The Return (12 page)

"Can he have sex?"

"I don't know if he can have sex. Many crippled people can. Many crippled people can't. It just depends. And who cares? Despite what all these stupid magazines say, sex isn't everything." Jean was suddenly close to crying. "I can't walk away from him. He needs me. And I need him. You're my best friend.

Can't you understand that?"

Carol spoke carefully. "But he doesn't even call you, Jean."

Jean nodded. "He will. When he's feeling better, he'll call. I know it."

Carol stopped at a light and stared at her. "You're still so different from when we were growing up. Before your fall, you would have been out with another guy while Lenny was still in surgery."

Jean forced a smile. "I wasn't that bad."

"You were no saint." Carol sighed. "I'm sorry I said what I did. If you want to go on loving Lenny, more power to you. Look at me, I can't even make up my mind whether I want to sleep with guys or girls."

"Are you still seeing Scarface?"

"No. But I go out with his sister every now and then." She nodded at the manila envelope Jean carried.

"Is that your story for Debra?"

"Yes. It was the first story I ever thought up. I told her the beginning, but I only figured out how it should end last week. I hope she likes it." Jean laughed at her own foolishness, and also got a little teary. "I know she's not there in that hole in the ground where they put her body. But I want to read it to her at her grave because I think maybe she'll know I'm there somehow. Does that make sense?"

"It does to me." Carol paused. "Maybe I should become a mortician."

"Just keep driving."

"Can I read the story after you've read it to Debra?"

"Seguro. "

"Are you going to try to get it published?"

"I hadn't really thought about that. But the main character is a successful author. I wonder if I subconsciously patterned her after myself." Jean added, wiping at her eyes, "I see myself being like her some day."

"Have you been working on other stories?"

"Yes. Late at night. I write in a spiral notebook with a Flair pen."

Carol cast her another look. "You never did that before your fall."

Jean nodded thoughtfully. "I know."

She never got headaches before her fall, either. They had become less frequent, but had never left completely. Sometimes she wondered if she had hurt herself worse than the doctors knew. She tried not to think about it.

Rose Hills was lovely. Many acres of well-tended lawns weaving in and around the Whittier Hills. Jean had attended Debra's funeral and still kept in loose contact with her father. Jean directed Carol toward a shaded meadow. Carol offered to stay in the car without being asked, and for that Jean was grateful.

Jean had brought Debra a handful of flowers as well as her story. Jean laid the daisies beside the simple metal marker that was all that was left to say Debra had come and gone. Yet Jean felt her friend close as she lifted up the handful of pages to read aloud.

"Debra, I've reworked this three times and I don't know if I can make it any better," she said. "It's either completely brilliant or totally stupid. But it's my first story and I'm proud of it. If I ever do get it published, I'll be sure to dedicate it to you. Please forgive the crude spots ahead of time. What can I say?

I have a dirty mind." She cleared her throat. "The story, as you might remember, is entitled, 'Where Do You Get Your Ideas?' If you get bored fly back to heaven. I won't hold it against you.

*****

Debra Zimmerer was working on her latest novel when the creature came out of her bedroom closet. She almost fell off her chair when she saw the thing.

She rubbed her eyes, hoping he'd go away, but he didn't. He was ugly, short, and dark as a dwarf from a deep cave, scaly and smelly as a troll from beneath an ancient bridge. Clearly, he was not human. As he walked toward her desk she couldn't help but notice his big yellow teeth and wide green eyes. He didn't smell especially pleasant, either. She had no idea what he'd been doing in her closet.

"Hi, Debbie," he said. "What's happening?"

Debra took an immediate dislike to him. She let no one call her Debbie. She was either Debra or Melissa Monroe, the pen name she wrote under, or else simply Ms. M & M. She had a few names because she was one of America's best-selling authors, and she felt it only fitting that someone as popular as she should be able to slip in and out of several identities. Just before the troll had come out of her closet, she had been typing hard on her new novel, The Color of Pain. She had a tight deadline, and as always was late. Indeed, she had been up most of the previous night working on the last chapters and was exhausted.

