CAKI WILKINSON

Human Resources

Look, she’s not saying that she didn’t sculpt a tiny model of the Weatherman in polymer clay. She absolutely did, and it was marvelous, no easy feat. You find her someone who can stripe a button-down and pocket square, forge cuff links at matchbook scale, and she’ll harelip the Pope. It’s true, too, she built a model of the station, but just the set, no cameras or talking heads; he needed context, don’t we all. And—right again—she stuck the tiny Weatherman on the real Weatherman’s car, upright like a hood ornament, no strings attached; that’s why she had to stake out the station, which took a week and several lenses, some of them illegal. But look, it was a gift Wynona didn’t rush; she shaved the jaw and neck bone, added props—poncho, barometer, wind tunnel—before arriving at munificence. Munificent and then some, and, excuse her for living, it never crossed her mind he wouldn’t be flattered, you tell her what’s more flattering? So to suggest she’s hopped the fence between propriety and private property, well that’s the lowest blow. Maybe he wasn’t keen to see things as they are, because, you know, she didn’t glam it up; she left loose skin, the dented nose, the belly fat. Wynona’s had her fill of Davids, all muscle and junk, and she’ll take the moles, the goiter, any day. But hey, she hears you, no one wants to be a creep; you ask him, though—let him cool off first, then ask the Weatherman when he was last immortalized. We all know never’s what he’ll say, and look, Wynona tools around with clay, but not for any other reason than she likes to get the details right. It makes her feel, it’s tricky, like the gods must’ve felt—shaping nothing into something she can hold but never grasp.