I see you across from me.I see your bread, your wine, the sadness in your eyes.I see the way you obstruct yourself from everything you want.You always obstruct yourself.
I pulled back from his touch and looked down, shame coloring my cheeks.
You’re beautiful, Aster concluded, sitting back in his own seat.
Now I was completely stunned.My stomach fluttered.I wet my lips and shook my head in a blend of confusion and bafflement and a growing sense of adoration.I wanted to ask him to repeat the sentence so that I could hear it again, so that it would become more real for me and less of something that I questioned.But instead I raised my sandwich to my mouth and began to eat.
I had never tasted so much flavor in a meal before.Aster as well appeared to enjoy his, and for the rest of the night we kept our conversation to the topic of what meals we’d pursue in the future, the possibility of going to the beach in the morning and taking a more serious look at my writing to see what there could be improved.
But still, I kept hearing those words in my head until I fell asleep three hours later in my bed.Beautiful.Whatever else Aster told me, he had officially labeled me beautiful, and nothing I did would ever shake that perception.
I didn’t know what our relationship amounted to beyond a frenzied and impossible dream, but now that I had Aster, I could never let him go.
THE QUESTION
The lighthouse quartersat Illumination Point came equipped with one double bed in its single bedroom on the second floor.This room was uncomfortably bright in the morning because it sported two windows, and the larger one faced the ocean in the east.If I got out of the bed and pulled white linen curtains aside, I could look out and see the sun not as a ball but as a stripe of white that started in the sky and then moved down across the waves to the beach, blinding and hot.Somewhere out there lay the shores of Europe.England.Ireland.Africa.The wreck of theTitanic.Centuries ago my ancestors had sailed those same waves, and sometimes when I stood still, I imagined I could feel their curiosity as they set foot on the same rocky shore.
At first I remembered little of my supernatural encounter the day before.Remembering Aster was like remembering a dream.When I woke up I recalled nothing at all, only a patch of pleasantness as I remembered sitting at my desk to write.I smiled sleepily as I rolled around in my bed, only slowly realizing that despite my intentions, I hadn’t thrown the work into the day I meant.I had intended to write.I’d intended to fill half a notebook, or open a new document on my computer and draft five or ten quick pages I could edit today.
I had not written or typed a single word.
At that realization, the rest of my memories fell into place.I remembered my prayer.I remembered my plea to the universe and the way I had begged someone to come down and inspire me, and I remembered Aster all at once.I replayed our encounter.I could not tell, not for the life of me, whether he was real or only a daydream that had carried me away.His appearance alone cast a spell on me.If nothing else, I could write about him, record what I saw, act as a prophet in an artistic abyss.
Long silky hair, delicate features and milky skin.The way he touched me.The way the air touched me in his stead.
I reached a hand to my chin and tried to match the feel of that touch, but even my fingers were rough and calloused by comparison.
By now the last of my sleep had fallen from me.I took my clothes from the white wicker dresser near the vanity in my room, and minutes later I was showered and ready for the day.
This house still did not feel like mine.On the dresser sat a laminated book of general rules and safekeeping for Illumination Point, as well as ten or fifteen pages of historical annals and notes that I perused the day of my arrival, including a picture of the first and second generation of the Childress family who had built the tower and lived here first.
The parents of the family.Robert and Ethel Childress, had the makings of an attractive couple, but both were thin—haunted, even.Even despite the wear and aging of the picture itself, I could swear I saw a shadow in both their eyes as if they’d survived encounters of their own.
As I navigated the morning I took care not to disturb anything more than needed, not even to track water on the bathroom floor for fear of tainting my haven during the span of my stay.
My eyes caught on an antique porcelain doll I found on one side of the bathroom counter.The doll was a relic in her own right, with glossy brown hair and an open book and quill painted onto her crisp white gown under her hands.A writer.I didn’t know if she’d come with the lighthouse or if an associate with the residency had added her to the place more recently.Either way, she conflicted with the other aesthetics here in a bad way, and soon after my arrival, I’d pushed her into a corner where I would be less likely to notice her in the future.
When I descended the stairs to the main level of the house, my brain swirled with thoughts of Aster and everything that had unfolded yesterday.Last night when we parted ways, he had kissed me on my cheek.I could feel the spot even now, even after my shower, damp and cool from the touch of his lips.We had only talked the whole time.He asked me about myself, about what I wanted to accomplish.I intended to start working with him or to demand that he point me in the right direction, but his presence alone stunned me so much that I never got around to it.I felt like I could look into those eyes forever.
But I had released Aster in the end.My physical exhaustion had gotten the better of me.I’d surrendered to my fragile human frame.When I realized that I couldn’t keep my head up past two, after Aster had finished questioning me about my education and prior influences and favorite types of dogs, I finally I told my muse that I needed to go to bed, that we could start working in the morning.
Sleep always killed off everything I wanted most.It didn’t matter whether I went to bed early or forced myself to stay up.Any traces of inspiration I’d possessed at my peak dried into a creativity desert.My focus slid.The words came more slowly, even clumsily, to my brain.With a physical muse, it was even worse—sleep meant saying goodbye and not knowing for certain if I’d see him again when I woke up.
Now that I reflected on the closing of our time together, I realized that Aster’s presence had grown distinctly burry by end of our encounter.He was both there and not-there, present but only a figment of my imagination.
Now that I had gone to bed and slept and woke up refreshed, I had no confidence that I would see him ever again.
How very like a dream.
I visited my workspace first.I worked in the living room of the house.There was an extra studio near the back, a small room a little larger than a closet with a work table and bench.Some people might have preferred that, but the living room had a spacious bay window and a closer connection with the natural surroundings of the lighthouse that I couldn’t pass up on.It was also home to a large replica of a nautical painting by Winslow Homer called “Breezing Up” and a cross on the wall that someone had fashioned from the rubble of a shipwreck that took place off this very coast, shortly before the lighthouse’s construction.
The cross was grotesque, not decorative.It contrasted in every way with the light, airy setting of the lighthouse.The wooden planks were worn and jagged.The nails that held it together were red from rust, jagged and sharp like something that had been dragged up from the bottom of the ocean.Perhaps the cross’s jarring appearance was why I found it so appealing.
I checked out the desk first and reminded myself of my inactivity the day before by looking again at my blank paper and opening my computer screen.
“Aster,” I said, more to myself than to the universe.Then I straightened, still alone.I could ask what I wanted, and the worst that could happen would only be more silence.“Aster?”
A breeze blew in from a window I had left cracked open earlier, and Aster stood again in front of me with his arms hugged across his chest.
