The Muse

by Anne Calhoun

  Seth’s smile softened into a real one. “They’re gone,” he said. “Your pizza, ma’am.”

  She swallowed hard, dug her fingernails into her palms, and fought off the panic. It was so close, scratching at the underside of her skin, fighting to be free. “I’m not sure I have enough money to pay for it.”

  “We can work something out,” he said, and rolled his bike through the open front door.

  The pie was from a quintessential New York pizza place that sold slices and whole pies, garlic knots, bottled soda, and not much else. It smelled fantastic—basic mozzarella, tomato sauce, and a worthless carb white-flour crust. For the first time in recent memory, her stomach growled.

  “Sounds urgent,” Seth said, and spun the box around and onto the dining room table.

  “What can I get you to drink?” she asked from the kitchen.

  “I’m good,” he said, following her into the kitchen, and pulled a six-pack of beer out of his messenger bag. They were still sweating, so he must have picked them up from one of the grocery stores on Lex or Second. She turned the oven on to warm while he put the beer in the fridge, keeping one back for now. She got two plates down from the rack hanging over the sink, and poured herself a glass of wine while he slid a piece onto her plate, two onto his. A quick rummage in the fridge brought out a container of Caesar salad and another of fruit. Napkin and glass in hand, she followed him back into the dining room.

  He held up his bottle of beer. She tapped her glass to it, then bit off the tip of her piece. He folded his in half, New York–style, and did the same, decimating nearly a third of the slice.

  “I didn’t get a chance to grab lunch,” he said when he swallowed.

  “Me, either,” she said. “I’m surprised to see you here.”

  He smiled at her. “I was riding by and saw your light on. It was a whim.”

  – ELEVEN –

  Arden fiddled with the edge of her napkin and sipped her wine, her eyes dark and conflicted. For a moment Seth wondered if being a whim bothered her, then set it aside. If he had to guess, he’d say she was both surprised and touched that he’d stopped by out of the blue. No guess at all, she was definitely on edge.

  “I like being your whim,” she said lightly.

  He glanced at the files and laptop at the other end of the table. “Bringing work home?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” she said.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “I’d really rather eat this pizza and forget about it,” she said.

  And why would she assume he’d be able to help her? He was a bike messenger, a former Marine, a guy who modeled nude for money. She had no reason to assume he’d be anything more than a distraction. Anyway, it didn’t matter. He had obligations. Responsibilities. No room in his life for another one.

  “Tell me about your day,” she said.

  He mentally ran through the deliveries. All over Manhattan, one in Queens, a couple across the bridge into Brooklyn. “I spent the day playing in traffic,” he said easily.

  She smiled. “Is that what you call it?”

  “Among other things,” he said.

  “Why work as a bike messenger?”

  Unbidden, Phil’s question came to his mind: This is what you’re doing with your life? But Arden’s words were tinged with curiosity, not judgment. “I like being outside. I like the rush of riding in Manhattan traffic. I like the challenge of pitting myself against the clock, the traffic, my own endurance.”

  It was the truth. He did like that, but it sounded shallow in this context. Chasing a rush when he was a Marine meant something. Chasing one alone, even with the motivation of the people left behind, sounded different. He’d never wanted to be alone, but this was the way his life turned out.

  “Another slice?”

  “I’ll get it,” he said, but she took his plate and got up. “You’re not afraid of the traffic?” she said from the kitchen. He heard the box scrape against the oven rack, then her hissed breath just before pizza hit the plate.

  She came around the corner with three slices steaming on the plate and a second beer in hand, pausing to transfer one piece from his plate to hers and hand him the beer. He blew on the melting cheese, then folded the slice double, taking the time he needed to chew to think about his answer. “I am, but I’m not. Fear is a warning, not a command. Respect the situation. Pay attention. Only fools don’t feel fear. Courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s feeling the fear and doing whatever impossible task is in front of you anyway.”

  She thought about this as she finished her first slice, then arranged the second neatly on her plate. “Give me examples.”

