“Seducing the Muse”

By

Jamie Huston

John opened the last door, the one she had to be behind. Even as cold sweat and dirt caked his face in mud, he couldn’t suppress a game show analogy, where the first two doors only lead to empty stages (only here they’d led to booby traps), but now the audience fell into a reverent silence as he got an unprecedented chance to open the door that the grand prize had to be behind.

She wasn’t tied to anything and didn’t look hurt. Not physically, at least. When he’d come into the concrete cell, she’d drawn her knees to her chin, looking at him like a frightened animal. His relief was swallowed by satisfaction at having punished those who had done this to her, and a promise to stay with her during the recovery from this ordeal. To stay with her forever.

He crouched a few yards away and addressed her in the voice he used for interviewing children who had seen their parents fighting. “C.J., it’s John. You’re safe now. I’m here to take you home.” There was no reaction and he wondered if the Triads had already used those very words to get her hopes up and crush them; just another tortue tactic for those monsters. As he stared at the floor thinking of what to say next (he knew better than to try to touch her), she jumped on him, throwing her arms around him and nearly knocking his gun out of its holster, sobbing with the same relief he’d felt. His surprise soon gave way and the tears he’d been forced to restrain for months brimmed under his eyes.

Between their mutual sobs of exhaustion, they clung to each other as if holding this other person was the source of life. As he started breathing slowly again, John squeezed her even tighter and whispered in her ear, “I guess we were both right.”

*****

John hit the save button on the toolbar, then leaned back to stare at the last page of Fate’s Labors Lost (“A gang war couldn’t stop their love, but their love would stop a gang war,” the blurb on the back cover would say). He wouldn’t sit on his laurels for long, though. He always felt like sleeping after finishing a big project.

He would be hitting the mattress shortly, but, he was sure, not with his usual aplomb. Each word he typed further convinced him that he was a hack. He wasn’t cut out to be a writer. His prose had all the grace of drunk donkeys in heat. All these offbeat romance novels that had made him one of the few successful men in the industry had the same sad formula, and it was starting to get old.

Except that wasn’t quite it, either. Artistic integrity took a back seat to something else—he didn’t like this anymore because it was ineffective. The Fate series had brought him fame and fortune (and in some circles, grudging respect), but that wasn’t why he’d begun writing, or why he’d continued. Writing, to him, was a blunt tool used to get a job done.

*****

John Aquitaine and C.J. Angel had been born in the same hospital and had gone to all the same schools, she one grade behind. After high school, they’d worked in the same publisher’s office for two years while they attended nearby colleges.

And he had loved her as long as he could remember. Of course he’d had feelings for other women, had even been in some relationships, but invariably his thoughts came back to her. He had never tried to fight what he knew filled him more than blood or bones or thought—that he would always be emotionally drawn to this random girl that fate had chosen for him.

At first he’d written her scores of juvenile love letters but, he being painfully shy and she being a social butterfly, he had never given her any of them. Besides, he didn’t know her well enough to write anything specific, anyway. Poems followed the letters; short stories the poems. The stories were always the same: a misfit named John lamely pursues a beautiful girl named C.J. She would be oblivious to his existence until the end, where he would dramatically prove his love in some way and she would accept him. The end. Happily ever after. The settings might change, the careers, conflicts, or a hundred other details, but it was always the same two people out front, with the same appearance and personalities: John and C.J. All plot, all adolescent gangly fumbling into furniture in the dark.

As a teenager it had seemed natural to make the stories metaphors for their lives. When he, president of the school AV club, had wanted to ask her, the homecoming queen, to the prom, he wrote about a microchip magnate who personally developed the technology that saved the life of a globetrotting supermodel from Central American guerrillas. When he, a runner at Fulsom Bros. Books, had heard through the grapevine that she, a secretary for an assistant editor, had just found out her fiancé had been cheating on her, he’d written about a scruffy P.I. who falls for the woman who hired him to prove her fiancé was dealing with the mob. Luckily, he’d never had pretensions for anything other than the genre fiction that came so naturally to him.

He wrote his first novel, All You Need Is Fate, after she got a job as a copy editor at one of the local dailies. Neither of them had moved away, so he was able to keep up on her life. Each of his best-selling novels had been based on some concurrence in their lives since then. Fate’s Labors Lost was about passing her in the frozen foods aisle, where they made thirty seconds of awkward chit chat (she had gotten divorced, but no mention of his being a writer), and then seeing her in the checkout line behind some exchange students who had more than the allowed twelve items.

When he was writing All You Need Is Fate, he wasn’t aware he was writing a romance novel. It wasn’t until his agent read it and told him it was too uneven, that it could either be a book about the horror of war, or a book about a long-suffering soldier who comes home to find his girl married to another man, but that he couldn’t give equal weight to both parts and make it work. This agent suggested toning down the post-traumatic stress angle and making it a more conventional romance novel.

