have a series called the Sleuths of Stockbridge.”
“Ah. I don’t think I know it. You said you had a partner though?”
“Yes. I wrote them with someone. Her name was Robyn. Together we were Robyn Grace. That’s the pen name.”
I’m tense, waiting for the blow. Usually when I tell people I’ve written with someone, they get ready to treat me like it doesn’t count, like I got help with a book, that I didn’t do it on my own.
But his father merely smiles. “That is fantastic. What a nice way to do art, is it not? To share the process of discovery with someone?” He sighs. “It is such a lonely profession. Even being a painter, it is so many hours in the studio or off on the land by yourself. You neglect every step of your life except the thing you’re trying to create. Because, of course, if you neglect the thing you are trying to create, you may never create it! It is like the muse. You have to beg for her to show, and when she does, you have to show her so much attention so she doesn’t leave you. Our life’s work hinges on that muse.” He pauses. “That fickle bitch.”
I burst out laughing.
“Papà,” Claudio chides him.
“What?” he asks, throwing his hands out. “It is true. Look at you, for example. You could be doing so much more work than you are, but you don’t. You blame it on your muse. How she doesn’t show for you.” He shakes his head and looks away, sounding gruff now, in that way of fatherly disappointment I know too well. “You know, sometimes I think if you just tried a little harder, she might come to you more often.”
“I am trying,” Claudio says, his face darkening. “I have had so many commissions this year.”
“But commissions don’t put art into the store.”
“There is too much art in the store as it is. There is no room.”
His father waves him away and has a sip of his drink, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Bah. You know when I ran that store, we could hardly keep anything in stock.”
“You can’t compare the economy of the eighties to today.”
His father shrugs.
Well, at least we managed to keep Jana from being mentioned, though it seems they have their little difficulties between them.
“Never mind them,” his mother says, appearing with a sparkling red drink in a highball glass. She hands it to me, and I thank her as she sits down. “The two of them are always arguing about the same old things. The damn muse, as if she is the same for everyone.”
I look to Claudio at that, and see him already staring deeply at me.
They don’t know that I am his muse, and the fact that I am the muse, that I have the power to create his inspiration and his art, is a thrill that never leaves me.
That said, I am stumbling over what his father said. That you have to show the muse so much attention or else she’ll leave for good. Is that why Claudio is so attracted to me? Because I promise him creation and success? If I didn’t, would we even be here right now?
As if he can hear my thoughts, Claudio reaches up and taps the side of his head.
He mouths to me, “Stop.”
I suppose my trepidation is on my face, as clear as anything.
The next day Claudio knocks on my door early, telling me to get up and come with him to the beach for a morning swim. Seeing as we went to bed fairly early and in separate rooms, I don’t want to pass it up. I need to be alone with him.
Except when we grab our towels and head down the steps, my flowing cover-up nearly making me trip and fall a bunch of times, we find we aren’t the only people with that idea. There are quite a few people, old ones especially, heading into the water at this hour, the sun only now touching the beach on the other side of the bay.
And once I leave the towel and the caftan on the beach and walk along the smooth pebbles into the water, I realize that his parents have a clear view of us. In fact, when I look up at the cliffside, they’re both sitting on the balcony, waving.
I wave back, grateful that I didn’t do something stupid, like pinch Claudio’s arse. Just friends, indeed.
“Ah,” Claudio says, looking up and over