House of Holes by Nicholson Baker

pocket. Yes, the silver egg was still there.

Marcela Admires Koizumi’s Sculpture

    M arcela, an art critic, was in the sculpture garden. Koi-zumi, the well-known Japanese artist, was mounting one of her newest wooden sculptures onto its base. The sculpture was of a woman resting on all fours—large thighed and stylized, with a wide bottom and a moon face. She was carved out of black wood with yellow streaks.
    Marcela wore a boatneck shirt and white Bermuda shorts. She brushed her hair from her face, watching Koizumi bolt both of the wooden woman’s knees to her pedestal. Then the sculptress pulled out a big manual drill with a kink in it where the handle was.
    Marcela opened her notebook. “And what are you going to do with that?” she asked.
    Koizumi, a slight woman with a small mouth, said, “Once I get the sculptures mounted, I do the last step, which is to drill this auger bit into their asses.”
    “Can I watch?”
    Koizumi almost said no. She preferred to work in private. But then, struck by Marcela’s fresh, curious face and generous hips, she changed her mind. She took a metal poker and tapped it lightly into the wooden seam of the sculpted woman’s bottom. Then she removed it and fitted the tip of the auger into the tiny guide hole she had made.
    “Now I will drill her asshole,” Koizumi said simply.
    She pressed against the handle and began slowly turning the crank of the hand drill. Curls of wood came twirling up off the spirals of the bit.
    Marcela walked around to look at the wooden woman’s face. “She looks like she’s enjoying that pressure,” she said.
    “She likes to get her ass drilled,” said Koizumi. “All my women do. It’s the very last thing I do with each sculpture.”
    Marcela looked around the sculpture garden, and, sure enough, each of the four Koizumi women had a small hole drilled in her bottom. One had a drill bit left in place.
    Marcela looked from the moon face of the sculpture to the thin, intent face of the sculptress.
    Koizumi saw her and smiled. “Would you like to give it a few turns?”
    “Can I?”
    “Just apply steady pressure while you turn the crank—not too hard.”
    Koizumi put her hands on Marcela’s hands and showed her how to hold the pommel and the handle of the drill.
    Marcela leaned and turned the drill and it ground into the wooden woman. A long curl of wood peeled up and fell away.
    “It’s rather straightforwardly erotic, isn’t it?” said Marcela. “Are you her, in this case, or are you the drill?”
    “Both, neither, I don’t know,” said Koizumi. She raised her hand. “That’s probably deep enough.”
    Marcela pulled the drill out, and Koizumi bent and blew away the sawdust. Then she took a rag with some linseed oil on it and pushed the rag into the hole with her pinkie and worked it around. “Do you want to try oiling the hole, too?” she asked.
    “Sure.” Marcela moved her pinkie finger in the wooden woman’s new hole and felt a strange tingling clench deep in her bottom. “When I push the rag I feel my muscles tighten,” she said. “Is that normal?”
    “Which muscles?”
    Marcela patted her behind. “These. The back ones.”
    “Yes,” said Koizumi, solemnly, “that happens to me, too.”
    “Oof, I’m all confused,” said Marcela in a small voice. “I feel like I want to fuck a football team.”
    “Put your finger in the hole for a moment and wait, and you will be taken to a place where you can be made love to any way you like, by anyone you choose,” said Koizumi.
    “Okay.” Marcela pushed with her finger and waited. She felt herself turning sparkly and growing narrower. Her finger, and then her hand, and then her arm flowed into the carven woman’s asswood, and then she found herself swimming deep into the wooden woman’s body. She smelled the smells of linseed oil and cherry bark. Things went dark for a moment.
    When she became solid again, she was facedown on a wooden rolling table with a soft, thin