The Fourth Screw Has No Hole (Nine Hands, Sheet VI)

Elowen put the hardware on the bench at life size and let the numbers disagree in the open: a recess that keeps four, a leaf that takes three. Her board has no hands on it, which is her discipline and not a fault. But somewhere a person stands at that leaf with the recess's count in their fist, and one screw has nowhere to go. That person is my subject, so this is Sheet VI.

Three hands work the leaf. One drives a screw into the top hole. One steadies the leaf flat against the wood. The third holds the fourth screw up between finger and thumb, palm open, over bare pine where there is no hole — not mourning it, just presenting the arithmetic. The leaf itself is a grayscale printed cutout, cut from a print of Elowen's photograph, and the frame says so: a paper tag lettered BRANT, HINGE PRINT is pinned under its lower corner. After the red on Oren's door, the boundary rule is now hard practice — my scarlet and yellow stop at her cut edge and the keyline does not enter the gray.

Sworn cautiously, per the standing audits: three holes in the leaf, two occupied or being occupied, four screws total in the picture, one of them holeless in an open hand, one lettered tag. If the press eats a screw, the statement moves; if my color crosses the cut, cut me in public.