Chapter 14
THE CEMETERY
Aster had remained fixed to my computer for several days after he first started writing.
He’d gone from wanting to leave this place to immersing himself deeper into it, retreating more into his mind and his creation.
Even my presence and my own barely-started book took second place to the masterpiece that now commanded his attention.
I should have been free to roam, but Aster still insisted that I stay within earshot.
I tried to keep myself busy. I cleaned the house, fixed the meals, doodled all the more in my notebooks and waited for another streak of inspiration to hit. But until today, I’d worried increasingly that this would never end.
Today was different. Aster excused himself from my laptop and walked into the kitchen. Before I had a chance to ask him what he was doing, he called me to come after him.
I found him standing behind the granite counter in the kitchen, where he poured wine into a pair of glasses.
I want to make a toast, he said as he lifted the bottle from his pouring.
“A toast?”
To you and me and everything else. To summer.
I picked up my glass and clinked it against his, but I waited before sipping any of the wine for myself.
Aster enjoyed his and downed half the glass in a single swig. Then he looked at how little I’d taken, and his brows lowered in frustration. Everything’s coming back together. Aren’t you excited?
I twisted the stem of my wine glass. “No.”
Aster braced himself to answer.
“For me, I’m not,” I clarified. “I can’t rattle around in the living room every day with nothing to do.”
Is it the heat? We could open the windows more…
“It’s the fact that I’m not writing. I’ve tried to keep myself busy. I do things around the house, I clean, I doodle in my notebooks.”
We both looked at the counter, where one of my notebooks currently lay folded open to a doodle of the lighthouse garden as visible from the living room window.
Once upon a time, the garden had provided basic sustenance for the Childress family.
The later generations had turned it into a decorative flower garden, and over the past couple years it had fallen into a sad but picturesque state of disrepair.
I realize how hard this must be, Aster said as he angled the image to face him better. I feel terrible about it. Awful. But right now I really need you with me. My wrists are getting tired and, well, I think I need a break too.
“Then let’s go somewhere else,” I said. “Let’s explore.”
Now he pushed the notebook back to me. Together, both of us? I’m too committed. I like this scene I’m at now. I can’t walk away.
“But you just said…”
He curled his fingers into tight fists and then flexed them restlessly, stretching his neck as he did so.
You make a point, and I’ll admit my hands are tired of holding the same position for so long.
How about this? You’re used to this sort of work, aren’t you?
And you want a change. How about you type it out for me?
“That’s not what I mean by a break.” I set down my wine glass. “I mean we need to get out there and stretch our legs. Breathe in the sunlight. That’s what I’m talking about.”
Didn’t you tell me you wanted to write? That you want a stake in our victory?
“Yes, but not like this. I wanted to write my own book.”
Then make this your own. Please, I insist. Together we can create something unstoppable.
I weighed the idea in my head. I could type everything Aster told me, and then in the end of summer I could pass the manuscript off as my own conception.
No one would know differently, and I knew from my stray over-the-shoulder glances that Aster’s writing excelled over anything currently published.
This scenario played out the way I had dreamed when I first settled into this place: a source of unlimited, infinite and tangible inspiration that I could pull from as long as I needed to write something profound. Aster’s book was profound indeed.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll try.”
On a microscopic level, every word Aster employed played against every other word for the best poetic effect.
Aster’s writing could never be described as flowery.
It didn’t need to be. It affirmed everything he mentioned so well that the only separation between reading and experiencing the events he wrote about firsthand was the way he elevated the experiences in his writing.
On a larger level, I couldn’t shake off the sense that what I was typing would outlast me. Our work felt like a piece of literary history, like a monument that would be dug up hundreds or even thousands of years from now and displayed proudly in a museum halfway around the world.
But for all that, it wasn’t mine.
I typed the words as Aster dictated them, and they passed from my ears to my fingertips without ever once touching my heart. Initially fascinated, I grew numb to the book. The day ended. Another began. And still I couldn’t feel anything when I wrote it.
At first I denied the problem. I had wished for this, for Aster.
