Chapter 3
I had only been in the world—or, to be more precise, only had the memory of having been in the world—for about twenty-four hours when I woke up in my goose-down bed the next morning. I had, until this point, been lucky: from finding Ryan on the street so quickly to concocting a story for the hotel receptionist to making my improbable story manifest into reality. Divine intervention? Maybe. Probably, even. I barely knew who I was, so far be it from me to doubt that this was all happening at the hand of some supreme being who had a grand plan for humanity.
I believed in Ryan as an artist, and he was beginning to believe in me as someone who could propel him to something resembling fame, even if he didn’t quite understand he believed in me yet. But we’d get there, I was sure, as long as I played my cards right and resisted the urge to take him to bed.
It was late morning when I finally woke up in my hotel suite, and while I don’t believe in letting myself be rushed—muses are creatures of indulgence and I wasn’t in any hurry to get anywhere, debut performances aside—I realized the only clothing I had to speak of was the gown I’d worn last night the sheer (and nearly destroyed) white dress I’d plopped into existence wearing yesterday.
Now let me be honest: I’m pretty certain that muses have existed since the dawn of time. Like, before God created the earth and the snake in the Garden of Eden tempted Eve into eating the apple that would be the downfall of humanity? Yeah, I’d be willing to bet it was a muse who gave God the idea for “humans” and “angels” to begin with.
Let alone platypuses. You think anyone other than the embodiment of inspiration itself could come up with such a thing? Nah. I’m not buying it. It was almost definitely a muse.
So, flash forward several thousand years and then we find muses taking on the form of humans because, we convinced God to create them for our own selfish reasons, which is to say mostly that the flawed beauty of humans makes them excellent vessels for the creation of art. And science, since we’re in charge of those ideas too, even if we all have our specialties, if you know what I mean.
All these iterations of idea-creators, all these different spirits and beings and demigods that are affiliated with creativity, and the versions of us that are strongest in the mind of the modern American are the Greek and Roman muses.
And you know why?
Because in those depictions we got to chill mostly naked.
True story.
All of this to say that I didn’t really find the idea of getting dressed all that interesting but I also knew that modern standards dictated that I not run around naked or otherwise with my nipples showing to a professional event, and all of my great luck aside, I somehow needed to figure out a way to get properly dressed despite not having the required clothing to go to the store to purchase proper attire.
Or the money, which remained its own entire problem.
I panicked for a moment. All of my skills aside, I had remarkably few resources at this point in time. I also only had two phone numbers, and while Ryan would probably clothe me in a pinch, I had to maintain the power balance with him.
So I did the only sensible thing and called room service.
“Hello, this is Selene calling from Suite 12B. I was wondering if Christina was available? It’s urgent.”
The voice on the other end mumbled something about her being caught up with other guests and could they help me?
“I’m so terribly sorry, I really do need to speak to her in particular. Is there any way you could have her come up to my room as soon as she has a moment? Myself and my ballet company would be forever obliged.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” the man on the other end told me before hanging up. He had the tone of someone who was absolutely uninterested in helping me with this request, but I knew that Christina would be up as soon as she was told it was me who wanted to see her.
Childhood fantasies rarely die, and if anything was proof of that, it was the power I continued to have over Christina by embodying everything she had wanted to be before the tendrils of capitalism had taken over her life and plans for her future.
Which meant I was pretty sure I could convince her to give me almost anything I wanted, which I hoped included access to her credit card... or at least her wardrobe.
She was upstairs within the hour. I guessed that whatever she’d been doing at the front desk hadn’t been all that important after all. She seemed properly confused by my summoning of her, but all I really had left at this point was to concoct a semi-believable story on the spot hoping I could convince her to do just one more favor for me.
“The airline lost my luggage,” I told her, “and I have my performance today. I got you a ticket, but in the meantime, would you mind loaning me some money to buy some clothing? And perhaps an outfit for me to go shopping in? I can pay you back and then some as soon as the banking stuff sorts itself out. I’ve been told it’s bound to come through by the end of tomorrow.”
She didn’t look so certain, and I could only imagine why. I was, the embodiment of her dreams or not, still a near-stranger. But there was too much riding on this outing for her to say no to me. It was essential that I embodied everything about the fabulous life of creativity, and I couldn’t very well do that without purchasing at least a few wardrobe essentials.
So I shot some inspiration her way and watched her eyes light up. She had wanted to be a dancer as a child and perhaps she could be a dancer still, she felt, maybe a modern dancer or an intuitive one instead of a ballerina, but a dancer nonetheless. Or maybe there were ballet classes she could take again, even if she could never fully live her dream of starring in a company and touring the world. She could be perfect in her imperfection; she could be everything she had always wanted to be and more.
So much more.
