Unfinished Muse (15 page)

“Who knows? But he certainly likes to walk
around without his shirt.” She snickered.

I groaned. “Tease. I’m going to bed. Say a
prayer to the gods that tomorrow is easier on me.”

As I walked down the hall, I heard her
answer me in a soft voice. “If I did that, how would you learn
anything?”

~*~

On Wednesday, I popped in on Alex and watched him
finish a toothpick section of garage on his house model. The work
was smooth, and he didn’t need anything from me. In fact, he hummed
to himself while he worked and ignored Oscar when the dog whined at
me.

After a half hour or so, I was satisfied
with his progress and left.

When I walked into Missy’s apartment, I
found her in the same place she’d been sitting the day before, but
this time the baby was in the swing, cooing and chewing on a rubber
ring shaped like a bunny.

Missy thumbed through a pile of gold, blue,
and maroon paper, each page with a different pattern on it. She
tapped the stack against the table and started over.

Halfway through her third try, she groaned
and dropped the pages. “Cassie, I don’t even know where to
start.”

Cassie burped and dropped her bunny ring on
the floor.

Missy crawled over to the swing, retrieved
the teething ring, and placed it in the tiny, chubby hand. “Mommy
sucks.” She spoke in a cutesy, cooing voice that made the baby
giggle. “Mommy needs a wine break. Yes she does!”

I glanced at the clock on the cable box. It
was quarter to eleven. I really hoped she wasn’t going to open a
bottle of wine. There was no telling how the Thought Bubbles would
interact with alcohol, especially this early in the morning.

But Missy didn’t go to the kitchen. She
crawled back to the coffee table and opened a second package of
brightly colored paper—this one in greens and purples and
yellows.

I unlatched my bottle and blew like a
tornado. The entire room was filled with bubbles.

“Don’t pick a pattern, yet. Remember what we
said yesterday? Little bites. Pick a photo, first. Start from
there.” I blew another stream of bubbles.

She frowned and put the papers down, then
fanned out a pile of old photographs. After a moment of fierce
concentration, she placed her finger on a shot of two women and two
men on a picnic, hamming it up for the camera. “What do you think,
Cassie? Shall we start with their first date?”

And just like that, the pieces for the first
page fell into place. She chose a solid light brown sheet of paper
for the background, then added several different green and darker
brown patterns to it. Before long, she was cutting and stamping and
trimming like a pro, and the page was on its way.

After watching what she was doing for a
time, I finally figured out what the point was. She was telling a
story. This was a photo of her parents on their first date, and she
created objects around the photo that both drew out the
story—stickers of sandwiches and wine bottles—and made the photo
pop by decorating around it in ways that simply made it more
attractive.

It was a photo album in which each page
celebrated and expanded on an individual picture.

Once she’d chosen the layout and cut all the
parts to fit her vision, she grabbed a gun that held double-sided
tape and put the first piece on permanently.

“Well, that’s actually kind of nifty,” I
said. My stomach rumbled. “I need food. Think you can handle it
from here?”

Missy sang to Cassie while she dragged the
gun across a dark green and gold plaid strip. The baby dozed in her
swing and hiccupped in her sleep.

“Okay, then.” I waved. “Great work, Missy.
I’ll see you tomorrow.” I held my breath and backed through the
wood of the door. No one noticed me go. It was a little
disheartening.

Being invisible kind of sucked. When things
went well, there was nobody to high five me.

Still, I was so pleased with myself and the
progress both my clients were making, I was halfway down the road
before I realized I hadn’t hit the button on my belt to become
visible again. Fortunately, nobody seemed to have been watching my
car pull out and drive down the street by itself.

Of course, my self-congratulations were
short lived. After a quick burger, I went back to the office.

A third client order sat in my inbox.

I stared at it, rage replacing my earlier
cheer. “Son of a bitch.”

Polly’s office door was closed and the
lights were off. I toured the entire room, hoping to find someone.
Anyone.

Nope. The office was empty.

I returned to my desk and smoothed the paper
I’d crumpled in my fist. Mark Willoughby. And he lived in my
apartment complex.

