Unfinished Muse (2 page)

“You’re dry,” I said. “It’s supposed to rain
tonight. Fresh air should do you some good.”

“What are you doing, Wynter?” The branches
quivered, and a leaf dropped from a stem. “Do be reasonable,
sweetheart. If you don’t like operettas, I’ll sing something
else.”

I didn’t respond. Why should I? It was all
happening in my head, so my delusion already knew what I had in
mind. Trying not to show fear, I grabbed the dish beneath the pot
and carried the whole thing out the back door into the courtyard,
placed it beside the door, and went inside.

The silence was amazing.

And a little lonely, now that I didn’t have
a made-up problem to distract me. I checked my phone and saw that
Freddy had left two voice messages as well as a text that said
“Thinking of you.”

I sighed and left the phone on the counter
without listening to the messages. The text was sweet, in a way,
but I’d never gone back to a guy I’d broken up with, and I didn’t
mean to start now. The ones who kept trying after the breakup were
even less likely to get me to give in and try again.

I turned off the ringer. If Freddy wasn’t
done trying to convince me to
work on our relationship
, he’d
be calling back. I’d rather miss a call than ignore it. One action
was without knowledge, the other was deliberate. If I didn’t know
about the call, I didn’t feel as much guilt over not taking it.

I plopped on the couch and turned on the
television to veg over some sitcom doomed for early cancellation. I
didn’t really follow the plot and got lost halfway through. Mostly,
I was distracted by the idea that I’d have to go looking for a new
job come Monday, or pack up all my stuff and move in with mother.
Again.

I cringed at the idea of living with Mom
again. I was twenty-four. I shouldn’t have to keep moving back
home. And my mom leaned well toward the bonkers side, so there was
that.

One of the characters on television pulled
out a box of the same cereal I’d seen advertised during the
commercial break.

I wrinkled my nose. “Product placement.” I
clicked off the television. It was early for a Friday night, but my
day had been draining. All I wanted was to crawl into my bed and
hide until at least tomorrow. Besides. I probably needed to get
dressed, since I’d been wrapped in my towel long enough that not
only was I dry, but so was the towel.

I sighed and unfolded myself from the couch,
running my fingers through my short, blonde hair and leaving it
spiked around my head. By morning it would probably be flat on one
side from the pillow.

After throwing on a tank top and a pair of
underwear, I deserted the towel in the middle of my bedroom floor
and crawled under the covers. My eyes burned from weariness.

I managed to doze for a few hours before the
courtyard erupted in a rap song. A loud rap song.

I listened for a moment before I realized it
was the theme song to
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
, as sung
by someone’s beloved Nana.

I groaned and wrapped the pillow around my
ears.

A few seconds later, a window facing the
courtyard lit up and someone yelled for quiet.

My mouth went dry.
Oh my God. They can
hear it, too.

I scrambled out of bed and pulled on a
lavender kimono I sometimes used as a bathrobe, then ran for the
back door and flung it open.

In the glow of Mrs. Terwilliger’s porch
light, my philodendron bopped its leaves to the beat of its own
song. “…to the cabbie, ‘Yo, homes, smell ya later!’”

“Wynter, is that you singing?” Mrs.
Terwilliger yelled across the space.

“No ma’am!” I yelled back, then hissed
between my teeth and lowered my voice to a whisper. “Would you stop
it! You’ll get me evicted.”

I snatched up the singing plant and rushed
inside. As soon as I closed and locked the door, she stopped
singing.

“You know, it’s cold out there, Wynter. That
was a mean thing to do.”

“Waking up my neighbors was mean, too,” I
said. I shifted my feet, self-conscious about talking to a plant
now that the plant could talk back.

“Can we stop with the games now and discuss
this like rational adults?” Every word she uttered was accompanied
by a shushing sound of leaves rubbing against each other.

“It’s the middle of the night.”

There was a long pause before she spoke
again in a tight, disapproving voice. “It seems to me you have
nothing better to do anyway.”

“Don’t you judge me. You’re a freeloader
hanging around all day while I work at a crappy job taking shit
from customers. I got tired of people yelling at me. Don’t I
deserve better than that?”

