The Muse

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The Muse Page 10

by Carr, Suzie

I imagined the scene. She’d be pouring herself a cup of coffee, most likely wearing a pencil skirt and a fitted button-down dress shirt that hugged her waistline. She’d lean forward to ensure the coffee landed in her petite mug. This would cause her calf muscle to flex, and I would undoubtedly walk right past the collaboration room and back to my cubicle, beet-faced and choking back a giggle. Doreen would have to come out of her cubicle and ask me what happened. I would back down and tell her I just tripped, and Doreen would be kind enough to walk away with all questions squelched and swept away out of sight.

  I would try to get close to her again once she slipped into the bathroom. I would enter a good thirty seconds after she did so as not to appear like I was, in fact, stalking her. I’d just go in and pretend to wash some ink off of my hands. She’d be in the stall, and I could once again examine her shoes, her shapely ankles, maybe even her cute, painted toes. My heart fluttered imagining myself only a few dozen feet away from her again. She’d walk out and over to the sink next to me, smile, then her face would blossom into a sneaky grin, knowing I had been the one to catch her the first time in that precarious situation. This would relieve all pressure from me and impose it on her. Of course, she’d take it in stride and continue to smile coyly at me, her head bowed, her eyes shadowed by a hint of embarrassment, and then a twinkle as she glanced up and saw me watching her. Our eyes would lock in an intense moment of recognition that something just sparked between us. I’d break the silence with Larry’s suggestion of her well-matched shoes. We’d both have a hearty laugh over this and end with a friendly tap on each other’s arms.

  Sadly, my fantasies would always remain that way. I would never follow her into the bathroom. I would never watch her as she lathered warm soapy water between her delicate hands. I would never brave a sly smile. I would most certainly never face her and tell her ‘oh by the way, I’m CarefreeJanie.’

  I enjoyed the mystery. I wouldn’t ruin this precious intermission in my boring, reclusive life. For the first time since seeing Rhonda’s hollow eyes stare at me through her tears, guilt lifted in the presence of Eva’s beauty. I relished in some fun finally. I deserved a chance to flirt, to fantasize, to kiss this girl, if only in my dreams.

  I yanked open the door to the office building on an empathetic yes, absolutely I deserved all of this and so much more. I blew into the foyer with a determination to keep this charade going as long as possible. I would gift myself with this. The universe would gift me with this. Eva would undoubtedly view this as a gift, too, and would not be ready to face what reality dealt her just yet. I couldn’t disappoint her that way. We both benefited from this. I would not destroy that for her. Not now. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. She’d never have to find out the real me.

  This could totally work as a virtual fling.

  Yes. Of course it could.

  I strolled in staring down at the brown carpeting, struggling to keep my laptop strap balanced on my shoulder, hiding a goofy grin brought on by musings of suds and sensual kisses in my steamy bathtub fantasies.

  I waved to Ron the mailman who perched up in the receptionist booth. “Hey Jane,” he yelled out. I cringed, scanned the open foyer for her, suddenly worried she’d hear my name and connect me with CarefreeJanie.

  As I rounded the corner to my department, muttering to myself what an idiot I was, I slammed right into her.

  I slammed right smack into Eva Handel and her coffee mug.

  Her coffee flew straight up in the air, spraying us both, splashing right down the front of her cream, fitted blouse. Coffee also spilled down the front of my taupe capri pants and into my sandals. My laptop fell to the floor, as did the box of donut holes I brought in for Doreen. Balls of dough rolled around Eva Handel’s perfectly matched shoes.

  To my horror, her mouth hung open in shock. She patted the front of her blouse and looked down on herself as if she’d been shot. Her dark hair, swept to the side in a sexy, low ponytail, even dripped. My hands flew up to my mouth, and I just kept repeating “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry” over and over again.

  She glanced up at me on my fifth repeat, placed her hand on my upper arm and said, “It’s okay. It’s just coffee. I shouldn’t have rounded the corner at such blazing speed.”

