Unfinished Muse (13 page)

“If I fail, I go to the Underworld, don’t
I?” I dropped into a kitchen chair and held my head in my
hands.

“It takes more than one failure, sweetheart.
And you’ve got—what—twenty-seven days left on this one? You’ll be
fine.”

I shook my head. “I’m not good at anything,
Phyllis. Don’t you remember? That’s how I got into this mess in the
first place.”

~*~

I didn’t talk to Polly the next day like I’d
planned, though I did get in early. After a long night of soul
searching, I’d decided to make this work. One way or another, Alex
Meyer would finish his damn toothpick sculpture thing.

Since I was early, most of the belts still
hung on the wall, though a few were already checked out. I grabbed
mine, attached my gear, and took off through the door without
seeing anyone. On the way down to the lobby, I stopped on the
second floor to grab a cup of coffee.

Okay, let’s be honest. I also stopped to see
if that guy Rick was around. I tried to look casual, like I wasn’t
looking for anyone in particular, while Gretchen made my latte. I
didn’t fool her a bit.

She smiled as she handed me my change. “He’s
got a weird schedule. He doesn’t come in every day.”

I thought about trying to look innocent and
pretend I had no idea who she was talking about, but I didn’t want
to be that person. I’d been caught. I might as well go with it.
“Thanks. Maybe I’ll see both of you tomorrow.” I dropped a tip in
the jar next to the register, then tried my best to exit with my
head up rather than slink out in embarrassment. Sometimes it was
necessary to suck it up and be a grownup.

Still, I kept my eyes open for him in the
hallway, the elevator, and all through the crowded lobby. I did
slam right into a teenaged girl with three heads, though. Two of
her heads were pretty brunettes with big eyes and long eyelashes.
The head in the middle, however, was pale and sickly-looking with
lank blonde hair and puffy eyes. When I walked into the
girl—girls?—she dropped her purse, and I helped her pick it up.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

The girl snatched the purse from me, and one
of the brunette heads sneered. “Watch it.”

“Thank you!” The other brunette head grinned
at me.

The third head said nothing, but the look of
annoyance on her face made me think the happy head was the odd
woman out. I apologized again and walked around her.

I didn’t quite give up looking for Rick
until I left the building. Once I did that, of course, there wasn’t
any chance of seeing anyone from Mt. Olympus. I doubted very many
people were exiting for Topeka, Kansas.

I nodded at the homeless guy as I walked to
my car. He smiled and waved. I’d have to remember to ask somebody
about that. I would’ve bet hard cash the guy was there to watch the
door and not because he was actually homeless.

Good disguise, though.

I climbed into my car and fastened my
seatbelt. My work belt was a clever contraption. It never seemed to
get caught on anything or get in the way, despite all the dangling
bits and bottles. People didn’t stare at it when I walked down the
street, either. It was as if their eyes rolled away from it.

Tools of the gods.

On the way to Alex’s house—or rather, Alex’s
mother’s house—I worked on my game plan. If Alex wasn’t working in
the basement, I’d follow him around and blow bubbles at him until
he felt compelled to get to work. If he
was
working, I’d
stand over him and try my hardest to get him to think of a
good
idea this time.

I wasn’t sure how long it would take to
build a sculpture out of toothpicks, but I had a feeling we’d need
the better part of the month to complete it. Having lived a life of
procrastination and not finishing things, I knew how inviting it
sometimes was to get caught in the vortex of Idea Land. It was
tempting to stay there, fantasizing about all the possibilities.
And each new idea would be bigger, flashier, and less likely to
actually be possible to finish. Alex needed to get started fast, or
he’d never get started at all. And it needed to be a scaled-down
idea he could complete in such a short time.

I parked on a different street than the day
before—I wouldn’t want the neighborhood watch to get suspicious—hit
the button on my belt, and marched to Alex’s front door. I held my
breath and stepped inside.

Today, the pink living room smelled like
bacon. When I entered the kitchen, Mrs. Alex’s Mom was there, daisy
oven mitts on her hands, pulling a pan of cinnamon rolls from the
oven. I inhaled with a sad sigh. Bacon and cinnamon rolls. How
crappy was that? I couldn’t even touch them, let alone eat
them.

