7 #3
Blake nodded again, picking up his clay and attempting to mold it into a ball the best he could, squeezing it between his palms. Due to the cool air conditioning, it was much harder than he had anticipated.
Marin made a small noise in the back of his throat that sounded almost like an aborted laugh.
“It’s a bit easier if you roll it on the countertop,” he explained, making a motion with a flat palm above the surface. “Like this.”
“Oh.” Blake’s ears burned with chagrin and he did his best to keep his embarrassment off of his face as he followed Marin’s instructions. “Like this?”
“You got it.” Marin smiled. “Now you need to — ”
“Make a hole with my thumb, right?” Blake recalled, working his thumb into the lopsided ball.
“Oh—uh. Maybe… a little less off-center?” Marin suggested.
It looked to Blake like he was trying not to break down into laughter, doing his best to be polite even as the corners of his mouth fought from curling up.
“The clay around the hole is going to become the walls of the pot, so you’ll want to make them even. ”
“Ah. That. Makes sense.” Blake stared down at where he’d pressed into the clay. He glanced up at Marin, more than a little helpless. “Should I get more clay and start over?”
“No, that’s the great thing about clay: if you mess up you can reshape what you have,” Marin explained. “Just squish it back into a ball.”
Unfortunately, no matter how well Marin instructed him, Blake was completely incapable of creating anything remotely resembling art.
While Marin ended up with a handsome little teacup in a matter of minutes, Blake’s pinch pot had somehow been morphed into a malformed saucer, its uneven and wavering walls looking about ready to collapse in on themselves.
Blake hung his head in shame, about ready to set the overworked piece aside. “Sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” Marin told him, tone patient and kind. “Here, would you mind if I helped you out?”
“By all means—” Blake began, ready to turn his disaster over to the professional. But to his surprise, Marin laid his hands over the back of Blake’s and began to help reshape the sides of the pot.
“The clay on the sides is too thin and the bottom is too thick,” Marin explained. “It’ll probably shatter if we try to fire it as is.”
Blake tried to pay attention to Marin’s tutelage, the proper pressure that he demonstrated with his hands—but his touch was warm and distracting.
Even slick with clay, Blake could tell that Marin’s palms were soft, a relief on the back of his perpetually chapped hands.
His fingertips were a little cool, but not in an unpleasant way.
With the way Marin was leaning over to instruct him, their forearms were crossed and Marin’s stray hair tickled Blake’s ear.
He smelled like Blake’s bodywash, sweet and peppery, and Blake noted that it smelled much better on him.
Without thinking, Blake leaned in a little closer.
“You think you got it?” Marin asked, turning to Blake so that their cheeks brushed together. Blake nodded, still attempting to suppress a blush. Marin smiled, pulling away. It was a little pathetic, but Blake immediately missed his proximity and touch.
“Show me what you’ve got,” Marin instructed, resuming his original project, which looked like some sort of star. Determined to please him, Blake crumpled his clay back into a ball, starting the project anew.
They worked in tandem, silent but not awkward. Despite the urgency of the coming days, Blake found himself at ease for the first time in hours. There was something uniquely pleasant about being in quiet company.
The clay transformed easily beneath Marin’s expert touch.
He rolled it thin with a small pin, draped it across the pentagram of his tinfoil and sealed away the edges under the glide of his thumb.
Small, uniform shapes were carved into the clay with a twirl of his hobby knife.
Using a damp sponge, he smoothed away the fine wrinkles left behind by his fingertips.
He held his tongue between his teeth as he worked, brow furrowed and black eyes sharp with concentration.
Blake watched as he tilted his long neck to get a better look at a small detail, watercolor tresses spilling across his face.
His process was as mesmerizing as it was relaxing, and Blake nearly forgot about his own project in his hands several times, so enraptured in the art of Marin’s creation.
After a while of maneuvering, Blake managed to make a pinch pot that was more or less acceptable to his meager standards—while it was still a little lopsided with a wavering rim, it at least appeared to have a consistent thickness and looked like it could hold a small amount of water.
“How’s this?” Blake asked, turning to Marin for approval. Marin set aside his tools, taking the pinch pot up in his hands and turning it to and fro.
“Much better.” He nodded in approval, grinning at Blake. “You’re a fast learner.”
“You’re a good teacher,” Blake responded with a smile of his own. “How’s your project coming—oh!”
The moment Blake’s eyes fell upon the figure in Marin’s hands, he was struck with realization. Initially, he’d assumed that Marin had been carving a starfish, but he had decorated it with a small gem and facets in the center that immediately made it recognizable as something else.
“It that a Pokémon?” he asked, gesturing towards the sculpture.
“A what?” Marin asked, cocking his head.
Blake leaned over to the nearby sink, washing residual clay from his hands before bringing up an image on his phone.
“It’s a game where you catch and battle little animals,” he explained, turning the screen towards Marin to show him the starfish-like creature.
“What you made looks exactly like a Pokémon called a Staryu. You probably remember it from before—unless it’s something you saw at the park or while we were in transit. ”
“I don’t think so—it popped into my head out of nowhere,” Marin said, staring at the picture on his phone and then down at his creation. “That’s… uncanny. All the details are down to the point.”
“That’s a good thing, though,” Blake said, dropping his voice so that Trinity and the others couldn’t hear.
“Pokémon didn’t come out until the late nineties—if you remember one, it gives us a shorter time frame to work with when it comes to figuring out when you…
” he trailed off, the sentence a bit too dark to finish.
“Died?” Marin filled in with a wry smile.
“Yeah,” Blake agreed. “We have to figure out when Water Zone opened, or at least when the pirate ship you were on was installed.”
“I’d imagine that would be easy enough,” Marin was saying as Blake opened up his text messages to update Celeste. Surprisingly, there was already a text from them about Paul Aberley.
“ Hey, I did that search and narrowed it down to a few Paul Aberleys in Nor Cal, ” they’d said. “ I’m reaching out to them with the contact info that I got. I’ll keep you updated .”
“ Thanks, you’re a lifesaver ,” Blake texted back. After taking a quick moment to update them about the Pokémon situation and his associated theories, Blake glanced at the clock on his screen.
“I don’t know if you’re done, but we’re gonna have to wrap up here real soon,” he told Marin. “My shift starts in a little more than an hour.”
“No problem, I’m all finished. It just needs to be painted and fired at a later date,” Marin replied, gently moving his sculpture onto a small wooden board beside his teacup and Blake’s lumpy monstrosity of a bowl.
“I’ll ask Trinity when we can come ba—” the words died in Blake’s throat as Marin brought the sculptures over to the drying rack.
His mind’s eye flickered to the posterboard where Celeste had scrawled ‘ Don’t screw it up ’.
If Blake didn’t manage the conditions, there would be no coming back.
The thought of the little starfish alone amongst the other projects, abandoned and unfinished, was enough to make his throat squeeze in upset.
No, Blake thought, watching as Marin exchanged pleasantries with Trinity, who was marveling over his work. There was still clay drying on his soft hands, powder falling from them as he gesticulated, hiding a flustered grin behind his palm. I’m not gonna fail you, Marin. I’ll keep that smile alive.