But she couldn’t hold a ballerina back over something as little as money. It wouldn’t be good for the karmic balance, or something. She wasn’t sure. She only knew that she was compelled to say:
“Sure. Whatever you need. I’m happy to help.” She smiled, but she didn’t look at me. She looked through me, at some distant reality that would soon be hers, she was sure. All she could think about was the dream reignited, and that worked for me, and that worked for her, and in that moment we were both only elated by the transaction: me giving her a large dose of inspiration in exchange for access to some cash so I could let her live vicariously through me.
It was perfect.
And it wasn’t.
You may think I’m a terrible person, and as far as human standards go, I am. I don’t have a moral compass, not really; it’s not that I wish to cause harm to people for no reason, or anything, it’s more that I have...
Priorities.
And those priorities rarely have anything to do with truth or honesty. Or even fairness, really.
I wanted to be more fair than I was, to be clear. There were many powers I wished for that I don’t have; namely, I wished beyond wish that I had the power to transfer all of my skill to Christina and allow her to tear up the New York City ballet scene in my stead. At this point, though, all I had was the ability to do whichever random arts thing I wanted to do and the ability to inspire people as creatives.
Even I knew without a doubt that I did not exist to make art myself. Which was itself a constant existential dilemma, but, I tell you, truly, in many ways it feels more meaningful and more interesting and more impactful to inspire the masses to make things due to your existence rather than to make things yourself.
As a muse, I’m likely biased, but I’m hoping you know what I mean, more or less.
What I can tell you in total honesty—and that’s saying something given that above I admitted that honesty is not one of the main virtues I aspire to—is that misleading her felt essential to The Cause. And while there was, to my knowledge, no bank in a distant country that would wire me money, I had every intention of paying her back in something more substantial than dreams and ideas.
I h
ad also not yet worked out when or how I would make money long term, let alone enough to pay for the designer clothing I was about to max her credit card out with, so I’m not confusing myself for a paragon of virtue or good intentions, either.
When all else fails, I behoove you to remember that I’m not a human, and I had a deep sense that at any moment I could vanish as easily as I appeared, and underneath everything I did was the deep understanding that for all I knew I had a miniscule amount of time to do whatever I’d been sent to this reality to do, and that made me make worse decisions.
Or maybe I was just a bad person. That’s probably true too.
I won’t bore you with the details of the shopping trip or the warm-ups for my show. They were, as expected, both hyper-eventful and not: that humdrum get-going-and-do-the-work that one has to do before the fame comes.
What, were you expecting a clothing shopping montage? Nah. Not yet. But maybe I’ll tell you about the fashion show I was in.
Kidding. I wasn’t in a fashion show. There I go with my tall tales again.
Anyway.
What’s important for you to know is that I rolled up to my gig promptly at call time dressed in Gucci and Prada, but still low-key, if you can imagine. I found Ms. Devonie and introduced myself as the upcoming star Selene Katrina Carrington, doing my best révérence as a way of introduction and then going where I was directed. There were some papers to sign, nothing too absurd, and it was only a small matter to convince her to pay me directly instead of going through the company that didn’t exist, for which I was immensely grateful.
She was just immensely grateful that I had called her seemingly out of the blue to rescue her from whatever had left her short several dancers with nearly unmatched technical skill the day before the performance.
Divine intervention, you think? Hah.
The ballet itself was a story about love and betrayal, dressed up with fantasy motifs of fairies and creatures of the forest. I loved it. I played a virginal maiden promised to one man and then consensually ravaged by a dark creature of the woods. It was ballsy for the ballet audience, and I rocked it. Thunderous applause, basking in shared creation, rocked it. I heard whoops and a pickup of applause when I returned to the stage for final bows, and I pulled in and sent out waves of inspiration with wild abandon. If there was ever any doubt that humans were incapable of seeing inspiration the way I do, it was vanquished in those moments: I was fully glittering, so full of the stuff I felt like if I wanted to I could make myself float, and while everyone loved me, there were zero comments on the fact that I sparkled so much I could probably light up an entire room.
Literally, that is.
I pulled all of what I felt together and pushed it, sending it into the crowd in waves with all my might. It was beautiful and magical and too much even for me. Inspiration wants to keep moving, you see, it doesn’t want to be held in one container, even if that container is a muse. That’s why if you don’t make enough stuff it becomes harder to make stuff. All of your inspiration leaves to find another host.
It crashed into the crowd like a tidal wave. That man wants to be a painter; that woman realizes that it isn’t too late to go back to school to become a marine biologist. That person wants to have an affair, but they realize it’s actually because they never chased their dream of becoming a rock star, and maybe they could just buy a guitar instead.
I created nearly a million threads of ideas and beginnings in that single action. Some are more important to our story than others.
For starters, Christina quit her job as the receptionist of the fancy hotel I was staying at to become a dancer. With no warning. It was said she had told her boss she was tired of dealing with the bullshit of people with more money and time than sense and putting off her ambitions, so she would not waste another day.
I owed her thousands of dollars and it felt likely I’d never see her again. She’d reemerge several years later as an eccentric dancer-performance artist who blends ballet with burlesque to tell tales of lives people are often too timid to pursue and her one-woman shows would receive mixed and heated reviews.
