The Wishing Game(70)
Hugo’s eyes widened. “He said that? He called you a ‘stray’? Unbelievable.”
“He liked that I was an ‘emotional orphan.’ That’s what he called me.‘The only thing worse than having dead parents is having parents who might as well be dead.’ Or something like that. That’s a line from The Small Hours. Or maybe it’s from Artifice. I get those two mixed up.” She looked away, stared at the fire a moment. Her voice was hollow when she spoke again. “He was an emotional orphan too, he said. Divorced parents, drugs, cheating, no stability at home, raising himself by age twelve. We were so screwed up we belonged together.”
“Cite your source.”
“What?” She laughed nervously.
“Jack says you must always cite your sources. Who said you were so screwed up you belonged together? Him? Or you?”
“Him. And I guess I believed him.”
She smiled like she was joking, but he could see cracks in the fa?ade. “Lucy…That’s bloody awful.”
“Don’t get me wrong. It was fun sometimes. I went to house parties on Martha’s Vineyard, ate at Michelin-starred restaurants. I went on his European tour with him. I,” she said, pointing at herself, “have had sex in a castle.”
“And here I thought you were just a kindergarten teacher’s aide,” Hugo said, stretching out on the floor. “Who knew I was with an actual muse? Every artist’s dream come true. Lucky man.”
“Want to see my ink?”
“More than life itself.”
“Here, I’m not flashing you, I promise.” She turned and lifted her shirt to show him her rib cage, which sported a tattoo about eight inches high of a beautiful Greek woman holding a scroll in her hands. He rolled over on his side, got in close, and studied the outlines in the firelight. He wanted to trace them with his fingertips, but if he started touching her, he wouldn’t want to stop.
“Her name is Calliope,” Lucy said. “She’s the chief of the Greek muses. The muse of epic poetry.”
“Please don’t tell me Sean Parrish made you get that.”
“Oh no, I did this to myself. Thought it would make him happy since I was his ‘muse.’”
Hugo looked at it closely, not a man ogling a woman’s body but an artist admiring a work of art.
“You know anyone looking for an unemployed muse?” she asked, lowering her shirt.
“I’m a modern artist.” He put his hands behind his head. “My muse is the fear of poverty and obscurity.”
She smiled, but her eyes looked far away, as if remembering something she wished she could forget. “I will say this for him. He was the first person who made me feel wanted in my entire life. Really wanted. And when you feel wanted for the first time in your life, you realize how much you’ve been starving for it.”
Hugo heard something else in her voice, some old secret sadness creeping in. He sat up and softly asked, “What happened with you two?”
She let out a long breath before she began to speak.
“I should have known the first month we started sleeping together what kind of man he was,” she said. “He asked me why I’d taken his writing class when I didn’t want to be a writer. I told him I was thinking of working in publishing someday, getting a job in New York at a children’s book publisher. I remember hoping he’d say something like, ‘You’d be great at that.’ Or, ‘Sounds like a dream job for you.’ Or even just a vague, stupid, ‘You can do it. I believe in you.’ But no, he rolled his eyes, said children’s books weren’t real literature, and I should find something to do that didn’t involve—you know.”
“Books with pictures,” he said. He’d heard all the jokes before about his work.
“Right. That. Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I know you don’t believe it.”
“No, but I didn’t have the guts to say that. I just nodded along and let him kill that dream. But he could be charming and funny and sexy, and we traveled, and his apartment was nice…so I stitched a sort of patchwork relationship out of all that. You don’t have to be happy to convince yourself you’re lucky. Lucky me, dating a famous writer. Then I got pregnant and it all fell apart.”
“Oh, Lucy.” Poor mite, he thought. He wanted to hug her but knew he shouldn’t.
“Deep down, I always knew what I was to him—the younger woman he kept around to make people think he was younger. But kids were not in his plan. He wanted me to end it. He told me to do it a hundred times, even made an appointment for me.”
She took a deep breath.
“And that’s how I ended up in California,” she said, continuing. “Every time I got out of the shower and looked in the mirror, I saw that stupid muse tattoo. It reminded me how much of myself I’d given up to make him happy. If I stayed, I knew he’d eventually wear me down. So…one evening we went to his launch party in Manhattan. I faked a headache and went back to the hotel, grabbed my bags, and ran for it. Put the whole trip out west on the one credit card I had. A friend from college let me stay with her while I figured things out. A couple of weeks later I started bleeding.”
Hugo didn’t say anything, too afraid of saying the wrong thing.
Lucy’s hands clutched into fists. “And…I…I didn’t tell Sean. Anything. At all. Didn’t tell him where I was, even. I was still scared he’d talk me into coming back to him. I decided to stay, start over. That’s what California’s for, right? For people who are on the run, who need a fresh start. I got a job. Started over from scratch. And here I am, still scratching.”