The Writer and Her Muse

Isla awoke in a new year altogether. With eyes closed, she imagined that she was back in the technicolor days of her childhood, with her mother stroking her head as she used to do back when she was alive. As Isla’s eyes fluttered open, she found that those few gentle, soothing caresses were not her mother’s at all.

“Alex?” she lazily whispered.

“Oh, thank the good Lord she’s alive and coherent!” Clara-Lou’s voice drifted in from the peripheries, but all Isla could see were the vivid blue of Alex’s eyes that dimmed all other objects in her vision momentarily.

“Isla. . .are you alright?” Alex stopped stroking her hair and slowly helped her sit up.

“Yeah, I think so. I’m. . .”

“A little uncouth if you ask me.” Camille squawked, rolled her eyes and joined the unaffected party.

“My goodness gracious!” Clara came to hug her friend on the ground with traces of gin still on her breath. “My God, I thought you had died! Or gotten a concussion!” Her accent was thickened by the alcohol. “Quick! What’s seven times seven? Oh dammit, would you know the answer to that? You’re a writer, not a mathematician. . .Oh Lordy!” Clara shook Isla’s shoulders then helped her stand up. She noisily ushered her to the door of the office with Alex following close behind, all the way to the elevator, then to the street to call for a cab. He caught her twice when her knees gave in from exhaustion and when the cab finally came, he gave Clara money for the fare and tucked Isla into the cab. When he was sure they were safely in the back, he leant down and wished Isla a happy new year and a quiet happy birthday as the cab drove off.

When Isla awoke again, she was greeted by the dazzling sunlight through the large windows of Clara’s apartment. Clara was passed out next to her in the four-post bed, still wearing the clothes from the night before.

As Isla struggled to get out of the grips of Clara’s memory foam, there was an intense pulsing against her head that caused her whole body to shake.

“. . .The hell. . . “ she patted the back of her head and pulled a bandage from her hair and threw it to the wooden floor. Clara stirred for a minute next to her then opened her eyes.

“Hello there, Iz.” she said as she wiped the sleep from her eyes.

“What happened last night, Clara?” she asked groggily as she stretched her arms up in a sun salutation.

“You tripped, you fell, you hit your head. Isn’t that your usual Saturday night?”

“Why is there a bandage on my head? The fall couldn’t have been that bad. . “

“Well it was bad! You were out for the count for a while. I’d thought you cracked your skull! So I put a bandage just to be safe.” Clara smiled up at her sweetly.

“You’re ridiculous, you know that?” she laughed weakly. “But thank you.”

“You know, you should thank that delicious Harker man. He was there with you, called for help, even paid to get us home last night. Well not really to my home. We went to your house but the place was trashed from Darren’s party, so I decided to take you here, you poor thing.”

“The party! Shit. I have to get home.” Isla pulled off the covers, grabbed her shoes and headed for home with Clara screaming after her to take a bagel and some grapefruit.

Home was less than comforting. It looked like a hurricane had come and went and FEMA workers had just begun to handle the aftermath with half-assed intention. Cups littered the floor, along with crushed cigarette filters and a scattered array of bodies that couldn’t physically pick themselves up. Amongst them all was Darren, passed out on the paisley carpet and wrapped around a stranger as her typewriter keys were swept up around her feet.
Isla dropped her bag to the ground, shook her head a couple of times as if wanting to erase the idea from her memory and kicked the man she had once imagined she was in love with. ‘Furious’ did not begin to explain the multitude of emotions whizzing between the tiny apartment, aimed at one in particular.

Darren got up immediately. With eyes closed to slits and a deeply furrowed brow, he scratched his unshaven chin with his left hand and reached out for Isla with the other.

“Oh hey baby. Come on down here. We need to talk, yeah?”

“You need to bring your ass up here, Darren.” she said, tapping her foot on the floor. “And you broke my typewriter?” she bent down to pick up the smashed remnants of her most prized possession.