  He really didn’t want to talk about it, but there was something else behind this. “Like walking point on a patrol into a wadi you know is riddled with insurgents. Like driving down a road you know was mined last week. Like going door-to-door in a village never knowing if a sniper’s got a bead on you from a window across the street. Like getting into a Humvee knowing the road was mined last week, and driving on it regardless.”

  It was more than he’d talked to anyone besides Phil since he got out. He hadn’t had to explain this to anyone. The people he knew and loved already knew all of this.

  “And riding in Manhattan traffic compares to that?”

  “No,” he said frankly. “But it’s the best I’ve got.”

  “Why are you here, not back in Wyoming? Don’t you have family there?”

  He couldn’t tell her about dust, how little there was of it in Manhattan, how dusty country roads were. “My parents are there. I’m an only child. One of my friends who died left behind his kid brother, who was also a Marine. He’s having trouble adjusting to civilian life.”

  “Phil,” she said. “The guy you were going to the movies with.”

  He nodded, on the verge of telling her about Brittany and Baby B, but something stopped him. He didn’t want to be that guy, the wounded one who got the big eyes and the soft, patting hands, and the whispers. He’d been a part of something special, a kind of bond that nothing, not even death, could break. Most people couldn’t even begin to comprehend what he’d had, what he’d lost, what he was determined to honor.

  “You have responsibilities,” she said quietly. “I get that.”

  They finished the rest of the meal in silence. “Do you have anything going on tonight?” He shook his head. “Can I?” she asked, glancing at the ceiling where, above them, her easel was always set up in the living room now.

  “Sure.”

  He started unbuttoning his shirt, but she stopped him. “I want something different this time,” she said. “Can you do something Marine-ish?”

  “Marine-ish?” he said, humor fizzing in his veins. It felt good. Light.

  “I don’t know what I want,” she said. “Something you’d do, a pose you’d hold, a way you’d sit or stand or whatever.”

  “You really don’t know anything about the military, do you?” he said.

  “Not a thing,” she said ruefully. “Show me.”

  A faint ping went off on his internal radar, not a siren blaring, just a ping he couldn’t shake that faded into the silence. He watched her, but the radar swept around, giving back a clear screen. Then he got to his feet and took the stairs to the second floor, where Arden lived and slept. He could feel her behind him, like he used to feel Manny at his back as he guarded their backs. The hair on his nape lifted, but he kept on moving until he stood in the small space made by rearranged furniture, then he did something he hadn’t done for months. He came to attention.

  Heels together, toes apart, legs straight but not locked because locking his knees ensured he’d pass out in formation. Every recruit learned that in a week or so, either from personal experience or from watching the poor fuck who did pass out. Stomach in, shoulders back and down, but chest not puffed out, elbows slightly bent, fingers curled, thumb aligned with the side seam of his pants. Chin lifted, thousand yard stare, and just like that, he was ba
ck in his body, hearing.

  His heart did a jittery little dance in his chest, cha-cha-cha-ing against his breastbone like automatic fire. He was aware of Arden in his peripheral vision, hand moving in the rough scribbles of gesture drawing, fluid movements contrasting with the bony angles she shouldn’t have, cheekbones and collarbones and wristbones, her hair like gold in the setting sunlight.

  “It’s too formal. Too distant,” she said distractedly. “Too still.”

  He tried to remember that she had no idea what this meant, what coming to attention meant to him, the thousands and thousands of times he’d done it, how deeply it was carved into his bones.

  She looked up, tucked her hair behind her ear, leaving a smudge of charcoal on her ear. “You’re not here,” she said. “Where do you go?”

  Except he was. “Back,” he said. Why was he answering her questions?

  She stepped out from behind the easel and circled him, pacing slowly, stopping to look at the arrangement of his shoulders and spine. The sword burned down his back, a leftover sense memory from getting the tattoo. He’d thought nothing would ever feel that alive again.

  “Back where? Boot camp?”

  “No.” Stop answering these questions. “Morning roll call.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Every morning and evening we’d muster for roll call.”

