The Muse's Undoing

“Yeah, well…” He sinks down low on the couch, propping his bare feet on the coffee table and crossing his arms and ankles. “I haven’t been feeling so hot either.”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Yeah, about that,” Matthew says, not cutting me any slack with his tone. “What did you mean by that text?”

“At the time? You said you were sorry, and I assumed you meant something like sorry this didn’t work out the way we talked about wanting it to, and I was sorry, too. Why? What did you mean?”

“I meant I was sorry for missing your call, but also because I couldn’t talk then, and I was sorry about that, too, and also because if it weren’t for me, Nicole never would have done that shit to you. I meant a lot of things. But mostly I was sorry I missed your call. Why did you call?”

“Because I wanted to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“To see if you were okay.”

“Define okay,” he says.

I wave in the direction of his workshop. “It’s fine. I got my answer.”

“Did you see that?” he asks.

“Yeah. I cried.”

He sighs. “It was cathartic.”

“You’re all cut up.”

“At least I’m not having sex with a stranger.”

I wince at that. “Is that what’s next? Or do you have more stuff you want to break first?”

“I don’t know what’s next,” he says. “The tree wasn’t me. I figured it would sell. I knew it was pretty, and it was just interesting enough but not too deep, and someone would find a place for it. It was meaningful in a way, but the parts that meant something are all still there—the foundation. I actually think I like it better this way.” He gestures at the skeletal collection of twisted wires, now bent and battered but still reaching out in all directions forming words that don’t make sense to anyone but him. “That’s me,” he says.

“The words?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“What’s meaningful about the words?”

“It’s all about that time,” he says.

I don’t follow.

“It’s about us, Fischer.”

I scowl at what’s left of the tree. I even start to stand, but he stops me. “Don’t you dare go over there. There aren’t enough bandaids in the world.” He yanks me back to sitting, and I land right next to him.

54

MATTHEW

Is this a reconciliation or a post-mortem?

I have mixed feelings about Fischer being drunk. On the one hand, I feel like I’m being short-changed on a real conversation about where things stand, and I can’t fully trust whatever comes out of his mouth. On the other hand, he’s disinhibited, openly pitiful, and unguarded. It’s disarming, which makes me forget why being around him was ever a bad idea.

“How is it about me?” he asks.

“Maybe read it sometime, and it’ll ring a bell,” I tell him. Basically, the only words I left off the tree were surgery and bed. Otherwise, it’s basically a transcript of the nights we spent together in his old apartment and my subsequent effort to move on. Storm, nightmare, more, hurt, burn, close, here, please, raw, pain, torn…