She falters as she reads. Hal tells her to take her time.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and then tries to clear her throat. It doesn’t help. Her chin drops and her shoulders begin to quiver. A quiet mewling breaks from deep inside her chest.
I know that noise. I’ve heard it a thousand times before. I’ve made it a thousand times before. I start to slide from my seat but Hal is already moving to her. Of course he is. He takes her in his arms and hugs her. Of course he does. He shushes her gently as she cries against his collar. He presses his lips to her forehead.
I close my eyes and I make the noise, silently, and let it go around and around inside my head.
Hal tells us, “You must find your muse. Seek her out no matter how difficult the journey. She may be fickle. She may be shy and hide when you call to her. She may embrace you when you least expect it. But it’s your duty to discover her. It’s your obligation to provide her with whatever it is she needs.”
I think about my muse. I wonder who she is. Maybe Beth. Maybe the first girl I ever pined for. Perhaps some bully chick from first grade who haunts me under my skin whose name and face I’ve forgotten. The drive is there. It makes my hands strong. I don’t use a computer. I type on an old manual Underwood. I want to feel the foot-pounds of pressure when I hit a key. It’s work. Writing for an hour on a manual burns up more calories than three games of racquetball. I eat one of Mrs. Manfreddi’s homemade pies a day and there’s still not an ounce of fat on me.
My writing courses through my system. It has impact. It changes me. My muse, whoever it is, knows this.
I try to imagine what it is she needs. What sacrifices must be made in the name of passion, creativity, and success.
Hal has given a name to his muse, and calls her Pandora. He thinks he’s being cute. He always thinks he’s being cute. He says, “Pandora loves no man, not even me. But she understands who and what I am.”
What the hell. I steal the name.
Pandora, you’re my muse. We need to get back to work. You don’t love me but you know what I am.
Beth and tonight’s beau are bowling. The beau is pretty good, has a nice steady throwing style that rolls along the edge of the gutter and then rockets back into the sweet spot with a thunderous crack. After every strike Beth stands and jumps in place, bringing her hands together for an instant as if in prayer, and then clapping energetically. He holds his arms wide and grabs her, lifting her off her feet, twirling. It would look very romantic except for the silly bowling shoes.
I close my eyes, hearing the action in all the alleys. The spares being picked up, the strikes, the gutter balls. The kids crying, the geriatrics doing their best to stay active. The drunks in the bar arguing over the game on television. I listen to Beth’s clapping.
After their last game, the beau pays me and they turn in their pairs of shoes and while I’m handing the guy back his change, Beth stands barefoot on tippy-toe and licks him beneath the ear. He meets my eyes with a vain expression. I can’t blame him. If she was licking me under the ear I’d be looking at every working-stiff doofus the same way. Still barefoot, the two of them traipse across the carpeted floor toward the front door. I stand there with the disinfectant about to spray their shoes.
Mrs. Manfreddi calls me out to the shed. The fence at the back of her property has fallen over and she needs me to help drive in new posts. Dead trees dapple the area. Rotting roots have caused the earth to settle. She tells me that the grade of the back lawn has always been off, and twenty-seven years of heavy rain flooding the fence line have created a sump. She hands me a rake, a pick, a spade, a chainsaw, the Rototiller, a root-grinder, and suggests how I should cut down the trees and stack the cordwood. How I should turn and level the soil. It shouldn’t take more than four or maybe six weeks, she says. After I get the first tree down, she’ll have a nice blueberry pie waiting.
I yank the cord on the chainsaw, give it some gas. Sawdust spits into the wind.
Woody Wright is full of myth and warriors and gods. He writes about sorcerers and barbarians in the distant past who battle in stone temples at the tops of black cliffs. Evil tentacled beings slither in the skies and at the bottom of volcanic pits. His heroes are always men who take what they want, pillaging and using two-handed broadaxes to cleave the skulls of enemies who don’t immediately acquiesce. The women are all dancing slave girls trained in the ways of love. He uses the term “red ruin” ad nauseam. Men’s faces are constantly being turned into a “red ruin” by swords and maces.
Woody’s voice is high-pitched, but he has a sense of drama. He speaks with a growl. He acts out his battles as he reads, wielding invisible weapons overhead. Black veins bulge in his throat. When the horses fall in battle he whinnies and neighs and strikes his desk. His head must be loud with screams because he reads louder and louder, as if he’s deaf to himself. Sweat is slathered across his top lip. He raises a hand to shield his eyes from the torches of his enemies setting fire to his village. He cries for his murdered father. He chugs down a goblet of wine with the slave girl he has freed. He’s run through by a spear but still manages to kill his own murderer, an enemy tyrant king of Lemuria whose death means freedom for a hundred different nations.
With a gurgle, Woody whispers, “And so my name... passes into chronicles of the great ages... gaahhh... ack...”
Hal is impressed. So am I. Woody’s face is a red ruin of hope and relief. He slumps across the desk and, completely slack, drops to the floor, unconscious.
The paramedics ask us what happened. They’ve got an oxygen mask on Woody and are strapping him into a gurney. The class looks at one another in silence, and then we all start talking at once. Hal’s voice slices through the din like a battle-ax.
“The boy... he’s a master storyteller who gave his all.”
The girls nod. Jerry the Jock drapes the back of his hand across his eyes and wipes away tears.
The paramedics look at us like we’re all out of our heads.
I never work the front counter of Cabo Wabo Burger, but somehow I’m working it tonight when Fruggy Fred walks in. He spots me immediately and nearly turns around. We’ve been doing this dance for three years, since I moved out of the dorm. He took it personally despite my explanation that I just couldn’t take the noise. Maybe that’s where his self-doubt began. Maybe it’s all my fault, what’s happened to him.
“You got a minute?”
I’m working the front counter of a fast-food joint, but he’s caught me at a lull. There’s no one else around so I say, “Sure.”
Fruggy has a light step. He writes about the fat a lot but he doesn’t look bad, doesn’t seem to be uncomfortable. There’s a liveliness there, or at least there used to be. The years on campus have taken a toll on him. He’s gotten a touch sophisticated, his eyes don’t carry the same amused glint.
“What are you doing?” he asks, almost angrily.
“Me? I’m covering the counter.”
“No,” he says. “What are you doing?”
I know what he’s talking about, but I ask, “What are you talking about?”
“You know what I mean. What are you doing to yourself?” He looks me up and down. “I see you all over town, working all these loser jobs. You’re rail thin, man. You’ve got black bags under your eyes. When was the last time you ate a real meal? When was the last time you got a good night’s sleep?”
More good questions. Everybody has them. “Why don’t you play the banjo anymore?”