She wondered if her fatigue had something to do with her seeing the troll. Her novel was in the horror genre, but otherwise it had nothing to do with the creature standing beside her desk.

"Who the hell are you?" she asked.

He smiled, and as he did so gray-colored slobber leaked out the sides of his wide toothy mouth. His nose was thick, the nostrils pointing almost straight out, choked with white hairs. He wore a baggy pair of black shorts, snakeskin slippers, no shirt. The muscles on his hairy green chest were knotted and hard.

Even though he was only three feet tall, he looked strong, perhaps stronger than she was, she didn't know.

"My name's Sam," he said. "I'm your muse."

Debra reached over and turned off her computer screen. "Come again?"

"I'm your muse. You know, the one who gives you your ideas. You get asked that question all the time where do you get your ideas? Well, now you know.

You're looking at him."

Debra shook her head. "That's ridiculous. Muses are supposed to be beautiful angels. You look like something the dog dug up."

He lost his smile. "Careful, Debbie. I don't like cracks about my looks. And if you think you have an angel for a muse, then you better think again. Look at the kind of stories you write. They're filled with ghouls and vampires and psychos. Somebody's always getting murdered in them. What do you think—an angel would give you those stories? Get a clue, sister. You want to write horror—you get a muse like me. It's that simple."

Debra frowned. "What is your name?"

"Sam. Sam O'Connor."

"Are you Irish?" He had a trace of the accent.

"On my mother's side. But I'm no leprechaun, if that's what you're thinking."

"What were you doing in my closet?"

"That's where I live. I have to stay close or you wouldn't be able to write nothing."

"You used a double negative. What you mean to say is, I wouldn't be able to write anything. That's pretty basic grammar. You should know that if you're really my muse."

Sam waved his hand. "I don't care about all that crap. Grammar is for editors and pansies. I'm the one who gives the blood and guts to your stories. If it wasn't for me, you would be writing about teen problems and teacher-student conflicts. You wouldn't be selling anything and you'd be living in a dump." He reached out to turn her monitor back on. "You sure as hell wouldn't be writing a book as clever as The Color of Pain. Let me see that last chapter. I think I can tell you how it should end."

She slapped his hand away. "Don't you dare look at my work. I don't let anyone see it till it's done."

Sam stared at his hand as if she had stabbed a knife in rather than knocked it aside. His face darkened; his teeth seemed to lengthen; the pupils of his eyes narrowed to hard green slits. He took a step back and glared up at her.

"Let's get one thing straight from the start," he said.

"It's not your work, it's our work. And if you want our work to continue, you're going to have to learn to play by a few new rules. Understand, Debbie?"

"Don't call me that. No one calls me that."

"Liar. When you were in school all your friends called you that. But now that you think you're such a big shot, you go by Debra or that other stupid name you put on our books. But you're no big shot to me. You're nothing without me."

Debra gave a smug chuckle. "You keep saying that, but this house and everything in it belongs to me. I bought it with the money I made selling thirty million books. How many books have you sold? None, I bet. You look like a loser to me, Sam O'Connor. You look like a—something despicable."

Sam smiled grimly. "You were about to call me a colorful simile, but you couldn't think of one, could you? You can't think of anything clever without me. Go ahead, try, I dare you. I look like a what?"

Debra thought for a moment, but nothing special came to her. "You look like one ugly bastard," she said finally.

He laughed. "That's it? That's the best you can come up with? How many books are you going to sell describing your villains as 'one ugly bastard'? And what are you going to say about your heroes? Oh, they were so handsome? So pretty? You're going to be searching your thesaurus soon, Debbie, if you don't cooperate. And you'll find it can't help you with your plot." Again, he reached for her monitor button. "Let me see how you're wrecking my story."

She didn't stop him as he turned on the screen, but said, "How can you say it's your story when I thought it up, in my own head?"

Sam studied her last page. "All us muses are sort of telepathic. The story may have ended in your head, but only because I put it there in the first place." He grunted at the screen. "You can't kill Alisa here. You need her for the sequel."

