Scott Nicholson - The Manor

She was no longer Muse, only Bridget, a Georgia sophomore shivering in a sheer nightgown, her nipples hard from the chill in the air.

"I'm worried about you." She leaned over him from behind and wrapped her arms around his chest. Spence let the swivel chair sag backward. Now that the spell of Word was broken, anxiety sluiced through his limbs. One corner of his eye twitched.

Bridget kissed him on the neck, just below the line of his newly grown stubble. "You're working so hard. Why don't you come to bed?"

"I can't work if I'm in bed." His irritability returned now that the letters had stopped flowing.

"I'm lonely for you, honey."

She had forgiven him for the previous day's mistreatment. Or had that been last night? A hundred years ago? Time lost all meaning at Korban Manor.

"Dear, dear, dear," he said, letting each word dangle in the air like a noose. "What is your loneliness compared to the great loss the world would suffer should my work go unfinished?"

"I know it's important. I'm not like you, though. I need a little companionship now and then."

"Surely you can turn your not inconsiderable charms toward procuring yourself a bedmate. You can play your illusory games of love elsewhere, with my blessing."

Bridget pulled her arms from his chest. Spence swiveled the chair so he could admire his latest bauble. Her comely curves undulated beneath the clinging fabric of her gown. A treasure. A pretty, useless thing.

"Jeff, I don't want anybody else. I love you."

This distraction was getting interesting. Perhaps Word would forgive him a moment's idleness. Surely even Ephram Korban played emotional games in his day.

"Love," he said, and the word flowed as if spoken by Sir Laurence Olivier himself, the liquid of the phonic dripping off Spence's tongue. A classic oratory was coming on, rising from his bones to his chest, through his lungs and throat, air made wisdom. The only thing that ever changed was the audience.

"Love, the ultimate vanity," he said. "All love is self-love. Motherly, brotherly, sexual, puppy, religious, sacrificial. All love is masturbation. And so, I give you permission to love yourself, since that seems to be what you require of me."

"Honey, don't be so… so…"

"Obdurate. From the Latin 'to harden.' Synonyms: firm, unbending, inflexible. Oh, how I wish that were true. But the mind embraces what the flesh shrinks from in shame."

"Don't do that. You know I don't care about yourabout our-problem."

Spence laughed, his girth wiggling from the sheer ecstasy of his self-love. He reached up and stroked her hair, a romance-novel cliche, silken tassels, spun gold. Her cheeks were pink with hoarded passion, lips slightly parted as she gasped at his touch. Her skin glowed like honey in the firelight.

"Our problem," he said.

She had crossed the line. This demanded a response.

His hand closed into a fist around her hair. He pulled her head forward, reaching behind him to grab the manuscript. He flung the loose pages at her face, pleased at the slapping sound the paper made against her skin. The pages kited to the floor as she grunted.

"Pick them up," he said, twisting her hair, forcing her to her knees. She was petite, no match for his great bulk. She sobbed as she fumbled among the papers. He jerked her to her feet, though she had collected only a small sheaf of pages.

"Read," he said, with cold menace.

Her eyes were wide, cheeks wet with tears, lower lip quivering.

"Read," he said again. Calm now.

Her eyes flicked across the page, shoulders shaken with sobs, breasts swaying miserably against the confines of satin.

"Aloud." He was once again Jefferson Davis Spence, the legend, the genuine article. No more illusions of Muses and far-off literary gods, no more lofty aspirations, no more symbiosis with the Royal typewriter. Now he could focus on the art of cruelty.

" 'The night spread its f-filth like spies, like flies,' " she said, voice trembling. " 'The n-night walked the night, climbed its own spine like a ladder, the night rattled the bones of its own cage…'"

Spence relaxed his grip on her hair, and now stroked her. He closed his eyes, lost in the precious rhythm of his own prose.

"'… the night growled, hissed like a snake, sputtered like a black firework, the night entered itself, laved itself with its own tongue, swallowed its own tail…'''

Ah, the Muse was singing again. All she needed was the proper sheet music.

" '.. the night tastes of charcoal and ash, the night tastes of licorice, the night tastes of teeth-yes, of cold teeth… go out frost

Her voice trailed away, but Spence still rocked back and forth in his chair like a babe lulled by its own sonorous babble.

"Jeff?" She took a careful step backward.

"You stopped reading. I didn't tell you to stop."

"This stuff is… this stuff is…"

Spence smiled, his face warm with satisfaction at this small but tender tribute the peak of self-love. He braced for the paroxysm of bliss, awaiting her ejaculation of praise.

"This is just so awful." She dropped the section of manuscript to the floor. "You've been wasting your talent on this? This… maggot mess? "

Spence, anticipating the rush of sweet validation, didn't register her words at first. But the tone was clear. Even with their southern flavor, the words were exactly like those of Mrs. Eileen Foxx, his fifth grade teacher. Foxx in Socks, the kids called her, because they weren't clever enough to come up with something lewd or connected to bodily functions.

Mrs. Foxx had berated him in front of the whole class because he'd had the temerity to misspell the word receive. He stood at the chalkboard, breathing the dust of a thousand mistakes, while the other children howled with laughter, relieved because it wasn't them this time. And the warm wetness spread beneath his waist, his small bladder voided, and the laughter changed in pitch, rose to the level of schoolhouse legend.

And on that sunny spring afternoon at Fairfield Elementary school, a new grammar rule was formed: I before E except after P.

Born as well that day was Jefferson Spence, the writer. The one who would out-obtuse Faulkner, who would out-macho Hemingway, who would out-wolf Tom Wolfe. And though he couldn't reach back through the halls of time and grab Mrs. Foxx by the frayed seams of her cardigan sweater and smash those ever-pursed lips, he could act now. He could vent against the critics and the sneerers and the pretty popinjays, all the other Eileen Foxxes of the world who deserved retribution.

He swept his hand hard against the cheek of the faux Muse. She moaned and collapsed back onto the bed, an arm bouncing against the brass bedstead, another arm flopping across her chest. A trickle of blood leaked from her mouth, and one nostril clotted red as well. As the flesh of her cheek warmed from the blow, her eyes stared back at him with all the severity of Eileen Foxx's.

He turned from her gaze.

Ah, Ephram smiled. Ephram, who had offered support during Seasons of Sleep. Ephram, an ally in a universe of small-minded fifth graders who would never understand.

It wasn't that he always failed with women, or that his literary output was uneven. It wasn't a flaw in the equipment. It was them. It had always been them.

They stood between him and the true light, the bright shining path, the burning Word. Who needed mere physical pleasure? What one needed was the shedding of pleasure, the removal of distraction.

One needed to become the Word, a communion reduced to its simplest form.

Spence placed his fingers on the cold keys of the typewriter. The lantern hissed in approval, the fireplace rumbled with hot delight. He looked at Ephram again, and then at the blank page, his greatest ally and his most dreaded enemy.