The Muse

by Anne Calhoun

  Ready?

  The reply came immediately.

  Yes.

  He slipped his blade shades in his pocket, squared up, and set off at a brisk walk down the opposite side of the street.

  They didn’t even look at him twice. He wore khakis, a button-down, a thin cotton sweater over the shirt, and his running shoes, his best effort to blend into the Upper East Side, and it worked. He felt naked without the combat helmet or bike helmet or the shades. Halfway down the street, he texted Arden.

  Now.

  He crossed the street, coming up her side just as she opened the door and hurried down the steps, falling in behind her and obscuring her from the photographers’ view. “Turn left at the corner,” he said quietly, refusing to look behind them but listening for running footsteps. He heard an uptick in the chatter but without being able to see Arden for sure, they were reluctant to chase her and maybe miss a Daria shot.

  Only when she was around the corner and out of immediate range did she turn to face him. He gathered her close then turned uptown and held up his arm for a taxi. One pulled to the curb almost immediately. He opened the door for Arden, and followed her inside. “Fifty-third and Fifth,” he said through the open window. The cab pulled into traffic, and anonymity.

  Arden shut off the television screen explaining how to ride in a cab, and turned to face him. “Hi,” she said.

  It took him a moment to recover speech, because she looked like something out of a fashion magazine. She wore a black leather jacket that looked like alligator or crocodile, nipped in at her waist with wide fur lapels and buckles at the wrists and hips. Her black swirling skirt pooled at midthigh. Black tights for warmth, black motorcycle boots with low Vibram soles. Her red leather sketchbook peeked out of a black bag not much smaller than his seabag. But the killer was a black beret tugged down low over her forehead and ears, black-rimmed glasses, and barely there color on her lips. She looked fragile, delicate, all bones and angles, but underneath she was steel. Only a strong person could take the kinds of hits she’d taken in her lifetime and still be in the ring. He was drawn to that character trait. Where everyone else saw weakness, he saw pure, ringing steel.

  He should just walk away, but he couldn’t, not from her.

  “I didn’t know you wore glasses,” he said finally. Stupidly.

  “Contacts, usually,” she said. “I have an astigmatism. That was cool. Very stealth, covert ops, James Bond, Jason Bourne.”

  “Good job wearing shoes that don’t make any noise,” he said in return, playing along.

  “Fifty-third and Fifth,” she mused as the cab drove south. They were already in the high Seventies, traffic moving along quickly now that the morning rush was over. “MoMA?”

  “Sound okay?”

  “Sounds great. I haven’t been in ages.”

  When they got to Midtown, the cabbie pulled to the side of the avenue and punched the meter button. Seth handed a twenty through the window and followed Arden out of the cab. They set off down the sidewalk, moving briskly until Seth caught her elbow.

  “Slow down,” he said quietly. “We’re not in a rush. Whatever happens, we’ll handle it together.”

  She exhaled, paused, then continued the exhale, reminding herself to breathe, he thought. A slow inhale, then she straightened her shoulders, tucked her arm through his, and let him set the pace.

  The museum had just opened for the day, the line of people waiting to get in moving quickly through the grand lobby and into the galleries. “I have a membership,” Arden said under her breath.

  No one was looking at her, the New Yorkers’ unconscious gift to one another, privacy, a seeming ignorance of another person’s presence. “Do you want to use your name here?” he asked.

  She hesitated. “No,” she said finally.

  He paid for both of them and picked up a floor plan before guiding her to the elevator bank. “Let’s wander,” he said.

  The next ninety minutes were spent in near silence as they browsed the galleries, following the art through doors and around corners until they ended up on the uppermost walkway connecting the building’s gallery spaces. Arden’s face, pinched with worry when she walked down her town house stairs, had relaxed and taken on a bit of color. She rested her forearms on the metal railing overlooking the atrium, and turned to look at him. “Now what?”

  He turned his back to the railing and leaned against it. “What spoke to you? Made you wonder?”

  She tilted her head, considering the question with a seriousness that was both characteristic and far too much work. “The orange Rothko,” she said. “It’s—”

  “Shh,” he said. “Not yet.”

  He led her back to the gallery where the vibrant painting was on display. While there was a horde of selfie-taking tourists in front of Van Gogh’s Starry Night, this gallery was quiet, people walking through, but not stopping. They sat down on the padded bench facing the painting. “What are we doing?” she asked.

  “We’re going to look at it.”

  She looked at the painting. Her attention wasn’t obedient. She didn’t do it because he’d told her to look at the painting, but because that was the task, the mission, the job, the purpose and point. And if he’d learned anything about Arden MacCarren, it was that she’d master the task, or die trying. But this wasn’t a task she could throw herself at and beat into submission. So he sat there, not moving, and observed her. Over the course of several minutes she crossed her legs, shifted her weight, leaned forward, then back, cocked her head, tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. Each movement released a hint of perfume, the smell of animal skin she wore—the beret smelled like it had just come out of the back of her closet, dusty, a bit like sheep. Her breathing varied widely from rapid and shallow, then slowed, and the fabric of her tights whispered against her skirt as she crossed her legs again.