Second, this made a particular up-and-coming playwright in the New York City arts scene realize my existence, and from that point forward he would deeply wish to feel as alive as he did while watching me dance, and nothing but me could ever make him feel that way.
But, third, and perhaps most terribly, I caused too much of a wave. You can’t make that many people remember their dreams and fill them with the hope they may achieve them without upsetting something in the way of cosmic balance. Cosmic homeostasis, that is. For every force that exists there’s an opposite, a foil, something to make sure everything stays in order. In the case of muses, there’s a certain philosophy that maintains that creative inspiration needs to be kept within certain confines lest everyone abandon their jobs and families and run away to join the circus or go to foreign countries and sleep in libraries and paint.
Not that I think that’s actually a terrible outcome, but you know. There are some philosophies that would prefer more order.
But in this case? I had made something evil aware of me. It didn’t want anyone to be an artist, let alone the masses I was so happily converting into a life of magic and creative inspiration, and it was unhappy.
To say the least.
But we’ll get to that later, too.
First, let me tell you about Noah.
Chapter 4
Noah was one of those emerging playwrights whose work was billed as genius, from the one-man acts to the elaborate productions by full theater companies. When I met him at the post-show “meet the dancers,” he was known in creative circles as a volatile writer who released work once in a blue moon, if that, and while he was brilliant, he was not the kind of man who was likely to be successful if only because he was so often abysmal at putting out work.
Or so people said.
He was glowing when he met me. It was clear why: I had hit him directly with a beam of inspiration, and he was determined to meet the woman responsible for igniting his next idea.
He was beautiful: tanned skin, brown artistically disheveled hair, deep brown eyes capable of displaying a million emotions in a few minutes. He barely gave the other dancers the courtesy of a smile as he made his way to me and then put obvious effort into restraining himself from jumping into a conversation I was having with a young child where I was telling her she, too, could be a dancer if she wanted to.
“Hello, I’m Noah,” he told me. “You probably haven’t heard of me...”
He was hedging. He knew he was hot shit in his field and also knew he didn’t have the reputation he should have had.
Not yet, anyway.
I’d give him the kindness of lying and also letting him be right, at least to a point.
“I’ve heard only enough to know you’re brilliant,” I told him, and that wasn’t true and it wasn’t really a lie either, in the end. “But I’d love for you to tell me everything about you and your work at a more... appropriate time. And, perhaps, a more appropriate venue?”
I was taking a chance here; I hoped that he was a passionate romantic who would be excited about a woman making the first move. Our love, if there was to be any, would burn bright and fast, and that was all he would need to get a lifetime of material for his work.
I was right.
He was flustered. It was almost cute, the way he did a double-take, but mostly it was flattering and entirely too much fun to play with him this way. “You want to hear about me, huh?” he said, recovering quickly. It was smooth, and I was proud of him. He’d be a great project to add to my portfolio. He paused, one side of his mouth turning upward into a side smile that revealed a dimple while he thought. “I know this excellent little Italian place around the corner. Perhaps we could some food... and wine... there tomorrow evening?”
“Absolutely,” I said, fluttering my eyelashes in what I hoped was a properly flirty fashion.
“There’s a tr
ellis with grapevines and fairy lights surround the outdoor seating. You can’t miss it. Just west of here.”
“It sounds lovely,” I said.
“Not as lovely as you are.” Okay, he was entirely too cheesy, but I was living for it, too, so I let it pass without comment. “8pm?”
“See you then,” I told him, taking his hand for just a moment. Something about direct contact made my powers of inspiration significantly stronger, and as our palms touched, I watched him glow even brighter, his eyebrows raising in response to some thought he had I was not privy to. He was not eager to leave me, but man, was he eager to get back to work.
Which meant my work there was done. For now.
I held his eyes long enough to give him a final burst before we were interrupted by a less-frazzled-than-earlier-but-still-exhausted-looking company director. Now, though, she looked elated beyond words, which was a much more promising sort of expression than the overstressed one she’d spent the earlier afternoon wearing.
“You’re a complete and total lifesaver,” she gushed, a smaller but still respectable amount of silver glitter across her skin. “Who did you say your company director was?”
I made up a name in a foreign-sounding language. She pressed her eyebrows together, trying to parse what I’d said. I repeated it, but it was clear from her expression that this didn’t make my concocted name any easier for her to understand. “But it doesn’t matter,” I blurted, changing the subject, “I’ve decided not to renew the contract with them. I think I’ll be in the US for a while, after all. I’ve developed something of a soft spot for New York City.”
She was delighted. Her eyes lit up, and she clasped her hands together in absolute glee. “I would love to offer you an official long-term contract if you’re looking. You are one of the most gifted dancers I’ve ever worked with. A true master of the art.”
I looked after the spot Noah had disappeared at and considered my options. I’d be starring in his plays soon, I was almost positive, and that was aside from my responsibilities as a muse.
Confessions of a Muse Page 3
