad, and the sandwich is so good that I wish I had a second one. Inside the sandwich’s container is a smaller glass bowl with a lid. When I lift up the lid, ruby-red pomegranate seeds greet me, plump and glistening.

It’s been seven years since I’ve tasted a pomegranate, the association with that awful last day at Evelyn so strong, but the seeds look so juicy, and even if they taste like ruin, what’s left that can actually ruin me?

I rinse the other containers in the sink, but I keep the pomegranate seeds and continue poking around the warehouse.

Bell’s bookshelves are eclectic but in a way that feels honest, like he grabs anything that interests him. Books on beekeeping, on medieval manuscripts, a few famous shipwrecks. One that I pull off the shelf is about the SSEdmund Fitzgeraldand is inscribed to him from someone named Sean. There is an entire shelf of role-playing game guides, none of them very new, and several shelves of horror, ranging from old paperbacks to critically acclaimed novels with spot-glossed covers. Another shelf, in what almost seems like a place of honor, of translated novels about young men doing magical martial arts and falling in love. It seems like one of the young men is always evil, at least judging by the jacket copy.

His living room is cozier than I’d thought at first—the long, L-shaped couch is low and trendy, but all the seats recline and are comfortable. One seat is squashed a little more than the others, and there’s a horror novel on the armrest next to it with a bookmark inside. The bookmark looks like a school project, colored with crayons but laminated after, and when I flip it over, I see a picture of an elementary school–aged boy with dark curls, amber eyes, and a smile showcasing a missing front tooth. The bookmark is dedicated, in careful cursive,To Uncle Ryan, love, Josie.

I see Josie again when I get to Bell’s office. There’s a picture on the bookshelf of what seems to be the entire Bell family—Ryan and his three brothers with the same wide, dimpled grins, and then assorted spouses and children.

Ryan and a handsome older man that I take to be his father stand at either end of the group. Josie’s dad is blond like Ryan but several years older and stands with his wife tucked into his side, his hand splayed on her waist, like he doesn’t want to go a single minute without touching her. She has warm brown skin, dark curls that drop to her shoulders, and a nose piercing. Adding to my theory that Josie’s dad doesn’t like to go long without touching his wife, Josie is surrounded by four brothers and sisters, all with their father’s wide, confident smile. A signature of the Bell family, if the patriarch is anything to go by.

The youngest of the kids was caught mid-giggle the moment the picture was taken, his head thrown back, and it’s easy to see the culprit, the green-eyed uncle with the Bell smile next to him, hand still in a half claw from where he’d been tickling his nephew’s ribs. The man holding the green-eyed uncle’s hand is laughing too, the fondness apparent on his face while he watches them.

The last Bell brother is the one standing next to Ryan, with brown hair and green eyes and a smile that’s more warmly happy than arrogantly so. His wife has creamy skin, dark hair, and crimson lipstick, and a little girl stands in front of them, her posture indicating that she’s considering bolting over to where her cousins are.

I remember the rumors…the stories thatweren’trumors even if they sounded like they should be. The brother and his red-lipped wife—the fallen priest and his parishioner. The green-eyed uncle and his husband—the monk and the man he’d once left behind to join the monastery. The father and mother with five kids—the millionaire and the nun he stole away on the day of her vow ceremony.

And then the one person who isn’t in the picture at all. The sister. There’s no hole where she should be, no gap in birth order, no held photograph with her face on it. But I see her absence in the way the brothers grip the waists or hands of their spouses—like stealing love from under God’s nose was a wergild they were owed and they’re ready to defend what’s theirs by right.

Bell’s desk is as neatly ordered as the shelves of architecture plans and books, and I dare a peek inside a couple of the drawers. Chargers, sticky notes, condoms. Blushing, I close that drawer, and then I’m surprised to find the largest drawer is filled with Lego bricks.

Maybe for the nieces and nephews when they visit.

There’s a binder on the lower shelf with an envelope on top. I pull its contents out and unfold the newspaper clipping and the note with it—So proud of you, Son! Your mother would be too if she were still with us—and skim the article. Bell spearheaded an initiative to redevelop an old factory north of the river into a hygiene center, his firm having provided the plans pro bono, him personally being the face of the project. The city agreed and purchased the property; the article is about the ground breaking for the renovation.

The binder is full of clippings and printed web articles. Green spaces, regional awards, and glowing profiles by local papers and magazines. A half-page feature about fresh voices in architecture inArchitectural Digest.

And then I see the piece from a month ago, the piece that made me want to finish my carving of Lucifer and put it in front of city hall.

“The Future Mayor of Kansas City?” reads the headline.

I look at Bell’s picture next to the article highlighting the issues around housing and sustainability and his vision for the city’s future. He’s wearing high-waisted trousers and a button-down casually open at the neck, sleeves rolled up to highlight his defined forearms as his hands are stuck in his pockets. His hair is blown out, straight and gold and wind mussed as he stands on a hill with the city skyline behind him. He’s smiling, blue eyes lighter than the May sky draped like a canopy over the skyscrapers, and there’s that Ryan Bell charm on full display, irresistible even in grainy newsprint. The dimple, the loose and friendly posture, the beauty of his exposed throat, his jaw, his long lashes. With the trousers and suntan, he looks like he’s just come from a vacation in Venice. In 1958.

I remember seeing this picture as I settled a fresh stack of newspapers into their holder at Buddy’s and then freezing in place. Reading every single word and then starting at the beginning and reading again. Staring at the picture, at God’s affection justheapedonto this one person, this person who literally seduced me into ruin. And the idea that he was justgoing on with his life, that he had everything he could ever want, that, why, he could have an entire city if he wanted, infuriated me. The paper thought he was moral? Good? That he cared about the people in this city? Was I the only one who knew the truth? That behind his lovely face and silky words was a depraved and hungry soul?

The idea had come to me the minute I got home that morning, and I’d finished the statue faster than I’d finished anything. Ironically, it felt like I was possessed, like it was completely out of my powernotto finish the statue,notto arrange to have it dropped in front of city hall. If this city wanted Ryan Bell, they could have him, but they should at least know who he really was first.

Yet another impulse inspired by Ryan Bell that would have been best ignored.

I leave the binder in his office the way it was and go to the studio, where I spend the afternoon eating the pomegranate seeds and staring at the light slowly moving across the wood.

It’s been so long since I’ve had this kind of material in front of me and in this kind of space. And…andtime.

A gilded cage indeed.

At the cusp of evening, after I’ve washed my hands and started moving the pieces around for the dresser commission, I get a text from a number I don’t recognize.

There’s more work to do than I planned on, and I probably won’t be home until after you go to bed. Have you taken your medicine?

It has to be Bell. I’m surprised how disappointed I am that he’s staying late tonight, that tonight might not bethe night, and I’m surprised at my own bitterness about it, how much it stings. I close my eyes and think of the perseverance of the saints, of the patient goodness of martyrs. This uncertainty is just another cross to bear, I guess.

Yes, I text back.And I understand.

I don’t really understand. He was so eager to…toacquireme, and then he couldn’t even make the drive to Kansas City without pulling off the road to take the edge off. And then today, Ifelthis desire, the iron thickness of it, and then he’d sprung away like I’d become suddenly repulsive.

Maybe he doesn’t want to have sex with me now that he has me here. Maybe now that he’s seen me in a hospital gown, laid eyes on my breasts or felt the soft, wet parts of my body, he’s changed his mind. I’m not worth the money after all. Buyer’s remorse.