"What sequel? There's no sequel to this book. Alisa's going to die and that's the end of it. Finished."

"You see what I mean? You don't even know that this first book is the beginning of a trilogy. The second and third books are going to be better than the first. You can't kill the girl. If you do you'll be out a million dollars in royalties."

Debra felt exasperated. Of course, when she thought about it, she remembered she had felt that way before Sam appeared. "How come I didn't know that?" she asked.

"Because I didn't tell you," Sam said. "I waited to tell you until after I came out of the closet. I knew it would make you more open to my proposition."

"What proposition is that?"

Sam's smile returned. He glanced around her well furnished spacious bedroom, then out the window at the forest and the ocean. "You got it pretty good here, girl. You live in a mansion. You drive a hot car. You have a maid to clean up your messes and a secretary to take care of your bills and correspondence. You don't have to do anything except write."

"But writing's hard work. I deserve my success."

Sam snorted. "Writing's hard work when your muse goes on vacation. But how hard do you really work? You can sit down and knock out a novel in a month.

That's because you got me working for you in the closet. I do all the heavy thinking. You're just a glorified typist. Sometimes I'm up till two or three in the morning trying to figure out a plot line, and then you get to wake up fresh in the morning and there it is all ready for you. I'm sick of this arrangement. I'm tired of the closet. I want to enjoy more of the fruits of my creativity. From now on, Debbie, you're going to give me a piece of the action."

Debra sat back and crossed her arms over her chest.

"How big a piece?"

"For starters, fifty percent of everything you make."

Debra laughed. "Gimme a break. I make millions a year. You think I'm just going to hand over half of that to you? You get a clue, brother."

Sam lost his smile. "Fine. You want to play hard ball, let's see how hard your head is." He pointed to the screen. "Finish this book right now. Write the last page."

"I can't write with a slimy troll like you standing beside me."

Sam put his scaly hand on her knee. He pinched her leg, ever so slightly, and chewed on his tongue as if wishing it were one of her fingers. "I told you, no cracks about my appearance. If you spent as much time as I have in a closet, you wouldn't look any better. But as a favor to you, and to prove my point, I am willing to wait in the other room while you write the last page. You come get me when you're done. Or more likely, you come get me when you realize you have nothing in your brain to write about." He released his grip and patted her knee gently. He even smiled again, although his eyes remained cold. "You take as long as you want, Debbie."

Debra wiped the spot where he had touched her.

"The name's Debra."

Sam walked toward the door, calling over his shoulder.

"The names will be Sam O'Connor and Melissa Monroe. From now on, that's what'll appear on your books, in that order. That's another of my conditions."

Debra wanted to spit at him. "Never."

Sam laughed as he left. "Never say never."

He was gone two seconds when Debra turned back to her word processor and began to type furiously. His challenge was a piece of cake, she thought. What was one more page out of three hundred? She just had to have her heroine—

well, all right, maybe she shouldn't kill her. Alisa was a great character and there were at least another two books in her. Debra could see that now. Sam was right. But she could finish with Alisa for now without his advice. She just had to have the girl—what? How could she save her? She had it all set up to kill her. Maybe she could— Maybe if she just No, that wouldn't work. That would be stupid, and if she had a stupid ending, that's all people would remember. Three hundred pages of brilliant prose, and people would throw it against the wall and tell their friends not to buy it if the last page was flubbed.

She always prided herself on her fantastic last pages. OK, she thought, stay cool and do what you do best. You know you're better than the rest, Ms. M & M, Ms. New York Times Best-Selling Author. Just write the goddamn page!

Two hours later Debra went out to see Sam. He was sitting in her favorite chair with his ugly feet up on the coffee table eating the turkey sandwich she had planned to have for lunch. He had the TV turned to the sci-fi channel, some old black-and-white monster flick. He laughed uproariously as the alien monster ate a cute, well-proportioned brunette who bore a vague resemblance to her. He barely looked up as she entered.