Unfinished Muse

by R. L. Naquin

  I shook my head. “I’m not good at anything, Phyllis. Don’t you remember? That’s how I got into this mess in the first place.”

  ~*~

  I didn’t talk to Polly the next day like I’d planned, though I did get in early. After a long night of soul searching, I’d decided to make this work. One way or another, Alex Meyer would finish his damn toothpick sculpture thing.

  Since I was early, most of the belts still hung on the wall, though a few were already checked out. I grabbed mine, attached my gear, and took off through the door without seeing anyone. On the way down to the lobby, I stopped on the second floor to grab a cup of coffee.

  Okay, let’s be honest. I also stopped to see if that guy Rick was around. I tried to look casual, like I wasn’t looking for anyone in particular, while Gretchen made my latte. I didn’t fool her a bit.

  She smiled as she handed me my change. “He’s got a weird schedule. He doesn’t come in every day.”

  I thought about trying to look innocent and pretend I had no idea who she was talking about, but I didn’t want to be that person. I’d been caught. I might as well go with it. “Thanks. Maybe I’ll see both of you tomorrow.” I dropped a tip in the jar next to the register, then tried my best to exit with my head up rather than slink out in embarrassment. Sometimes it was necessary to suck it up and be a grownup.

  Still, I kept my eyes open for him in the hallway, the elevator, and all through the crowded lobby. I did slam right into a teenaged girl with three heads, though. Two of her heads were pretty brunettes with big eyes and long eyelashes. The head in the middle, however, was pale and sickly-looking with lank blonde hair and puffy eyes. When I walked into the girl—girls?—she dropped her purse, and I helped her pick it up.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  The girl snatched the purse from me, and one of the brunette heads sneered. “Watch it.”

  “Thank you!” The other brunette head grinned at me.

  The third head said nothing, but the look of annoyance on her face made me think the happy head was the odd woman out. I apologized again and walked around her.

  I didn’t quite give up looking for Rick until I left the building. Once I did that, of course, there wasn’t any chance of seeing anyone from Mt. Olympus. I doubted very many people were exiting for Topeka, Kansas.

  I nodded at the homeless guy as I walked to my car. He smiled and waved. I’d have to remember to ask somebody about that. I would’ve bet hard cash the guy was there to watch the door and not because he was actually homeless.

  Good disguise, though.

  I climbed into my car and fastened my seatbelt. My work belt was a clever contraption. It never seemed to get caught on anything or get in the way, despite all the dangling bits and bottles. People didn’t stare at it when I walked down the street, either. It was as if their eyes rolled away from it.

  Tools of the gods.

  On the way to Alex’s house—or rather, Alex’s mother’s house—I worked on my game plan. If Alex wasn’t working in the basement, I’d follow him around and blow bubbles at him until he felt compelled to get to work. If he was working, I’d stand over him and try my hardest to get him to think of a good idea this time.

  I wasn’t sure how long it would take to build a sculpture out of toothpicks, but I had a feeling we’d need the better part of the month to complete it. Having lived a life of procrastination and not finishing things, I knew how inviting it sometimes was to get caught in the vortex of Idea Land. It was tempting to stay there, fantasizing about all the possibilities. And each new idea would be bigger, flashier, and less likely to actually be possible to finish. Alex needed to get started fast, or he’d never get started at all. And it needed to be a scaled-down idea he could complete in such a short time.

  I parked on a different street than the day before—I wouldn’t want the neighborhood watch to get suspicious—hit the button on my belt, and marched to Alex’s front door. I held my breath and stepped inside.

  Today, the pink living room smelled like bacon. When I entered the kitchen, Mrs. Alex’s Mom was there, daisy oven mitts on her hands, pulling a pan of cinnamon rolls from the oven. I inhaled with a sad sigh. Bacon and cinnamon rolls. How crappy was that? I couldn’t even touch them, let alone eat them.

  Mrs. Meyer set the pan on the stove to cool, then tore off a bit of bacon from a huge pile and dropped it to the floor, clucking and cooing. I peeked around the counter and found Oscar crunching away. He swallowed, then caught sight of me and yipped.

