(Special thanks to Bad Penny for her help in proofreading the story.)
*
"Just bring it in here!" Erica heard the woman's shout clearly through the door, and she adjusted the package in her hand to try the doorknob. It opened easily, revealing a large studio apartment. The place seemed like a nightmare of disorganization, big blocks of stone everywhere, chipped and sanded into a variety of strange and disturbing shapes. Tarps covered some of the pieces, various stone-working tools lay on tables throughout the apartment, and a pile of cushions in the corner suggested that whoever lived here, they didn't pay much attention to things like "sleeping".
Erica looked around for a moment, and finally spotted the owner of the voice in a corner, polishing a statue that looked like a claw made out of smoke. It was a woman, one with just a faint stubble of black hair on her shaved head, wearing goggles, a tank-top, and a pair of panties. Erica blushed a little, but the woman didn't even notice as she waved Erica over. "What do you think?" she said without preamble. "It's called 'Fear'."
Erica looked at the statue, uncertain of what to say. She was pretty sure that the woman didn't know why Erica was here, and even more sure that she didn't care. "It's not making me afraid."
The woman sighed. "You're looking at it too representationally. You have to engage with sculpture on a more spiritual level, that's what abstract art is all about. I'm guessing you don't go to museums much, do you?"
Erica held up the package, at this point just waiting for a chance to give it to its recipient gracefully and get the hell out. "No, I...um, are you..." She looked at the name on the label. "Miranda Madsen?"
The woman sighed. "Yes...and let me guess, Erica," she said, making a show of reading Erica's name tag, "you'd like to enrich your mind by engaging with avant-garde artwork, but there always seems to be something good on TV, right?"
Erica bit her lip. 'Miranda Madsen' was a customer, and there was no point in arguing with a customer. She'd never see her again anyway. Let her be smug if she wanted to. "Sign here, please," she said, holding up an electronic tablet.
Miranda took the tablet, but instead of signing, she walked off to another part of the room. Erica darted after her, but Miranda was paying no attention to the rituals of package delivery. "See, you're exactly the kind of person that my work is aimed at, Erica. You're someone who probably has a first-rate mind underneath layers of ingrained pop-culture detritus and mass-produced schlock masquerading as art, but you've never tried to engage it. Somewhere, deep under layers of Britney Spears and Brangelina and People Fucking Magazine, the part of you that engages with the higher self, the subconscious element that appreciates truth, the, oh, hell, let's call it a soul, that part is ready to appreciate my work, or at least, that's how I feel about it." Erica felt like Miranda was throwing up a verbal wall to prevent any sort of meaningful interaction, but before she could deliver a statement to that intent, Miranda had pulled off a tarp. "This is really my 'entry-level' piece. I call it 'Obsession'. And no, it's got nothing to do with the cologne."
Erica looked at the 'sculpture'. It was just a cube made out of stone, two feet in all dimensions, resting on a pedestal. She walked all around it, but it was still just an ordinary stone cube. "I don't get it," she said. Part of her enjoyed Miranda's failure to 'move her soul', part of her felt a little bit dumb for not understanding the meaning of the piece. But it was still just a cube.
Miranda nodded. "That's normal at first. Try looking at it for a bit."
Erica looked at it. Then looked at it a bit longer. "Sorry, still don't get it. I mean, why is it called 'Obsession'? It's just a cube."
Miranda said, "You're still thinking representationally. You have to engage with it on the spiritual level, think of the symbolism of the piece. It..." she looked at Erica and sighed. "Never mind." She signed the electronic tablet, and handed it back to Erica. "Thanks. Just set the package down anywhere on your way out."
*****
It was stupid, Erica thought as she continued on her drive. Why would it be called 'Obsession'? It didn't look like an obsession; an obsession wouldn't even have a shape. Why would you try to sculpt something that didn't have a shape, and why would you wind up with a shape like that when you were done?
The thought nagged at her for the rest of her route, and even when she got home, she was bothered by the notion. If she'd tried, Miranda couldn't have chosen a worse way to represent an obsession. It just didn't make any sense. Erica ate her dinner quickly and almost turned on the TV, but thought better of it and instead went to bed. 'Obsession'? She tossed and turned, trying to make some sense of the title of the piece. Hardly.
*****
The next day, she found herself back at Miranda's apartment. It was Erica's day off, and she'd been planning to go to the beach and get some sun, but something about that sculpture had stuck in her head. It just didn't make sense. She knocked on Miranda's door. "Come in!", she shouted from inside the apartment, and Erica once again let herself in.
Miranda looked up from the piece she was working on. This time, she was wearing a pair of shorts, but no top--just a bra. Erica wondered if she ever even noticed what she was wearing. "Oh, Erica! Back for more mental stimulation, eh? Or do you just have some more chisels for me?"
Erica blushed a little. "I, um...actually, I wanted to see that sculpture you showed me yesterday. Y'know, 'Obsession'? It didn't make any sense to me, and I thought that with maybe another look, I might..."
"Engage your brain? Possibly, possibly." Miranda led her to the back, where the sculpture sat under a tarp. She grabbed Erica a chair, and pulled the tarp off. "There you go, look to your heart's content. I'll be around, working on 'Fear' and 'Loathing'. I should probably sell them to the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce." She paused for a laugh, looked at Erica's bemused expression, sighed, and said, "I'll leave you with the rock." She walked off.
Erica looked at the cube. It was big. Something about the way it formed a perfect cube made it seem bigger than just a lump of rock. But it didn't seem to say, "Obsession." It just said, "Big." She leaned closer, trying to glean details. Perhaps it was something in the carving of the stone? Something in the texture?
She got up, walked around it, and sat back down again. Perhaps she needed to examine the whole thing, inch by inch...
After a while, Miranda tapped her on the shoulder. "Hey!" she said. Erica almost jumped. Miranda had changed into a slinky black dress, and Erica hadn't even noticed. "Sorry to kick you out, but I've got a gallery opening in a few hours, and I can't leave you in the house alone." She gestured to the two-foot cube of solid rock. "You never know, you might walk out with this thing under your shirt." Erica was able to chuckle at that one. "So is it making more sense to you now?"
Erica sighed and shook her head, feeling foolish. "I don't get it any more than I did yesterday. Maybe I just don't get modern art."
Miranda smiled. "It's not whether you get modern art, Erica. It's whether modern art gets you." She laughed loudly at that, but Erica just smiled in confusion.
*****
At home, in bed, the sculpture seemed to mock her with its resolute refusal to be understood. It was just a big, square rock, but Miranda kept insisting that there was a hidden meaning that Erica could unlock if she just spent the time and used her brains. But there wasn't. There wasn't! She was sure of it! She'd looked at it for hours, and there was nothing obsessive there!
She finally fell asleep around three AM, but her dreams were filled with the sculpture, grown to gigantic size (or maybe she'd shrunk), and she woke up bleary and unrested. She made the decision to call in sick, and head back to Miranda's. Maybe one more day of staring at the sculpture would make a link between it and 'obsession' make some kind of sense.