Mrs. Meyer set the pan on the stove to cool,
then tore off a bit of bacon from a huge pile and dropped it to the
floor, clucking and cooing. I peeked around the counter and found
Oscar crunching away. He swallowed, then caught sight of me and
yipped.

Mrs. Meyer squatted down, her chenille
bathrobe pooling around her on the linoleum. “What’s the matter, my
darling? Did it go down wrong?”

Oscar shivered and buried his nose in her
hand.

I hadn’t meant to make him afraid of me. Did
the Beastie Dust give him a headache? Did I use too much yesterday?
If I left him alone, maybe he’d get used to having me around. It
wasn’t as if I’d been given real training on what to do about
pets.

Or on anything else, for that matter.

Mrs. Meyer gave Oscar a pat on his head and
straightened up. She took in a lungful of air and shouted down the
half-open basement door. “Alex! Breakfast!”

I cringed. The woman was loud.

Alex appeared a moment later, and I hopped
up on the counter to watch him eat with his mom.

Watching them interact gave me a better feel
for who my client was. And if I hadn’t felt bad for him the day
before, I certainly did today.

“I don’t know why you spend so much time
down there.” Mrs. Meyer crunched a piece of bacon. “It’s not like
you’ve got a chance of winning anyway. What’s the point?”

Alex licked icing off his finger. His voice
was quiet. “I have as much chance as anyone, Mother.”

“About as much chance as finding a job.” She
leaned over and fed a chunk of cinnamon roll to Oscar. “Isn’t that
right, sweetums?”

Alex said nothing in response. In fact, he
didn’t say another word until he was finished, despite his mother’s
continued insults and prodding. When he was finished, he took his
plate to the sink, rinsed it, and put it in the dishwasher. “Thank
you for breakfast, Mother. I’ll be in the basement. Working.” He
turned away without looking at her and clomped down the stairs.

I hopped off the counter and gave her a
dirty look. “Yeah. We’ll be working.” I glared at Oscar. “Don’t
follow us. I don’t want to have to dust you.”

He yipped and hid under Mrs. Meyer’s
bathrobe.

Down in the basement, Alex paced and
muttered. He pulled at his thinning hair and made it stand out on
the sides of his head.

I leaned against a wall and crossed my arms.
“Dude. That’s not a good look. Stop doing that.”

He mumbled louder and waved a fisted hand in
the air. “…determined to undermine me every chance she gets.”

I unhooked the bottle of bubbles from my
belt. “Let it go. Stress doesn’t get you anywhere. Let’s just prove
her wrong, shall we?” I blew a series of smallish bubbles at him in
a stream. Most of them exploded around his head. I was getting
better at aiming, anyway.

Alex stopped and pressed his index finger
against his lips. “I’ll prove her wrong. That’s what I’ll do.” He
pulled out his stool and took a seat at his worktable.

“Whoa. That’s exactly what I said.” I moved
closer to him. “You can’t hear me, can you?”

He didn’t react. Nope. He couldn’t hear
me.

I blew bubbles at him again. “Today you’ll
come up with the perfect idea.”

He stretched and cracked his knuckles.
“Today I’ll get the perfect idea.”

“Whoa,” I said again. “So, that’s how these
babies work.” I held up the bottle of Thought Bubbles in the dim
light. Nope. No directions I’d missed.

Audrey was the shittiest trainer ever.

“How about a building instead of a natural
structure, Alex? Something with straight lines.” I encased his head
in bubbles.

Alex crumpled up the top page on his notepad
and discarded it. “No more nature. Nature is irregular and rounded.
I need a manmade structure. Let’s see.” He stared at the paper,
holding his chin in his fingertips. “A bridge?”

I rolled my eyes. “Everybody does
bridges.”

His hand moved quickly as he drew the
outline of a bridge, despite my words.

“Dude. I said no bridges.”

“The Golden Gate Bridge is a classic.” His
pencil flew over the page.

“Why aren’t you listening to me?” My arm
hung at my side, and the bubble wand I held dripped on my leg,
getting my attention. “Oh. Yeah. Okay.” I dipped and blew. “Bridges
are overdone.”

Alex stopped. “Everybody does bridges. What
am I thinking? I can’t win with a bridge.” He crumpled up the paper
and started over. “The Taj Mahal, maybe?” His voice wavered.