  I melted under her caress. Her hand softened and warmed on my arm. I looked down, unable to control my trembles in the wake of her sexy voice, her penetrating eyes, the smile that rested on her lips, the same lips I fantasized about every other minute of the day. I couldn’t even respond to her, I just nodded and closed in on myself.

  She slipped her soft hands off of my bare arm. “You’re that girl from the bathroom!”

  I inched my eyes up the full length of her and met her friendly gaze.

  “Look,” she said pointing to her shoes. “I managed to match today.”

  In my peripheral view, I saw disaster walking towards us. “Oh my gosh,” Katie said, staring at the coffee spill on Eva’s shirt, her voice sailing high, so screechy, that all of marketing seeped out of their cubicles to get a peek at what clumsy me did. Even Sanjeev appeared. “Jane, why don’t you get her some towels in the kitchen?” Katie said this like I was ten and a complete imbecile.

  “Don’t be silly,” Eva said, stooping down to help me gather my loose papers and laptop. “I’m the one who ran into her.” She handed me my notes on my latest project and then stood. “I’ll go and get us some towels.” She rushed away.

  Katie crossed her arms over her chest and giggled.

  All eyes fell upon me, poking at me like a piece of kindling, stirring flickers and then flames. The room shrunk. Sanjeev moved in closer asking me if I needed some water, if I wanted to sit down. As if I took one step backwards and reentered my pathetic teenaged life, I blushed deep purple.

  I couldn’t let Eva see me like this.

  I gathered my stuff and ran. I ran so fast I dropped my lunch tote and just kept running all the way to my car, all the while reprimanding myself for tossing out the Old Bay seasoning question in the first place. I could’ve ignored the way her private smile twirled my heart and just gone about life as usual, watching reruns of House and eating Doritos. I would’ve been dunking my donut holes in my hazelnut coffee laughing with Doreen over something stupid Katie said that morning instead of fleeing the scene like some wacky woman tripping on bad drugs.

  Great going, CarefreeJanie.

  Chapter Eight

  Later that afternoon, I read a tweet Eva sent out to the masses. “When all else fails, toss your hands up in the air and laugh out loud.”

  That’s exactly what I did. I tossed my hands up in the air and laughed out loud to my messy condo. I was a one-woman comedy show. All of my life, I doled out comedic relief to people. They laughed when I sat alone at the long, lonely eight person tables in school. They laughed when they hit me square in the middle of my shoulder blades with a rock. They laughed when I entered a room and stood silent against a wall. They laughed when I wore too much makeup or dressed in an outfit one size too small from my above average sized frame.

  If anyone was going to laugh at me, it should’ve been me. I stood in the middle of my living room amongst a plate from breakfast with a half-eaten banana, my socks from the night before, and Larry’s exercise mat that I forgot to return. I pictured the spilled coffee dripping down Eva’s shirt and into her bra and I spun around in circles, hands extended up to the ceiling laughing from somewhere deep in my belly.

  After a few moments of this nonsense, I stopped spinning and laughing.

  I imagined Eva after witnessing my fiasco, walking into the office bathroom. With coffee stains already setting in, she would peek under all doors to make sure no one else was inside, then toss her delicate arms up in the air and lose herself in a beautiful giggle over my clumsy mistake. I stopped short on this thought. I could never reveal my true identity to her now. She’d think I was a stalker, a nutcase, an insecure flake for not telling her right then and there while her hand rested on my skin that I, plain and red-
faced Jane, was actually CarefreeJanie.

  Never. I could never reveal my real self. With this decision cemented, the pressure released and freed me from future self-talks about how I should definitely just tell her who I really was.

  I settled my fate with Eva. I would remain a mystery. I would live out my days in my beautiful fantasies, cherishing and tucking safely into them. In their embrace, harm and judgment couldn’t poke at me.

  I’d drive Eva wild and crazy with the recurrent question of how she could be so crazy over a girl she’d never even met.

  She could never know I was Jane Knoll, proofreader at Martin Sporting Goods, a twenty-nine-year-old kissing virgin, the girl who caught her with two mismatched shoes, and the girl who sprayed coffee all over her expensive blouse and dashed out without a proper apology or at least an offer to pay the dry-cleaning ticket.