  Slowly, slowly, she settled, focused on the picture, the gradations of orange and red. He should have been doing the same thing, but all he wanted was to immerse himself in her, try to get to the core of her, the fundamental impulse that drove Arden MacCarren to never, ever quit. Even now it streamed from her like heat from the hood of an idling car, self-contained, fast moving, revving up when the time came.

  He reached for her hand, wove his fingers through hers, and lifted the back of her hand to his mouth and kissed it. Her attention was now fully focused on the painting, but she gave him a distracted smile without looking at him. Unobtrusively, he touched his tongue to his lower lip and tasted the lotion she used, her skin.

  Other visitors came and went, glancing casually at the painting, taking selfies, smiling apologetically at Seth and Arden but never really looking at them, then moving on. Arden’s body relaxed almost imperceptibly, until she was breathing deeply, her shoulder pressed into his, her fingers loosely linked with his.

  When a tourist tripped over her foot backing up to get a bigger shot, Arden seemed to surface. She blinked, smiled at him, her eyes curious, but she didn’t speak.

  “Come on,” he said, and led her to the cafe.

  When they were settled in a corner table with a cup of soup for her, a sandwich and chips for him, and cake for dessert, he said, “That’s all you’re eating?”

  “I put a pot roast in the slow cooker before I left,” she said. “I thought . . . you might like to stay for dinner.”

  “Sounds great,” he said casually, like the date turning into an all-day thing was no problem. And it wasn’t. It was easy, too easy for him to forget who he was, where he belonged. “Why that painting?”

  She let her soup cool on the spoon while she considered her answer. “The color, I guess. At first it was just vivid, but then it became intense, like a challenge. I didn’t want to look at it, so I looked at it for a really long time.”

  He chuckled. “You are something else.”

  “But then I just let it go,” she said. “I let my eyes go into soft focus, so the color field wasn’t the object of my attention, but j
ust part of my awareness, part of the space in the room, then in the museum, then the city. It became permeable, like I could walk into it, through it, see it from the other side of the wall.”

  He felt his eyebrows lift ever so slightly. “Go on.”

  “If art is a representation of the artist’s view of reality, I wondered what Rothko’s view was when he chose those colors, how he could stand to work with those colors day after day. I looked at the painting for what? Fifteen minutes?”

  “Forty.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “Forty minutes. You’d still be there if that woman hadn’t tripped over your boot trying to see the world through her phone.”

  She blinked, obviously pleased and bewildered. “Okay, forty minutes. But as I wondered, imagined coping mechanisms, what he was thinking, the way the color changed as the light shifted, I felt the color saturate my . . .”

  She had paused. “Your soul?”

  “Well, yes. Which is ridiculous.”

  “Why is it ridiculous? You don’t have one?”

  “I don’t talk about having one.” She ate another bite of cake, sipped her coffee. “The painting doesn’t have an obvious subject. It’s not of dancers or war or a café under a night sky. But the subject is light. The painting had a life of its own, and for a little while, I was a part of it.”

  They finished lunch and left the museum to a warmer autumn afternoon. “Where to now?”

  “A walk in the park?” he suggested.

  “I’d like that,” she said.

  It was a slow ramble back up to Ninety-second Street, winding through the fall color, leaves in yellow and orange and red gathered against curbs and park bench legs and fences. People stared at Arden, tall and slim and obviously wearing clothes that cost as much as a small car, but with the big sunglasses she’d swapped for her other glasses, no one seemed to recognize her. “Which painting would you have chosen?” she asked as they walked along Poet’s Walk.

  They passed a woman in a trim gray business suit juggling six balls while someone filmed her; they stopped to watch the show. “You’ve obviously studied art,” she said.

  “My degree is in art history,” he said. “Lots of theory, lots of drawing. But I was in the Corps while I got the degree, and overseas for a big part of it. Most of my work was out of books. I visited museums when I was stateside, but even that didn’t seem like homework.”

  “Have you thought about becoming an artist? There are so many venues now, digital and traditional.”

  He shook his head. “It’s just for me,” he said, then stopped, frustrated.

  “There’s nothing wrong with that,” she said when they came to the fountain at Seventy-second Street. The boat pond stretched away from them, ducks gliding across the surface, avoiding the casual boaters.

  “It’s not enough,” he said, then stopped again. He’d had enough, once. He didn’t need much. Food was fuel for his body; he’d slept wet, freezing, half-awake and listening for gunfire, mortars, RPGs. A thirty-year-old motor home was enough. What satisfied him was the camaraderie, the purpose, the friendships. Belonging. “I want to do more than make art. It’s too easy.”

  “Says the man who’s made most of his money in the Marine Corps,” she said with a smile. “Your definition of difficult is most people’s definition of impossible. Easy for you isn’t necessarily easy for anyone else.”

  The problem was that civilian life wasn’t cut out to provide the things he wanted, had become accustomed to, not in the intense way he’d had them before, not when lives were on the line every single second of every single day. Combat stripped away pretenses, illusions. You knew who you were, who your friends were, what mattered. The rest of the world felt like a movie set, something he would watch in the rec room before heading out on patrol.

