I googled him every morning and nearly every night. It was enough, for a while, to summon the same small collection of photos, drawn from his website, for which he had posed long ago—he barely resembled them now, might have been that man’s brother or father—and to see the shapes of the letters that formed his name. Yet my matutinal searches turned up other details as well: a lawsuit he’d once been involved in, an old social media account bereft of content, and dodgy websites that linked his name to others’, people he’d shared addresses with, through which means I ascertained that at least one marriage had run its course. It was only after I had learned so much about him, and after his podcast took off, that I began to take up sculpting. His subject—financial literacy—was tedious, yet weekly episodes offered me the chance to listen as his voice, performatively deeper and breathier, instructed me to grow my investment portfolio. It reminded me of the impetus for our brief acquaintance, soon after circumstances not to be disclosed struck me with a fresh exigency: I required assistance in managing my money. His tutelage, though dull, soothed me then, and it soothed me now as I went about my work. Clay, wax, and leather by turns auditioned to serve as verisimilar skin. (Briefly, temptation seized me, and I nearly ordered, from a hard-won contact, a set of armchairs purported to be bound in a rarer material; paranoia and fear of detainment at last prevented me.) My effigy took shape, with crooked, asymmetrical eyes, a lumpen nose, a bright red O of a mouth—all of which failed to do justice to my inspiration; try as I might, I could not overcome an impoverished talent. Still, long months of work resulted in a tolerable likeness, within whose hollow head I managed to place a speaker so that, when the podcast played, it seemed as though he were speaking to me. He was speaking to me. Sometimes I imagined it did, imagined that the effigy awoke, granted breath of life by some mysterious divine or narrative mechanism. And then—what? My imagination stopped there; I remain, always, far too diffident. But I hoped for the best. And so, when it spoke at last, some years later, my delight could hardly be contained. It said, “What do you know about mutual funds?” Before I could reply, it stood and stretched and strolled out the door. I never saw it again, much less him, but the effigy managed to make something of itself, having started a podcast of its own, whose audience is even larger than that of his likeness. I google both of them sometimes when he crosses my mind.