  What an ass I was. Yeah my identity would remain bottled, sealed, shut off from every source of light to prevent spoiling it.

  So, as long as I bottled up that identity, I could play with reckless abandon and live life vicariously through the computer screen. I could be that sexy girl, that mysterious girl, that girl someone like Eva would fantasize about meeting and falling in love with.

  First, I retweeted her “laughter” tweet to my twenty-two followers. Yup, twenty-two people followed me. A few posed as eggheads with no faces and no followers aside from me, and a couple claimed to be internet gurus specializing in social media marketing and search engine optimization crapola. Then, there was my beautiful Eva, the girl who wrapped her heart around my writing and adored me for what I might be able to produce for her one day.

  I could totally write a script for her. Mark Twain used a pen name. Why couldn’t I?

  I landed back into my direct messages and sent one out to her. “Hey, girlie. How’s your day going?” So innocent and clueless I sounded. I loved being CarefreeJanie.

  Within a minute, she messaged me back. “What a day. I had a small coffee fiasco this morning but other than that, I’m doing fine.”

  I wanted to know more about her take on the fiasco. “What happened?” I sealed my fate. I was CarefreeJanie on the road somewhere and not the one who spilled coffee down her shirt.

  “I smacked right into some chick at the office. I splattered coffee all over her pants and my shirt. I felt so bad for her.”

  I groaned. “Why? Did she get burned or something?”

  “No. But, she turned bright red.”

  “Well, I would’ve, too. Coming face-to-face with a gorgeous girl like you would certainly turn me a few shades of red.”

  “I adore when you flirt with me.”

  My fingers fluttered as I typed back. “Is that all you adore about me?”

  “I’m starting to adore a lot about you, honey,” she wrote.

  I rocked backwards on my heels, floating on the softness of her words. “Mmm.”

  # #

  “She adores me.” I twirled around, modeling a summer dress for Larry.

  He stood with his feet shoulder-width apart, chin propped up with his fist, and waved his other hand. “I don’t like it.”

  I spun around again for him, enjoying the flowing pretty tickle of the soft fabric against my thighs. “What’s wrong with it?”

  He stood cupping his chin in his hand. “Doesn’t do anything for you.”

  I scoffed and patted my hips while examining them in the mirror.

  “It’s too puffy and doesn’t do anything to show off your nice curves. You look like you’re about to crochet a sweater for a granddaughter.”

  Larry once told me that my hair resembled the last stages of an overused scouring pad. He said this after I had gotten a body perm for volume. We had spent the better part of that night hunched over my kitchen sink pouring neutralizer on it, conditioning it, applying a hair mask, and shampooing it five times to straighten it back out. I ended up having to cut my shoulder-length hair into a short bob that hung at my ears. It took me two years to finally get it back to just below my shoulders. The shiny smooth texture never did return after all of that abuse. I stopped using smoothing creams altogether and just dealt with the frizz and wooly texture. That was up until just a few weeks ago, back when I thought I’d be brave enough to walk up to Eva at the quarterly meeting. I’d been spreading smoothing cream into my luscious locks ever since, and I had to admit, the marketing people who wrote that copy on the bottle were accurate. It really did smell like coconuts and add an element of shine. I stared at my puffy skirt and tamed hair and laughed.

  “Help me, Larry.” I turned to him. “I just want to feel pretty and sexy.”

  “Then, darling, get your ass out of that mess.”

  “Find me something else?” I bent forward squeezing my hands together. “Please. You know how much I hate shopping.”

  He ushered me backwards towards my dressing room. “Get in there before someone catches me with you. That skirt’s beyond embarrassing.”

  I stepped inside and closed the door. “I’ll be waiting.”

  “Sure dear.”

  I tore off the dress and angled back towards the mirror. I could hardly notice the stretch marks in this light. I turned to check out my ass, and that, too, improved under the soft golden mist of proper lighting. A few more weeks of brisk walking could do wonders. I placed my hands on my curvy hips and posed. With the right outfit, I could disguise my waist.

  “Hey,” Larry whispered. “I got you something.”

