thrown off balance and into the path of the van when the dog stopped to scratch his ear.
Guide dog trainers refused to speculate about the dog’s behavior, saying only that the dog’s training and fitness will be evaluated.
The dog was unharmed.
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Award Winner,
Best Short Story of 1994
Macavity Award Winner for Best Short Story of 1994
The Muse
The jet black pantyhose were calling to him. The feet of the pantyhose, to be precise. He knew he shouldn’t look. Knew it would only encourage her. But he folded the edge of the newspaper down, giving in that much.
“Bee-yoll.” Her voice was childlike, crooning. Her puppeteer voice.
“I’m not in the mood for this, Ellie,” Bill said.
“Oh, Beeeeee-yoll.”
Her hands were all he could see of her, and not really much of her hands. The makeshift pantyhose puppets were “looking” at each other.
“He’s very angry with you,” the right hand admonished the left.
“No, he’s not,” the left answered, then they both looked at Bill.
“I’m not angry,” Bill said to the hands, giving in a little more. Addressing the puppets now. “Not really angry. Just tired.”
“Quit distracting him. He’s on an important deadline, and he has writer’s block,” the right said.
“He never has writer’s block,” the left replied. “He’s upset about Mir.”
“The prospect of a visit from Miriam is an unpleasant one,” he agreed.
Ellie’s head emerged above the edge of the breakfast table. He saw that she had cut the crotch out of the pantyhose, and was wearing them over her head.
“You are the strangest woman I know,” he said, causing her to smile. Ellie considered this a grand endearment. Bill knew that.
Her head tilted a little to one side, as if studying him for a portrait. “It’s fine now. Not even my evil twin can stop you.”
“She is your younger sister, not your twin,” he said, but she was leaving the table, pulling the pantyhose off.
Ellie was right, as always. Not about the twin business, of course, but about the novel he was working on. He got up from the table feeling invigorated, and went straight to the computer. He had a new slant on a passage he had considered unworkable until a moment ago. This was the effect she had on him. Ellie was his Muse.
He had known she would be from the moment he first saw her. Seven years ago, well past three o’clock in the morning on a hot summer’s night, at a gas station on Westwood Boulevard. Bill supposed he would forget his own name before he forgot that night.
He had been uneasy, at loose ends. It wasn’t insomnia: it’s only insomnia when you’re trying to sleep. He had been trying to write. It was his best kept secret then, his writing. None of his professors at UCLA, who knew him as a recent graduate in mechanical engineering, would have ever guessed it. Well-written papers and a flair for creative problem-solving didn’t make him stand out as more than a good student. His friends, although from varied backgrounds and majors, held the same prejudices as the few women he had dated: they assumed that engineers were unlikely to read novels, let alone write them. His father, who expected him to come to work for the family company in September, was also unaware of Bill’s literary aspirations.
In those days, Bill thought that was for the best. If he was going to fail, he preferred not to advertise it. And while he had faith in the basic idea for his novel, he had to admit it wasn’t working out. Frustrated when he stalled in that place in the manuscript where he had stalled no fewer than ten times before-where the boy ought to get the girl back again-he stood up and stretched. He needed some fresh air, he decided. At least, the freshest he could find in L.A..
And so he had restlessly made his way down to Westwood Boulevard, head down, his hands shoved down into his pockets, his long-legged gait taking him quickly past record stores and restaurants. He glanced up just to keep from running into parking meters and lampposts, glancing at but not really seeing the boutiques and movie theaters closed for night. The gas station was closed, too, but the sight that greeted him there made him slow his stride.
A lithe young woman was tugging on one of the water hoses most people would use for filling radiators. She was using it to wash a gold Rolls-Royce.
He came to a halt on the wide sidewalk, fascinated. She looked up over the hood, used the back of her hand to move her bowl-cut, thick, dark hair away from her eyes. Big brown eyes.
“Want to go for a ride?” she asked him.
He nodded, but didn’t move forward.
“You’ll have to give up hesitating if you’re going to ride with me,” she said, opening the driver’s door. But Bill was distracted from this edict when he saw an elderly man sleeping on the front seat.
“Wake up, Harry,” she said, gently nudging the old man, who came awake with a start. “We’re taking…” She looked over her shoulder. “I’m Ellie. What’s your name?”
“William. William Gray.”
She turned back to the old man. “We’re taking Bill here for a ride on Mulholland Drive. You can sleep in the back.”
The old man reach for a cap, rubbed a gnarled hand over his face and quickly transformed himself into a dignified chauffeur, moving to hold the passenger door open for Bill, waiting patiently as Bill finally moved toward the car. Harry gave a questioning look to Ellie, now behind the wheel.
“No, you need your rest.”
Harry nodded and climbed into the back, asleep again before Ellie had started the car.
They had traveled Mulholland and beyond that night, climbing canyon roads that twisted and turned.
She was a good driver; calm and assured, not crazy on the winding roads. At first, he was afraid, wondering if he had made the biggest-and perhaps the final-mistake of his life. He started envisioning bold headlines: “Missing UCLA Student Found Dead,” or “Still No Suspects in Topanga Canyon Torture-Murder Case.” Perhaps he wouldn’t be missed much. Maybe he would only rate a small article on a back page, near a department store ad: “Boy Scout Troop Makes Grisly Discovery in Canyon.”
“Either you just had a big fight with your girlfriend or you’re a writer,” she said, not taking her eyes off the road. “I’m betting you’re a writer.”
He hesitated, then said, “I’m a writer. Or I want to be one. How did you guess?”
“The time of day, the way you were walking. You looked frustrated, I suppose.”
“Anyone can be frustrated. Why would you think I’m a writer?”
She shrugged, then smiled a little. He waited, hoping she would answer, but she startled him by saying, “You’re also a bit of a romantic.”
He laughed nervously. “That’s an odd thing to say.”
“I am odd. But there’s nothing odd about knowing a romantic when you see one. At three-” She glanced at the clock on the dash. “At approximately three-twenty-five in the morning, you agreed to get into a Rolls-Royce with a sleeping old man and a woman you had never met before.”
“Perhaps I just needed an adventure.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps both. So, what’s your favorite movie of all time?”
“Rear Window,” he said without hesitation.
“Wonderful!” she said, laughing but still not taking her eyes from the road. “Whose work in it do you admire,