Now Aster and I were working together better than ever, as far as writing was concerned.
We operated as a unit, writing through the day and loving each other through the night and eating together and breathing together.
But the book he wanted to write lay beyond my capacity to feel.
And my earlier restlessness mounted to the point where I couldn’t ignore it any longer.
At one point, I looked at my reflection in the bathroom mirror in the morning and recoiled when I saw the haggard figure I’d become.
After I announced my need for a change in routine again on another early afternoon, Aster frowned like he didn’t understand me.
“I feel like I’m enslaved to that screen, and my fingers need a massage,” I said. “I need to go for a swim. Or back to the cafe for a drink, or…”
After we finish the chapter, said Aster.
I had suggested the Red Sails Cafe to Aster a few times since our first visit, but he was hesitant to return.
He was hesitant to do anything except writing, actually.
Even a week ago he strove to engage in every area of life, constantly pulling me from the keyboard and reminding me of how much more was out there.
But now he couldn’t see more than a couple feet away, for all his attention demanded.
I shook my head when I heard his refusal. “I’m not waiting until the end of the chapter. I want us to do something now.”
I suppose I can type my own work for a while, he said with an adept nod. You’re right. I’ve been using you too much. I’m spending you past your abilities, and it isn’t fair. Would you like to sit on the couch a bit while I get to work? My fingers don’t hurt anymore.
“The couch?” I said, crestfallen. “Are you serious? I need time out of the house, and I think you do as well. Come on. Let’s find a place to explore.”
Aster pursed his lips together. He didn’t want to go with me. He didn’t value time with me anymore—only work.
“There’s still a path nearby we haven’t taken,” I said. “Let’s check it out and see if we can find any treasure at the end.”
And what if there’s nothing there? said Aster, eyes devoid of their characteristic sparkle. It might not be treasure. No, I don’t want to break into a sweat over a petty excursion with no payout in the end. It isn’t worth it.
“Who’s wasting time?” I asked. “You used to love this sort of thing.”
I used to lack a sense of greater purpose, Aster clarified.
I sighed. “We could always type something out later. If we’re not done by the end of summer, I have a den back at my parents’ house we can use. Come on. I want to milk this place for all its worth.”
Aster followed me, but shook his head at my words.
“Don’t you want to go?” I asked.
There’s nothing I’d love more than to sate your desires, he admitted. But it’s wrong. Both of us, gallivanting away from the very thing we both came here to do. What happened to your work ethic? This book needs both of us like a child needs parents.
“A charming muse came along and reminded me where I really needed to focus.” I slipped my feet into a pair of worn leather sandals and draped a pale blue shawl over my shoulders by the door.
I was young. My instruction came from a seat of ignorance, Aster grumbled before making a hard swallow.
“Ignorance, really?” I challenged.
I didn’t have a proper perspective back then. Everything was warped by an illusion of eternity. This mortality, or whatever it is, has changed the way I see everything.
“Do you think you know better now?” I pried.
Better? I can’t promise anything. But I know how to write a good book, and we’re going to do it.
“A good book,” I said. “Is that really what it comes down to?”
He blinked.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Why can’t you relax? Why can’t we do the things we used to do?”
Nothing’s wrong.
“You sound like you’re afraid.”
There—I’d struck a chord with him now. Aster flinched with the suggestion.
He pressed his lips until they were almost white, and when he drew his next breath, it was shaky.
After I saw how things looked from a human perspective, I found myself unable to let down my guard.
Maybe it’s fear. Maybe it’s something else.
I don’t know. This whole family of emotion is new to me.
“You’ve never… been afraid before?”
Aster wet his lips. He didn’t like what I’d said to him.
I’d put him in preposterous position. The idea of anything as majestic as a muse—of all beings—cowering in fear!
But still he could never deny it. Aster had always before opted for a lackadaisical approach, and one taste of my point of view had hooked him like cocaine.
I opened the door and let the sun spill across the floor. “It won’t take more than a few minutes. I just want to see where the path leads to and then come straight back.”
Now he tightened his crossed arms, and I realized that I would leave alone.
“Aster…”