  I reached up over the door and grabbed a set of lacy, French cut undies with a matching bra. “What the hell is this?” It dangled from my fingers.

  “Nothing screams sexy like a pair of red lacy underwear. You cannot say no.”

  “I will never wear these ridiculous things.” I stretched my legs through them and pulled them up. Then, I fastened the bra. When I looked at myself in the mirror, my jaw dropped. I actually looked halfway decent in them. Dare I say, almost sexy?

  A few minutes later, fully dressed back in my jeans and Nike t-shirt, I balled the undies and bra up and carried them out of the dressing room like a football. “Come on. Hurry before someone sees me buying these ridiculous things.”

  He slinked up beside me, grabbed me by the hand and smiled like he just caught me making out with the prettiest girl in town.

  # #

  I emailed the short story I wrote for Eva to five of the country’s top magazines. Two days after, I received an email message from the editor of Glamour asking if I’d accept two thousand dollars for the piece and agree to their copyright terms which she had attached.

  I flew off my stool and ran circles in my living room. I jumped on my couch and flipped several times. I screamed. I high-fived the air. Then I ran over to Larry’s condo and knocked so hard my knuckles shined bright red by the time he answered. Shaving cream still bearded his face. The words spilled out before my brain could keep up and what came out was “Story… published… two grand… oh my God…”

  We jumped up and down in the cement hallway that separated our condos. He squealed higher than I did. “Didn’t I tell you? I told you that you could write. And, you didn’t believe me.” He clung to me, spinning me in wide circles, leaping with me, celebrating my big victory as a published writer.

  I couldn’t wait to tell Eva. I would owe her part of this check. If she hadn’t pushed, I’d still be plain Jane burying my time in the quicksand of humdrum nights filled with short-term sugar highs from too many Oreos.

  # #

  I couldn’t hide the smile spreading across my face that morning when I arrived late to work. I logged onto my computer and within two seconds Katie appeared, digging her claws into me. I turned and she handed me a stack of tear sheets from ads we had created. “Can you find the one that is advertising the executive golf bags? Sanjeev is asking me for it and I’ve got to get ready for a meeting with him in an hour.” A sweet smile played out on her face, the likes that concerned me. What was she up to?

  “Sure.”


  “Late night last night?” she asked.

  “Alarm failed me.”

  “Ah.” She tapped my cubicle wall. “You might want to check your email.”

  I did. I hopped on immediately and sure enough she had emailed Sanjeev the production schedule and highlighted three projects of mine that were late. That bitch changed the dates on me, shining the light on her, the glowing star of marketing, the glorious one meeting all of her deadlines ahead of schedule.

  I popped over to Doreen’s cubicle a moment later. “I feel like having some fun today.”

  “How?”

  “Let’s steal her keys and watch her panic.”

  Doreen looked up from her desk, her pink lipstick shimmered a bit too much. “Just breathe for a few minutes and let it pass.”

  I wrapped my arm around her shoulder. “Actually, I don’t even care about her today. She can’t ruin my mood.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Well, I bet you never thought you’d be able to say that you’re friends with a writer whose work is going to be in Glamour in two months.”

  She pulled away. “You’re writing again?”

  “Yup.”

  “I thought you were tired of being bullied by mean editors?”

  ”

  “How?”

  “By my muse.”

  Her eyes stretched wide and a smile danced onto her face. “What’s his name?”

  Not even fear could squash my joy. “Actually it’s ‘her’ name. And, I don’t kiss and tell.”

  She covered her mouth and squealed. Her blue eyes sparkled under a fresh layer of moisture. I bounced away, feeling lighter and happier than I had in a very long time.

  # #

  Wearing sexy underwear thrilled me. I wore them out that day to buy groceries and when I walked down the cereal aisle, my hips swayed more. The lace lifted me up, way up to this crazy, birds’-eye view level where I could soar across the shiny floors with eloquent rises and falls and agile force that even turned one young stock boy’s head. He looked up from his boxes of oatmeal and smiled at me. No one ever smiled at me. I didn’t know what to do with this smile, so I just sort of giggled and bolted towards my Chex mix section.

 

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