Chapter 13 #2
I read another line, shivered, and looked away. The book was unnatural. No, not unnatural. A great and talented mind could write it, but looking at the words felt like making too deep eye contact or like reading a diary without permission. “I’m overwhelmed.”
Overwhelmed?
“It’s too much for me to read all at once. Maybe I can read more this afternoon.”
He pinched an index finger. You do like it, though, right?
“I do, but I want to talk about it first. How about we stop and clear the air? Let’s go to Red Sails.
I wanted to try one of their chocolate croissants.
We need to decide what I’m writing and what you’re writing.
If you’re going to work on anything, I want to make sure I’m involved in the right way. ”
Aster smiled first, but then his expression grew somber. We’re close to solving all our problems.
Aster’s enthusiasm lured me on, and gently I encouraged him to take a break from the frantic typing and tell me about his story over a breakfast of coffee and pastries.
When I reached the tourist district of downtown, I parked a safe distance from the cafe so that we could have more time together while we walked.
Aster sat next to me, in the passenger seat.
He wrapped his hand around the handle over the side window and stared through the glass with so much intent that I wondered how much of the world he had actually seen before working with me.
We’d gone shopping together before. There was a small grocery store and deli about three blocks away that we had walked to on more than one occasion, but the additional few minutes of this drive made Red Sales Cafe feel like more of a destination.
“So, tell me what you were writing about,” I said as I pulled into a parallel parking spot by a shop that had large windchimes hanging in the window. “What gave you the idea?”
You did, he started. That is, your writing did. Let’s keep this straight. I looked at what you had written, and in it I could see so much life that I reached in to see what I could find.
I shivered. “What I read of that was beautiful, but it got under my skin. I mean, I don’t know what that was. It felt human, somehow. Alive. Aware of me reading its words.”
All good writing is alive, said Aster. How else do you know it’s good?
My pace quickened as we walked forward. I wanted to know what he’d written about me. No, I was dying to know. Aster looked like he didn’t want to tell me much more, but I could see some of his secrets spilling out through the bright flickers in his eyes.
We reached the cafe, and he held the door open for me as we entered.
This place was colder and darker than it had looked from the outside.
I noted the roughness of the stone slab tiling and the unpolished wood at the front desk, where a few selections of coffee grinds waited for someone to buy them.
“Order anything you want,” I said to Aster while skimming the chalk menu myself and browsing the day’s specials.
I’m not hungry. I’m set up to write now, and I can’t think of much else, he said.
“Then think of it. But tell me about it too.”
I can’t. There are too many eyes on us. Too many people.
I counted heads and came to the number six. “No, there aren’t.”
But I can’t bear to see them all. They disprove my favorite illusion.
“What illusion is that?”
The illusion that you and I are the only two living people in the world.
I looked at him in surprise. I pictured it for a moment as he did, the pair of us alone on the coast needing nothing but each other to live. The thought made me queasy. “We were never the only people in the world.”
He drew a breath. How about you order something for yourself, then? I’ll pass. The food we have back at the house is better, anyway.
I turned to the person working behind the counter, a girl my age with thick dark hair and a square jaw.
She had been watching us for a few seconds, and without deliberating further I ordered a white chocolate cappuccino and checked with Aster to make sure he didn’t want anything.
Then I ordered a pair of chocolate-filled croissants for both of us and waited while the barista put the order through.
“So, if you’re going to go on and write that book for now,” I asked, “then what do I do?”
Stay around. Keep my feet tethered to the ground.
“But this is my residency, and I’m the one who needs to write. Does your book count as mine?”
Why wouldn’t it? No one would know the difference.
“Because there’s no pride in it if I didn’t write it,” I said. “And I can’t celebrate a victory I didn’t win.”
But Aster wasn’t looking at me. His eyes darted around us, and a shadow covered his expression of concern, even fear.
The barista placed my cappuccino on the counter, where I picked it up. When I turned around, I found that an expression of concern had masked Aster’s face. He didn’t look at me but around me, and his eyes flicked around the room like he was following something else.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s sit down. And I insist you try a croissant.”
I extended a hand to him, and he took it numbly, walking after me like a blind man trusting a guide. Something had changed. Aster could see into reality on a level that I couldn’t, and whatever he saw now put him on edge.
After a pause, he sat across from me. We picked a high table, a small one with two tall wooden stools on either side. Mine wobbled when I sat down, so I leaned back to lock it more easily in place.
“Is everything all right?” I asked, giving him a croissant.
He took it, and he set it down without taking a bite. I’m not sure.
“Not sure? What happened?” I had already felt chilly in this room, but now the cold became conspicuous. I glanced out the window to the shop outside and saw a row of colorful scarves on a rack on the sidewalk for ten dollars apiece.
I’m being pursued.
The single instance of the word “pursued” would have caused me to spill my coffee, if my cup were still in my hand. I shivered and tried to imagine what my muse could be getting at. “Pursued? Why? By what?”
They’re here. Or they were here. Though they seem to have gone now. He glanced around to make sure we were alone.
“Who is it?”
They’re people, he said in a hushed voice, steepling his hands over the table. People, or shadows of people. They see everything. They know all about us muses, and… they’re the ones who make the calls about things. They’re not happy with what they see.
I turned my head to make sure I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. A trio of teen girls enjoying their summer vacation entered and started their orders, but no one else was in earshot. “You never told me about these people before,” I said.
They weren’t a threat before. In fact, I’ve never seen them in person before now.
“So how dangerous are they?” I asked. “What can they do?”
Aster looked down and pressed his head into one hand while examining his uneaten croissant in the other. Mostly they watch. They keep tabs, watch who’s naughty and who’s nice. And when they deem it necessary, they interfere and pronounce judgment. Possibly death. You might call them the Fates.
The Fates. An image of three grinning, shadowy creatures filled my head, a trio of monstrous women cutting threads and determining the fate of all living things from worms to gods.
I couldn’t relax in the cafe after Aster had described them to me. He didn’t want to talk about them, and if they were real—and listening to us—I didn’t want him to talk about them either.
Leaving Red Sails Cafe brought some relief.
The sun had ascended to the midpoint in the sky over our heads, and Aster remained silent on the drive home.
I expected that his paranoid behaviors would continue for the rest of the day, but instead he returned to my laptop and kept working at the story he now wanted to finish.
I watched him from behind while he worked. I wanted to break the silence, to hear him assure me of an answer or resolution, or at least tell me the details of the book.
Once or twice I brought the matter up. I asked if there was any way I could secure us both against the Fates’ harsher judgments. Aster lifted his right hand and shooed me away, at one point insisting that I would be unharmed regardless.
When I fell asleep that night, I was alone, and I didn’t know if I should expect him to join me in bed or not. My last thought as I closed my eyes was that something inside of me felt decidedly hollow.