Then again, money was apparently a thing, and even if I was sure I could manipulate myself into most situations I needed to be in without it, it would make several things easier.
“I think I’m due for a break,” I told her, smoothing back my blonde hair that hadn’t budged a millimeter since I tied it into a ballet topknot and secured with a pound of hairspray and a small army of bobby pins. “Perhaps something with a less... rigorous schedule. I’m thinking I might transition to stage acting for a while, get my character actor skills more up to snuff.”
Some sparkles in her skin dimmed as I turned down the possibility. It broke my heart.
I couldn’t go through with the no. Not really. I had to soften it, somehow; I was compelled not to let this dream of hers die out.
“I can dance for you,” I told her, “but I can’t commit to the daily practice schedule or to dancing in every production.” I paused. “And, of course, I can continue this role for this show, at least until you’ve found a permanent replacement.”
“Done! As long as you can maintain your skill on your own time, I’ll welcome your addition to any production you wish to be involved with.” The sparkles returned, and I relaxed a little more. I couldn’t disappoint her when all she wanted was to use me as a creative tool. I didn’t have it in me. But a compromise? That worked.
“I have one other request,” I began.
“Anything for my favorite rising star!” She clapped her hands back together, and I felt some ballerinas near me deflate a little at her exclamation, which was its own issue I would have to figure out how to navigate.
“Have any friends in book publishing you could introduce me to?”
After a long post-performance evening and a longer lazy morning, I was summoned to the receptionist’s desk to resolve an issue regarding my account. Since Christina had up and left her job, I was working with the other guy—the one I’d spoken to very briefly who was entirely unsympathetic.
Sigh.
“Ms. Kourtz tells us you had promised for money to be wired by the end of yesterday,” the extremely to-the-point older man said as he read off a post-it note with familiar pink ink scribbling. “We have not yet heard anything from your distant banking institutions. Do you have any updates for us?”
I glanced over his skin using my special muse sight, looking for traces of inspiration I could draw on. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. It was curious and terrifying; like I’ve said, it’s human nature to be creative, even if many don’t recognize it. The complete lack of anything was concerning. Not to mention inconvenient.
“That’s so weird,” I said, trying to figure out some new cover story. “There should be plenty in that account. How much do I owe you?”
“If we’re including the restaurant tab, you’re up to $1,765.” No ifs, ands, or buts. No blinking or effusiveness. $1,765 was my bill.
I breathed a sigh of relief. Internally, anyway. Externally, I kept my probably-well-practiced poker face together. “You know, I just made that from a performance I gave last night. If you don’t mind, could I possibly borrow your phone to call the ballet company’s director? I’m sure she’s wondering where to send the check, anyway.”
His mood lightened. I couldn’t inspire him into action but I could use my nebulous social power and imaginary currency to get him to cooperate and like me and that was something.
It bought me another night, anyway.
“If you can get her to send that to me, I can wait another day or two for your money to get wired over. No big deal. These things happen.” He smiled at me and held out the phone, so I made a big show of calling and demanding ever-so-sweetly, and for now, everything worked out.
I didn’t know then that his inspiration had been stolen from him by the very being that would soon hunt me. What I knew was that a human so bereft of anything resembling inspiration was itself a cautionary tale to a creature like me, and as long as he was in charge of my sleeping arrangements, my accommodations for the evening could never be certain.
It was a long day of carefully cultivating my image to myself and getting all of my stories—let’s call them “stories” now, because that was what they were: stories I told myself and others—in order before I made my way to the “Italian restaurant around the corner with a trellis of grapevines and fairy lights” where I would meet the exceptionally talented playwright.
This wooing stuff is hard work. And, well, I won’t lie and say that is exactly difficult for me, but there’s a reason I’m a muse instead of, say, a cupid.
You didn’t think there was such a thing as cupids? Well, I have some news for you, but that’s another story for another time.
After I solidified everything I needed to know about what I was pretending to be, I made my way down to the corner restaurant whose name I did not know but assumed would be something vaguely fancy and generically Italian.
I was not disappointed as I approached the La Italiana. It was everything I expected and more, the twinkle lights that lit the trellises contrasting beautifully with the lights of the city that had clicked on as the sun went down behind the surrounding skyscrapers. I had found a bright blue jumpsuit I could set off with some gold accessories that looked just casual enough for a first date and just fancy enough for me to not feel out of place at this establishment.
I approached the host, giving her the playwright’s name with an air of carefully cultivated self-importance befitting somebody of my assumed status. I didn’t want to give the impression that this was new to me even though I had no idea what I was doing, but I also didn’t want to give the impression that I was a stuck up jerk.
I watched the pretty redhead get slightly flustered as she leafed through the reservations. Oops.
“Ah, yes. It seems like he was due in just 15 minutes ago. Let me confirm everything is good to go and I’ll be right back with you.” With that, she disappeared into the back of the restaurant, giving a small smile of appreciation or else apology for not having all information already ready. Of course, I had no reason to expect more from her, and since I was already pretending to be someone I wasn’t, I was hardly able to judge anyone else for not having everything one hundred percent together, if you know what I mean.