My next client was the weird, shirtless guy
across the courtyard.

Chapter 12

Having my neighbor as a client brought a dilemma I
hadn’t expected. Should I go all the way out there, get him started
on his project, then go all the way back to work to hang up my
belt? Or should I hang on to the belt and stay home afterward?

It seemed like a waste of time, gas, and
energy to drive across town when I would be there again in the
morning.

I debated with myself all the way home. By
the time I pulled into my regular parking space, I’d decided it
came down to one thing: no one had specifically told me not to keep
the belt overnight.

After all, if I were a mechanic, they
wouldn’t expect me to drive back to return the tools, would they?
Of course not. If they weren’t going to lay down any rules, I would
make my own.

I went into my own apartment first and
dropped off my purse and keys. Glancing out the window, I found
Mark—now I had confirmation of his correct name—standing in the
courtyard again, staring at the unfinished boxy thing I’d seen the
night before.

“He’s been out there for an hour staring at
that thing,” Phyllis said in a hushed voice.

“Well, guess whose job it is to help him?” I
did a twirl for my houseplant to show off my well-appointed, fancy
belt.

“You’re joking.” She sounded appalled.

“Nope. I’m not off the clock yet. See you in
a bit.” I touched the button on my belt and went invisible.

Before I stepped through my closed back
door, I reached out to touch Phyllis, hoping to startle her.

“I can still see you, Wynter.” She waved a
branch at me.

“Well, that sucks. It didn’t malfunction,
did it?” I adjusted the belt and looked to see if anything was
wrong—not that I’d be able to tell.

“It works. It just doesn’t work on me. Move
me to the left a bit before you go, would you? I can’t see the
entire courtyard. I don’t want to miss this.”

I was tempted to move her to the bathroom
where she wouldn’t be able to see anything, but I adjusted her
until she was happy. “I’ll be back in a bit.” I drifted through the
door into the sunlight.

The work order had said
urban renewal
on it, nothing more. It did have the deadline on it—no surprise, it
was twenty-eight days. But the explanation and requirements field
had been left blank. Whatever the hell Mark was working on, nobody
knew how to describe it.

That didn’t help me one bit.

He stood over the half-built, boxy structure
with his hands on his hips. After eyeing it for a long moment, he
moved to the other side and did it again.

Finally, he shook his head and grabbed a
hammer from the tool belt slung low over his hips. “It’s too small.
And the wrong shape.” He pulled a board off the side using the claw
side of the hammer. “It’s all wrong.”

I had no idea how long it had taken him to
build the frame for whatever this was supposed to be, but it came
apart faster than I expected.

“Talk to me, Mark. What are we making here?”
I paced around him, squinting and trying to imagine what the intent
had been. “Urban renewal. Is it a garden plot? A compost bin?
What?”

He pounded the nails out of the planks, then
dropped the planks in the pile they’d come from. “Back to the
drawing board.”

“Come on, buddy. Give me something. Tell me
about the silver tires you painted over the weekend, at least.”

Mark appeared to be a lot more Zen about the
situation than I was. I was ready to tear my hair out. He stood
there with his arms folded and his face tilted to the sun while he
thought mysterious thoughts about whatever he was making.

The angle of his chin highlighted the
stubble on his jaw. I’d never seen him up close before, and with
the sunlight reflecting the reddish highlights in his dark hair, I
wanted to reach out and touch that stubble to see if it was soft or
scratchy.

But I didn’t. For one thing, my hand would
have gone right through him. For another, Phyllis was watching
through the kitchen window.

I cleared my throat. “Okay. I don’t know
what you’re trying for, so I don’t know if this will work or not,
but let’s give it a try.” I unhooked my bubbles and pulled out the
wand. “You can make it work, Mark. You already know what you want
to make. You just have to trust the idea is a good one.” I blew a
stream of bubbles.

The wind picked up, and every last one of
them flew over his left shoulder.

“Crap.” I jogged around to the other side of
him and tried again. “Trust in yourself. You can do this.” I blew
another stream of small bubbles, hoping my aim would be better and
that my vague thoughts of encouragement would help.

