buckets and mops and brooms and God knows what. If he was going to live in a place, she’d told him, at least it could be clean. And somehow he’d ended up spending three hours of a rainy afternoon when he should have been writing, scrubbing floors and chasing down dust.
Then again, he’d nearly gotten her into bed. Very nearly gotten her there, he remembered, when she’d stood in speechless shock at the state of his bedroom.
She’d gotten her voice back quickly enough and had launched into a lecture. He should have more respect for his workplace if not for his sleeping area, since they seemed to be one in the same. Why the hell did he keep the curtains drawn over the windows? Did he like caves? Did he have a religious objection to doing laundry?
He’d grabbed her out of self-defense and had stopped her mouth in the most satisfying of ways.
And if they hadn’t tripped over a small mountain of laundry on the way to the bed, he doubted they’d have ended the afternoon with a trip to the cleaners.
Still, there were advantages, he thought. He appreciated a clean space, even though he rarely noticed a messy one. He liked tumbling into bed on freshly laundered sheets—though he would have preferred to tumble on them with Cybil. And it was hard to complain when you opened a cupboard and found actual food.
Even the sexual frustration was working for him. The writing was pouring out of it, and out of him. Maybe the play had taken a turn on him, focusing now more on a female character, one with a shining naiveté and enthusiasm. A woman alive with energy and optimism. And one who’d be seduced by and damaged by a man who had none of those things inside him. A man who wouldn’t be able to stop himself from taking them from her, then leaving her shattered.
He saw the parallels well enough between what he created and what was, but he refused to worry about it.
He sipped his coffee, reminding himself to ask Cybil why his always tasted faintly of swamp water, and turned to the comic section to see what she’d been up to.
He skimmed it, frowned, then went back to the first section and read it again.
* * *
She was already at work, her window open, because spring had decided to be kind. A lovely warm breeze wafted through along with the chaos of street noise.
After her sheet of paper was set and scaled, she set her T-square back in its place in the custom-built tool area she’d designed to suit herself. She tilted her head, facing the first blank section. It was double the size of what would appear in the dailies in a couple of weeks. She already had it in her mind—the setup, the situation and the punch line that would comprise those five windows and give the readership their morning chuckle over coffee.
The elusive Mr. Mysterious, now known as Quinn, huddled in his dim cave, writing the Great American Novel. Sexy, cranky, irresistible Quinn, so serious, so intense in his own little world he was completely unaware that Emily was crouched on his fire escape, peering through the narrow chink of his perpetually drawn curtains, struggling to read his work in progress through a pair of binoculars.
Amused at herself—because in her own way Cybil knew her subtle little probes and questions on how his play was going were the more civilized version of her counterpart’s voyeurism, she settled down to lightly sketch her professional interpretation of the man across the hall.
She exaggerated ruthlessly, his good points and his bad. The tall, muscular body, the ruggedly chiseled looks, the cool eyes. His rudeness, his humor and his perpetual bafflement with the world Emily lived in.
Poor guy, she thought, he doesn’t have a clue what to do with her.
When the buzzer sounded, she tucked her pencil behind her ear, thinking Jody had forgotten her key.
She stopped to top off her coffee cup on the way. “Just hang on. Coming.”
Then she opened the door and experienced one more rapid meltdown. His hair was just a little damp
Then again, he’d nearly gotten her into bed. Very nearly gotten her there, he remembered, when she’d stood in speechless shock at the state of his bedroom.
She’d gotten her voice back quickly enough and had launched into a lecture. He should have more respect for his workplace if not for his sleeping area, since they seemed to be one in the same. Why the hell did he keep the curtains drawn over the windows? Did he like caves? Did he have a religious objection to doing laundry?
He’d grabbed her out of self-defense and had stopped her mouth in the most satisfying of ways.
And if they hadn’t tripped over a small mountain of laundry on the way to the bed, he doubted they’d have ended the afternoon with a trip to the cleaners.
Still, there were advantages, he thought. He appreciated a clean space, even though he rarely noticed a messy one. He liked tumbling into bed on freshly laundered sheets—though he would have preferred to tumble on them with Cybil. And it was hard to complain when you opened a cupboard and found actual food.
Even the sexual frustration was working for him. The writing was pouring out of it, and out of him. Maybe the play had taken a turn on him, focusing now more on a female character, one with a shining naiveté and enthusiasm. A woman alive with energy and optimism. And one who’d be seduced by and damaged by a man who had none of those things inside him. A man who wouldn’t be able to stop himself from taking them from her, then leaving her shattered.
He saw the parallels well enough between what he created and what was, but he refused to worry about it.
He sipped his coffee, reminding himself to ask Cybil why his always tasted faintly of swamp water, and turned to the comic section to see what she’d been up to.
He skimmed it, frowned, then went back to the first section and read it again.
* * *
She was already at work, her window open, because spring had decided to be kind. A lovely warm breeze wafted through along with the chaos of street noise.
After her sheet of paper was set and scaled, she set her T-square back in its place in the custom-built tool area she’d designed to suit herself. She tilted her head, facing the first blank section. It was double the size of what would appear in the dailies in a couple of weeks. She already had it in her mind—the setup, the situation and the punch line that would comprise those five windows and give the readership their morning chuckle over coffee.
The elusive Mr. Mysterious, now known as Quinn, huddled in his dim cave, writing the Great American Novel. Sexy, cranky, irresistible Quinn, so serious, so intense in his own little world he was completely unaware that Emily was crouched on his fire escape, peering through the narrow chink of his perpetually drawn curtains, struggling to read his work in progress through a pair of binoculars.
Amused at herself—because in her own way Cybil knew her subtle little probes and questions on how his play was going were the more civilized version of her counterpart’s voyeurism, she settled down to lightly sketch her professional interpretation of the man across the hall.
She exaggerated ruthlessly, his good points and his bad. The tall, muscular body, the ruggedly chiseled looks, the cool eyes. His rudeness, his humor and his perpetual bafflement with the world Emily lived in.
Poor guy, she thought, he doesn’t have a clue what to do with her.
When the buzzer sounded, she tucked her pencil behind her ear, thinking Jody had forgotten her key.
She stopped to top off her coffee cup on the way. “Just hang on. Coming.”
Then she opened the door and experienced one more rapid meltdown. His hair was just a little damp
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