It took only a few minutes for her to confirm that, yes, Noah was here and waiting. I was pretty impressed with him for not only having the foresight to book a reservation earlier than the time he gave me but to also actually show up that much earlier.
“Right this way,” said the gorgeous redheaded woman, who—now that I stopped being so preoccupied with thinking about this date that I hadn’t really looked at her—I noticed was herself streaming with a million sparkles that told me she was likely an active creator and this was likely nothing more than a side gig or a way for her to earn a small income while she was working her way through art school. I smiled larger, inspired by her inspiration, and followed her to the table where Noah waited for me.
Noah was nervous; palpably so. He was every bit the roguish creative wanderer on the surface: he sat at an angle, his suit was just a little too flamboyant for most “nice” events, his hair that exact kind of disheveled that told me he likely spent half an hour minimum on it before meeting me here. But I know a performance when I see one, and that’s what this was. A performance.
And I was absolutely flattered.
I’m a simple gal. I just want to help people make stuff and do stuff and even this informal acting was, to me, a greater success than him being honest with me would have been.
Bizarre, I knew, but so alluring.
“Fancy seeing you here, huh?” I joked, cocking an eyebrow at the way he looked up from his phone as if just noticing me. I’d seen him staring at the entrance to the private room in anticipation on my way in. He hadn’t been that smooth. I pulled a chair out to sit across from him and he clicked his phone off, his eyes lighting up in what read as an exaggerated expression of a genuine emotion.
“I’m glad you made it,” he said, anything but si
mply. He said it as if he were trying to convey a million things with the five words, like maybe I could save him, like maybe I was an answer he didn’t know he’d been looking for. The answer would be yes, because that is who I was and am, and there was nothing more appealing to me in this moment than popping his bubble of pretension and giving him the gift of openly wanting me.
He was so close to admitting it to me. All that stood in the way was admitting it to himself.
First dates rarely start notably, and this was no exception. We shared tastes in wines and went with each other’s recommendation, which was a challenge, since I could not recall having ever had any wine, but if I was already lying about my entire identity, it wasn’t like that one detail would make or break me here. We made small talk, during which I told him I was a professional ballerina (which, if you follow, at this point was true) hoping to make something of a transition into stage acting. He gushed over me, or did so as much as his cultivated persona would allow him to.
We ordered food and chatted about the exotic places we’d been.
I don’t particularly want to bore you with the details, so I’ll leave you with what’s important.
What’s important is that a few glasses of wine and a few hours of conversation were enough for him to give up on his pretenses, to even forget he was supposed to be maintaining them.
What’s important is that he smiled at me as we left the restaurant, his hands in his pockets while he stared at his shoes with a level of shyness. I enthralled him. It wasn’t like Ryan, where I had to proceed with caution not to be just another girl who was duped by his persona. No, Noah was already looking to fall in love, and all I had to do was be the kind of person he could fall in love with.
Chapter 5
Noah’s home was the precise sort of ritzy artist loft I’d expect any up-and-coming playwright in New York City to live in. One of those gentrified buildings that used to be industrial with metal doors that slide open instead of swing. There had been effort put into the whole thing to make it look grunge in an artsy way instead of merely grungy, and I could guess from the overall aesthetic that he was likely paying more to live here than it was worth beyond art community inner circle posturing.
Which, for an up-and-coming playwright, is extremely valuable.
He lived alone, which lent an air of credence to his assertions he was doing well in his career, though at this stage it was just as likely to mean he had parents who didn’t mind funding his life while he pursued his dreams. As far as I was concerned, there was nothing wrong with that, but it was a data point. You’d be surprised at how many wanna-be creatives take their parents’ support just to party.
Judging by his coffee table and the many papers scattered across it, at least, he was telling the truth.
“Would you like another drink?” he asked me after situating me on the sofa. When I nodded, he said “be right back” and disappeared around a corner, presumably to go get the aforementioned drink.
So, naturally, I peeked at his work in progress. What I saw there broke my heart.
Like people, creative works have a resonance. That is to say that they have something of an energy force. Unlike people, works in progress do not push their energy out so much as contain it within themselves, holding back its radiance for the artist who next appraises it, who next wishes to come into union with it to see it to completion.
As I ran my hands over the pages, I felt the energy of this piece, and it was not doing well. It had sparks, but it was like they started and popped out, prematurely, before anything resembling a flow could get going. I stared at lines of dialogue out of context, not for a preview but to see if I could find the holdup. It seemed to be the entire piece if the number of words crossed out and critical comments in the margins were any indication.
This handsome, talented playwright was blocked.
“Ahem,” he said, intentionally drawing my attention away from the paper in my hand. “Red wine?”
“Thank you,” I said, dropping the pages back to where they’d been on the table, taking the glass he offered to me, then smiling at him. I did my best to make sure it was warm, to give him no sign that I might have been judging his work in his absence. Even the most talented of artists can get... territorial.