“Do you think you do?”

I opened my mouth to argue—as if arguing
with a houseplant were the most natural thing to do in the middle
of the night—then snapped my jaw shut, frowning. “Are you trying to
psychoanalyze me?”

“Do
you
think you need therapy?”

“Are we playing the question game?” I tilted
my head at her.

“Would the question game help you make
better decisions?”

“Can you help me make better decisions?”

“Yes. Yes I can.”

I grinned. “I win. That wasn’t in the form
of a question. Thank you for playing.” I poked at her soil. “You’re
still dry. I guess the weather girl was wrong.” I put the pot in
the empty sink and sprayed water on the soil. “I’m going to let you
sit here and drain for the rest of the night. While you do that, I
will be sleeping. If you wake me up, I will chop you into tiny
pieces with kitchen scissors. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she said in a mopey voice. “Though
I’m not in the least bit afraid of you. Get some sleep, and we’ll
talk in the morning. We have a lot to discuss.”

I nodded. “I guess. Goodnight…hey, what do I
call you?”

“You’ve been calling me Phyllis for two
years, dear. Why would you change that now?”

I tried not to think of all the intimate
moments I’d spent both with and without boyfriends in front of this
self-aware plant. “Goodnight, Phyllis.”

As much as I was eager to get back to sleep,
I never did manage it that night. I was too afraid I’d wake up in a
white room with padded walls.

Maybe an institution would have been easier
than what Phyllis had in store for me. Apparently, she had my whole
life already planned and had been lying in wait for me to hit
bottom.

And now that I’d done it, she was more than
ready to take over.

Chapter 2

After a long, mostly sleepless weekend spent arguing
with a philodendron and dodging questions from Mrs. Terwilliger, I
found myself standing on the sidewalk in the worst part of Topeka,
bright and early Monday morning.

With a houseplant tucked under my arm.

The street was fairly empty of vehicles and
pedestrians, which was good, since Phyllis was so excited to have
browbeaten me into all this she hadn’t shut up the whole way
there.

“Are you sure you have the right address?” I
asked, shifting her to the other arm. “The only businesses in this
area are meth labs and prostitutes. I wasn’t especially good at
chemistry in school, so I hope you didn’t drag me here to meet my
new pimp.”

She made a tutting noise, interesting for
someone with no tongue. “Stop fussing, Wynter. Just do what I say.
You’ll see.”

All I
saw
was a homeless dude whip
himself out and pee on the side of the building she wanted me to
enter.

At one time, the place might have been full
of doctors’ offices or accounting firms. Now it was a single-story
mess of peeling gray paint, boarded-over windows, and cracked
concrete.

And she wanted me to waltz in there like I
had an appointment.

Spend a weekend arguing with a plant. When
you finally lose, you’ll walk into the pits of hell rather than
continue the argument.

I squared my shoulders, lifted my chin, and
walked past the homeless guy shaking himself dry and tucking back
in. I averted my eyes and didn’t return his greeting. At the
threshold, I hesitated a moment, then pushed the door open.

With the first step inside, everything
changed.

The door closed behind me, and I blinked in
the sudden brightness. I stood in a round atrium bustling with
people. Several stories above me, the ceiling rose to a glass dome.
Everything was white and shiny and clean, and hallways led off in
several directions. A bank of elevators opened and closed with
people pouring out and more taking their places.

In the center, a reception desk held court,
surrounded by couches and chairs for people to wait in comfort.

“Over there, dear,” Phyllis said. “We need
to get you checked in.”

I supposed she meant the reception area. I
didn’t ask. My jaw hadn’t yet learned to reconnect my lips.

We stood in line and waited our turn. I’d
been so busy taking in the enormous—and impossible—building, I
hadn’t looked at the receptionist yet.

“Don’t stare, dear, it’s rude,” Phyllis
said. “Put me on the counter, please. I’ll take care of
everything.”

I closed my mouth and did as I was told.
This entire situation put me so far out of my element, I might as
well have been at a cocktail party on Mars.

“Patrice,” Phyllis said. “How wonderful to
see you, dear.”

