Page 7 of Come Back To Me

I wondered if he was going to make things awkward, hang around until we locked up, but he stood suddenly and slipped his arms through his jacket sleeves.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll be on at ten o’clock. I’ll sing to you some more.”

“How many girls have you said that to?” I called after him. But he was gone, and my manager was standing in the doorway looking at me funny.

Relentless. There’s something about a relentless man. You couldn’t ignore them. If they asked long enough, eventually they wore you down. Women looked for that, persistent interest. An investor. We were, in ourselves, an entire universe. We felt too much, talked too much, wanted too much—the anti-simple.

“You didn’t come to my show, Yara.” —David, at the bar again.

I watched him as I poured a beer. He was disheveled today, his hard side-part not so hard, and he had dark half moons beneath his eyes. He came twice a week now, sometimes in the morning, sometimes late at night. Whatever time of day he came, his eyes never left me.

“No,” I said, simply.

“Why not?”

I looked around the bar. Did I have time to answer that? I had four tables.

“Why do you want me to come?” I asked. I watched him think about it for a minute as he rolled his glass between his palms.

“So I can impress you.”

“Why do you want to impress me?”

A man at a table nearby was looking around, searching for his server. I pegged him for a ketchup guy. He wanted a side.

“I’m obsessed with you. I’m fascinated by the fact that I’m obsessed with you. This has never happened to me before.”

I smiled. I didn’t believe him, of course, but it was fun to hear.

“Yara, can you explain this?” He sounded distressed.

“I can,” I said. “Sort of. But I have to get ketchup for that guy over there.” I motioned with my head and he turned to look.

“Okay,” he said. “Hurry.”

I did. I hurried. I went to the kitchen and retrieved a steel ramekin of ketchup from the fridge, I set it on the table, and I smiled—not at him, at David—who wanted to know why I made him feel the way I did. David waited at the bar behind me, and I felt him waiting. Why was I playing this game? I said I wasn’t going to anymore. When I got back, he looked at me expectantly.

“What?” I asked him. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Tell me,” he said. I sighed.

“Look, I’ve never called myself this so don’t laugh,” I warned him. “But I’ve dated a lot of artists. Probably exclusively artists,” I admitted, somewhat embarrassed. “They seem to need me for a while…to spark something. I really don’t know. But I’ve been called a muse.” My face was hot, a fever of embarrassment. I didn’t know why I was telling him any of this, I would agonize over it later. “It’s simple for me and complex for them.”

“What do you mean?” he asked me.

I looked around the bar at my tables. No one needed me, so I continued. “They’re…different when I leave and I’m the same.”

He considered that for a moment and then nodded.

“I can see that. I really can. And I’m not just saying that because I’m drunk.” He lifted his glass in cheers and took a sip.

“I need a muse.”

I laughed.

“I’m not kidding. I can’t write anymore. I feel stale. And then by chance, I was walking by and I saw you through the window.” He spun around on his stool and pointed to a spot on the sidewalk. “I was composing my speech, the one I was going to give Elizabeth. It was blah, blah, blah—I’m not the commitment sort of guy, and then I saw you and I wanted to marry you on the spot.”

“You’re full of it,” I told him.

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