Neither of those things happened, since the
bubbles drifted over his head and toward the roof before popping on
the rain gutters.

Mark ran his fingers through the hair over
his eye, pushing it back. Without a word, he turned and walked into
his apartment.

I groaned in frustration and glanced back at
my kitchen window. Phyllis’s branches were jerking in what I
suspected were spasms of laughter. I gave her a dirty look and
followed Mark into his house.

This was not my first foray into the
apartment of a single man. They all seemed to have the same
underlying funk, like sweat socks and leftovers long past their
expiration date. Not so in Mark’s house. It smelled like furniture
polish and window cleaner. The living room still had a few
newspapers on the table, and an empty pizza box sat on top of the
kitchen trash can, so he wasn’t a neat freak. But he wasn’t a pig,
either.

I didn’t see him right away and searched
down the hall to the bedroom. Even in there it smelled like clean
laundry instead of gym shorts. Mark sat in a corner at a desk,
sketching out a three-dimensional hexagon with the sides built up
like we were looking down into it.

I frowned. “I really wish you’d just tell me
what we’re making.” Before he could slip away and go outside into
the wind again, I blew a bubble at him from a foot away. It landed
between his eyes with an audible plop.

“I don’t have enough wood or paint for
something this size.” He rose from his chair and nearly walked into
me—not that either of us would feel it.

I followed him through the apartment like a
puppy. When he dropped his tool belt on the floor next to the door
and grabbed his keys, I threw my arms in the air. “I give up. This
is ridiculous. It’s as if they want me to fail.”

He went out the door toward the parking lot,
and I marched in the other direction, across the courtyard and into
my apartment, scowling the entire way.

“What happened?” Phyllis sounded as
exasperated as I felt.

I flapped my hand at her as I kicked off my
shoes. “I think he went to the store to get more materials.”

“Well, what’s he making?”

My scowl deepened. “I haven’t the faintest
idea.” I dug into my purse and pulled out the assignment to show
her. “A
hexagon
. He’s making a damn hexagon.” I hit the
button on my belt to become visible again, then unhooked the belt
and hung it over the back of a kitchen chair. “It was going to be a
square, but now it’s a hexagon, and he doesn’t have enough wood. Or
nails. I don’t know.”

I left the kitchen and flopped onto the
sofa.

The apartment wasn’t large. Phyllis could
still see me from her perch on the windowsill. “You’re not giving
up, are you?”

I shook my head. “No. But I’m not about to
try to ride in his truck with him while I’m invisible. That would
be weird. I’ll try again when he comes back.”

But he didn’t come back. Not until long
after I’d fallen asleep on the couch in an uncomfortable position.
Around two thirty in the morning, I unfolded myself and went to
bed, irritated and with a cramp in my neck.

Phyllis didn’t say anything. I suspected she
was asleep, too, which surprised me. I hadn’t thought about it
before, but she ate, drank, and breathed, in her fashion. I
supposed she slept, too.

I dozed off wondering if she’d always been a
houseplant, or if she’d been put under a spell by an angry god.
Gods loved doing that sort of thing.

~*~

On Thursday morning, I stood in front of my desk and
rubbed my eyes in disbelief. I glanced over my shoulder at Polly’s
office, then back at my inbox.

It was empty.

I muttered a vague prayer of thanks to
whatever god was listening and headed for the elevator. Maybe three
was all they would assign me. Honestly, if I had another client,
I’d probably snap. I had a full plate.

The elevator doors opened to let me in, and
there he was. Rick stood with his arms folded, eyes sparkling, and
a grin making a dimple in his left cheek.

He was dressed as a Roman gladiator.

“Hey, New Girl. Coming to get some
coffee?”

I inhaled deeply and stepped into the
elevator. He smelled ridiculously good. “Sure. I’ve been going
every morning on my way out.” I paused. “Haven’t seen you for a few
days.” I hoped I didn’t sound petulant and whiny.

Or desperate.

The doors closed, and my stomach dropped a
little as we descended. I wasn’t entirely sure it was the elevator
that had caused the sensation.