The Muse (24 page)

“You’re a celebrity these days.”

I’d blush at this and end up writing another story to release the energy. Eva was my muse in more way than one. She infused energy and charge into my life. She revved me up, my secret fuel, and sent me speeding with ease down an open runway where possibilities grew like wildflowers. My mind expanded through her loving support.

I loved our messages to each other. I couldn’t get enough of them. I craved her words like a drug addict craved a hit. Eva helped me to see new colors, new sunsets, and new beauty. I saw past the barriers that once blocked creative thought. I saw past the ridicule that once imprisoned me. I saw blue skies, puffy clouds and enjoyed the tickle of grass blades on my ankles as I strolled through the breezy fields of change and purpose and full-out life. I embraced each day with hope, with a smile, with a lightness that lifted me like a plume into the wind and carried me through the day with love in my heart.

Eva brought out the best in me. I loved this new me, this new CarefreeJanie, the cool, talented, enlightened girl behind the screen. I soon tossed aside the girl who wept, who pitied herself, who shied away from walking with a bounce in her step at the mall for fear someone would laugh or trip her. I tossed the old Jane aside and allowed this new carefree Jane to take over. No one could penetrate this new me with hurt. My sweet and precious Eva, my muse, protected me with something so powerful, so giving, so loving, so full of life.

Our relationship blossomed. I connected to her. I was in love with Eva Handel, and I was pretty sure she loved me, too.

“What are you doing right now?” she asked me one morning.

“I’m writing. I’d much rather be sipping a cool drink with you by my side. What are you doing?”

“If you were here, I would take you out for a long drive on my motorcycle.”

I could just picture the beauty of her chocolate hair blowing around her face, wild and free. “You know how much I want to be tucked up against you on that open road, don't you?”

“I want you right there beside me, holding me tight as the wind whips around us.”

“The rush would drive me wild.” I fanned myself.

“Gosh, I really want to feel your lips against mine.”

“I’m all warm and tingly now,” I wrote. “I might have to go ‘relax’ (wink).”

“Aw. I wish I were there to ‘relax’ you.”

“You always are.”

The messages just kept getting hotter to the point I could no longer stop their ultimate progression and aim.

I cooled them down by asking her more questions about her life. I learned that she loved adventure, because it challenged her. She confessed that while growing up, she didn’t allow failure into her life. Her parents failed miserably at things like paying bills on time, putting a safe roof over her head, and getting her to school on time. She mothered them, leading them to choices that would help get them onto the path of a better life. Where they failed to take action, she followed behind, scooping up the broken pieces and salvaging their survival. She didn’t hate them for stealing away her childhood. She thanked them for turning her into someone who fought hard for her success. Through her tough times, she learned to survive, to rebuild, and to not take crap from anyone.

The more I learned about her, the more I loved her.

“No one has ever cared so much about me like you do,” she wrote. “You make me feel so good, like you really care about me as a person.”

“No one’s ever made you feel like that before?”

“No. No one’s ever listened to me like this before.”

She attempted to get me to talk, too, and I just clammed up, not wanting to build up more lies than I could already handle. She would ask me where I worked. I lied and told her I worked as a freelance writer. She asked me if I played sports growing up. I lied and told her I played softball, basketball, and even ran road races as a teenager. When the questions poked at a more personal level, like asking about my family, my best friends, my fears, my passions, I shut down, pretending I had to shove off to finish an assignment.

I hid well, and she respected that for a while until one day, while at work, she asked me what I was doing. “I’m eating lunch.”

“Hmm. So are you eating alone?”

“Yup. I’m sitting in front of my computer alone.”

“Can you jump on Skype?”

My heart stopped. I spit out my sandwich. A picture, I could doctor. A live stream, well, not so much.

“I don’t have Skype.”

“Then come on video chat.”

“I don’t have a webcam.”

“We have to do something about that.”

“I’m terrible on camera.”

“You’re gorgeous. And I want to see you live, talk to you in real time, and get to know the real you.”

Her words struck at my shock center, firing off all sorts of alarm bells. “One day.”

“What’s your mailing address? I want to send you a webcam.”

I wheeled away from my desk searching my brain for an answer on how I could keep the ride going. The inevitable time had come when the adventure would end. Just like reading the last word of a novel, I couldn’t take the thousands of words I’d just read and erase them from my memory. They were logged and earned their rightful spot in the recesses of my mind. Eva asked the question, and I could not go back in time and pretend she didn’t ask it.

If I just got the inevitable over with by facing the heat and revealing my true identity, maybe I could put to rest all of the anxieties and just get on with my life. How much longer could I keep up the charade? After a couple of months of dodging her pointed questions about my life, and her begging me to tell her more about me, I could finally rest the guilt of not being honest. I could stop stressing, and just move onto the next chapter in my life. Otherwise, what would I do? Spend the next fifty years flirting with her behind my computer screen in the hopes that would be enough to sustain her love and affection for a girl like me?