Or, insecure.
He raised his eyebrows. “So... did you like what you read?”
Cornered. I couldn’t explain to him what I was actually doing, but I also hadn’t read anything on the page. I came up with the most pathetic excuse of an excuse ever and hoped he’d buy it. “I didn’t read it,” I told him, “I just looked at your... process. At the way you left notes, crossed things out... I’m sorry, I should have-”
His hand hit my mouth to quiet me. It felt huge against my face, firm and warm, but his skin was also far softer than I expected it to be and that minor fact startled me into silence.
“No apologies,” he said, “you are a person of great curiosity and I knew that before I brought you home with me. But answer the question: what did you think?”
We made eye contact and my breath caught in my throat. Looking into his eyes told me everything I wanted to know and more, but that didn’t make the words come easier.
I took a sip of my wine and considered the question for a long moment before I answered him. “I think...” I started, “I think you’re a brilliant writer, but a blocked one.”
He nodded, looking back down at his feet, his own wine glass tipping dangerously.
“I don’t say that to hurt you,” I began.
His head shot up to look at me again. “No,” he said, “I wouldn’t imagine you would do so intentionally.”
“So why are you acting as though I hurt you?”
The corner of his mouth tilted into a smile, seemingly despite how he felt about the entire exchange. “You didn’t,” he told me, “far from it.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means...” It was his turn to search for the words now. “It means that you saw something about me most people don’t.”
“Which part? I know the papers know you’re brilliant.” I was fishing. It was important to me he say the next part out loud.
He looked back up at me and took a sip of his own wine. “I’m blocked,” he said, and as the words left his mouth, it was like tension that had been building for months finally released. “I’m blocked,” he repeated, more loudly, as if finally embracing the truth now that he no longer held it within himself. “And everything I’ve ever written, I’ve hated.”
“Why is that?”
He broke into an actual smile now, a large one that spread across his face. The man had dimples, because of course he did. “Because I hadn’t met you yet.”
Corny. So absolutely fucking corny. But I was into it.
I sipped my wine and did my best to keep my eyes glued on him all sultry-like as I did so.
“So, you asked me on a date to a fancy place, brought me back to your place, and then brought me additional wine. Which is excellent, by the way, but I’m not so dull as to not understand there’s a particular narrative you’re following here.” I continued to sip my wine. I knew what he wanted from me and I knew he was not so dim-witted that he would have believed otherwise, but it felt necessary and helpful to get the cards on the table explicitly now.
He shrugged. “I like you, Selene,” he said. “I want to know you more. You’re such... a puzzle.”
I raised a single eyebrow at him as he said this. “And by ‘know me more,’ you mean you want to bed me.”
He crossed over to me, taking the spot on the couch beside me. He smelled like poetry, like romance, like passion, and when I turned to face him he was inches from my face.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said, “but it’s not untrue.”
I stared into his eyes, and I was frozen. Their deep brown was laced with the silver sparkles of inspiration, and there was nothing I could do to get myself to look away, but there weren’t words I co
uld find, either.
Noah saved me the hassle of having to remember English. The silence between us was electric, not stifling, and he raised his fingertips to my cheek and gently caressed my skin. He moved from my ear down to my lips, brushing against them in a way that was entirely sensual and somehow far more intimate than expected. I let them drop open, releasing tension from my jaw, and closed my eyes to focus on the sensation.
He leaned in and kissed me.
It’s hard for me to explain what that moment was to me, dear reader. For starters, this was my first kiss. Or, it was at least the first kiss I’d had since I’d popped into existence a few days prior. All those butterflies in the stomach you hear about with first kisses? Yeah, definitely there. I wasn’t prepared for him to be so close and to smell so good and to hold me as if I were something precious, something he could not take enough care with, but here we were, and yet neither of us knew my name.
The other part of that—beyond the wow factor of the very first kiss I remembered ever experiencing, I mean—is that there’s something particularly special about the moment when a muse physically touches an artist, and it was amplified nearly a hundredfold by the passion that lead to this point. There were, in fact, literal sparks between us, silvery blasts of energy that he couldn’t see but I’m certain he could feel if I know anything. They coursed through my arms and lips and into him like static electricity, like magic, like beings with their own agenda to travel and bring all kinds of wonders into fruition.
The flow of energy invigorated me. It brought me more to life, made my being here feel more intentional and less a bizarre twist of fate. I needed it. Craved it. The more I had the more I wanted and as a result I leaned into him, kissed him back with more intensity than he likely had believed I had in me. It was sexual, sure—how could it not be with my body pressed against his, with me slowly repositioning myself until I was nearly straddling him and could feel his hard-on through the fabric of his pants—and yet there was something beyond sex happening. I wouldn’t call it love, but perhaps it was similar, an existential experience that brought us to each other and then back to ourselves. I searched for the bottom of his shirt and ran my fingertips up along his sides just to feel the continued sparks against his skin, and for the moment, I felt alive.
Confessions of a Muse Page 4