A romance novel. Just like the ones C.J. sometimes read in high school, John had thought. Just like the ones she’d read a whole lot more of in college, and even more

since getting married. If I could tell our story, if I could express my feelings for her in a book that she might pick up on her own and read…

John had gotten a new agent and insisted on finding a publisher who would market the work as romance. He did, and his first sale became his first bestseller. John had the publicist schedule him to do signings at every major bookstore in the city. He did readings from his book on the local NPR station. He gave a couple lectures at the college she’d gone to.

His overnight success was initially written off as a quirky fad akin to self-referential Gen X irony or short, melodramatic books about Christmas and patriotism. Like such fads, though, his popularity endured from book to book. He supposed his fans were smitten by the idea of a running protagonist who kept pursuing and catching the same heroine. The readers must have been taken in by all this lonely unrequited love that unerringly became unconditional mutual love.

Most of his fans, really, saw through the lightly veiled metaphor as soon as the second novel was published, if not sooner. They wanted to figure out who this mystery woman was in real life and, more importantly, see if these plaintive invitations to a relationship would work. They wanted to see “Aquitaine Engaged to Novels’ Secret Heroine” on the front page of the paper. Speculation as to her identity ran rampant in Internet chat rooms and on the A&E pages, and even though John refused to talk about it during interviews (which only further piqued everybody’s curiosity), there weren’t many C.J.’s in his life. The name of C.J. Angel came up more than once in the rumor mill.

John was aware of all this (his agent kept him abreast of the latest guesses), but he wasn’t interested in the publicity itself. He only wondered if C.J. knew what was going on, if she had ever been questioned about it. Would she say Oh, I know, isn’t it sad that he’s still so obsessed with me? Or would she say John who? What books?

But there was never any response from her. He wasn’t sure what he expected. To see her standing in the back of a crowd at a reading, maybe, or to get a perfumed letter forwarded from his publisher. But after four wildly popular Fate novels (and a fifth one just finished, sitting on his hard drive), there was no sign she knew he was writing about her, or that she had read him at all.

The cathartic value of writing, he felt, was overrated. She was all he’d ever been able to write about, but since he had never really gotten close to her, never gotten into her head and admired the decor, his writing had stagnated. He knew that but didn’t invest any time worrying about it.

If he could get her to recognize themselves in his work, he might never write again. He didn’t think he’d need to. But if four novels hadn’t done the trick, why would a fifth one work? He knew he’d done everything he could to make himself clear to her, even to the point of enshrining her; he’d done everything short of coming right out and saying it.

He stopped tapping his foot. His eyes narrowed and he wondered if he was really that desperate. The answer didn’t take long: Yes, I very definitely am that desperate. If his reverie hadn’t been interrupted by the abrupt new thought, it would have been shattered by the ring of his business line.

“John,” his agent said as soon as the phone was within two feet of his ear, her exasperation exaggerated only partly for comical effect. “It’s almost three. What happened to getting one in early for a change?”

“Karyn, it just… hey, Karyn, when exactly does this one have to be done by?”

Asking an agent that was like telling a mechanic that you’d be careful when you went off-roading, but asking if he’d be available to replace a bent rear axle on Monday. She replied, hesitantly, “Four weeks. Why?”

“I just had a new idea, and I want to run with it. How about calling me back in four weeks?”

“Unless your new idea is a cure for cancer, I’ll need more details.”

“I just want to try something different, something really personal. The personal angle of these novels is what got you this cash cow in the first place, don’t forget.” She didn’t respond, so he continued. “How about a novel where a late bloomer kind of guy falls for a girl and writes a series of novels mirroring their lives as a way of telling her?”

Karyn, John’s agent since that first novel, knew exactly where this was going and why. “Dare I ask how this novel would end?”

“Duh. In total frustration after four novels, he scraps the fifth to write a confession about a writer who uses his career as a gimmick to tell a childhood crush he loves her.”

“This plot is starting to sound like an M.C. Escher drawing. You know trying to write a novel in four weeks is insane.” Now it was John’s turn to be quiet. “All right, you’re tugging at my heartstrings. Again, which means it might sell. But John, you promise if this new thing doesn’t pan out, you’ll send them Lost.”

“Oh yeah,” John said, like a child who wants permission to do something and is eager to please, while closing the Fate’s Labors Lost file—the last thing he saw as the screen went blank was “Between their mutual sobs of exhaustion, they clung to each other as if holding this other person was the source of life.” No great loss for the world there, he thought, only evaluating the work for a moment before telling Karyn, “You bet.”

“Right, John. That reminds me, though. What should I tell the suits this new magnum opus is called?”

John already had a title in mind. “True Fate.”