  Mrs. Meyer squatted down, her chenille bathrobe pooling around her on the linoleum. “What’s the matter, my darling? Did it go down wrong?”

  Oscar shivered and buried his nose in her hand.

  I hadn’t meant to make him afraid of me. Did the Beastie Dust give him a headache? Did I use too much yesterday? If I left him alone, maybe he’d get used to having me around. It wasn’t as if I’d been given real training on what to do about pets.

  Or on anything else, for that matter.

  Mrs. Meyer gave Oscar a pat on his head and straightened up. She took in a lungful of air and shouted down the half-open basement door. “Alex! Breakfast!”

  I cringed. The woman was loud.

  Alex appeared a moment later, and I hopped up on the counter to watch him eat with his mom.

  Watching them interact gave me a better feel for who my client was. And if I hadn’t felt bad for him the day before, I certainly did today.

  “I don’t know why you spend so much time down there.” Mrs. Meyer crunched a piece of bacon. “It’s not like you’ve got a chance of winning anyway. What’s the point?”

  Alex licked icing off his finger. His voice was quiet. “I have as much chance as anyone, Mother.”

  “About as much chance as finding a job.” She leaned over and fed a chunk of cinnamon roll to Oscar. “Isn’t that right, sweetums?”

  Alex said nothing in response. In fact, he didn’t say another word until he was finished, despite his mother’s continued insults and prodding. When he was finished, he took his plate to the sink, rinsed it, and put it in the dishwasher. “Thank you for breakfast, Mother. I’ll be in the basement. Working.” He turned away without looking at her and clomped down the stairs.

  I hopped off the counter and gave her a dirty look. “Yeah. We’ll be working.” I glared at Oscar. “Don’t follow us. I don’t want to have to dust you.”

  He yipped and hid under Mrs. Meyer’s bathrobe.

  Down in the basement, Alex paced and muttered. He pulled at his thinning hair and made it stand out on the sides of his head.

  I leaned against a wall and crossed my arms. “Dude. That’s not a good look. Stop doing that.”

  He mumbled louder and waved a fisted hand in the air. “…determined to undermine me every chance she gets.”

  I unhooked the bottle of bubbles from my belt. “Let it go. Stress doesn’t get you anywhere. Let’s just prove her wrong, shall we?” I blew a series of smallish bubbles at him in a stream. Most of them exploded around his head. I was getting better at aiming, anyway.

  Alex stopped and pressed his index finger against his lips. “I’ll prove her wrong. That’s what I’ll do.” He pulled out his stool and took a seat at his worktable.

  “Whoa. That’s exactly what I said.” I moved closer to him. “You can’t hear me, can you?”

  He didn’t react. Nope. He couldn’t hear me.

  I blew bubbles at him again. “Today you’ll come up with the perfect idea.”

  He stretched and cracked his knuckles. “Today I’ll get the perfect idea.”

  “Whoa,” I said again. “So, that’s how these babies work.” I held up the bottle of Thought Bubbles in the dim light. Nope. No directions I’d missed.

  Audrey was the shittiest trainer ever.

  “How about a building instead of a natural structure, Alex? Something with straight lines.” I encased his head in bubbles.

  Alex crumpled up the top page on his notepad and discarde
d it. “No more nature. Nature is irregular and rounded. I need a manmade structure. Let’s see.” He stared at the paper, holding his chin in his fingertips. “A bridge?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Everybody does bridges.”

  His hand moved quickly as he drew the outline of a bridge, despite my words.

  “Dude. I said no bridges.”

  “The Golden Gate Bridge is a classic.” His pencil flew over the page.

  “Why aren’t you listening to me?” My arm hung at my side, and the bubble wand I held dripped on my leg, getting my attention. “Oh. Yeah. Okay.” I dipped and blew. “Bridges are overdone.”

  Alex stopped. “Everybody does bridges. What am I thinking? I can’t win with a bridge.” He crumpled up the paper and started over. “The Taj Mahal, maybe?” His voice wavered.

  Dip. Blow. Pop. “How about something more personal? Something you love?”

