The Muse
She couldn’t manage to get a good grasp on him today. She felt at risk of having him up and float off somewhere above her head. Or maybe he would just pull her down, drag her along the pavement — bumpity, bump, bump, bump, shredding her stockings, maybe losing a heel. How would she walk home after that? Her knees bleeding through torn nylons. Maybe she should just take the pantyhose off now, here, before they got ruined. For that matter, why not shed her jacket and scarf before they ended up ruined, so much for salting away her paycheck if she had to fork it over to a dry cleaner.
Turning about to make sure no one was looking, she leaned over and slipped off her shoes, then peeled off her stockings, inching them down carefully over her sturdy legs so as not to snag them. She rolled them up with her scarf neatly and placed them in her handbag, She bent over again, wiggling her bare toes in the crisp autumn air before slipping them back into her sensible heels. This was getting out of control. She could feel his cool marble fingers slipping under her tweed skirt inching their way closer to the soft parts of her inner thighs. She tightened her legs feeling the tingle start. This was certainly untenable, here, where they were not alone, where she could not give herself over to the feeling. She looked down the train platform again, only half dozen or so commuters midday — not like the rush hour. She was late into work. She’d called to make an excuse. She couldn’t bear the thought of taking him with her. But then, there was no choice. Either stay home or get on with it. So she tied his hands loosely with her green silk scarf and threw him over her back.
Oh, the weight. Three blocks to the station up Broadway to 125th then up the platform stairs. She’d had to grab the railing twice to steady herself as he’d reached under her coat and blouse, right down into her brassiere, taking her right nipple between his thumb and forefinger. She was beside herself. Stricken, really. But she couldn’t leave him at home. She couldn’t risk his wandering off again.
And she knew he could make the drudgery of work more pleasant. Instead of having to listen to her work mate prattle on about her conquests, he would surely drown her out with his incessant whispering — little creative things in her ear to make the commerce of typing go by more quickly. And then there would be lunch. He could sit with her in the cafeteria and keep her company. If only he wouldn’t do that thing with his toes, making the swirls on the inside of her ankles, tickling her until she laughed so loudly that people looked over at her rolling their eyes.
It was always better when he was with her — better than the alternative. The last time he wandered off she’d been left bone dry; she couldn’t write a word. She sat for hours in front of her Olivetti sporadically hammering out phrases — nothing cohesive or even coherent. That and the numb feeling that set in — all her highs and lows vanished leaving her flat. She’d felt like a tree whose branches had been badly pruned — emotionally limbless, disinterested in writing and cooking and only the seduction of sleep able to provoke any momentum.
She’d had a boyfriend once, kind of. She was young and oddly pretty in an often-unnoticed sort of way. She was shy, hiding beneath her blonde bangs. He’d had shoulder length dark hair and watchful eyes, very serious and intent. They sat desk by desk in the back of algebra class on the upper west side. After a time he began to speak to her. At first questions about the work, and eventually commentary and even some humor. She slowly engaged until it could be said, they were a thing. She, being too young and inexperienced to read his intentions, hadn’t understood what he wanted of her. Now, of course, she understood that his insistence to be near her was a need, an unwitting desire for something to happen between them — akin to her feelings right now, momentarily set aside on the platform — a need to recognize and to be recognized, to share something powerful.
At home, she was inattentive — loose piles of writing scattered in baskets and unmarked folders. She sometimes surprised herself, sorting through papers to find one thing and coming across quite another, pausing to read and take note of what she had written months, or even years earlier. Sometimes she submitted a poem or two, not often. She was certain of rejection the moment she licked the envelope shut.
Once she’d taken a community college writing class. Her first essay came back with a brief note in the margin — I think I’m going to like your writing. Good work. She read it over two or three times, then slowly circled the word think, bearing down hard with her #2 pencil, then quickly scribbled next to his ink: tentative? When the Professor picked up the day’s assignments, she tucked her paper with the comments back into the stack. This started a correspondence of sorts: the notable margins. It could have been conceived as a flirtation but it was more. She was hungry and he fed her in small ways she could digest. She would not have trusted flattery and could not have withstood honest criticism. She slept with him only twice; it was painful. He was married and she imagined she was one of a long line of students as often as she imagined she was his first indiscretion in all his years of teaching. She understood this to be love. It was this feeling that unwittingly served her. She wrote voraciously from it — letters, poems and short stories. She wrote in spasms and floods. Rarely editing, rarely submitting. It was this feeling too that thwarted her. She created in a bell jar — as cut off from the world as her feelings for him. She hadn’t thought of her Professor in years. Yet it was he who had unintentionally introduced her most profoundly to the wellspring of her own creative center.
It was becoming warmer as the sun rose in the sky. Still, she was chilled standing on the platform, her jacket draped over her arm. She lifted it and shook it out lightly, threading one arm then the other back into its embrace. A little shiver went through her shoulders and down between her breasts. She buttoned up the jacket slowly, feeling her muse’s firm hands on her hips through the wool of her skirt. At least she had him, the yang to her yin.
She adjusted him over her shoulder, patting his arm. In return, he squeezed her wrist reassuringly. The train was coming. She could hear it before she saw it far down the track, its chained door picking up glints of sunlight as it rattled toward 125th Street.
