The Muse and her friends
(When we left the story, I had just escaped from The Muse at a muse convention workshop and hit the hotel bar. I thought I was alone, then…)
“Fancy seeing YOU here.” Gads. It was my Muse and some of her cronies who had skipped out on the session about avoiding being assigned to a journalist.
“Uh, I ah….er….”
“Don’t get up,” she said. (I hadn’t moved.) “Barkeep! We’ll take a bottle of tequila over here. Put it on his tab.”
“But….”
“Don’t interrupt, Elwood,” she said. “It’s unbecoming for a world-class author.”
I was stunned. The Muse and her cohorts repaired to a table in the corner while I contemplated what she had said. World-class?
I was trying to figure that one out over my gin and tonic when the Muse appeared at my elbow (I think she is part cat with her stealth).
“Don’t get a big head now,” she said out of the corner of her mouth. “HEY! BARKEEP! How about an ashtray and some matches?”
“This is a smoke-free hotel, m’am,” the man said.
The Muse gave him one of her laser-beam stink eyes. He wisely relented and recommended a “back room” I didn’t know existed.
“Listen, bub,” she said. “I had to say that because I need to keep my street cred among my colleagues. I can’t let them know who I am really working for. They think you are a real writer.”
“But…”
“Now quit interrupting. I don’t have the time, and you don’t have the talent. You need to get to work. Don’t you have ANY ideas?”
“That’s your job, I thought,” I protested.
“My job is to make sure you write, not tell you what to write about,” she said while lighting an unfiltered Camel. The bartender started to correct her, but she gave him another stink eye. He skulked back to his post at the far end of the bar.
“Now why don’t you just whip out that lil ol’ laptop and started tickling those keys like a real writer. I’ve got some partying to do.”
She left me open-mouthed at the bar as I watched her walk back to her laughing harpy friends. I swear there were at least eight of them. Watching her butt while she walked was like watching two bear cubs wrestling under a blanket. She had gained weight.
I got out my laptop and put it on the bar. I ordered another gin and tonic. I sat and waited for an idea to arrive, like an e-mail, from the ether.
(more to come)