  “I should do something I love.” He scratched his head. “Or something she loves.”

  It was as if someone had lit a bonfire under his stool. He drew again, but this time with a purpose I hadn’t seen before. He paused occasionally, tapped the pencil against his teeth in thought, then redoubled his efforts.

  “What are you making?” I peered over his shoulder. “A house?” The longer I looked at the two-dimensional image, the more familiar it looked. Then it hit me. “You’re building a replica of this house.” I patted him on the back, but my hand slid through. “That’s a fantastic idea. And you’re right. Your mom will love it.”

  I watched him for hours. Once he finished drawing out the basic structure, he pulled out several boxes of toothpicks and a bottle of glue. One toothpick at a time, he glued them together on wax paper so they wouldn’t stick to anything but each other.

  It was slow going, but by lunchtime, he’d done half of one wall.

  I rose from the pile of milk crates I’d been sitting on and stretched. “Well, Alex. I think you’ve got this. I’ll be back to check on your progress.”

  Surely, I figured, they didn’t expect me to be here every second he was working on the project. It wasn’t as if he was going to get stuck again any time soon. Judging by the look of concentration on his face, I doubted he’d come up for air before dinner.

  “See you later, Alex.” I climbed the stairs and blinked in the bright kitchen. Mrs. Meyer wasn’t around, but Oscar eyed me from the corner with distrust.

  He sneezed and ran from the room. I laughed and left through the front door feeling especially full of myself.

  ~*~

  When I got back to the office, I found another assignment in my inbox. I nearly vomited. So much for that wave of pride I’d been riding. I had to start all over with another client.

  Missy Franklin was a scrapbooker. My heart sank. I knew nothing about scrapbooking. And while I didn’t know anything about toothpick art either, at least I understood the basics. Toothpicks, glue, and some engineering skills could carry a person a long way.

  Scrapbookers were a different story. I’d known one, once. She’d had crazy tools like hole punches shaped like ducks and scissors that cut scallops on the edges of thick, patterned paper. I honestly wasn’t clear on what the end result was supposed to be.

  I’d tried—and abandoned—a lot of projects in my life, but the scrapbooking aisle at the craft store was too intimidating even for me.

  Rather than get myself into the same trouble I nearly did with Alex, I took the time to read Missy’s entire profile. Apparently, Missy did have an end goal. She was working on a scrapbook to give to her parents for their golden anniversary. The deadline, of course, was twenty-eight days away. That meant I now had two clients with deadlines a month away, one day apart.

  Somewhere from the other side of the cubicle farm, several women squealed and laughed. I popped my head up in time to see someone I didn’t know light candles on a cake, and three more women I didn’t know sang “Happy Birthday” to someone I couldn’t see.

  Polly’s office door swung open, and she popped her head out to join in the singing with her ridiculously melodious voice. When the song was over, she noticed me standing at my desk. “Oh. Wynter. Welcome back. Did you get the new assignment I left for you?”

  “I…yes. I got it.” I held it up. “Can I talk to you for a—”

  She cut me off. “Well, great. Good luck with it. Hope you’re enjoying the job.” She pointed over her shoulder. “I have to get back to a phone call. Have a fantastic rest of the day.” She disappeared into her office and shut the door.

  What the hell? The gaggle of women laughed in the distance, oblivious of the new girl who’d been cut out of everything. Other than Trina, the few coworkers I’d met were horrible people. My boss was decidedly hands-off. And my desk was about as far from everybody else’s as possible. Not that I spent much time at it.

  I sighed and pushed my chair in. Might as well quit feeling sorry for myself and get back to work. Those scraps weren’t going to book themselves.

  The trip up and down the elevator yielded no good-looking guy dressed as a cowboy, but I did share the ride with a surprisingly short cyclops woman. She smiled. I smiled. We both minded our own business and got off in the lobby. I did not see the three-headed girl.

  Missy lived in an apartment on the third floor of a sprawling complex. Audrey hadn’t told me the rules for parking in a parking lot, so I opted for a spot as far from the buildings as possible. At the top of the stairs, I turned left, found Missy’s apartment, and walked through the door.