  He longed, with every fiber of his being, to give more, to be worth more. Doug, Manny, and Brian had given everything, their lives, leaving no road map for What Happened Next. None of the books dealt with that, what happens when the mission’s accomplished, the quest ends, they all live happily ever after.

  The sun was setting when they emerged from the park at Ninety-first Street, walking the long half-block to her town house. Tantalizing smells came from the kitchen. Arden pulled off her boots while she opened the Crock-Pot lid, turned to wash her hands, and make a salad.

  “It’s a Crock-Pot,” he said.

  “What?” she said. “Think I’m too fancy for a Crock-Pot?”

  “Well, yes,” he said. “My mom uses a Crock-Pot.”

  “If it makes you feel better, I had the ingredients delivered from Dean and DeLuca.” She bit off a carrot and smiled at him.

  “Whew,” he said. “Are you working on your piece for the show?”

  “Yes,” she said, and opened a drawer for a meat thermometer. “But you still can’t see it.”

  “That smells good,” he said, his mouth watering.

  “Good,” she said. She tugged the digital meat thermometer from the roast and inserted it again at the front. “Done. It’s best if we let it sit for a few minutes while I make gravy.”

  “Gravy?”

  “You eat pot roast without gravy?”

  “No, but—”

  “Just hush and let me cook,” she said, then handed him the bottle of wine and a corkscrew. “It’s strange. I’ve seen you nude a dozen times, no formalities, just shuck your clothes and get on the pedestal, but for this I thought we needed wine and food.”

  He laughed as he seated the corkscrew, pushed down the levers, and wriggled the cork free. “It smells really good.”

  She set two glasses on the counter. He poured out a red wine, first for her, then for himself, and clinked glasses with her. He swallowed. “Very nice.”

  “Thanks,” she said, pleased. “I don’t do this often, but it’s really satisfying.”

  The tenor in the room had changed, throwing him off balance again. The scent of a home-cooked meal, something he didn’t do often, given how easily the motor home heated up. The contrasting textures of her clothes, from the silky tights to the rough leather of her jacket, made his fingertips itch to touch her. In his mind he kept seeing flashes of the shield maiden he’d drawn last night. Vikings and Arden clashing together in his mind.

  “Why did you decide to do the video?” he asked.

  She shrugged, then sipped her wine again. “It seems like the most fearless thing I can do. It’s the craziest thing anyone’s ever suggested to deal with the panic attacks. And I really want to see how we are together.” She pulled a serrated knife from the butcher block and handed it to him. “Will you carve, please?”

  He carved, she added dumplings and vegetables in a pretty arrangement. They carried their plates to the table, and sat down at two places set with mats and napkins in antique silver rings. She took her place at the head of the table, glancing at him only when he held her chair for her, then snagged the wine bottle from the granite breakfast bar and topped off both their glasses.

  Suddenly awkward, he waited until she picked up her fork and knife before following suit. The meat all but melted on his tongue. “That’s good.”

  “I’m glad,” she said, adding a bit of carrot to her fork.

  They ate in silence, something he appreciated. She finished before he did, sipped her wine, watched him with a lazy smile on her face. “How did you become a bike messenger?”

  “Filled out the applications on the apps, went through a background check, bought a bike.”

  She snorted. “You just threw yourself into Manhattan traffic?”

  “I studied the map, memorized the streets below Houston, but yeah. I hit accept for a job, did the job, did it again.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  He shrugged.

  “Ever think of doing anything else?” She made a little noise, studying him in a way that made him really nervous. Not judging. Seeing. She saw him like no one had seen him since the day the IED went off.

  “Not
really,” he said. Which was partially true. The IED blew up more than his friends. It blew up plans for the future, too.

  “What didn’t you have in mind?”

  Like that. He huffed out a little laugh. “What do you mean?”

  “We don’t make choices in a vacuum. I, for example, am very aware when I do something that my mother might like it, but my father might hate it, or I’m doing it to prove something to Dad and Charles.”

  His friends used to be his framework. “I have two unrelated skill sets that don’t translate well into the civilian world. I’m a grunt with an art history degree. Do I need to do something else? Use my degree? Make something of myself?”

  “Only the something you feel called to be,” she said. “I think you’re already quite something.”

  Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes a little glassy. His tense, anxious art student was a little tipsy, and a little flirtatious. He smiled at her, leaned forward in his chair, and kissed her. “I think you’re something special, too.”

  “Frightened by my own shadow,” she said.

  “Fighting the fear that’s as close as your shadow,” he said. That’s what was missing from the drawing, her shadow, a demon she’s facing off against. He made a mental note, and kissed her again.

  “Not here,” she whispered against his mouth. She got to her feet, took his hand, and drew him down the hall to her bedroom. Her sketchpad and pencils were strewn on the unmade bed.

  “Got the camera?”

  She opened a closet in the foyer and pulled out a digital camera, then trotted up the stairs, shucking her jacket as she went. He popped open the memory card slot. Sixty-four gigs. Plenty for what would likely be maybe an hour of recording. He set the camera on the bureau that was only a bit higher than the bed itself. He hunkered down and positioned it so the bed filled the frame. He wasn’t thinking about angles or close-ups, just getting the action, such as it was.