The Muse's Undoing

He accepts the challenge, immediately changing the pen’s color to green. I leave him to it and walk back to Nicole, gesturing at the kitchen table, where all of Fischer’s notes, pads, and pens still litter the surface. I start stacking them up as she takes a seat. My hands are shaking, and I hate that for myself.

I give up trying to organize his mess and collapse into a chair. But I can’t look at her. “What’s up?”

“I have a lot of questions,” she says.

I inhale deeply. “I can’t promise I’m gonna answer any.”

“I had no idea Fischer was attracted to men.”

“I didn’t either until a couple months ago.”

“No?”

I shake my head.

“I’m not sure I knew you were either.”

“No offense, Nicole, but it’s never been any of your business.”

“I know. I want you to know that’s not the issue.”

“To be honest, I don’t know what the fuck is going on. All I know is one second, I’m trying to keep myself from getting too excited about being in love with someone for the first time, because it’s terrifying, and the next second he’s gone, and I realize I was right to be scared. So in terms of the details about you wanting to keep Vaughn away from his dad—that’s about all I know. I don’t know what he did wrong. I don’t know what you heard. So what do you want?”

She speaks without pretense or filter. “I want to know who Fischer is. Because I might have been married to him, but all of a sudden people are telling me things, and I feel like I don’t know shit. Which means as far as I know, my child is with a virtual stranger who’s screwing one of my friends and his brother?—”

Indignation flares. A sign of life. “I’m not his fucking brother. He was never there. He never acted like one. He never treated me like one, and I don’t mean that in some sick, perverted way, or whatever the fuck my mother thinks now—I mean he wanted nothing to do with us.”

“He did tell me that,” she says softly.

“Well, believe it. He was an asshole. I’ve never even heard him call my parents by anything other than their names. He calls my dad Dick for fuck’s sake.”

“I know,” she says.

“Right. So what else?”

“Sex clubs?”

“It’s his friend Gibson’s club.”

“Gibson?” she says loudly enough to make Vaughn’s head jerk up. And then she leans in and whispers, “Gibson has a sex club?”

“Best kept secret on the Upper East Side apparently.”

“Oh my God.”

“Look—I don’t know about your sex life, and I don’t want to, that’s not me asking, because it’s none of my fucking business. I wouldn’t want to tell you about mine either, but you’ve been single in this town before. You know how it goes.”

“I mean…right, but…”

“Anyway, no one’s having threesomes in his living room that I’m aware of. I know he had a thing with your friend Raven for a few months where she’d come up and keep him company some nights, but?—”

“She mentioned another man in his apartment.”

I shut up and look at her, my gut twisting. “What?”

“A blond? Kinda feminine?”

“Gavin?” I point at the door Gavin just exited. “His assistant?”