He threw back the glass of caipirinha, downing the whole lot in a single gulp and slammed the glass onto the bar. Diego, Carolyn, and Miciela shared a glance. Ossirian had been drinking steadily since the disastrous party seven days ago, his waking hours and increasing frantic energy lubricated with a steady stream of alcohol. What had started as an amused rant had become a steady stream of invective and abuse, all of it heaped upon his own head. My talent, he said, is worthless. My soul, he said, is corroded. My heart, he said, is broken.
Of all the things he said, slurring the words far too little for an eighteen-year-old who had been drinking as long as it took God to make the world, these are the ones that Carolyn believes. His heart has been broken by the casual cruelty of a jealous rival.
“It’s useless!” He reached for the caipirinha. He eschewed the glass and downed a swallow right from the pitcher. “Worthless! Ridiculous!”
He thumped the pitcher down and stalked about the library, gesticulating and arguing half of a conversation they had difficulty following, as he lapsed in and out of English, Spanish, and Portuguese without slowing. He had begun to speak in literal tongues.
They were on their feet instantly as the angry young man tripped over a settee and pitched onto his face. Carolyn reached him first and cradled him in her arms. She rolled him over and gasped; his nose was streaming blood.
Diego and Miciela were at her side, Diego holding out a handkerchief, Miciela slipping under Ossirian’s head to help hold him still as Carolyn gently daubed at his nose.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, trying to staunch the flow of blood. “I’m sorry for this, and for him, and-”
“Nonsense,” Diego de la Luna told her in a kind, paternal voice. “It isn’t your fault. He’s in crisis.”
“I’ll… if you can call us a cab or arrange a car, I’ll take him home. You’ve been more than gracious, but it’s time we-”
“My Muse,” Ossirian muttered through the handkerchief, eyes closed, “I am home. I am in hell, but I am home. We are home. I have lost so much, do not take that from me as well.”
Diego put a gentle hand on Carolyn’s shoulder. “The lad’s right, Carolita. This is as much your home as any. We wish you to stay for as long as you like.”
Her eyes brimmed with tears. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m grateful. But I don’t know what to do.”
“We heal him, of course. We give him what he needs to mend his soul.” Miciela brushed hair out of Ossirian’s tear-filled eyes.
“I don’t know how,” Carolyn said.
For the first time since meeting the stately, elegant older man, Carolyn heard in Diego de la Luna’s voice the bite of anger, bitter and searing.
“Perhaps not, but it’s not your wound to heal. We need something to soothe this brilliant, lost artist.”
“’m no’ an artist,” Ossirian slurred through the alcohol and the handkerchief. “’m a paint’r.”
“Yes, yes,’ Carolyn agreed. “And right at the moment you’re an exhausted painter who needs sleep, a shower, and ten gallons of coffee.”
Ossirian muttered something nonsensical. They managed in turns to get him on his feet, down the hallway, and into the room that he and Carolyn had been sharing since the night of the party, when it had become too late to go back down the mountain. It was plain to Carolyn that whatever was troubling the sensitive, wild young man’s mind, it was no mere crisis of confidence or even faith. He seemed to be shattering into pieces before her, and she could not help him. They wrestled his limp body onto the coverlet and all three heaved a sigh of relief. Ossirian seemed inclined to sleep. It would be a welcome change from the previous week, in which he drank, ranted, and slept where he fell, only to awaken minutes later and continue. None of them had ever seen anything like it, and even Carolyn, who spent her life around artists and students in all stages of debauchery, couldn’t for the life of her figure out how he kept going.
“Many thanks,” she panted. “Hopefully we can get some sleep.”
The de la Lunas shared a knowing look. “If he wakes in the night,” Diego told her, “be assured he will find no drink. I’m going to lock the cabinet.”
“Do you need help readying him for bed?” Miciela asked. Carolyn glanced at the woman, sure she had heard a sly inference, but the older woman’s wide-eyed gaze seemed to fairly ooze innocence.
“I can manage, thank you,” she said. She yawned enormously. She clapped a hand over her open mouth and her cheeks glowed pink. “I beg your pardon.”
“It seems we could all use a bit of sleep,” Diego said. He took his wife’s hand. “We’ll leave you to your rest. Until the morning.”
“Good night.” Carolyn closed it after them. She put her hands on her hips and stared at Ossirian, whose nose had stopped bleeding, and whose gentle snores caused her to shake her head in exasperation.
“What am I going to do with you?” she wondered aloud. She spent the next few minutes getting him undressed and under the covers. She stripped down herself, deciding that nightclothes were too much of a bother at the moment. She flicked the light out and climbed into the bed beside the young man. She cuddled up to him, her head on his chest. She listened to his heartbeat. She realized that his heart had begun to speed up almost the second after she had put her head upon it. As she realized this, his arms drew her close in a fierce, possessive envelopment. She sighed as he squeezed her. “My Muse,” he whispered in her ear.
“I’m here, Ossirian.” Her voice was a rumble against his skin.
“My Muse,” he said again into her hair, and his hands began to caress her. Now, as always, her body responded, and although she tried to push herself up to bend over him, he rolled them over, pinning her to the bed with his delicious weight, his ardent lust evident against her. She opened her legs to him, her mouth to him; her heart was already wide open for him. He took her gently at first, and rougher as they both teetered on the edge.
“My Muse,” he panted again and again as their bodies cooled together, endearingly sticky in the hot, damp night.
She caressed his face in the darkness. “What can I do for you? What do you need?”
“I need… I need… I don’t know,” he muttered. “Who am I?”
“You’re Christoph Ossirian. You’re my painter.”
“Yes, yes. But who is that? Who is Christoph Ossirian?” His voice was peevish, irritated.
She blinked into the darkness, at a loss for an answer.
“Who is he? Who am I supposed to be?”
She had never heard him sound so lost. Even in his drunken anger he sounded furious that he should have lost his purpose, his sense of self. But now he sounded like a lost and scared sixteen-year-old boy, and it almost broke her heart to hear him pondering the nature of his existence without being able to give him an answer.
“I thought you were a painter. Is that not what you want to be?”
“I paint; I’m a painter,” he muttered. “But what kind of a painter? What do I need to say? What can I say?”
“Why, you can say anything in the world you wish to. With your skills and your hand and your eye, you can say anything at all.”
“That’s just it,” he slurred from the edge of a fitful sleep. “What do I have to say?”
His gentle snores and heavy, untroubled breathing soothed her. It would be better in the morning. He would be better. Still lost, but better equipped to cope with it. She could give him a place to live, she could buy him food and clothing, she could introduce him to the world, but she could not give him a vision.
I’m a terrible Muse. I am letting him down. He needs a reason, a purpose, not just the skill to paint, but a desire to paint something. To show the world something he alone can see. Something more that he sees. Something unique and him.
Her skin prickled as she realized the crux of his problem, as it fell on her from that place beyond our conscious thoughts.
He needs to explain himself. But if he doesn’t understand himself, how can he?
She pondered this revelation all through the night until the first light of dawn peered under the shade of their east-facing window, as if checking to see if they were ready for the new day to begin.