But, I couldn’t end this just yet. I needed her. I could buy more time.

“My editor’s calling. I’ve got to run,” I wrote.

After I logged off, I called Larry.

# #

Larry knocked on my door with cheesecake in hand. “I ran to the store just in case.”

I let him in and resigned with a sigh. “I’ve got a serious problem.”

He handed me a plastic fork. “Dig in.”

I did. I dug my fork and swallowed a hefty piece. “I might need the entire cheesecake for this one.”

“Talk to me.” Larry dug in, too.

I told him everything that happened up to that point. I didn’t leave one crumb on the plastic plate. I told him about how things intensified between me and Eva, about how we shared intimate moments online, about how she wanted more, about how I would rather die than suffer her disbelief when she discovered the real me, the girl who lied and hid in her cubicle and ran away from all opportunities to come clean.

“Wow,” he said out loud. “What are you going to do?”

I massaged my full belly and waited for some miracle. “Not send her my mailing address.”

“And when she asks you again?”

“I hoped you could tell me.”

“Just tell her who you are.” He labored these words, as if yanking them from deep in the ground and hauling them over hundreds of miles in the hot desert.

“I can’t now. It’s too out of control. I can’t even look her in the eye. How am I supposed to be sexy and desirable with that handicap?”

“Let her be the judge.”

“It’s perfect as it is. I don’t want to mess with it.”

“You’re having sex with a bike seat. This isn’t perfect.”

As if on cue, we both looked over at my bike seat. It sat lonely waiting for me. We landed back on each other’s eyes and fell into hysterics, punching, slapping, and kicking the pillows, even howling at one point.

Later after Larry returned to his condo, I logged back into Twitter to get my fix.

“I miss you,” I wrote.

“Oh come here, my sweet girl. Let me give you a kiss.”

We bantered back and forth for an hour, ending somewhere in nirvana and blanketing each other in virtual kisses and hugs. I couldn’t give this up.

# #

Running became a sort of therapy session for me. As I charged forward, my brain uncluttered, my heart opened, my senses came alive. By the halfway point around the loop at work, I opened up my stride and enjoyed the fresh smell of honeysuckle and the sparkling sunshine dancing on the leaves.

Since meeting Eva I had lost a total of fifteen pounds and all of my clothes hung too loose on me. Larry bought me three outfits out of the blue one day. He left them sprawled out on my bed as a surprise. When I saw the size twelve, I laughed. I hadn’t fit into a size twelve since high school. To my surprise, they fit perfectly. I danced around my condo thrilled to be wearing a size less than the average American woman.

Even after losing some weight, my bulge still hung out like an unwelcomed visitor. I panicked whenever I jiggled. I would never hop on a webcam because of it.

I went for a run at lunchtime that day. I had panted and grunted my way up the inclines surrounding the Martin Sporting Goods campus and returned a sopping mess. After showering and changing, I returned to my cubicle and Larry had called. “Travis wants to meet you.”

“Me?”

“You saved his life. He held a gun between his teeth and your wisdom prevented him from pulling the trigger.”

“What can I say to him that I haven’t already said?”

“I’ll be picking you up Saturday at ten. Wear jeans and a long sleeved shirt. And sneakers.”

“But—”

He hung up.

# #

On Saturday morning, dressed to order, I waited for Larry to knock on my door. When he finally did, I opened it. A scrawny, tall black kid with big owl eyes stared down at me. His face lit up the moment I smiled.

“Ma’am.” He extended his hand like a politician.

I shook his firm hand and stopped the ma’am calling immediately. I might’ve been twenty-nine-years-old and a virgin to kisses, but I didn’t need to add ma’am to that category, too. Next thing I’d be walking around the mall in curlers, setting my unruly hair for the week, wearing flowery dresses that hung like potato sacks to my ankles. “Please call me Jane.”

“So, where are you taking me?” I asked Larry as we climbed down our condo steps.

“You’ll see.”

On the drive, we didn’t talk about my article or about the gun. Instead, I sat up in the front seat and he sat in the back and Larry turned up the volume of his radio. We drove in silence. Larry filled the voids with overdramatic singing. The entire drive I wanted to connect with this kid and tell him how I understood what plagued him. I wanted to hug him and tell him everything would be okay one day. But, maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe he’d live a fate similar to mine, always worried that one day the love of his life would discover the real him and not love him back for it. Maybe, like me, he’d want to change into someone different and hide behind a computer screen so no one would ever discover the real deal under the façade.

At one point, I turned around and smiled at him. He returned it with a weak smile and a hesitant shrug before retreating back to the window, to the safety of the trees instead of this strange woman who wanted to bond over misfired lives.