  “So they’d know if you were there?”

  Ignore the amusement in her voice. She doesn’t know.

  Because the whole mattered more than the individual parts. He’d surrendered himself to the mission, the brotherhood, and the pain of missing it bloomed sharp and metallic in his mouth. As if he’d bitten into metal. “It imposes order. Sets you to military time and military life. Doesn’t matter if you came in off patrol two hours earlier. You get up and answer roll call.”

  His voice wasn’t his voice. Did it always sound like that, or was his hearing still off?

  “Where would you go? Oh. AWOL? Surely not in Afghanistan.”

  People did all kinds of crazy things in war zones. What kept you there, what kept him there, were the other members of his platoon. Letting down your buddies was a sin worse than death. “Nowhere to go,” he said, then cleared the quiver from his voice.

  Still behind him, she said, “May I?”

  He gave a jerky nod, like his chin would meet the stiff upright collar of his dress uniform if he nodded too deeply. The next thing he felt was her palms on his shoulder blades. They rested there, tentative, pressed, thumbs and fingers seeking the edge of bone and muscle, the dip into his spine, then down and around to his ribs. She did it again, her breathing even and unaware. He swallowed, feeling an indescribable tension as his body and mind struggled to be in two places at once.

  “Where are you?” she asked, her voice light even, fading into the background of waning light.

  He was back at the roll call after the IED. It was tradition. Even though everyone knew Manny, Doug, and Brian were dead, and half the people in the room had picked up body parts and pieces of their kits, tradition held that their names were called at the next roll. That’s when it felt real to him. Hearing their names, then their ranks, and his own voice saying, Lance Corporal Dorhaus is no longer with us. Lance Corporal Gibson is no longer with us. Corporal Lopez is no longer with us.

  That was his right, his responsibility, his role as the person left behind. Not the gunny’s. Not the LT’s. His. His voice, saying what had to be said. That’s what you could do with words, but how did you draw absence? How did you depict what wasn’t there? Three human lives snuffed out, and no way to show it.

  That’s when the silence started, the silence that was flickering off and on like a poorly tuned radio, even in this room, the absence of even his voice now. Her fingers curled around his ribs, no more than heat and faint pressure, but he had no doubt they were the only thing keeping him on his feet. He had sixty pounds on her, probably more, and a few inches, but she was holding him up.

  He inhaled. His body betrayed him into breathing, into taking what it needed to fill his blood with oxygen to deliver to the cells. She stepped back, and he found he could indeed stand. Even in failure, he still stood.

  “Give me something else,” she said. “Less rigid.”

  The next breath shuddered into the air. He made a big show of rolling his shoulders, cracking his spine side to side, then shut off his brain and found himself dropping to one knee. He used to wear kneepads to protect his knees from hard surfaces, rocks, shrapnel left in the dirt; Arden’s carpet served the same purpose. His arms and shoulders curved into position around the imaginary weapon cradled in his arms.

  “Interesting,” she said.

  He could feel the nearly eight pounds of rifle in his arms. He’d lived with it for so long, carried it everywhere, and when he wasn’t carrying it, it was within arm’s reach at all times. He could fieldstrip and reassemble it in less than twenty-five seconds, insert clips and clear obstructions with his eyes closed. Left elbow on left knee, left hand supporting the barrel, right hand curled around the grip, finger on the trigger. Head tilted, cheek pressed into warm metal, eye aligned with the sight and squinting under the visor of his helmet. Dirt and hills in front of him, not an upscale apartment, no leather purse on a table in the hallway, money and girl gear spilling out of the open top. His shoulder automatically adjusted for the kick. His bones and muscles settled into a new formation, one as utterly familiar as attention. All imaginary, all more real to him than the floor under his knee.

  He’d drawn it again and again, trying to capture what couldn’t be held.

  “May I?” she said again.

  He wondered what it was about him that was telegraphing do not touch signals, but at some level he recognized she was doing the right thing. He nodded, felt the stock push against his cheek. He held nothing. His arms curved around fucking air, but he could feel metal against his face.