Patrice wore small, mirrored sunglasses and
a cleavage-baring, hot pink blouse that set off her green skin. Her
dark green dreadlocks coiled around her ears with one or two skinny
locks dangling over one eye. I called them dreadlocks in my mind
because there was no way I would admit to myself that the woman had
a head full of live, moving snakes.

“Phyllis,” she said with a remarkable lack
of hiss in her voice. “It’s about damn time you got here.” She
looked from the plant to me and back again. “Is this her?”

“It is, yes.”

Patrice fixed me with what I was sure was a
stony stare through those glasses. I may not have finished college,
but I sure as hell knew a gorgon when I saw one. Not that Medusa
was real, of course. I looked away in case my apparent lateness was
cause for giving me that look over the top of her rims. Forget
Mars. I was all the way out on Jupiter, and the cocktail party had
turned into a lecture on alien economics.

“Took you long enough,” Patrice said. She
handed me a clipboard with a pen attached by a silver chain. “Fill
out this paperwork and bring it up when you’re done.”

“Thank you,” I said in a near whisper, eyes
to the floor. I clutched Phyllis against my chest and made a
beeline for the farthest chair from the desk.

I settled into the seat, hands shaking, and
put Phyllis on the table next to me. “What
is
this place?
Why didn’t you warn me what to expect? How is any of this possible?
Are we even
in
Topeka anymore?” I rattled off questions,
hoping for answers, but also hoping some sort of understanding
would click in my brain so I could think coherently.

A faun in dress shirt and tie trotted past,
and I felt my brain shrink away from the elusive understanding I so
desperately wanted.

“If I’d explained it first,” Phyllis said,
“you either wouldn’t have come or wouldn’t have believed me.
Knowing you, a little of both. Just fill out the paperwork. You
don’t want to make Patrice angry.”

No. No, I did not.

The top of the form gave me the name of
where I was, at least. Finally, some sort of clue:
Mt. Olympus
Employment Agency

I filled out the form the best I could. My
name was easy—Wynter Greene. I’d had a lot of minty-fresh jokes
throughout my life, but now that I was an adult, I didn’t have to
deal with it as much. The standard address, date of birth, and
social security questions rounded out the first section. No
problem.

Section two was where things went a little
sideways. They wanted the names of my parents. Who asks for that on
a job application? I shrugged and put down my mom’s name, Cora
Greene. I left the father question blank. I had no clue. Every time
I’d tried to ask my mom about it, I got a different story.

“Check the box for which parent is the
superior deity?” I frowned at Phyllis. “What’s that supposed to
mean?”

“Leave it,” she said. “Let them sort it
out.”

Section three was where I expected them to
ask about my previous jobs. Or school. Or qualifications of any
kind. Nope. They wanted to know if I could fly.

I dropped the pen and held up my hands.
“Phyllis? What am I supposed to do with this?”

Her leaves quaked and she chuckled. “Answer
‘no’ to all the abilities questions, but in the write-in portion,
tell them you’re good with plants.” She laughed at her own
joke.

I didn’t find it funny at all. “Crazy-ass
job application,” I muttered under my breath. “And a talking plant
who won’t help me.”

I left nearly everything on the form blank.
I didn’t know if they were joking or serious, and I didn’t want to
come off sounding like a lunatic. Though the fact that I had to
hand the forms to a gorgon while a lady with flowers growing out of
her hair waited in line behind me kind of gave weight to the idea
that the application questions were serious.

Or that I was lying on the street somewhere
with head trauma, and this was the weirdest dream ever.

I bit my lip and squinted at the page in my
hand. Yeah. That had to be it. Head trauma. I decided to proceed as
if the whole thing were an entertaining product of a vehicular
accident involving a family of ducks, a carload of clowns, and a
careening melon cart. That could cause anybody to slip into a coma
featuring a colorful dream cast of bizarre characters.

My cheeks tightened with my strained smile
as I handed over the clipboard.

Patrice pushed her sunglasses up her nose
and sniffed. “Not a lot of information here.” She yanked the papers
from the metal clip and shoved them into a folder. “Follow the
copper line to Thebes for orientation and further instruction.
Next, please.”