*****

Three years later a long-awaited new John Aquitaine short story, “Fate Conquers All,” appeared on his website:

John slipped the dust jacket off the new Fate novel. He didn’t especially like this cover, but his agent had campaigned for it, and he guessed he owed her one. This novel had been a risk for her and for the publisher, abandoning the pretense of metaphor his faithful audience had come to expect, instead delivering a narrative so close to the truth that most fans wondered what could possibly come next.

It was the most honest thing he’d ever written, and for the first time he felt that he could love something besides C.J. Writing this one had been different. He had barely slept for the entire four weeks he’d spent writing it. He had danced and sung and practically run around the block laughing every time he finished a chapter. Even the critics were reluctantly admitting that his style was finally maturing. The book he held in his hands just weeks after being released was already in its fourth printing, declaring it a commercial success, much to the publisher’s relief.

But to the author’s chagrin, it wasn’t yet a personal success. As the fans suspected, this was it. If this novel didn’t do what it was supposed to, he’d have no further public, romantic recourse. This wasn’t just a novelty to him anymore. It was the best way anyone had ever thought of to say “I love you” for the first time, but he’d realized that just chanting those three words over the course of three hundred pages wasn’t enough. Maybe his muse deserved something that evinced a stronger feeling than blind boyish obsession. Maybe she deserved a monument that could thrill her mind to the degree that she had thrilled his heart. The composition of True Fate had taken him deeper than he’d ever been and now…now he felt hungry for more. His muse had been good to him, and so had the words. He had fallen hard and grown another lifelong love.

At his computer this morning, the monitor did nothing for him. All he could produce were some doodles in an old notebook, then a series of phrases based on some important initials:

Cheerful jamboree

Constant joy

Ceaselessly jocund

Cerebrally juiced

Catalyzes jubilation

Curvy jiggling

Celestial jewel

His phone rang, but not the business line. The rarely used personal line was ringing. He didn’t recognize the information on the caller ID, which was odd. His home number was a closely guarded secret. He picked it up and with more curiosity than anything else asked, “Hello?”

“Hi, John. This is C.J. Angel. Your agent gave me this number. I hope you don’t mind.”

John’s heart rate tripled, but he quickly drew from one of the lines of conversation that he’d had rehearsed since the first book had been shipped out. “So, you went back to your maiden name. You still haven’t gotten it changed on your phone, though. I was trying to figure out who C. Butguly was.”

Her laugh was so sincere that John could tell she’d wanted to enjoy this call, and was glad to find it so easy. “Yeah, that name really should have been my first clue…. Hey, I’m sorry I never contacted you. It’s kind of intimidating being the subject of a famous author’s infatuation, you know. Some days I expected to get an ear in the mail. But I’ve been meaning to thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”

“Everything I’ve done? C.J., I’ve never even had the courage to say two words to you.”

“Not true. You’ve saved me from plagues, malfunctioning androids, the mob, and renegade Colombian death squads.”

His laughter was finally easy. “Well, you know, all’s fair in fate and war.”

“Uggh! OK, that’s the one thing I could never stand! Those corny titles make me retch. But I’ll forgive you. It’s not every day you find a guy who’ll offer himself as a hostage to gold-hungry cattle rustlers in your place… or spend years writing about you. The new book is your best; it’s really beautiful. Thank you, John.”

The unexpected seriousness at the end caught him off guard and made him grateful she wasn’t there to see him blush. “You’re welcome. But speaking of hunger, let me rescue you from that, too. Would you meet me at the Bistro Cafe tonight at six?”

“I’d love to. Perhaps we could discuss the next Fate book.”

“Well, I might have some bad news on that front. I think I’m going to pull a Stephen King and start working on some literary stuff instead. I’m ready to cut my teeth on some of that soul-searing, blindingly-fierce Joycean-epiphany kind of writing…or something like that. Besides, what else can I write for Fate?”

“I’ve had some ideas for the further adventures of C.J. and John. Such as getting U2 to play at their wedding out of gratitude for getting the major nations to cancel third-world debts, or celebrating their tenth anniversary while exploring an ancient human spaceship buried on Mars.

“But you’re right: the next novels need to keep moving in the direction of True Fate. Genre stories with happy endings are all fine and good, but maybe now we can move on to a sublime meditation on the fractured, frustrating nature of the human condition. Or something like that. Perhaps John and C.J. can show us that simple love can heal hearts broken by the fundamental pain inherent in existence. Nobody’s done that before, right?” They giggled in pure unison, faux-deprecating the art that bound them.

In thousands of fantasies, John had never imagined this ending. But as he heard it now, it was clearly the one he would have wanted, and there was only one way to respond. “C.J., I have an idea for a book called Fate in the Time of Cholera. Let’s write it together.”

THE END