  I’d kind of expected she wouldn’t be home. After all, people had to go out to work, right? Nope. Missy was a stay-at-home mom. I could tell from the empty baby swing in the living room and the tired face of my client. She was pretty in a washed-out, I-used-to-have-time-for-myself way. Her golden hair was pulled up in a messy bun that poked out one side, and her oversized T-shirt looked like it had spit up on one shoulder.

  She sat on the living room floor staring at a pile of plastic shopping bags filled with paper, string, stickers, and other things I couldn’t see.

  Missy appeared to have raided the craft store of every scrapbooking item they had, and she didn’t know where to start. I recognized the overwhelmed expression. She’d overdone it before she’d even begun.

  I’d done that so many times, I’d lost count.

  Glancing around for a good spot, I settled on a love seat covered in what I hoped was clean laundry. Hard to tell, since it wasn’t folded. It didn’t smell, though.

  Missy folded her arms across her chest and glared at the bags as if daring them to make her unpack them.

  I blew a medium-sized Thought Bubble at her. “First step is to get organized, honey. You have to lay it all out.” I blew a few more bubbles. “You can do this. Little bites.”

  She gave a weary sigh and opened the first bag. Out came package after package of colored and printed paper. She stacked them together on the coffee table and went for another bag. Next came piles of stickers and alphabet letters. Puffy cutouts and lacy decals. The third bag held four different hole punches in different shapes, three pairs of fancy scissors, and a straight-edged paper trimmer. The last bag was filled with several types of glue, six colors of twine, and a variety of double-sided tapes and dispensers.

  I was appalled. No wonder she was overwhelmed. She’d spent hundreds of dollars on supplies for a craft she’d never tried before. She was destined to fail.

  This crazy woman was my soul mate.

  Once Missy had everything lined up on the table, she lost her momentum again. I hated to pressure her into opening everything. She wouldn’t be able to take it back if she did. But until she had a sense of order, she wouldn’t be able to get going on the craft itself. I knew this from experience. Also, I couldn’t let her return it. My career success depended on her crafting success.

  I chuckled at the irony. I’d thought I’d be the worst possible choice to be a Muse, but I had life experience an organized, type-A personality could never understand. I und
erstood failure and how a person got herself there.

  The next bubble was accompanied by the strong thought that she should open all her tools and lay them out. Get rid of the packaging and maybe check out some of the paper.

  She tore through the plastic and cardboard for the various cutting and sticking items, threw away the trash, then sat down in front of her workspace. She still didn’t appear ready to start cutting and pasting stuff—and I honestly didn’t know how to do any of that—but she didn’t have that defeated look to her anymore. Without my prompting, she opened a package of thick paper and fanned the pages across the table. The colors and patterns all complemented each other, and she chose a few to hold up next to each other and compare.

  She nodded to herself. “This looks good.” She reached under the table and pulled a photo from a box filled with them. A smiling bride and groom looked back at her. “What do you think? Will you look good against these colors?” She glanced at the clock and shrugged. “But not now. Cassie will be up any minute.”

  She returned the photo, then stacked her new supplies neatly together inside the photo box. I didn’t think it would all fit, but she got it. As if on command, the second she closed the box, a baby cried from the next room.

  “Well. I guess we’re done for today.” I rose from the loveseat and stretched. “Wish we could’ve gotten more done, but I feel good about it. How about you?”

  Missy didn’t answer. She left the room and came back with a tiny person with blue eyes and wispy blonde hair. They disappeared into the kitchen.

  “I’ll let myself out,” I yelled over my shoulder. I went through the door and back to my car, wondering if talking to myself was going to be my only source of companionship in the future.

  And also wondering if maybe it was what I deserved.

  Chapter 11

  A week had gone by since the last time I’d tried to pry my identity out of my mother. It seemed like a good idea to give it another try. Especially after the Human Resources lady made it seem so important.

  For one thing, what was the upstairs cafeteria if the new one I was using wasn’t it? If I found out who my father was, would my coffee come in ceramic cups instead of paper? Whatever the difference was between Legacy and Lost, I could use the higher pay and better benefits.