Dip. Blow. Pop. “How about something more
personal? Something you love?”

“I should do something I love.” He scratched
his head. “Or something
she
loves.”

It was as if someone had lit a bonfire under
his stool. He drew again, but this time with a purpose I hadn’t
seen before. He paused occasionally, tapped the pencil against his
teeth in thought, then redoubled his efforts.

“What are you making?” I peered over his
shoulder. “A house?” The longer I looked at the two-dimensional
image, the more familiar it looked. Then it hit me. “You’re
building a replica of
this
house.” I patted him on the back,
but my hand slid through. “That’s a fantastic idea. And you’re
right. Your mom will love it.”

I watched him for hours. Once he finished
drawing out the basic structure, he pulled out several boxes of
toothpicks and a bottle of glue. One toothpick at a time, he glued
them together on wax paper so they wouldn’t stick to anything but
each other.

It was slow going, but by lunchtime, he’d
done half of one wall.

I rose from the pile of milk crates I’d been
sitting on and stretched. “Well, Alex. I think you’ve got this.
I’ll be back to check on your progress.”

Surely, I figured, they didn’t expect me to
be here every second he was working on the project. It wasn’t as if
he was going to get stuck again any time soon. Judging by the look
of concentration on his face, I doubted he’d come up for air before
dinner.

“See you later, Alex.” I climbed the stairs
and blinked in the bright kitchen. Mrs. Meyer wasn’t around, but
Oscar eyed me from the corner with distrust.

He sneezed and ran from the room. I laughed
and left through the front door feeling especially full of
myself.

~*~

When I got back to the office, I found another
assignment in my inbox. I nearly vomited. So much for that wave of
pride I’d been riding. I had to start all over with another
client.

Missy Franklin was a scrapbooker. My heart
sank. I knew nothing about scrapbooking. And while I didn’t know
anything about toothpick art either, at least I understood the
basics. Toothpicks, glue, and some engineering skills could carry a
person a long way.

Scrapbookers were a different story. I’d
known one, once. She’d had crazy tools like hole punches shaped
like ducks and scissors that cut scallops on the edges of thick,
patterned paper. I honestly wasn’t clear on what the end result was
supposed to be.

I’d tried—and abandoned—a lot of projects in
my life, but the scrapbooking aisle at the craft store was too
intimidating even for me.

Rather than get myself into the same trouble
I nearly did with Alex, I took the time to read Missy’s entire
profile. Apparently, Missy did have an end goal. She was working on
a scrapbook to give to her parents for their golden anniversary.
The deadline, of course, was twenty-eight days away. That meant I
now had two clients with deadlines a month away, one day apart.

Somewhere from the other side of the cubicle
farm, several women squealed and laughed. I popped my head up in
time to see someone I didn’t know light candles on a cake, and
three more women I didn’t know sang “Happy Birthday” to someone I
couldn’t see.

Polly’s office door swung open, and she
popped her head out to join in the singing with her ridiculously
melodious voice. When the song was over, she noticed me standing at
my desk. “Oh. Wynter. Welcome back. Did you get the new assignment
I left for you?”

“I…yes. I got it.” I held it up. “Can I talk
to you for a—”

She cut me off. “Well, great. Good luck with
it. Hope you’re enjoying the job.” She pointed over her shoulder.
“I have to get back to a phone call. Have a fantastic rest of the
day.” She disappeared into her office and shut the door.

What the hell? The gaggle of women laughed
in the distance, oblivious of the new girl who’d been cut out of
everything. Other than Trina, the few coworkers I’d met were
horrible people. My boss was decidedly hands-off. And my desk was
about as far from everybody else’s as possible. Not that I spent
much time at it.

I sighed and pushed my chair in. Might as
well quit feeling sorry for myself and get back to work. Those
scraps weren’t going to book themselves.

The trip up and down the elevator yielded no
good-looking guy dressed as a cowboy, but I did share the ride with
a surprisingly short cyclops woman. She smiled. I smiled. We both
minded our own business and got off in the lobby. I did not see the
three-headed girl.

Missy lived in an apartment on the third
floor of a sprawling complex. Audrey hadn’t told me the rules for
parking in a parking lot, so I opted for a spot as far from the
buildings as possible. At the top of the stairs, I turned left,
found Missy’s apartment, and walked through the door.