Meanwhile, I tried to start my writing again from scratch following his erasure of my earlier draft.I could remember the opening paragraphs easily enough.I’d been proud of them when I first sat down to write this book under Aster’s prompting, but on the second typing, they felt weak, inadequate.This book inhabited more space than I could scope out, and I hadn’t lived enough years to carry the weight.This size difference between me and what I wanted to write was a problem I’d encountered ever since I started writing in middle school, and I hated that it still bothered me.
To compensate for the sloppiness I couldn’t prevent, I worked at a crawling pace, taking a break every few hundred words and asking Aster to validate my ideas moving forward.At first Aster refused to help.He didn’t want to damage things more than he had, and he still believed that he was a curse more than anything else.Then he softened.
“You don’t need to commit to anything,” I said.“If anything I ask is too much, just let me know.But I want you to be involved if you can.Think of it as a penance.Or a distraction.”
A distraction could do me some good,he admitted.From there, he kept his answers brief, minimalistic and indifferent.He told me to spend less time describing the clouds in my writing and more discussing the feeling of the lack of satisfaction that had permeated the book so far.
I slept alone that night, and occasionally I heard rain pattering on the roof.On the top floor, from the bedroom, I could hear the rain clearly and beautifully.It sounded more musical than the standard white noise slush.I considered running down the stairs and asking Aster if I should throw in a description of the sound to my book, but then I paused.
Aster had a prickly approach to my writing when his mood turned sour.He was critical and demanding.Nothing could line up to his expectations.As the night wore on, his mood was would continue to be sour from his frustrations.I didn’t know if he’d like being interrupted in the middle of the night for something so trivial that I could just as well mention in the morning.
The sound of typing downstairs woke me up after dawn, and as soon as I recognized it, I woke with a start.Noise.Was Aster capable of making noise?Aster’s motions always reminded me of a cat.Usually I couldn’t hear his moving around at all unless I honed my ears on the sound of soft padding on the floor or a lone breath interrupting the silence.Even his voice had a way of sounding like it wasn’t really there, like my own internal monologue had found a way to happen outside of me.Now the constant irregular tapping I heard from my own laptop gave him away just as it would betray anyone else.I leaped from the bed and hurried down the stairs in nothing but my silk bathrobe.
The kitchen and dining room were empty.The woven blanket Aster had wrapped himself in the night before remained on the sofa crumpled and abandoned.Aster himself sat at my computer behind my secretary desk.His hair was scruffed on one side from sleeping.He still wore the same crimson suit as yesterday, and I saw no evidence that he’d eaten or showered.He was typing.
He sat on my chair in a fixed state, face set as if he were in a trance and fingers moving robotically over the keys as a series of words streamed out on the pale screen.If I didn’t disturb him, I calculated that he might be there all day.
“Aster?”I asked.
The fingers stopped and flexed, poised over the keys before Aster relaxed his shoulders and looked at me.
The tired expression remained.I couldn’t tell if it looked improved over the day before.The circles under his eyes were deeper set, but there was a life that glittered in those eyes that had been absent yesterday.
“What are you doing?”I asked.
He stood up.Then his face broke out in a smile, and he clapped his hands together in front of his chest.Stella, I have some good news.
“Good news?What happened?”I asked.
Aster’s eyes glittered with excitement, and when he walked over, he took one of my hands in his and petted my arm accordingly.Oh, Stella, I just learned something remarkable this morning.You won’t believe it.It turns out I don’t have to leave at all!
He escorted me to the couch, and I sat.Then he twisted his hands together, pacing on the creaking floor before speaking.
Yesterday I about gave myself up for lost.If I stayed with you, I would only doom us both.But I can’t leave because staying is too deeply embedded in my nature.I need an artist.I need you.But… what we have, what we had, could never last.
“So what did you decide?”I asked.
I’m getting there.You know, I tried to rid you of myself last night after you went to bed.I tried to go.
“I don’t want you to go,” I said, closing my eyes.
Aster ignored the comment.It doesn’t matter, anyway.I can’t seem to do that.It’s not in my nature, as I said.But then I realized that my time with you has bestowed on me a new skill.
“What’s that?”I asked.
He held up his hands and let his fingers run through the air.I can put it all into words now.Words you can understand.I can write.
I turned my head, and my eyes focused on what I could see on the screen of my laptop.Aster had kept himself busy through much of the night.The screen displayed paragraphs of words, all coherent and easily readable.The window was filled with text, in fact, and even though I couldn’t see how far back it went, Aster had clearly been hard at work for a while.
It isn’t what either of us thought of for a solution,he said.It’s like an epiphany.We’re not fully bound to each other, are we?I can go my way and write my books, and I don’t have to worry about you at all.I only think of the page and the words appear to me, and I can write them… in a way you can read.
Suddenly I needed to know what he had written, what he could have written.As a muse, I assumed that his infinite imagination spanned the globe and reflected all history and all possible futures.He could spin a ballad that would last for centuries or invent an entirely new branch of science if he wanted to.The only question was what he would choose to pursue.
I took the seat behind the desk, and Aster followed me, pinching the cuffs of his sleeves together with childlike anticipation.Then he picked up the laptop and carried it away from me, looking at the open screen in excitement.
When I’m writing, I feel I could go on forever.The process is impossibly fluid, and the more I put down, the better it gets.I could keep typing indefinitely until another book is out.And then I could write another after that.Now that I think of it, I believe I could expand the entire concept of the book into a series.
I froze in place while I processed his words and the excitement that bled through them.“Aster, this is a big deal,” I said.“We don’t need to part ways.Maybe you should write the book for me instead, while I watch.”