“See? That! That right there.” Darren wobbled to his knees, then stood on his feet. He staggered towards her. “ All of this, “ he gestured clumsily at her visage, “Is the problem. I propose to you, and you yell at me. All you ever do is yell. And frankly, it’s starting to get to me. You were great. . .We had fun,but between your depression and demands, I just can’t.”
Isla could feel her face getting hot. Despite the words burning at the pit of her core, she gave Darren an obliging nod instead.

She turned towards the door, and left it open for him.



The majority of Isla’s birthday up until 8 pm was spent in a contemplation that only isolation can bring; on a park swing or a bench underneath a streetlight by the high stoned outer walls of Central Park West waiting to be lit for the night, she wandered aimlessly suffering from an ungraspable sentiment of loss and defeat. Instead of going home, she went to Clara’s house where a surprise awaited her. On Clara’s dining room table small blue candles were lit, and bright neon yellow balloons littered the ceiling, in an intimate scene reminiscent of a John Hughs film. Isla’s favorite strawberry cheesecake called out to her from the center of the table, and two shabbily wrapped presents waited in the wings. Clara wore a ridiculous paper birthday hat and a smile as she stretched a plastic crown in Isla’s direction.

“I figured after the day you had today, you’d let me spoil you.” Clara laughed heartily and it was so infectious that Isla couldn’t help but join in as she came to sit at the head of the table.
The cheesecake tasted like heaven and slid down her throat so easily that she almost forgot all her troubles of the day. They melted like the confection joyously melted in her mouth. Two slices and six tequila shots later, when they were good and bubbly, Clara brought the presents to Isla’s attention.

From her best friend, she received an exquisitely expensive Victorian-esque Emerald statement necklace. The gold of the chain had an antique glow to it, and the three diamond shaped forest-hued gemstones perfectly complemented Isla’s eyes. Clara-Lou proudly clapped at her accomplishment while Isla sang her appreciation.

“I’m making you more Southern one day at a time.” she cooed dramatically, wiping fake tears from her eyes.

Isla laughed and pulled the next package to her body. “You got me something else?”
She couldn’t contain her excitement.

“Nope. That, my dear, is from your kooky auntie. She dropped by earlier quite appalled that you hadn’t moved in here sooner.Imagine her surprise when I told her that you still hadn’t moved in. We might have to fix that.” Clara’s voice wavered as she went to put the cake up in the kitchen.

The gift was medium sized, wrapped in brown packing paper in a large brown paper bag like the kind gotten from expensive Manhattan retailers. Isla first dug around the bottom of the bag and found a pack of jasmine scented incense sticks wrapped with straw attached to a birthday card from good ol’ Auntie Irma wishing her the best of birthdays and a clear and positive energy, as well as complimenting her radiant aura after all those years. All Isla could do was smile and roll her eyes.

She breathed in the rich earthy scent of jasmine. It was strong, yet sweet, and romantic. It made her dizzy and calm at the same time. It prepared her fully for the final gift. She fished around the bottom of the bag and found another card. This one was from her father. In Russian he wrote:

Thinking of you always, my little sun. I heard of your troubles and I thought this might jolt your spirit. Love always,papa.

P.S. -be careful, I found it in your gypsy aunt’s shop. You know how she is. . .

She kissed her father’s card. Despite the incense, this card smelled only of her father. A clean, fresh scent that reminded her of his smile. She smiled and took out her final gift.

Wrapped ever so tenderly in the parcel paper was an old and delicate pink typewriter, still dusty, almost withered, but perfect in every way. Isla traced her fingers across the ‘Royal’ emblem across its face wiping the dust from the silver lettering. Her eyes lit up as she ran her hands across the keys.

“It’s perfect.” Isla pronounced.

Clara stood in the kitchen doorway with her arms crossed in satisfaction at having cured her best friend of her woes if only temporarily. “ Ain’t that crazy? I didn’t even tell your daddy and auntie about your typewriter. You got lucky, lil miss.” her voice drifted.

“This is perfect,” Isla whispered to herself. She loaded up the writer, and spent the rest of her twenty-second birthday typing away, creating with her words fantastical tales of lives she could only imagine with perfect detail because she’d lived them a thousand times over in her dreams; of lands unfettered by heedlessness; of characters scrapping towards the surface of reality. She wrote into the dawn. She wrote herself into bliss.