  This time she laid her hands on top of his shoulders, resting them there for a few seconds before squeezing gently. “They’re different, and not just because the pose is different.”

  “You give it nowhere to kick,” he said. “You absorb each recoil.”

  “That’s not what I’m looking for, either,” she said after a few seconds.

  He wasn’t sure how he felt about her shopping through his poses, his body, like she was trying on clothes.

  “What are you looking for,” he snapped as he straightened.

  “I’ll know it when I see it,” she said mildly.

  Hands on his hips, he glared at her. She wasn’t flinching from him. Somewhere in there was a woman who routinely dealt with, or stood up to, men being men. Swearing, sweating, flailing, yelling, throwing things, losing their cool spectacularly, Arden had seen it all. That strength was there, under the pale skin and the shadowed eyes.

  “Fuck,” he muttered.

  “Not yet,” she said. “Give me something else.”

  “For someone who won’t show me what she draws, you’ve turned into quite an artiste,” he said, giving the final word the derisive drawl it deserved.

  “Maybe I’m an artiste,” she said, with a French pronunciation, “and the rest of it is all crap.”

  He stared at her, waiting for her, no, willing her to tell him what she was keeping hidden. She stared back, then looked away. “Something else,” she said.

  Impatient, tired, and still back in Afghanistan, he walked over to the wall that separated her bedroom from the living area, put his back to it, and slid down until his butt rested just above his heels. Forearms on knees, hands dangling in space in front of him, he let his head rest against the wall and closed his eyes.

  “That’s really interesting,” she said, mostly to herself.

  With his artist’s mind he took himself out of his body and considered the pose. Lots of U-turns, knees to hips and up the spine. The folds of his cargo pants, the line of his throat emerging from the collar of his shirt. Hands dangling into space, deceptively innocen
t, up close a great exercise in drawing negative space.

  “Why that pose? Why is it different?”

  She was asking herself, and him. She’d form her own answers as she drew. He didn’t need to answer her. He did. “After a patrol, we’d come back to the base and hunker down behind a wall of sandbags, smoke, decompress,” he said, realizing even as he spoke that he felt not smooth drywall but the uneven, rounded protrusions of stacked sandbags.

  “So this isn’t pure Marine,” she said.

  She was already drawing, pencil moving swiftly and smoothly over the paper. The sound was unmistakable, somewhere between a gliding scratch and a rasping glide. He kept not looking at her, and as long as he didn’t look at her, he could see the ghosts in the room. Manny to his left, Doug and Brian to his right. Always the same order. Doug and Brian both chewed dip, shared their cans with each other. The day before they died, Brian offered Doug his last lipful. Doug refused it. Fuck you, I’m not taking your last dip. They’d split it, Manny offering a steady stream of chick-flick commentary about grand gestures and true love, Seth just happy to be there, just happy to be alive. He’d pull out his sketchbook and start drawing.

  The sense memory was so vivid he almost reached into his right cargo pocket.

  This was pure Marine for him. This was what it meant to be a Marine. Manny’s shoulder pressed to his—the only way he’d take comfort—Brian’s compulsive ’Scuse me every time he farted, Doug’s detailed retelling of Phil’s latest act of bravery. The way they watched over his shoulder as he drew. The way they pointed out things, learned to see the way he saw, bringing him interesting bits of debris.

  Arden had gone silent, lost in the drawing. As the minutes passed, he realized he’d inadvertently given her the pose he found easiest to sink into and hardest to bear. He tried to sort through the conflicting, confusing emotions. He was lonely, but so what? Aside from a few years in the Corps, he’d been lonely all his fucking life, the only child of parents caught up in their own lives. It wasn’t that. There was a ringing wrongness to holding this pose, so loud he was surprised she couldn’t hear it. Feel it. He shouldn’t be here. In this apartment. With this woman, sure, but he wasn’t supposed to be here at all. He was supposed to be with them, and he wasn’t, and it was impossible to take.